What does this mean exactly?

Question: IT IS ORDERED that all records relating to such arrest and subsequent discharge, including associated bench warrants, pursuant to the above referenced
section be expunged and destroyed and that no evidence of such records pertaining to such charge shall be retained by any municipal,
county or state agency except as follows:
(1) arrest and booking record, associated bench warrants, mug shots, and fingerprints of the defendant shall be retained under seal pursuant to
§17-1-40, by law enforcement, detention, correctional and prosecution agencies for three years and one hundred twenty days, and law
enforcement and prosecution agencies may retain the information indefinitely under seal for purposes set forth in §17-1-40 (B)(1)(a) and (b);
under §17-1-40 (C)(1), this order does not require the destruction of evidence gathered, unredacted incident and supplemental reports, and
investigative files, which statutorily shall be retained under seal for three years and one hundred twenty days, and may be retained
indefinitely under seal for purposes set forth in §17-1-40 (C)(1); and information retained under seal by law enforcement, detention,
correctional and prosecution agencies pursuant to §17-1-40 is not a public information and is exempt from disclosure, except by court order;
(2) nonpublic information retained on each person accepted for Pre-Trial Intervention pursuant to § 17-22-130; and
(3) nonpublic information retained by SLED and S.C. Department of Public Safety/Department of Motor Vehicles pursuant to §17-22-330(A) and
§17-22-530(A), as well as any nonpublic records retained by S.C. Commission on Prosecution Coordination as required by law.
Comment: You cut that off in a weird place - in the middle of a statute number?
Comment: not really. its regarding expungment in South Carolina. This is what is said on the expungement letter and I just want to know what it means?
Comment: Is this quoted from https://www.sccourts.org/forms/pdf/SCCA223A1.pdf if so the question could you [edit] the question to reflect that?
Comment: this is the right form: https://www.sccourts.org/forms/pdf/SCCA223B1.pdf
Comment: Sorry, this is way too broad as a question. Please at least indicate _what_ you don't understand - and please format the text to be readable. Voting to close.
Answer: It says that in the particular criminal case, all court and law enforcement records are to be destroyed. There are some limitations, one being that law enforcement and prosecution agencies must retain records for 3 years plus 120 days. These records are "under seal", meaning they cannot be released to anyone other than law enforcement, prosecution, or attorneys representing law enforcement or prosecution, or unless a court orders them to be released. That is, they are not public records open to disclosure, and thus a future employer will not know about this. Warning: that may not be true of jobs requiring a federal security clearance, since the FBI does investigate such candidates. Very recently on 6/27/18, SC law was amended to add a provision, which will be effective in 6 months, that

Except for criminal justice agencies, employers shall not use expunged information adversely against an employee.  No information
  related to an expungement shall be used or introduced as evidence in
  any administrative or legal proceeding involving negligent hiring,
  negligent retention, or similar claims.

Law enforcement and prosecution are also allowed to keep that information forever (still under seal), to be used in "ongoing or future investigations and prosecution of the offense, administrative hearings, and to defend the agency and the agency's employees during litigation proceedings" (the purposes mentioned in §17-1-40 (B)(1)(a) and (b)).
Detention and correctional facilities likewise must keep their relevant records (e.g. booking records) for 3 years and 120 days (under seal); at the end of that period, the records must be destroyed unless there is a lawsuit or investigation related to the incarceration. Finally, evidence must be retained for that same period, and may be retained forever. The tail end was cut off, so it's impossible to interpret.
The court order basically copies the statute, trimming the wall of text a bit, but still writing one incomprehensible sentence. Courts feel (not unreasonably so) that their job is to re-state the law, not make it intelligible to ordinary people, who are expected to hire an attorney.
Comment: I like this answer, but I'll also add that a good way to read the run-on sentence of the court order might be to put a line break after every colon and semicolon.  This will help visually separate the different clauses, so you aren't staring at a wall of text.
Comment: @Rolloofthenorm Yes, but only after three years and one hundred twenty days, and even then they might keep it under seal for certain purposes.
Comment: @Rolloofthenorm That is a complicated question of its own.
Comment: So in other words since the charge is expunged the detention facility where you were booked at destroys all fingerprints and mugshots related to the arrest?
Comment: So that doesn't hinder you job chances doesn't it?
Comment: how is that complicated?

What does this mean exactly?


SMB/CIFS pipelining

Question: Is pipelining a feature of the SMB/CIFS protocol? I found that SMB2 does have a pipelining mecanism but no clear answer is available for the previous version. I have a network capture with several SMB Transaction Secondary messages on top of several NetBIOS session service messages, is that common on a network?
Comment: pipelining, that is, sending additional requests before the response to a previous request arrives
Comment: What is your definition of pipeline in this context? That would probably depend on the network and what you do on it.
Answer: Yes, SMBv1/CIFS has special "AndX" commands, which can chain to another command in the same packet – although only a few specific commands can be part of the chain. (There are 8 "AndX" commands in total – OPEN_ANDX, READ_ANDX, WRITE_ANDX, and a few others).

Batched messages using the AndX construct were introduced in the LAN Manager 1.0 dialect. Batched messages reduce the number of messages required to complete a series of commands by sending multiple command requests or responses in a single message. SMB commands that apply the AndX construct are known as "AndX Commands", and are identified by the NT LAN Manager convention of appending "_ANDX" to the command name. Messages of this type are known as AndX Messages.
…
AndX Messages contain a construct, conceptually similar to a linked-list, that is used to connect the batched block pairs. The resulting list is referred to as an AndX Chain.
…
Each AndX Command has a specific list of commands that can follow it in an AndX Chain. Each command's list of permitted follow-on commands is documented in the command's corresponding subsection of section 2.2.4, SMB Commands.

Quoted from the official Microsoft protocol documentation:

MS-CIFS 188.8.131.52 Batched Messages ("AndX" Messages)
MS-CIFS 220.127.116.11.4 Sending Any Batched ("AndX") Request
MS-CIFS 22.214.171.124.4 Receiving any Batched ("AndX") Request
CodeFX CIFS Explained
Comment: Thanks, very useful. I think my capture is not following MS documentation because several TRANSACTION_SECONDARY requests on top of each other does not seem to be allowed. Any idea how this happened? Could this be crafted by a malware or can a normal SMB implementation do that?

SMB/CIFS pipelining


Saving Illustrator logo for common to use formats

Question: I've got pretty simple problem. I've created logo in 3 variations on 3 A4 format artboards. I want to crop them, to get rid of loads of white space around logo, and secondly i'd like to save it with transparent background. Thanks in advance.
PS. I can't find any resources of best practices when saving logo in different formats.
Answer:
Select the logo.
Object > Artboards > Fit to Selected Art

As for a transparent background, Illustrator files inherently have no background. You can turn on the Transparency Grid if you need to confirm that -- View > Show Transparency Grid. The only reason you would have a background is if you used raster images or raster effects within your logos. You don't need to traditionally do anything to an Illustrator file to remove a background.
Answer: if it is the whitespace in the artboards themselves you want to get rid of, you can either:

group all the elements in one artboard and go to file - document
setup - edit artboards and then click (doubleclick?) on the grouped
logo. That should bring the artboard down to the exact size

or

you could go file - document setup - edit artboards and then do it
manually with resize

To save with transparent background, choose png: file - save as
Make sure you have chosen one of the artboards (this is signified by a slightly thicker black line around it). This should make you able to save one logo at a time, and prevent you from getting one massive image with all three.


Start a unit after another unit goes inactive

Question: Is there any way to delay a unit from starting up once another unit goes inactive?  I have a startup process (oneshot.service) that runs as a one-shot and sets up the environment for all other processes to utilize and then exits (which makes the service report inactive).
However, I want to wait till that process is done before kicking off all the other processes.  I was hoping there would be some type of signal or something that other service files could queue off of. Using the "After=oneshot.service" doesn't yield what I want as it will start up other processes before the oneshot.service finishes.
A more practical example is having a SNMPD SubAgent delay it's startup until after the SNMPD Agent is up and running... otherwise there is no communication between the Agent and Subagent unless you startup the Subagent an unknown amount of time after the SNMPD Agent is started.
Answer: Did you try the RemainAfterExit=yes in your oneshot.service service?
That way the service will still marked as active


Is 7-Zip Encryption really secure?

Question: Is 7-Zip really a good encryption tool? I wonder what kind of encryption is used in 7-zip. I see most people using 7-Zip. Just curious about what extent it is safe.
Comment: How about to Google for "What encryption does 7-Zip use?" or similar? I see no effort to find the answer before asking this question. I voted the question down.
Answer: It uses AES-256 with PBKDF2 using SHA1 with only 1,000 iterations [number disputed in 2nd and 3rd comment] as the KDF.  The AES-256 is strong, but the password protection is weak so make sure you use good passwords.
Comment: [***THIS COMMENT IS VERY WRONG***] Indeed! Addition: the constant is `kNumKeyGenIterations` defined at line 24 of 7z2201-src/CPP/7zip/Crypto/WzAes.cpp in the [source](https://7-zip.org/a/7z2201-src.tar.xz). It's used at line 48. That can't be changed without breaking compatibility with earlier programs, because this is not encoded in the file. The use of the GPU/FPGA/ASIC-friendly PBKDF2-SHA-1, with that low number of rounds, is a dream for password crackers such as hashcat. We need a very strong passphrase to compensate for this, like 6 random words (obligatory [XKCD](https://xkcd.com/936/)).
Comment: On third look, the password-to-key derivation is in `CKeyInfo::CalcKey()` of 7z2201-src/CPP/7zip/Crypto/7zAes.cpp [there](https://7-zip.org/a/7z2201-src.tar.xz). It hashes with SHA-256 a message consisting of $2^{k}$ times (16 bytes of salt, password, and 8-byte counter), with $k=19$ by default (with parameter $k\le24$ indicated in the archive). So that's about $2^{18}$ rounds of SHA-256 by defaut. Not very good compared to a standard amount of Argon2 or Scrypt, but over a hundred times better than the <$2^{11}$ rounds of SHA-1 corresponding to 1,000 iterations of PBKDF2-SHA-1
Comment: [*THIS COMMENT IS STILL WRONG*] On second look, no! The 1000 rounds of PBKDF2-SHA-1 are implemented in some crypto supported by 7-zip but ***NOT*** for 7-zip's native crypto. I think the correct description is [there](https://crypto.stackexchange.com/a/77548/555). $2^{19}$ rounds of SHA-256 is still very far from the state fo the art, but it's 512 times better.

Is 7-Zip Encryption really secure?


MapPoint lags with C#

Question: I have included MapPoint control object into my C# form. Once I try to close the program mappoint seems to free for a bit and causes lag.
I tried setting _mpMap.Saved = true; but no luck
Answer: MapPoint can pause during startup and shutdown due to cache issues, garbage collection, etc.
Make sure all of your MapPoint references are clean. As soon as you've finished with an object, clear the reference. For good measure run the garbage collection at a suitable point if possible (eg. After an object intensive batch job).
Are you working with MapPoint application or the control? Your question is ambiguous in this regard. Either way, you should consider a using statement.

MapPoint lags with C#


Article is already a type "wizard-defined" function name

Question: Following this answer https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/85983/17685 I'm trying to create a publication list with TeXworks.
Basically I did exactly what was in the answer and created two files plainyr_my.bst and Publication.tex. Then I compile Publication.tex into pdfLaTeX. Then I compile Publication.tex into BibTeX and see:
This is BibTeX, Version 0.99d (TeX Live 2012)
The top-level auxiliary file: Publications.aux
The style file: plainyr_my.bst
article is already a type "wizard-defined" function name
---line 592 of file plainyr_my.bst
 : function {article
 :                  }
Database file #1: Publications.bib
(There was 1 error message)

What is wrong?
P.S. I can add the files content to the question, but I'm afraid that it would be inappropriate here, since they are too long.
Comment: You can't have two definition for `function {article}`
Comment: @egreg, Oh. I really did this mistake. Thanks.
Answer: Fixed it.
By mistake I have added function {article} two times.


Generic vs General property of reducedness in a family of projective schemes

Question: Let $\pi:\mathcal{X} \to B$ be a flat family of projective schemes, $B$ is irreducible. Let $\mathrm{Spec} K$ be a generic point on $B$. Denote by $\mathcal{X}_K$, the pull-back of $\mathcal{X}$. This is flat, projective on $K$. It will then follow that $\mathcal{X}_{K_{\mathrm{red}}}$, the associated reduced scheme, is also flat, projective scheme over $K$. Assume that there exists a subfamily of $\pi$, say $\pi':\mathcal{X}' \to B$, a flat family of projective schemes satisfying $\mathcal{X}'_b \subset \mathcal{X}_b$ for all $b \in B$ and $\mathcal{X}'_K = \mathcal{X}_{K_{\mathrm{red}}}$. Does this mean that for a general closed point $b \in B$, the fiber $\mathcal{X}'_b=\mathcal{X}_{b_{\mathrm{red}}}$, the associated reduced scheme? If not true in general, is there any known condition on $B$ or $\pi$ under which this could hold true?
Answer: This is true if you assume moreover that $(\mathcal{X}_K)_{red}$ is geometrically reduced -- in particular, in characteristic $0$. First of all, note that set-theoretically $\mathcal{X}'_b=\mathcal{X}_b$ for all $b$ in $B$ : since $\pi $  open,  $\pi (\mathcal{X}-\mathcal{X}')$ is an open subset of $B$ which does not contain the generic point, therefore it is empty. Now the subset $U\subset B$ of points $b$ such that $\mathcal{X}'_b$ is geometrically reduced is open in $B$ (EGA IV, Thm. 12.2.4), so for $b\in U\ $ $\mathcal{X}'_b$ is reduced, and therefore equal to $(\mathcal{X}_b)_{red}$.
I am not an expert in characteristic $p$ but I suspect there might be counter-examples if one does not assume that $(\mathcal{X}_K)_{red}$ is geometrically reduced.
Comment: Here is a counterexample as abx suggests. Let $X$ be smooth connected of dimension $d>0$ over a perfect field $k$ of characteristic $p>0$ and let $\pi$ be the *relative* Frobenius morphism $X\rightarrow X^{(p)} =: B$ over $k$ (e.g., $t\mapsto t^p$ on the affine $t$-line over $k$). Let $X'=X$. The map $\pi$ is finite flat of degree $p^d$ with generic fiber that is *reduced* (corresponds to $K \hookrightarrow K^{1/p}$ since $k$ is perfect, as one sees by expressing a dense open in $X$ as etale over an affine space over $k$) but the fiber over every closed point of $B$ is non-reduced since $d>0$.
Comment: Thank you very much. I am interested only in the characteristic $0$ case.
Comment: If one replaces "reduced" with "irreducible" but omits the "geometric" aspect then the same failure of spreading-out occurs in any characteristic; e.g., $t \mapsto t^n$ on the affine line over an algebraically closed field of char. not dividing $n$ (irreducible generic fiber but reducible fibers over all closed points).  So it is genuinely valuable to *understand* the proof of EGA IV$_3$, 12.2.4 so as to appreciate the origin of the "geometric fiber" requirement for spreading-out to work. This is not a matter of pathology-avoidance in char. $p$, but rather of the power of the Nullstellensatz.
Comment: @abx: This is most probably, a dumb question. Is it obvious that if every fiber of $\pi'$ is non-reduced then the generic fiber $\mathcal{X}'_K$ is non-reduced? In other words, why is the $U$ mentioned in your answer non-empty?
Comment: Because it contains the generic point by your hypothesis.


Is is possible to export Inkscape files for inDesign?

Question: I was wondering if it was possible to export anything built in Inkscape to inDesign CS or CS5. If it is possible, how can I get it to work?
Comment: You might want to add a little more info for folks that might know Inkscape but not inDesign. What file types could you use? Inkscape is more similar to Illustrator. It works with svg file, but can export to a number of other formats, png, pdf, ps, wmf, and xcf just to name a few.
Answer: According to Adobe [1], InDesign does not support importing SVG files. It does, however, support importing EPS files, which Inkscape can export to (just choose EPS from the drop-down box in the "Save as ..." dialog).
Answer: You can import EPS files into inDesign. In Inkscape go to file > save as, then choose EPS from the dropdown menu.
In inDesign, go to file > place and choose your exported EPS.
Answer: There is also another file format that works well for exporting to InDesign, it is PDF,
to save as PDF, select file > save as, then choose Portable Document Format(.*pdf) from the drop down menu.
PDF documents can be placed in InDesign. Even If you choose to combine PDFs as a single document individual pages can be placed from this document in InDesign.
Answer: The best way is if you have also Illustrator on your computer. You can Ctrl+C,Ctrl+V from Inkscape to Illustrator and then Ctrl+C,Ctrl+V from Illustrator to InDesign. You will get fully editable graphics.
Comment: excellent answer, BUT I "only" have inkscape and indesign. How to export a vector graphic from inkscape to indesign, sothat the vectors are editable without having illustrator???
Answer: As far as I remember Photoshop can import SVG. So inDesign should too.
There are many discussions on this theme.
Answer: Yeah, EPS is probably the answer. However, in case you need to import SVG images into InDesign, you can also use this SVG plug-in for Adobe CS.


wolframscript creates tons of log files

Question: On Linux, wolframscript seems to create log files in .Mathematica/ApplicationData/ProcessLink/Streams
for example:
wolframscript -c SemanticImport[\"/path/to/file.csv\"] > /dev/null

generates files called wl-stream-stderr-(nonce) and wl-stream-stdout-(nonce)
I don't think the issue is only with SemanticImport, but that's certainly one that generates log files. (For example, -c 2+2 does not generate a log file.)
After a few heavy days of wolframscripting, my hard drive runs out of space from all these log files.
The contents look something like this:

STARTED: interactive mode
READY
Running with hints: {Delims: [], HeaderLines: 0, FixedSpaceTable: false, AutomaticTokenization: true, AutomaticHeader: true, MissingDataRules: map[MissingRuleType:ForAll Rules:[]], ColumnSpans: [],
   ExcludedLines: [], AllowedDomains: [], ColumnCount: -1
  LOADING: include [], exclude [PeopleData]
  DONE LOADING
SUCCESS: (etc.)

I can't find an option in wolframscript to turn off these log files. Other than just deleting all files in that directory every minute or so as a cron job, is there a more elegant or correct solution to keep the files from being created in the first place?
Answer: I have found that adding KillProcess/@Processes[] fixes this problem.

wolframscript creates tons of log files


Best PreCalculus Textbook

Question: What is your favorite PreCalculus textbook for someone that needs to get their algebra skills up to snuff? Something comprehensive with some tricky problems. Stewart?  Sullivan? Blitzer? Something different?
Comment: They're cheaper and as standards decline over time so do the textbooks.
Comment: Get something free, like OpenStax. Then get some good harder problems from the free part of Art of Problem Solving. Alcumus: https://artofproblemsolving.com/alcumus
Comment: OpenStax is pretty good. I was mostly happy with it for Precalculus last year. I think I has a student use Stewart to brush-up precalc. with good results a few years back. It's probably more important to pick an old edition.
Comment: @JamesS.Cook Why the old edition?
Answer: I like the old (1958) Ayres Schaum's book:  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0007DPVM2
[not promotional]
I generally find that older editions are better, but I have no evidence that the Schaum's got worse.  Just the old edition is a known trusted quantity.  You can get it used for $30 or so. [check other booksellers if you want to try to shave that number down, personally I think 30 is cheap, when you consider the value of your time from actually studying.]
I think there are some disadvantages (in general, caveat, caveat) of web-based open textbooks.  Not professionally proofed, edited.  And I think for a person actually sitting and doing drill homework, that a paper book is more convenient and worth the price.  Especially if you do some used, trusted edition.
Note, the Schaum's has all the answers, not just half.  So it is designed for self-studiers, unlike books marketed to professors, where the market (professors, not students) wants to hold some of the answers captive.  I also find a drill book or review (of any sort, but Schaum's good) is more convenient and usable for adult students that may have had the course before, but just need to improve their algebra via drill.  (Typical "doorstop" texts marketed to selection committees are written in a way to impress selection committees with verbose text and derivations rather than to connect with students.  And the rocket pictures, not needed by kids drilling.)
Comment: +1 Schaum's Outline if you want something comprehensive.  Has many worked problems, and many exercises for the readers to do themselves.

Best PreCalculus Textbook


Multidimensional array init without pre-existing values?

Question: How can we initialize a multidimensional array without pre-existing values? Only the third one is correct, but it works with pre-existing values. I would like my multidimensional array to contain 10 or 20 values, and add them later on with numbers[y][x] :
int[][] numbers = new int[10][];
//List<int[]> numbers = new List<int[]>();
//int[10][]{ new int[]{}};
//correct :  { new int[] {1, 2}, new int[] {3, 4, 5} };
numbers[0][0] = 58;

Would you know how to do this? (I don't know if [,] is the same as [][] by the way)
Thanks
Answer: You can try initiating values this way, it is one way to create jagged-array
int[][] test = new int[10][];
test[0] = new int[20];
test[1] = new int[30];
test[2] = new[] { 3, 4, 5 };

test[0][1] = 10;
test[1][2] = 20;

Comment: Thank you very much AppDeveloper
Answer: Would you know how to do this? (I don't know if [,] is the same as [][] by the way)
there are not the some as  int[][] test = new int[10][]; is called a jagged array (array of arrays) and int[,] is a fixed array
just declare your array as the following
 int[,] test = new int[10,30];
test[0,1] = 10;
test[1,2] = 20;

Comment: Thank you very much Julie Shannon


When is the $k/n$ representation of $D_n$ irreducible, and why?

Question: The $k/n$ representation of the Dihedral group of order $2n$ in $GL(2,\mathbb{C})$ is induced by mapping the rotation element of $D_n$ to the Rotation Matrix $R(\frac{2\pi k}{n})$, and the reflection element of $D_n$ to the matrix  $ \left( \begin{array}{cc}
1 & 0  \\
0 & -1  \\
 \end{array} \right)$.  As mentioned in the first hyperlink, this representation is irreducible unless $n$ is even and $k=n/2$. The article also gives a brief justification for this, however I don't immediately understand why this is the case. Thanks in advance, and apologies for my inexperience formatting these posts!
Comment: What part of the argument are you more specifically struggling with?
Comment: The article says that the fact that this representation is irreducible unless $n=2k$, and that this "can be seen by computing its character norm"...this quoted phrase is what I don't understand.

Thanks for the edits, now I see it's actually quite simple to correctly format these posts.
Comment: It's more or less clear to me that in the case $n=2k$, this representation is not irreducible. However, I do not understand why: if we take $0<k<n$ with $n$ not equal to $2k$, this representation should be irreducible.
Answer: Let's suppose we are OK with the case when $n=2k$ (in this case the rotation matrix simplifies significantly and it becomes easy to find an invariant subspace).
Call the representation $\rho$ and let $\chi_\rho$ denote the character of this representation.
In the case $n=2k$ the representation gives rise to an invariant subspace - the rotation matrix will simplify to a diagonal matrix, and then any product of these two diagonal matrices will also be diagonal. This allows us to easily see that the subspace of $V=\mathbb{C}^2$ given by $V'=\{(z,0)\in\mathbb{C}^2\}$ is invariant.
Now let $n\neq2k$. To show irreducibility we wish to prove that the character norm $<\chi_\rho,\chi_\rho>$ is equal to 1.$
$<\chi_\rho,\chi_\rho>=\frac{1}{2n}\sum_{g\in D_n}\chi_\rho(g)\chi_\rho(g^{-1})$
$\implies<\chi_\rho,\chi_\rho>=\frac{1}{2n}[(2cos(\frac{2\pi k}{n}))^2+(2cos(2\frac{2\pi k}{n}))^2\cdots+2cos(n\frac{2\pi k}{n})+(0+0)+(cos\frac{2\pi k}{n}-cos\frac{2\pi k}{n})+...+(cos(n\frac{2\pi k}{n})-cos(n\frac{2\pi k}{n}))]$
We now apply the identity $2cos^2\theta=1+cos(2\theta)$ (we skip a few substeps) to obtain that
$\frac{1}{n}[(1+cos(2\frac{2\pi k}{n}))+(1+cos(2\frac{4\pi k}{n}))+\cdots+(1+cos(2\frac{2n\pi k}{n}))]$
$=\frac{1}{n}[n+cos(\frac{4\pi k}{n})+cos(2\frac{4\pi k}{n})+\cdots+cos(n\frac{4\pi k}{n})]$.
Now we use another trigonometric result, namely:
$cos(\alpha)+cos(2\alpha)+\cdots+cos(n\alpha)=\frac{cos(\alpha+\frac{n-1}{2}\alpha)sin(\frac{n\alpha}{2})}{sin(\frac{\alpha}{2})}$ with $\alpha=\frac{4\pi k}{n}$.
[note: this is the moment where we lose the case where $n=2k$, since it would give a zero in this denominator.]
It is easy to see now that in our case this sum is zero. Since $sin(\frac{n\alpha}{2})=sin(\frac{4\pi k}{n}\frac{n}{2})=sin(2\pi k)=0$ for all $k$.
Finally, $<\chi_\rho,\chi_\rho>=\frac{1}{n}n=1$ and the representation is irreducible.


two nouns together

Question: In every case where we find the word anointing(KJV) in the Old Testament it is from a Hebrew word that is a noun.   Most of the time it is coupled with the word oil as in anointing oil.  If I was reading this without knowing that the word anointing is a noun I would think it is an adjective.  Is the word anointing a gerund?  Is anointing oil a compound noun?
Comment: Almost any English word can be used as almost any part of speech. Depending on the sentence. Sentences, please?
Comment: The short answer is that you can't tell in that sentence, because there aren't any marks on the words (as there would be in Hebrew, for instance), and because both adjectives and nouns can appear as the first item in a compound noun (yes, this is a compound noun, or noun compound). There are tests that can distinguish adjectives from nouns in some situations, but in general what part of speech a word is is determined by its use in a sentence, not by an official concordance. It's not a very important piece of information; and it's not necessary to determine it exactly most of the time.
Comment: "He poured anonting oil on Aaron's head and anointed him to consecrate him(Lev. 8:12)"  Both words, anointing and oil are listed as nouns in Strong's Concordance.
Answer: It's worth noting that in the Hebrew the phrase is (apologies for lack of rigorous transliteration) shemen hamishcha; that's a noun phrase composed of two nouns (Hebrew basically uses juxtaposition to create noun phrases). The English 'anointing oil' is similarly a noun phrase composed of two nouns; if the '-ing' is putting you off consider it the same as 'anointment oil'. But as the commenters have said, the specific status of the constituent words is fairly unimportant (here and generally).

two nouns together


How to check if a given address belong to an exchange

Question: Does any exchange provides any public information about its private keys managed BTC addresses, or is there any service that provides this information?
Comment: Needless to sat, I mean providing a list of its public-key wallet information, not the private keys of course
Answer: A few exchanges publicize their hot and cold wallets, but currently, as far as I'm aware, no exchange publishes a full list.
This may change as FATF's Recommendation 16 adoption grows, but may still be limited to closed access networks among exchanges.
Beyond that, for most services, it is not very hard to determine if a used address belongs to an exchange - most exchanges tend to follow fairly easy to identify sweeping patterns to move funds between receiver, hot, and cold wallets. Many block explorers tag various addresses to exchanges, in addition to paid coin monitoring services.


How to rewrite a TCP MMOG server designed to run in a single machine, in a distributed way?

Question: I have a MMOG server running on C++, using winsockets. My server won't support more than 200 players. I had the idea of redesigning it so it will use multiple servers instead of one, so, maybe, for example, each server could take care of a number of players, and, if it was too laggy, it could transfer the responsability of that player to other server. I'm not sure of how to program a consistent game logic like that, though. Are there techniques for this?
Comment: I think you should be more concerned with taking care of the source of DDOS attacks and removing any vulnerabilities instead of simply adding more power to your system to better handle the attack.
Comment: Do you have anything in place to actually *handle* these DDOS attacks?  Or are you just letting your server handle the connections?
Comment: I think the OP mean that only players that want to play cause the DDOS ( Too much players at the same time)
Comment: No, it's maily administrators from competitor servers, and there's nothing I can do against them because it's a sort of underground gaming community. Script kiddies. Also, the server is hosted on my home. I have 3 to 4 internet links at disposal, so, if I manage to make a system wise enough, they'll not be able to nuke my server. They probably won't even figure out why it's not working.
Comment: For example, I guess I could make the client start a TCP connection with each one of my servers. The computing can happen on the main server, with the other two serving for internet access. If one of the servers is down, the remaining sends the relevant information. What do you think? Can this work?
Comment: What, for example? I thought DDOS attacks were a type of thing that you could do nothing to protect yourself from.
Comment: If this small-ish online community is quite local and you can get the IP addresses of those who are DDOSing, and it's a small enough number of them, maybe show up at their physical location with a blunt instrument... ;)
Comment: @Dokkat I removed the DDOS aspects of the question.  That is worth a separate question on Security.SE because it is offtopic here.
Comment: What the heck is a `mmog server`?
Answer: You have 2 questions here.
The first what do i need to do to convert from a single server to a distributed computing environment?
You need to learn to program distributed computing applications.  There are quite a few books on this out there.  There are even college classes that teach this skill.  Your can find some online classes as well.
Once you have learned that you will need to redesign your game to work in a distributed system.  Will probably require a nearly complete overhaul of your code.
Second how do I deal with my DDOS attacks from my competitors?  This is off topic here but is a good question for IT Security SE
Answer: The first thing you must think is about partition. That is, split players in groups that don't usually interact. As much partitions you have you can have more servers (you can read more with PCAM methodology of partitioning http://www.mcs.anl.gov/~itf/dbpp/text/node15.html).
On the other hand systems that make thinks like yours usually have their clients connected to more than one server at the same time in order to have a failover (but this is more harder to do).
Answer: The first thing you have to do is profile what's making it slow or "laggy". Understand the problem. Is it an OS limitation (too many sockets open)? Is the server using 100% CPU? Is the DDOS flooding the network and slowing it down? If not, can you do any profiling of your code to determine what the current bottlenecks are?
Is your code multi-threaded? If not, and if your game is CPU-bound, a good improvement might be to have multiple threads. This would be the first step towards a distributed system, too. You could have a client handler / connection pooler and a separate thread that represents the game state and takes actions from the handler and applies them. It's difficult to speculate without knowing more about the structure of your program.


How to SSRS RDL report file in an aspx page?

Question: I want to show SSRS report file rdl file in an aspx page. I build a web application and in the same solution i have created Report server project also now i want to show this report server project's rdl files in my web application .aspx page. How can I show this rdl file on the aspx page and how to pass parameters from aspx page to this rdl report?
I don't need to convert rdl into rdlc.
I am using VS2010 and sql server 2012 Reporting services.
Answer: If you don't "need" (want?) to use an RDLC you'll need to set up the ReportViewer for Remote Processing. You'll need to have the report deployed and running on your report server, which you should probably be able to check through the web interface.


How much space would a city need within a ringwall to survive for an indefinite period of time?

Question: I'm writing a D&D campaign and the premise is that a big bad thing happened and sent waves of energy pulsing over the landscape. A High Mage type character throws up an enormous wall, surmounted by an energy barrier which holds the bad stuff at bay but seals up the city for a (insert long-ass period of time here). I've been using a thousand years but I'm not sold on the timeframe yet. The city is on or straddling a river so water is no problem BUT.
How much space would a city of around 500,000 people (half of pre-industrial up to industrial London) need in farming land to grow enough food to survive?
This will allow me to determine the diameter of my walls, currently set as...big?
Comment: "Early" London did not have 1,000,000 people. You are overestimating the population of "early" London by two orders of magntitude. London reached 1,000,000 people in the 19th century, which is not "early" by any imagination.
Comment: Does this answer your question? [How large would a space ship need to be to feed 10,000 people?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/25800/how-large-would-a-space-ship-need-to-be-to-feed-10-000-people)
Comment: Apologies, my imagination is picturing something like a pre-industrial up to industrial London. Early was the wrong word, you would think I'd know that doing reenactment myself.
Comment: There are few questions (with science based answers) on how much space is needed for X amount of food sufficent for Y amount of people.
Comment: Since this is for D&D, you may wish to consider how that magic system can impact this calculation. Are you familiar with our sister [site for RPGs](https://rpg.stackexchange.com)?
Answer: So, I found this awesome reddit thread which hopefully answers your question:

According to Medieval Manors, a UK group dedicated to historical preservation of historical manors, one square mile of land could support about 180 persons.

So, if your town has 500 000 people, it would need minimum 500 000 / 180 ~ 2777 square miles of land. Just for food. It would also need some land to actually house the people live there. So, being you, I would not go under 5000 square miles, which gives the wall average radius of about 40 miles from the center and total length about 250 miles.
Please note that the calculation were done hastily, so take them as of average villager would talk about their confinment
Comment: Just as a quirk against that figure, the area within and immediately surrounding the M25, i.e. the area covered by the Greater London A-Z, is about 1000 square miles.
Answer: I quote part of my answer to a different question:
Build an impregnable fortress in the middle ages with modern technology1

And that is important because one way to avoid having your castle or city starved out is to grow sufficient food within the castle or city to feed the defenders.
Suppose that each person in the city or castle needs an average of one acre to grow food for himself and one tenth acre for other purposes. Suppose that a million people live in a city. They will need 1,100,000 acres of land to grow food and for other purposes.
Therefore, with 43,560 square feet in an acre, a total of 47,916,000,000 square feet would be needed, or a square 218,897.23 feet, or 41.4578 miles, on each side. It would have a total of 875,588.92 feet on all four sides. If there were 1,000,000 people in the city, and 0.25 of them were adult males, there would be a total of 250,000 defenders, so each side would have 62,500 defenders spread over 218,897.23 feet, or about one defender every 3.5023 feet, which seems adequate to defend a wall ten feet high, let alone one hundreds of feet high.
A circle with an area of 47,916,000,000 square feet would have a radius of 123,498.98 feet or 23.3899 miles, and a circumference of about 776,000 feet, with about 3.104 feet per defender. If the walls are hundreds of feet high and thick one defender should be enough to defend hundreds or thousands of feet of wall, so each fighting man could spend a few weeks a year training and stationed at the walls, and the rest of the year tending his farm which could be miles deep within the vast fortress.
Of course medieval methods of farming might require several acres to feed one person. But if the time travelers or aliens introduce more modern methods of agriculture, or hydroponics, or aeroponics, or food synthesizers, they may be able to feed many tens or hundreds of people per acre, and a fortress with a population of a million and 250,000 fighting men might be very tiny compared to one 46.7798 miles in diameter.

Build an impregnable fortress in the middle ages with modern technology1
In my answer here:
Giving Tolkien Architecture a Reality Check: Dwarvish Kingdoms2
I write about various scientific and technological methods for fantasy Dwarves to produce food in their underground cities and kingdoms, methods that might work in a fantasy setting depending on how different that setting is compared to the real world.  If the laws of nature or magic in a fantasy story are not too different from those in the real world, the real world methods would work for fantsy Dwarves in a fantasy story and maybe also work for an city of humans cut off from the outside world by a magical barrier in a fantasy story.
See answers to this question:
How many people can you feed per square-kilometer of farmland?3


Does Macbook Air 2012 (Intel HD4000) support GLSL 1.3+?

Question: I'm using SDL2 and GLEW on OSX Mountain Lion (2012 Macbook Air) to create an OpenGL context. Querying for the GLSL version, it reports GLSL version 1.2. I'm curious if this is a limitation of the HD4000 driver, the Macbook Air/OSX, or perhaps a limitation of SDL/GLEW?
Comment: Anyone who stumbles on this question and is specifically wondering about using SDL 2.0 to create an OpenGL 3.2 context, check out this related Stack Overflow question: [Here](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11961116/opengl-3-x-context-creation-using-sdl2-on-osx-macbook-air-2012). For now, the simple answer is: the current SDL release does not support this. BUT, you can modify the SDL 2.0 source to "hack" that functionality in. Hopefully this will be properly supported in an upcoming SDL 2.0 release.
Answer: According to this, the hardware supports OpenGL 4.0, but the Mac drivers/OSX only support 3.2. That should still get you GLSL 1.50 (you might not be able to get 1.30 or 1.40), but you need to use the core profile, as OSX doesn't support the compatibility profile. I think SDL defaults to the compatibility mode, so you probably need to explicitly request core profile context.
Comment: @iamcreasy: Core profile does not have deprecated stuff such as the fixed function pipeline. If an implementation does not support a particular version of OpenGL, it is not required to support the associated GLSL version either. Most vendors have added support for OpenGL versions chronologically, but Apple skipped OpenGL 3.0 and 3.1 and ditched compatibility profile in doing so (implementing compatibility would have basically meant implementing also the versions below).
Comment: @iamcreasy: Find out what graphics card your desired generation has and refer to the link or [this matrix](https://developer.apple.com/graphicsimaging/opengl/capabilities/index.html). Basically, if it's not very old, it will run 3.2core on a recent OSX.
Comment: I saw OSX support for 3.2 as well, that's what had me baffled. But, now looking at the OpenGL context version, SDL is creating an OpenGL 2.1 context. Currently I'm looking into whether SDL2 actually has the ability to create the 3.2 context in OSX...
Comment: @Tapio: OS X 10.7+ does support OpenGL 3.2. [Here](https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/GraphicsImaging/Conceptual/OpenGL-MacProgGuide/UpdatinganApplicationtoSupportOpenGL3/UpdatinganApplicationtoSupportOpenGL3.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40001987-CH3-SW1) is how you do it.
Comment: @Tapio What is core profile and compatibility profile? Why GLSL 1.5 can be supported when 1.3 or 1.4 can't be?
Comment: @Tapio Thank you for your answer. One more question, the link you provided  with the answer doesn't hold information about Macbook Air. Where can I find similar information about Macbook Air?
Comment: Just what I was looking for! :)


(Adobe Illustrator) Can't change Align Stroke attribute in objects created with Shaper Tool

Question: Is it just buggy me or Adobe isn't thinking it's a necessary privilege?
Answer: I don't think it's a bug.  It might be inconvenient but it's just that once you have made a Shaper Group object, it doesn't allow you to change the stroke alignment.  You could of course expand the shape made with the Shaper tool, then apply a different stroke alignment.

In fact, using the Shaper tool on shapes with strokes aligned to anything but centre, automatically switches the alignment to centre.
Comment: Nice illustrations! Thank you for confirming that it's not my end problem. By the way, can't find the option to release shaper tool created object, like ungroup it. Is there some magic trick?
Comment: @IgnatMiller

If you have a shaper tool group, select it, then choose the shaper tool, click on the down arrow widget at the right edge of the selection to turn it into an up arrow, then click inside the object you want to remove, and drag and drop it outside the bounding box. See example here: http://imgur.com/a/UxsLl
Comment: thank you, this is barely an option to ungroup shaper tool groups, but I guess the only one at the moment
Comment: @IgnatMiller if you want boolean shaping that makes sense, look at every other drawing program not made by Adobe. It's only Adobe that gets it this wrong. Seemingly on purpose.


How to spread things out evenly

Question: I was wondering how to spread things out evenly. When I look it up I only find things about aligning them, not about distributing them evenly. Here's a image to help explain
I want those three to be distributed evenly
Comment: You can use Snapping (`Shift`+`Tab`): *Vertex* or *Edge* if base mesh has adjacent loopcuts that are distributed evenly as you'd like, or *Grid* to snap to grid (better to be in ortographic mode to set up properly)
Answer: All the other answers are work-arounds when you want a single button solution like in Adobe Illustrator and others.
The solution you want is in the addon called Oscurart Tools. The link to the addon is here: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.6/Py/Scripts/3D_interaction/Oscurart_Tools
It comes with many features but the one you want is the second button from the bottom in the Object section.

Addon Download tip: The wiki page links to a list of separate file links that you have to download separately. Once you download them all, put them in a folder labelled "oscurart_tools" and then make a zip file from that. You can then import the addon from file this way for ease of use.
Answer: You may do it using the Particle System.

Add a mesh you want to spread the other objects on and divide it as many times you want (one object will be attached to one face). Add an object that will be spread. Name it Object.

Add a Particle System to the divided mesh. Choose Hair as a Type, check the Advanced box and set the Emission number to (in this case) 4. Under Emit From: check the Faces button. Check the Even Distribution box and change the Random to Jittered. Change the Particles/Face amount to 1 (there will be one particle per one face displayed). Go to the Render panel, press the Object button, and input Object below, near the Dupli Object: window. Don't forget to check the Rotation box below.

Now rotate your spread object to adjust particles rotation.

Resize the particles using the Size slider in a Phisics panel or changing the size of the object you spread.

Go to the Modifiers header and click on Convert to convert the particles to the editable meshes.
Answer: I would go to Scene tab in Properties panel and in the Units section, change the units from None to Metric

Then I would check Length in the (N)Panel in the Mesh Display section
*( this should be done in edit mode of the mesh )

And then I would divide the length of the cyllinder by 4 and place the objects after each time the length is presented (red spots).
Answer: I would use the array modifier and the boolean modifier. Object A is the base object and object B is the object you use to cut the holes out. Make sure you apply the rotation and scale on both objects CTRL + A.  On object B, I add the array modifier and set it to a constant offset over the Z in this case 1.5m and set the count to 3. I can still change this as long as I don't apply it. Then I go to object A and add a boolean modifier set the operation to difference and set object to object B. Then I copy object A and B to an other layer in case I want to change it.
I apply the boolean modifier on object A and delete object B, and clean up the mesh.

How to spread things out evenly


Make sure Windows always uses VPN provided DNS servers?

Question: I have a VPN server and it provides DNS in the remote network to the clients.
Under Windows the DNS settings get updated automatically, however the old, local DNS server seems to remain in the config of the physical interface when I display it with ipconfig /all
Now the OpenVPN supposed to give only access to the remote site network and not route all traffic through it. However as I use local domains there for different Webserver vHosts, the remote DNS supposed to be used when VPN is active and not the local.
Under Linux I can make sure that the remote DNS is used (it has access to the internet too and can also resolve normal addresses), by just setting it into the resolv.conf as the first entry. On Windows however it seems the System always asks the local DNS first and when that one answers "I don't know that domain" (which it doesn't because it only exists in the remote network), the Browser stops bothering and tells that the site can not be found. Using nslookup remotesite.dns 10.0.42.1 I get the correct IP number in the remote network.
How can I make sure that when VPN connection is up, ALWAYS the DNS the VPN-Server pushed to the client is used and NOT the local one anymore?
Answer: According this forum entry you can change metric for local network interface, set it higher then metric on VPN adapter(tun or tap). That will force Windows to send requests to remote DNS.


How do I make the WPF TextBox border inside the ScrollViewer not disappear

Question: in a WPF window I have a TextBox inside a ScrollViewer:
<ScrollViewer ScrollViewer.HorizontalScrollBarVisibility="Auto" ScrollViewer.VerticalScrollBarVisibility="Auto" ScrollViewer.CanContentScroll="True" MaxHeight="160" Grid.Column="1" Grid.Row="0">
    <TextBox MinHeight="80" Name="generalLog"/>
</ScrollViewer>

With an empty text it looks like this.
When the text gets to long or contains too many lines, the scrollbars appear, as they should. But as the TextBox is wrapped inside the ScrollViewer, the TextBox gets bigger and its border (default style) gets hidden on the sides:
Link to Screenshot because I can't embed pictures
As you can see, the border is not visible on the left side.
Is there any way to make the ScrollViewer appear inside the TextBox? Or make the ScrollViewer have a border like the TextBox and hide the TextBox one, which would probably look the way I want.
Thanks so much.
Answer: Wrap the Scrollviewer with a border and set Textbox borderbrush="transparent" ?
<Border>
  <ScrollViewer ScrollViewer.HorizontalScrollBarVisibility="Auto" ScrollViewer.VerticalScrollBarVisibility="Auto" ScrollViewer.CanContentScroll="True" MaxHeight="160" Grid.Column="1" Grid.Row="0">
   <TextBox BorderBrush="transparent" MinHeight="80" Name="generalLog"/>
  </ScrollViewer>
</Border>


Did pre-16th century Europeans call the Pacific Ocean the Atlantic?

Question: If some Europeans visited China in antiquity by sailing around India and into the Pacific Ocean, did they give a name for that ocean other than the Indian Ocean? From what I understand, they thought that west of Europe was a continuous ocean all the way to Japan and China. So if that's the case, did they call the ocean east of Japan the Atlantic ocean on maps or geographical works
Comment: Marco Polo talking about Cathay (China) and Chipangu (Japan), call it "Ocean Sea" (source: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Travels_of_Marco_Polo/Book_3/Chapter_1)
Comment: We're fairly sure that Roman and Greek traders made it to China, but we have very, very little solid information beyond that.
Comment: One would imagine "Indian Ocean", since the islands over there were referred to as "The Indies"
Comment: The question's title asks about "pre-16th century" while the question's body asks about "antiquity" which generally means classical times. The difference matters a lot.
Comment: Welcome to History:Stack Exchange. Thank you for your question; please consider revising it to be more in line with our community expectations. Like many other stacks, we expect questions to [provide evidence of prior research](https://interpersonal.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3227/1599). That helps us to understand the question, and avoids our repeating work you've already done. Our [help], and [other stacks](https://interpersonal.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3224/how-do-i-write-a-good-question) provide additional resources to assist with revisions.
Answer: Kind of. To the extent that Europeans were even aware that a body of water existed beyond China, it was indeed thought to be connected to the Atlantic. But this body of water was often given its own name nonetheless.

Prior to the Age of Exploration, classical geography dominated European views of the world. Ancient Greeks already had a concept of a World Ocean; in Homeric terms this was expressed as a river around the world.

Homeric view of the world, depicting the Ocean River surrounding all lands.
Herodotus wrote for instance:

For that on which the Greeks sail, and the sea beyond the pillars of Heracles, which they call Atlantic, and the Red Sea, are all one
Hdt. 1.202.4

This world encircling sea was often called Ocean. Importantly, some authors also applied the specific names given to the Atlantic to the entire body of water. Cicero, for example, wrote that:

For all of the earth with which you have any concern . . . is a mere little island, surrounded by that sea which you on earth call the Atlantic, the Great Sea, the Ocean.
Cic. Rep. 6.20

So yes, in this sense, they were calling the Pacific Atlantic.
However, just because the ocean is connected, doesn't mean that individual parts weren't given their own names. In the Herodotus example above, the Red Sea was acknowledged to be linked to the Atlantic, but still given its own names.
Accordingly, some writers also gave specific names to the sea beyond China. Pliny for instance names the Eastern Ocean after Serica, which is usually identified as North China. It is certainly considered to be the extreme end of the earth.

Aggripa bounds the Caspian Sea and the nations around it, including Armenia, on the east by the Ocean of the Seres.

Mela likewise places an ocean off the Seres on the end of Asia, which he called Eous Oceanus. His De situ orbis libri III remained in use in Europe until the 16th century.

Reconstruction of the world map according to Pomponius Mela
Comment: Great answer and thanks for taking the time to cite examples.


Help with very slow mist sync

Question: I have seen other posts in reddit where users experienced slow sync times. I am using windows 10 and version 3.7 (I saw on gitter that other users on windows 10 had trouble with version 3.8 crashing).
My download speed is 4.19 MBS. I have adjusted clock to (time.nist.gov). I am still not able to sync and it has been hours, probably at least 10 and I am only halfway through.
Any suggestions? Also I notice that when I close and reopen, only about a third of the time am I offered the option to "skip search for peers". Lastly, I tried to open an account when not in sync. I was able to enter and confirm password, however no new account showed.

Is it a problem with Windows ?
Is it a problem with network speed?
Comment: I am truly surprised how rough this is. I thought it would be much further along. I too went with my ether wallet paper wallet as few options available.
Comment: Long sync times are normal (unfortunately) - when I updated it about a week ago it took significantly more than 10 hours ;)
Comment: I've had the exact same experience - this is in active development so you can't expect a super smooth UX I'm afraid.
Comment: 10 hours you gotta be joking, i have been updating since the last 2 months!!!
Comment: I think there is some compatibility issue. Sometimes it gets hung up on blocks and i have to restart. Most of the time it tries to sync without option to go into application - skip peer search. The second time i went into application i did see account created but shortly after lost peers.
Comment: Could it be related to the clock drift, or simply clock batteries? There was on guy on ethtrader sub-reddit who could not sync until he reset his clock to correct time
Comment: Try clearing out your ethereum directory (where ever that is for Windows), then try using 0.3.9. I was able to sync in about 25 minutes if that helps. (12Mbps connection)
Comment: not familiar with windows but could it be that it blocks port by default ?
Comment: I'm having the same problem and I'm pretty sure it's my antiquated hard drive... data being written at close to 100% the whole time. Time for an upgrade I guess!
Comment: Why would you not use the --fast or --light options to get a synced node.
Run geth first using --fast or --light then start Mist.  With light it takes a few short minutes.
Answer: I am using Windows 10, Mist Wallet 0.7.2 which includes geth v1.3.6, a non-SSD hard drive and ethernet connection to 16Mbs modem.
I had incredibly slow syncing of the blockchain, even with 25 peers and was actually having to to quit and restart Mist just to download another few blocks. I had installed the Mist Wallet for Win64 from here, which also includes a CLI called geth. (nb. apparently x32 editions don't contain geth?)
I followed numerous different recommendations, however none worked until I deleted the blockchain data using geth and kicked the whole process off again.
Rather than using the Mist sync process, I removed the chaindata and then ran geth --fast:

Opened the cmd prompt
Navigated to the directory containing geth.exe and opened it
Copied the file path from the bar Explorer
Typed cd path/to/geth (replace path/to/geth with what you copied) and hit enter.
Typed geth removedb and hit enter.
Once the blockchain was removed, I ran geth --fast

This above is also described here.
The download has now got to block 500,000 in 30 minutes which had previously taken 3 days!
If you are on a Mac, you would do this...

Right click on the ethereum-wallet.app and select 'show package contents'
Open 'contents', then 'frameworks', then 'node', then 'geth' and voila.
Then you should right click on geth and select 'show info'.
Copy the location marked 'Where:'.
Open Terminal and type 'cd `
Then type: ./geth --fast

Other recommended changes to Windows I had performed were:

Ensuring my PC clock time was synchronised with internet time (it was
accurate)
Manually setting the Windows page size as per: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-2813275/disk-usage-100.html
Disabled Superfetch
Specifically opened the Ethereum ports for TCP 30303 and UDP 30301 on my router as described here: Which TCP and UDP ports are required to run an Ethereum client?

Whether any of these contributed to it being much faster after the geth removedb I'm not sure, but each of those may well help you.
The complete download of 1,500,000 blocks finished after about 10 hours, so the blocks definitely appear to take longer to download the greater the block number, due to the increased number of transactions contained in each block.
Comment: Would be great to update the Mac section for current Ethereum wallet. Geth no longer appears to be part of it. I find c++ eth instead, with no --fast option.
Comment: I now use parity and warp sync with mist.... Far quicker than geth!
Comment: This is phenomenal. All the info. One place. Clearly stated. Can you add how you got `geth` to run in the CLI? Did you have it installed already separately or did you navigate to the geth folder. Could you add that to your answer, please? Thank you.
Comment: I have also just read this site which has stated that geth.exe priority should be reduced down to Low or Below Normal, and affinity to just one CPU. Not sure if that is of any help also?

https://forum.daohub.org/t/access-to-and-selling-dao-tokens/5556/7
Comment: This looks like a typo above, ends abruptly: Open Terminal and type 'cd `
Comment: Why must you delete and start over instead of keeping progress already made? Does --fast produce a different data set?
Comment: Hi @mowliv , yes the fast option is basically pulling down a compressed version of the  entire blockchain that currently exists at that moment in time.

Ideally the --fast option would check what your latest block number is and then pull down only the latest transactions which you require to append to the end of your blockchain.

I would imagine there must be a reason why the developers have decided to not incorporate this type of process, perhaps security/stability of the chain?
Comment: Here's the answer! http://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/1845/why-isnt-fast-sync-the-default
Comment: know where geth is located on win10 ver. 0.8.10?
Comment: @mowliv The geth data appears to now exist on mac at  ~/Library/Ethereum/
Comment: This solution is not good enough. After waiting 24hours to sync about 2 week lateness, I decided to do yours. It's true than within hours I got sync. Today (24 hours after being sync) I restart geth (without fast of course): i'm still overing at around 1 block/40sec, 6000 blocks to go. My --cache ist set at 4096.
Answer: Use --fast and don't forget --cache with Geth
Everyone mentions --fast but you probably also need --cache=1024 (and --jitvm may also help).  Without it, you are running with the default which is --cache=16.
--fast is important to help sync past computationally intensive blocks.
If you are starting from the beginning, use:
geth --fast --cache=1024
If you already have some of the blockchain, use:
geth --cache=1024.  If it's taking too long, you may be in the process of syncing the computationally intensive blocks and deleting the blockchain with geth removedb and restarting the fast sync will be faster.
Depending on your RAM, you can also try with higher values, like --cache=2048.
Source

If you are using the geth client, there are some things you can do to
  speed up the time it takes to download the Ethereum blockchain. If you
  choose to use the --fast flag to perform an Ethereum fast sync, you
  will not retain past transaction data.
Note
You cannot use this flag after performing all or part of a normal sync
  operation, meaning you should not have any portion of the Ethereum
  blockchain downloaded before using this command. See this Ethereum
  Stack.Exchange answer for more information.
Below are some flags to use when you want to sync your client more
  quickly.
--fast
This flag enables fast syncing through state downloads rather than
  downloading the full block data. This will also reduce the size of
  your blockchain dramatically. NOTE: --fast can only be run if you are
  syncing your blockchain from scratch and only the first time you
  download the blockchain for security reasons. See this Reddit post for
  more information.
--cache=1024
Megabytes of memory allocated to internal caching (min 16MB / database
  forced). Default is 16MB, so increasing this to 256, 512, 1024 (1GB),
  or 2048 (2GB) depending on how much RAM your computer has should make
  a difference.
--jitvm
This flag enables the JIT VM.
Comment: I agree with this answer, but I would add that at least in my case a big difference was made by running geth with the flags described above AND the --rpc flag. Why I don't know, the syncing is still running after about 3.5 hours and currently it seems to be stalled. But I left it stalled a couple of hours ago and eventually it continued.
Answer: Geth is a CLI Ethereum client that helps the Mist Wallet application connect to the Ethereum network (you also have the option to use the C++ client, but Mist defaults to using Geth currently). If loading Mist (or Geth) is taking a long time to download/load the blockchain, try this:

Download geth
Run geth with the --fast option. Example: geth --fast
After geth has finished syncing the blockchain in the console/terminal window, open your Mist Wallet application if you are using it. It should load with the latest blockchain data.

The "Ethereum Fast Syncing" option is very new and there are still some bugs pre-homestead. However, if you're able to find a node that is running the latest Ethereum client version, it should be able to perform a fast sync with you, saving download time and hard drive space.
More about fast sync in Ethereum:

Post on Reddit with details.
Comment: Ah, good catch. Editing answer.
Comment: Fyi, you don't need to close geth before you launch mist. Mist accepts any running node or starts it's own.
Answer: Running geth.exe instead of downloading the blockchain with mist is working for me.  Its in the resources/node/geth folder of mist.
Comment: OP is asking to find out whats wrong with his set up, not what works for all of us.
Comment: interesting; other answers suggest downloading geth separatedly, any word on what's better?
Comment: since mist only launches the geth instance, it _should_ be the same turnout.
Answer: Thank you so much i had the same Problem with Sync. I have changed the Clock Settings to time.nist.gov and now i have made the Commands from you.
Opened the cmd prompt

Navigated to the directory containing geth.exe and opened it

Copied the file path from the bar Explorer

Typed cd path/to/geth (replace path/to/geth with what you copied) and hit enter.

Typed geth removedb and hit enter.

Once the blockchain was removed, I ran geth --fast

And now it works great only 30 minutes for Sync :) Thanks
Answer: I am running Windows 10 on a slow Core i5 1.7GHz w/ 8GB.
If you have part of the blockchain downloaded already, you can't use --fast.

The major thing that sped things up for me was stopping Superfetch in the task manager.  It is under one of the Service Hosts.  It was fighting geth for hard disk resources.
I also stopped other heavy processes (Dropbox, OneDrive, Skype, etc.).

It seemed that my computer was processing blocks so slowly that my P2P connections on the network would drop me, so syncing would stop while geth looked for new connections.
Also, eth<> is correct.  uping your cache helps the speed a bit.  I used --cache=4096.  It speed things up by about 50%.
Anyways, I'm now downloading at a pace that will update me to the current block (1,571,255) in around 10 hours.
Answer: Mist also have geth.exe , eth.exe in it's packages.
in CLI geth alone also slow compared than before DAOHUB.
I estimates that there are so many new geth nodes , compared existing nodes.
So, slow synchronization.
And If you're a little bit more fast and stable synchronization then just execute geth.exe
theirs no overhead on MIST ux.
Comment: @Hudson Jameson

I'm not recommend to use --fast option.
It's some problem with integrity with my homestead release experience.

but, If there's no update on geth then --fast is also alternative choice.
Answer: Updating the clients' situation to November, 2017:
In Ethereum Wallet or Mist 0.9.x you can sync using the light client, which is still under an experimental label.
That will get you up to speed in a matter of minutes, instead of hours.
You can also start Geth via command line:
geth --syncmode light

Mist releases: https://github.com/ethereum/mist/releases
Geth releases: https://github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum/releases
Answer: For me the disabling the "Superfetch" service in windows task manager ( open services under the services tab) was enough , it seemed like windows 7/8/8.1 and 10 use to much ram space for cache data ( although the OS is smart enough to remove all the unnecessary cache when needed [like when you open big programms] ) , but those wallet software aren't that evolved much yet to solve this problem by itself.
The Superfetch service in windows is existing for userlogin programms and datas in the RAM where the user has already used those once or uses frequently.
Nodes before disabling -> 1-9
now -> 1-28
Blockchains downloaded within 2 hours

Help with very slow mist sync


How long would a camera battery last unused?

Question: I discovered an old camera (canon powershot a3300 is if it helps) that i stopped using about 8-10 years ago. I lost the battery charger but found one online that i could buy. Just wanted to know if its still possible that the battery works or if i should also buy another battery.
Comment: It's possible that it will work, and also possible that it won't -- buy the charger and try it, if the battery won't charge, then buy a new one. There's not much point in asking the internet if some 10 year old battery will work, no one can tell you for sure -- but you can.
Answer:
Just wanted to know if its still possible that the battery works or if i should also buy another battery.

Yes, and yes.
Yes, it's possible that the battery still works -- I've been able to charge original batteries from my circa 2005 Rebel XT after they've sat for years, although the performance isn't nearly as good as new. But you won't really know unless you try it.
And yes, you should buy another battery if you plan to use the camera. Third party NB-8L batteries that fit that camera are cheap -- you can find kits with two batteries and a charger for as little as $13 including shipping. So it doesn't make a lot of sense to buy a charger alone and hope that your 10yo battery is still in good shape. Buy a kit that includes a charger and at least one new battery, and if the old one happens to still take a decent charge then you'll have one more spare.
Answer: The battery will most likely work, but may need a few charges/discharged before reaching it's best possible performance.
I wouldn't expect the capacity to be as good as it were 8-10 years ago though, but it should be usable.
Answer: It depends on whether it is second-source or original.  Second-source batteries tend to save on materials in quality and quantity, leading to quite higher self-discharge rates and self-corrosion even in storage.
In contrast, storing original Li+ based batteries at about half-charge in a reasonably cool and dry place tends to be comparatively benign.  After all, original batteries are planned with a potential quite higher stock and shelf life than typical second-source batteries are, and the effects of storage after light use are not all that much different from before it.
Answer: The usual life of Li-ion batteries is only two to five years, even if they are sitting on a shelf unused. For this time batteries discharge (if not in use) from self-discharge current and they can't be reactivated. The situation can become worse if the place where you store them is hot.
For more information you can check for example here.
IMO will be better to buy new battery, I saw them on Amazon for less than 15 USD
Comment: This is essentially wrong. Li-Ion batteries do age, even if not used, but they don't 'die' as you and the linked article claim. I have been using 10+ years old Li-Ion batteries on older equipment without any other problem than capacity loss. For older equipment, it is often the only way to still use it, since fresh, proprietary batteries are often not available at all.
Comment: @jarnbjo, OK, let wait for feedback from OP
Answer: Sometimes they survive such long storage, sometimes they do not. Fact is, practically all rechargeable Li-Ion packs that are sold to the general public and can be installed without tools have a trapdoor circuit inside that permanently disables the battery once it reaches deep discharge. The exception might be dodgy third-party packs. Leaving that circuit out, or defeating it (there are tutorials on the web suggesting overloading that circuit to fuse it short - DON'T!), is not a feature but criminal madness - attempting to charge that battery risks blowing it sky high.