Where can I get true info about god?

Question: They sing in songs that what you wish from God God fulfills it but when I see around the world doesn't send to work like that it means it's a false info, so where can I get true info about god and how can I cross check it?
Comment: Pl check my answer on what is god: https://hinduism.stackexchange.com/a/57185/29449  on dual perspective : https://hinduism.stackexchange.com/a/57090/29449
Answer: God will never give you what you wish for except in some cases. People have a image of God that he is very Benevolent and merciful but he isn't. God is a neutral entity who created a system in which we will enjoy and suffer according to our karma. The only way to get true info about God is to experience him.
The focus of many religions is on helping those who do not believe in God to believe in God. For them, belief in God is the beginning and the end of the process. Once you believe in God, there is nothing more to do. However, in Hinduism belief is only the first step. Hindus want to move beyond just believing in God to experiencing God for themselves.
There is a classic story from the life of Swami Vivekananda, one of Hinduism's most well-known modern teachers, that illustrates the Hindu perspective of experiencing God. When Vivekananda was still a university student, he asked many of the foremost religious leaders in the Calcutta area where he lived if they had seen God. It was, in part, his college-age intellectual challenge to their religiosity. He never got a clear and authoritative answer from anyone until he met Sri Ramakrishna. It was during his second meeting with the saint that he asked the question, "Sir, have you seen God?" Calmly Sri Ramakrishna replied, "Yes, I see Him as clearly as one sees an apple in the palm of the hand; nay, even more intently. And not only this, you can also see Him." This deeply impressed the young Vivekananda, who soon after accepted Sri Ramakrishna as his guru.
Ramakrishna was taking the young seeker beyond belief in God and pointing toward direct experience of the Divine. It is clear that the Hindu's belief in God is only a step toward the eventual experience of God. An important second point is that in Hinduism the experience of God, in the sense of complete God Realization, is the ultimate goal of life. It is an experience we will all eventually have when our soul has achieved sufficient spiritual maturity. It is the experience which liberates us from the need to be reborn on Earth. It is, to the Hindu, everybody's goal.
A great saint of North India, Anandamayi Ma, stated the goal of God Realization quite beautifully: "Man is a human being only so much as he aspires to Self Realization. This is what human birth is meant for. To realize the One is the supreme duty of every human being." In our own guru parampara, Satguru Yogaswami thundered a similar mahavakya: "Tanai Ari, " "Know thy Self." His disciple Markanduswami liked to stress that "Yogaswami didn't give us a hundred-odd works to do, only one: 'Realize the Self yourself,' or 'Know thy Self' or 'Find out who you are.' " "Yogaswami said, 'You can't find the truth in a thousand books or by listening to people talk. You must realize the Self by yourself!' "
This experience is called God Realization or Self Realization. Hinduism distinguises between self with a small s, which is the ego, and Self with a capital S, which is the soul. In Western, self-improvement terminology, self realization refers to manifesting the full potential of your outer self. In Hinduism, the first step toward realizing the Self is claiming one's identity as a spiritual being, a divine soul. The next step is realizing the soul's essence, which at the deepest level is also God's essence, so in experiencing our inmost nature we also experience God.
Besides God, religion is also concerned about evil. Again, Hinduism looks at evil as internal to man, not external. Evil relates to man's instinctive nature, which is capable of wrong actions based in anger and violence. We can say that man's nature is three-fold: instinctive, intellectual and spiritual. The goal is to subdue the instincts, direct the intellect, harness the ego and manifest the spiritual nature.
Though many individuals are inspired by the thought of seeing God, to most, the experience seems distant and unattainable. This is because they think of jumping somehow from a zero percent consciousness of God's presence to 100 percent awareness of God's presence. This is where one's concept of enlightenment may be a barrier that enlightenment is an instantaneous event coming out of nowhere, totally transforming us like a flash of lightning. It is more helpful to think of enlightenment as a gradual process which involves increasing our control over our instinctive nature, directing our thoughts better and expressing more and more of our innate Divinity. Said another way, we do not need to wait for the total, transforming and liberating experience of complete God Realization to know God in simpler ways. This approach allows us to start seeing God now.
Let's look now at some specific suggestions on where and how to first look for God. To experience God, do we sit on a mountaintop, go into a cave or simply close our eyes? Where do we go to see God? Perhaps the easiest place to start is to see God in great religious teachers. We feel a spiritual aura about them that is uplifting. We see a light in their eyes that we do not see in others. The mere sound of their words encourages us to live a more spiritual life.
Another way to see God, which is a little more difficult but still easy to do, is to look deeply into the eyes of another person. Look beyond the personality, go deeper than his or her intellect and see the pure life energy, which is God. The great saying, mahavakya, that describes this approach to experiencing the Divine is the Tamil word Uyirkkuyir, "God is the Life of our life."
This practice does not stop with people but should also include trying to see the life energy in trees, birds and animals. This is because God is our life. God is the life in all beings. Becoming aware of this life energy in all that lives is becoming aware of God's presence within us. A beautiful verse from the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad elucidates this concept: "He who knows God as the Life of life, the Eye of the eye, the Ear of the ear, the Mind of the mind, he indeed comprehends fully the Cause of all causes." In Hindu culture, every time we greet another person with the traditional gesture of namaskar, we have the opportunity to practice looking deeply enough into his or her eyes to see God within as the life of their life. This is fulfilling the deepest meaning of namaskar, which means, "I greet God in you."
A third place to look for God is in the Hindu temple. This is the devotional or theistic approach. The Hindu temple is not simply a place we go to socialize or listen to lectures on Hinduism. It is a sacred place, built and maintained in such a way that we can go there and experience the Divine. Invoked by ordained priests through daily puja rituals, the Gods and angelic beings, or devas, in the inner, spiritual worlds are able to bless us through the Deity's image in the temple. The image is like a temporary physical body the Gods use during temple ceremonies.
Though a devotee may have a vision of God, the more common way we experience the Gods and devas is as an uplifting, peaceful energy, or sakti, that radiates out from the image. It is easiest to feel these blessings at the peak of the puja, when the flame is held high. The Gods' blessings are most strongly felt on their major festival days, such as Vinayaga Chaturthi for Lord Ganesha.
A fourth place to look for God is within ourselves, through the practice of meditation. Meditation is internal worship going deeply enough into ourself to find that part of us that is identical with God. At first we experience God as peaceful and blissful feelings, later as a brilliant, clear white light, later still as a consciousness that permeates all, and finally as Transcendent Reality, which is timeless, formless and spaceless.
Meditation is the essence of ashtanga yoga, which means "eight limbs." The first two limbs, which are often glossed over by eager yoga students, are yama and niyama, Hinduism's ten ethical restraints and ten religious observances. These form a very necessary, secure basis for meditation, a foundation of good character without which no progress in spiritual life can be made. The restraints are noninjury, truthfulness, nonstealing, divine conduct, patience, steadfastness, compassion, honesty, moderate appetite and purity. The observances are remorse, contentment, giving, faith, worship of the Lord, scriptural listening, cognition, sacred vows, recitation and austerity. Once this platform of virtuous living is established, ashtanga yoga's subsequent six limbs can be pursued, beginning with asana sitting quietly in yogic posture, and pranayama, breath control. Then pratyahara, sense withdrawal, brings awareness into dharana, concentration, then into dhyana, meditation. Dhyana finally leads to samadhi, God Realization.
The key to deepening our experience of God is the regular practice of spiritual disciplines. And it is fair to say that no other religion contains such a vast range of spiritual practices, from such fundamental virtues as noninjury and purity, to temple worship, advanced yoga practices and meditation.
Even though God pervades us and the entire universe, in the beginning stages, we don't see Him. This is because He has intentionally hidden Himself from us, allowing us freedom to grow and learn through experience and eventually strive to find the Self within. This is called His veiling grace. Once we awaken to a certain stage and yearn with all our heart to see and know God, we can do so by seeing Him in great religious teachers, in the eyes of other people, and by seeing Him as the Life of the life within all that lives. In the temple we can experience God's peaceful energy, or sakti. And within ourself, we can come to know God through the fine art of meditation. Through all these joyous spiritual practices of Hinduism, we can become more and more aware of God's presence within and around us. But be patient! This is a gradual process. It takes practice, lifetimes of practice.
Comment: Your answer could be improved with additional supporting information. Please [edit] to add further details, such as citations or documentation, so that others can confirm that your answer is correct. You can find more information on how to write good answers [in the help center](/help/how-to-answer).
Answer: "True info about God????"
GOD has delivered already scriptures for those who could get educated properly under GURUs and through Aachaaryas & GURUs you can always get true info about GOD.
If you are very far that you cant reach any GURUs Aashram, you can read their simple explanatory books.

Where can I get true info about god?


What is the rule for cualquier, cualquiera, and cualesquiera?

Question: I remember learning the rule for when to use cualquier, cualquiera, and cualesquiera, but was always confused about the exact differences. When should each be used, and what role do number, gender, and word placement play? Specifically, what should the translation be in the phrase "any of us," and why is that the proper choice?
Comment: This video explains the difference between the two quite well but the explanation is all in Spanish https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLI79wGBb3s
Answer: "Cualquiera" can work as an determinative adjective (used with a noun) or as a pronoun.
In this site it is explained its use as a determinative:
Cualquier
It is the singular form and it appears before the noun, which can be both masculine and feminine:

Coge cualquier libro
Lee cualquier página

Cualquiera
It is the singular form and it appears after the noun, which can be both masculine and feminine:

Coge un libro cualquiera
Lee una página cualquiera

So, use cualquier or cualquiera when you want to say "any", one single thing. "Cualquier" is the shorted form, and "cualquiera" is the full form. Just pick any of them and be careful with the placement.
Cualesquiera
It is the plural form and it appears after the noun, which can be both masculine and feminine:

Coge dos libros cualesquiera
Lee dos páginas cualesquiera

However, it is quite spread the use of "cualquiera" in plural nouns, but this is not correct:

Coge dos libros cualquiera*

About its use as pronoun, [in this site][2] we read:

In its pronominal function, it's always "cualquiera".
Esto lo sabe cualquiera.
It can also take a complement preceded by "de".
Cualquiera de estas llaves abre la puerta.

So, having said that, let's translate "any of us". "Of us" translates as "de nosotros", that is, a complement preceded by "de". So, it must be "cualquiera", as it is in the pronominal form:

Cualquiera de nosotros.
Comment: Nope, you can't, see: "*Cualesquiera: it is the plural form and it appears after the noun*". It is a must, "lee cualesquiera cinco páginas" it's wrong; it's "lee cinco páginas cualesquiera".
Comment: Very helpful, thanks! What about plural before the noun (e.g. "Read any five pages")?


Connect to guest from host - Virtual Box

Question: I have a Windows XP as guest OS on VirtualBox running on Ubuntu.
Inside that Guest Windows XP, I have an instance of Apache running.
Now I want to connect to that Apache from the host (Ubuntu).
Is it possible? How can I do that?
Comment: Also I want the guest OS to continue to share the internet connection with the host OS.
Answer: Change the guests's network adapter settings to 'bridged' and it will get an IP address just like any other machine on your internal network. You can then communicate with it as if it were a physical machine.
Comment: Note that you may also connect to this machine from any other as well. If you don't want that functionality, you can use firewalling.
Answer: If your VirtualBox network is set to NAT, you are able to make the connection from your host by configuring the guest from the commandline using something along the lines of
<code>VBoxManage setextradata <GUEST_NAME> "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/HTTP/HostPort" 8080
VBoxManage setextradata <GUEST_NAME> "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/HTTP/GuestPort" 80
VBoxManage setextradata <GUEST_NAME> "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/HTTP/Protocol" TCP
</code>
and then connecting in your browser to http://localhost:8080


Maintaining a constant current with varying loads

Question: I've designed a constant current source using a current mirror, we need an output of about 50mA. The problem is that we build it and heat has become a problem.The transistors and the R_load are both heating up which decreases beta stabilization (our amperage through our load resistor increases constantly).

I think that by adding an emitter resistor we should be able to beta stabilize but I'm not sure if I'm doing it right.
Comment: You have the general idea, but the 2nd circuit will sink much less current than the first one (because (5-0.6)/297 is much less than (5-0.6)/27 ).
Comment: I get what you are doing theoretically but what are you trying to achieve performance wise? There are of course better circuits but it depends on what your aim is.
Comment: The four transistor [Wilson current mirror](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilson_current_mirror) improves on the basic concept substantially.
Answer: There are a few other constant current type regulators to consider: -

This biases a transistor to have a certain voltage across the emitter resistor and this means the current in the collector to the load is pre-defined.
Can be used with a LED as load - it works by the BJT cutting the voltage supply to the gate of the MOSFET when the current thru R2 reaches "the constant current level".
Classic voltage regulator turned constant current source
My favourite - an op-amp used with a BJT sets (very accurately) the voltage across the emitter resistor and hence the current in the collector is very well controlled too.
Pretty much the same as (4)
Like (2) but with the load at the top
Like (4) and (5) but with the load at the top

Also to consider are Wilson current mirrors (a definite improvement over your standard current mirror) and the Howland (and improved H) constant current source.
I don't really understand what you are trying to achieve so I can't recommend one over the other. AD have a good paper on current sources too.
Comment: @thexeno MOS can be used of course. These were just the first few hits I got from google (if i remember).
Comment: Hi Andy, may I ask why in the 4 (and 5) it isn't used a MOS?
Answer: Given the very large head-room you have available from your primary supply, you should be able to just use the 7805 in current regulator mode:

simulate this circuit – Schematic created using CircuitLab
This would accomodate a wider range of load resistors if you could swap the 7805 out for a chip with a lower reference voltage and lower drop-out voltage.
Answer: Linear regulators actually make for good constant current sources because of fairly high accuracy between the output voltage and ground.
All you need is a resistor between output and ground to limit your current.
$$I_{out} = \frac{V_{out}}{R_{out}}$$
I will refer you to this Maxim application note for a more thorough explanation.


How to get Visual Studio Unit Test to copy a file to the tests area? (which works when running/debugging)

Question: BACKGROUND: I have a sqlite file that is marked as COPY in it's properties.  When I debug my WinForms application in VS2008 (or run it) it does the right thing and copy it to the debug/run area.
QUESTION: When I run unit tests (using VS2008 unit tests) it is not performing this copy.  Anyone know how to get this working?  So that my sqlite database file will be copied across before VS2008 tries to run the unit tests
Comment: or you could just add a post build event in debug mode doing the copy (probably not what you're looking for though...)
Comment: This is a similar question to this http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1541096/visual-studio-unit-tests-loading-resources-in-the-project
Comment: I'm finding that my file is going to "Project1_UnitTests\bin\Debug" whereas the test is trying to find it under "TestResults\Username_PCName_datetime\Out"..???
Answer: You must either docorate your test with the DeploymentItemAttribute or configure deployment using the .testrunconfig file.
See this answer for more details.
Comment: add the DeploymentItem attribute to the test(s) in question


Astronaut in cryogenic sleep is woken by all-female village, villagers become violent

Question: An astronaut in cryogenic sleep is woken by a village of women. These women have lived for years with no men. As the man becomes integrated into the village women begin to act violently, mostly in jealousy over the men. It turns out there were other capsules and other men and in every village where they were placed women became violent. The man was placed back into cryogenic sleep for the safety of the female civilization.
Comment: When did you see this? It's a TV show? When did it appear to be made?
Comment: It was an episode of the Court Limits.... See answer from Richard.
Comment: Sounds like a [Genesis II](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genesis_II_%28film%29)/[Planet Earth](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_Earth_%28film%29) story... When John Saxon gets captured by Diana Muldaur and her savage Amazons!
Answer: This is the Outer Limits episode "Lithia"

"Lithia" is set in 2055, in a world populated only by women. Almost all the previous population was killed years earlier in a war,
followed by a plague that killed the remaining men.
The women are
living in a commune, and seem to be living full and happy lives,
although they must work very hard, lacking some of the technology of
the past. Neighboring villages have many of the resources, all in
control of a council governing their use and trade. When a neighboring
village refuses to defy the council and trade electricity prior to
completion of an impact study, Mercer tells the women living in his
commune that they must make sure that they have enough resources for
themselves. Their leader tells him that kind of thinking is what led
to war, she being the only woman old enough to remember. Intrigued by
her memory, children ask her to tell of the man she loved before the
war.
Mercer becomes aggressive and proceeds to steal electricity from
a rival village, enlisting help from a woman he becomes romantically
involved with. Unfortunately, this leads to the deaths of several
different women when the other village first tries to stop him, then
tries to get the better of a prisoner trade with the woman who helped
Mercer. After the funeral of the women from the village, it is
revealed that the council was responsible for unfreezing eleven other
men and attempting to integrate them into their society, but each
attempt resulted in a similar tragedy. Moments before Mercer is
refrozen, Hera, the leader of Lithia, calls him by his first name,
Jason. Pleading for his life as he is about to be refrozen, Mercer is
confused as to how she would know that, but, as she looks at her
locket containing a picture of Mercer, we realize that he is the same
Jason whom she loved before he was initially frozen during the war."

There's a few minutes of the opening here and if you're in the US, you can watch the full episode online here.
Comment: Thank you so much...this show has stuck in my mind for years.
Comment: @Tracy - http://youtu.be/CtNb1dnEaSQ?t=11s
Comment: @Tracy If this is the correct answer please consider marking it as accepted.
Comment: There's also the twist of who the female village leader is!


How do I display the thread / child process count of a process in top?

Question: I know there is a one-line-per-thread view (-H), but the particular threads are not grouped by master process. In fact, I would be completely satisfied with the sole thread count per process (= how many sub-threads does some process create?).
Answer: The top man page describes the field you're looking for:

nTH  --  Number of Threads
  The number of threads associated with a process.

(number above would probably change depending on OS and top version).
Interactively, you can use the f (Fields Management) key, then move down to nTH, activate it with space, select it for column display order change with →, move it up with ↑, and validate with esc. If you're satisfied with the result, you can finally save it in ~/.toprc with shiftw, so you won't have to do this again.
I'm not sure if there's an other method (eg command line) to toggle this field.
Comment: Yes, I didn't know the trick with the fields management yet. But now it works. Thank you!


Should I give up on an assignment that I can't figure out?

Question: I'm a sophomore CS Major, and I have a final programming project due on Monday for one of my classes, but right now, I've been stuck on it for the past two days. I've tried several different approaches to finding the problem with my code, but I can't get it, and I can't ask for help from anyone (including TAs/the professor) since it counts as an exam. Should I just give up on it and submit what I have at the moment? It's really frustrating and stressing me out, and I have another final to study for.
Comment: Debugging is one thing, not understanding how to solve the problem is another, and it's not clear which it is for you yet. But to "Should I give up?" the answer is probably "No, but put it aside since you're stuck, study for the other final for a day to make progress there, then come back and try something different." Break the problem into smaller problems/steps, add print statements for intermediate results, etc.
Comment: There is one person you can ask: your professor. At worst, they will tell you they can't answer the question. But there's a chance that they can provide *some* answer that might help: maybe the problem hasn't been worded clearly, or maybe they can suggest that you document any assumption you can make that will "unstuck" you. (You may not have a correct answer, but often there is partial credit available for correctly pursuing an incorrect approach.)
Comment: I'm trying to debug at the moment
Comment: Following up on @chepner's comment, you might try asking for some (nontrivial) hints that would allow you to make further progress, at the expense of some automatically deducted points. This is something I often did as a teacher (e.g. see [this answer](https://matheducators.stackexchange.com/a/1638/745)) to my own advantage, as explained in the last sentence of that cited answer.
Answer: You're going to have to make the decision. I'll only point out that this is not dissimilar to another situation which you've surely encountered before.
Consider: you have 30 minutes left in an exam, and you're stuck on one question which you've spend 10 minutes on without progress. You could give up and move to another question which you've yet to look at, or you could keep working on it. What do you do?
Ultimately you need to do whatever maximizes your grade. If you keep working on this assignment, how many points are you likely to gain? If you give up and work on the other exam, how many more points are you likely to gain? If you give up, are you likely to still pass? How important is it for you to pass anyway (e.g. if it's a core course and you fail could your graduation be delayed by a semester)? You know your circumstances better than anyone else, so you will need to make the decision; nobody else can do it for you.
Comment: @FShrike - I'd actually regard this as pretty good training for doing programming - pragmatic assessment of what goals are achievable in the time is an excellent skill to learn
Comment: It is sad that 'ultimately you need to do whatever maximizes your grade'
Answer: In my view, the crux of your dilemma is contained in the final context statement ("... I have another final to study for") rather than in the simple question about whether to give up on an assignment or not.
For example, if your current focus is on an assignment for an elective that is not critical to your overall success, it would be obvious that you should change tack. You might also consider how likely you are to pass the other exam without further study, and how necessary (or not) it is for you to get something higher than a mere pass.
Whether for good or ill, a lot of university study involves trade-offs of the kind that are sometimes referred to as exploitation vs exploration. Do you invest more time in the problem you are currently working on, or do you explore other options (studying for other forthcoming examinations) in the hope that the effort you invest there might be better rewarded than in your current focus? Unfortunately, only you can answer ... but it is worth explicitly thinking about:

your own estimate of the probability of you solving the assignment you're working on, as well as your estimate of the likely value (mark) that you'll receive
your estimate of the probability of you successfully studying for the other upcoming exam, and of the mark you might achieve
and finally, the relative value of the two different assignments/exams.
Answer: Let me suggest, first, that not all projects are successful, nor all approaches productive. You also have a fairly firm (hard?) deadline to produce something.
Rather than giving up on the project and not submitting anything, I suggest that you write up what you have done and where you are blocked.
Most important, include your best analysis about the nature of the block as you see it. What is it about the problem that creates a gate that you can't open? What thinking process led you to the current state.

Personal note: I once passed a comprehensive doctoral oral exam with flying colors, responding in just this way to the examiners. "I'm blocked, sorry, and this is why...". I was later actually praised for that response, since it showed some insight, though no solution.
Answer:
and I can't ask for help from anyone (including TAs/the professor) since it counts as an exam.

That's not a reason not to ask for help. They may not give you exactly what you ask for, but they may offer some kind of help - hopefully the kind which, if you've followed the course material properly, will indeed put you back on track.

Should I just give up on it and submit what I have at the moment? It's really frustrating and stressing me out, and I have another final to study for.

First, consider asking for an extension due to the conflicting final - and if refused, perhaps even an extension with a grade decrease. Better that than just "bombing" the assignment.
Second, consider asking for some alternative form of evaluation given the circumstances.
A third option: In some universities, the final exams in courses are given twice - in two sessions with a different exam for each - where the student can choose to take only one, or both, but with the second session's score always replacing the first session's. Perhaps something like that can be arranged with this course of yours? e.g. delaying the evaluation (and your grade) until the end of the next semester, taking the final assignment with them?
A fourth option: If the course staff refuses everything, consider consulting a colleague who's also taking the assignment, and whom you know has completed it or has fully worked out what is to be done. Tell them you're completely stuck, and ask for some guidance. Guidance, of course, is not the same as access to your colleagues solution - but something to help you become unstuck. This final option may get into some ethically-gray territory and also depends on the social and formal conventions of this kind of assignment-taking at your institution, so take this suggestion with a grain of salt.
Answer: Does it compile?
If code doesn't even compile, generally you'll fail a programming assignment. So at least get to that point. If that's your problem, you have plenty of compiler error messages to tell you what you've done wrong, and Google has more info on fixing them.
Does it run at all?
If it crashes at some point during running, stop the code at a random point and see if it gets there. If it crashes before that, stop at a point before that and try again, until you find a point where execution gets there. After that, work forward until you find where it's crashing.
Note that running in a debugger will make this easier. The debugger will give you a stack trace telling you what function it crashed in, and the nested function calls which led up to that crash.
Once you're past these two steps, you're into the possibility of a "gentleman's C". In which case document your known failure - what the inputs are, and what outputs you're getting versus what outputs you're expecting. This demonstrates you know good practice for debugging, and that you've isolated what's going wrong.  It also points the assessor at where they'll likely check for the bug and how to check what's right versus what's wrong.
And not infrequently, the process of writing this down might trigger a spark of realising what you've done wrong. :)


Browser Repaint/Reflow performance: using CSS3 Gradients vs PNG Gradients

Question: I am working at an app that causes lots of browser reflows. Performance is a key issue here. From the performance point of view Is it better to use a CSS3 gradient or an image gradient for some DOM elements? Does a page that uses CSS text shadows and gradients will have a slower reflow as a page that uses images to achieve those visual effects?
Also, are there any reflow tests out there I can use?
Answer: For drawing, CSS gradients and shadows do task the CPU more than images. Performance used to be pretty bad, these days they are acceptable. If you have a ton of gradients/shadows, you should just implement them and do the tests in your real-world setting. If you just have a few, I wouldn't worry about it.
Answer: It depends a lot on how the browser renders it, but for the most part those things will render slower. In addition, you'll have a less pixel-perfect display in older browsers. However, this also serves to segment your audience, as generally those with updated browsers also have updated computers. So, it's a trade-off that can work in your favor to essentially serve a stripped down version of your site to those that wouldn't be able to handle it. It's not guaranteed, but I've found it usually balances out pretty well.
Overall, real-world testing is the way to go. Build it, see if it works, and fix performance issues once you find them. I wouldn't hesitate just because there's a chance it might not work. If it works just fine and you don't try it, you'll never know!


Comparison of 180nm and 65nm CMOS technology in consideration of delay, power and energy consumption

Question: how would each of them typically compare with respect to delay, power and energy consumption?
(Used in digital circuits)
Answer: Above 180 -> 110 nm (depending upon whose process it is) you caould easily follow the scaling rules and get a rough order of magnitude.  However, moving to 65 nm and below, several significant changes take place that don't allow direct scaling based estimation to work.  Things like high K gate di-electric, Low K-dielectric in the BEOL (Back End Of Line).  You really need to compare data-sheets directly, and these are only available under NDA.


Spatial join (points in polygon) but also including the "observation count" of each point in the join_count field

Question: I have point layers of bird observations, and I want to symbolize certain areas by the number of bird observations in each polygon. Each point in the point layer has a "observation count" field associated with it. I want to include this number in the join_count field that already includes the number of points in each polygon. Since I will use that field to symbolize the abundance in each area
Comment: I'd use near tool, points - polygons. Summarise near_fid to get any totals from points table. Join field will do the rest.
Answer: When performing the join, you should choose the option "Each polygon will be given a summary of the numeric attributes that fall inside it, and a count field showing how many points fall inside it".  (Sounds like you're already using this option.)
PLUS, you need to select the "Sum" checkbox in the Join Data dialogue window.
This way, you'll get a field for the count of points, PLUS another field for the sum of any numeric fields's values.
(Your question said that you wanted this sum IN the join field, not as well as the join field.  If this really is the case, then you can follow up with a Field Calculator on the join field to equal the value of the sum field.)
If this does not resolve the question satisfactorily, then you'll need to provide more information, including all details of every step you're doing to perform the join.


Rugby league vs Rugby Union

Question: Which game variation existed first, and when and why was the second variation developed?
Answer: As a very brief history:

1845: the first rules of "rugby football" are written down.
1871: The Rugby Football Union (RFU) is formed. This is the same body as today's RFU which governs rugby union in England.
(1880: as well as the union vs league split, 1880 is when the American versions of the game moved from contested scrummages to an uncontested line of scrimmage, thus leading to American and Canadian football today).
1895: The Northern Rugby Football Union (NRFU) splits from the Rugby Football Union. The split is not over the rules of the game per se, but over professionalism with the RFU maintaining an strictly amateur stance and the NRFU allowing payments to players. The NRFU is the same body as today's Rugby Football League which governs professional rugby league in England.
1995: (yes, 100 years later) The International Rugby Board, the governing body for international rugby union, removes the amateur restrictions on the game. Both codes are now fully professional.

Source: mostly Rugby football on Wikipedia.
Answer: Union existed first
Source: Museum of Australia.
All football codes trace their roots back at least 700 years in England which "attracted large and often riotous crowds of players in England from at least the Middle Ages. Banned by royal decree at least 30 times between 1314 and 1667, the game was hard to control and even harder to suppress."
The growth of urban areas and the spread of the railways in the 19th century led to a move to establish general rules of football. A schism between those who wanted to exclude handling of the ball and those who didn't: the former led to Association Football (soccer) and the latter led to Rugby Union, Rugby League and North American football. Australian Rules football has its roots in Gaelic football.
Rugby emerged sometime between 1820 and 1830 at Rugby School:

According to legend, Webb Ellis picked up the ball and ran with it during a school football match in 1823, thus creating the "rugby" style of play. Although the story has become firmly entrenched in the sport's folklore, it is not supported by substantive evidence, and is discounted by most rugby historians as an origin myth.

The first laws of Rugby (always laws, never rules) were written down in August 1845. The game spread to other public (i.e. private) schools across the UK and, with the spread of the railways both schoolboys and ex-schoolboys travelled and played across the country. Because the private schools were the cradles of the British Empire's administrators, they took the game around the world.
Clubs for both soccer and Rugby were established and subsequently peak bodies for organising national competitions: The Football Association for soccer (which is where the name soccer comes from Association Football) in 1863 and the Rugby Union (which is where the Union part comes from) in 1871.
Both were strictly amateur. Players were not paid to play and could not be compensated for loss of earnings if they were injured.
The schism
The founders and controllers of the Rugby Union were mainly ex-public-schoolboys who were relatively wealthy and lived in the south of England.
The growing leisure of the working class and the ability to travel cheaply by train led to an explosion of popularity of the game generally but particularly in the industrial north. The players and clubs there were not wealthy and a football injury could mean not only loss of wages but loss of their job - industrial relations protections being not of 21st-century standard (except 21st-century USA).

At a general meeting of the Rugby Union in September 1893, it was proposed that 'players be allowed compensation for bona fide loss of time'.
But an opposing motion was raised 'that this meeting, believing the above principle is contrary to the true interests of the game and its spirit, declines to sanction the same'. The opposing motion was carried 282 to 136 votes and rugby union stayed resolutely amateur.
A meeting in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire on 29 August that year between 21 clubs formed the Northern Rugby Football Union, or Northern Union.

The name 'Rugby League' was coined in 1901 with the merger of the Lancashire and Yorkshire competitions Northern Union, forming the Northern Rugby Football League.
Rugby League and Rugby Union were initially the same game but more than a century of divergent rules changes have led to different but still quite obviously related codes. The two sports are probably the most similar of all football codes to the extent that it's not uncommon for players to switch and for some to earn the title "dual international" for representing their country in both.

Rugby league vs Rugby Union


Is it possible for a creature to eat dreams and/or thoughts?

Question: I was thinking of something akin to the Baku of japanese mythology, a creature able to eat people's dreams. If something like this existed, how would it be able to do that (or at least something similar)?
Comment: What would they be eating ?  What are dreams made of ?  And do you mean without directly entering or consuming the brain ?  We certainly have no idea how to do any of this in *reality*, so it fails reality-check.
Comment: Welcome to worldbuilding.SE.  When you have a moment, please take our [tour] and review our [help] pages.  While a story based around the answer to this question would be fascinating, I'm afraid the answer itself is beyond this site.  We help people build consistent fictional worlds by answering specific questions about them.  This one's a doozy because, without a bit of context, there's kinda nowhere to start.  Can you provide that context?  How do you imagine a creature would benefit from j"eating a dream?"
Comment: -1 for lack of research.  https://www.livescience.com/32798-how-are-memories-stored-in-the-brain.html https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/dream-catcher/201105/what-are-dreams
Answer: Since all brain activity is electro-chemical in nature, what you are describing would be a parasite which has breached the blood/brain barrier and is feeding either on the chemicals neurons use to fire, or directly off the electrical energy transmitted though the nervous structure of the brain.
Since much of the electrochemical activity of the brain is driven by charge carrying ions, this might not be the actual "food" of the parasite (a much more realistic parasite would simply absorb the oxygen and sugars in the blood), but perhaps the ingestion of these charge carrying ions is the means for the parasite to regulate its own metabolism, reproduce and so on. High brain activity associated with thinking, dreaming and so on would of course be the prime time for the parasite to absorb these ions for its own metabolic processes.
Given the scale of the neurons in the brain, the parasite would essentially be similar in size and scope to a bacterial colony lodged in the spaces between the neurons. While monstrous in concept and activity, it would not really be a "monster" in the traditional sense of the term.
Comment: Since the question asked for a reality check, this is where I ended up. Feeding on specific ideas, memories or dreams is fantasy, not reality.
Comment: While an interesting idea, the volume such parasites would occupy is needed for effective bran function - they'd kill the human in effect.  Also there's no way for these parasites to selectively feed of dreams or thoughts.  They'd simply end up suppressing or interfering with *all* brain activity.  They'd not be really feeding on dreams or thoughts - i.e. they'd have lost the information and context and just be collecting ions at a cellular level.
Answer: The abscence of the science-based and hard-science tags, as well as the [ tag:mythical-creatures] tag, suggests that fantastic or parapsychological-related answers are acceptable.
The part that needs the most handwaving is that the creature is telepathic, and it feeds upon psionic energy.
This energy is transmissible in the same ways as sound, radio, or electrical signals in a wire. The creature can only feed on energy in some specific channels, or modulated by amplitude or frequency, or whatever other means of filtering signal from noise you can think of.
Here comes the dream part. The creature is making use of the Ganzfeld effect, more specifically the way it is used in the Ganzfeld experiment. Therefore it needs its user to be in a dream state in order to feed.
The creature just might be able to collect food from the mind of someone in a trance, or in a state of deep concentration or hypnosis. Inducing sleep or such other states into a person (or animal) would be the creature's way to 'hunt'.


VS2010 Project Configuration - Anti Reverse Engineering Friendly

Question: I am searching for some good tricks of project settings in Visual Studio 2010 to get binary harder to reverse engineering.
Comment: I think .NET and C++ solutions will be welcome, i searching for .NET and C++
Answer: There is one: run a protector in post-build event.
Answer: Turn on as much optimization as you can without making your program crash, this will make the resultant binaries MUCH harder to reverse engineer.  You can get address-space layout randomization through the linker option.  Otherwise, there are obvious things like building a release version instead of a Debug version, Since 2003 Visual Studio comes with Dotfuscator, which does a good job of protecting .NET programs. To add to Abyx's comment, some protectors, like Software Passport and Oreans products allow you to insert anti-tampering things during the compilation process, which is much more effective than just applying the packer to the compiled binary.
Answer: Use Obfuscator (standard in visual studio 2010). It scrambles your code when compiled so when it is decompiled it will not be readable.


Ubuntu 13.04 AMD/Intel Hybrid Switchable Graphics NOT WORKING!

Question: I'm using Ubuntu 13.04 on the HP Pavilion dv7-6175us with AMD Radeon HD 6490M/Intel HD Graphics 3000 Switchable graphics. How can I make switchable graphics work on Ubuntu?
Answer: This guy's guide works: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1930450&page=76

I've managed to install the fglrx driver and use the external graphics
  adapter. The problem is the new intel graphics driver.
Here's what I did:

Ensure that you have the deb files for the current AMD driver (created with --buildpkg as described in previous posts)
open a shell and download a previous version of the intel driver and it's dependencies:
mkdir temp
cd temp
wget http://launchpadlibrarian.net/119461148/libudev0_175-0ubuntu13_i386.deb
wget http://launchpadlibrarian.net/111621162/xserver-xorg-video-intel_2.20.2-1ubuntu1_i386.deb

remove the eventually installed fglrx and the installed intel drivers. When removing the intel driver let it remove both packages
cd ..
sudo apt-get remove fglrx*
sudo apt-get remove xserver-xorg-video-intel

install the older driver with its dependencies
cd temp
sudo dpkg -i libudev*
sudo dpkg -i xserver-xorg-video-intel_2.20.2-1ubuntu1_i386.deb

now install the fglrx packages (go to the folder containing the fglrx deb files). Warnings about defect link groups can be ignored (at least I did)
cd <your folder with fglrx drivers>
sudo dpkg -i fglrx*.deb

backup and remove the existing xorg.conf
sudo mv /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.backup

create a new config file and switch to the external graphics adapter
sudo aticonfig --px-dgpu
sudo aticonfig --initial -f

reboot

That said, for 64-bit I had to pull the files from other sources than the ones listed in the post. Then in synaptic I locked the Intel drivers so they could not upgrade.
Comment: I find this doesn't work with the integrated card.  You get tearing effects and no external display support.
Comment: I dont think theres a way to get both to work, i never use the intel gpu
Comment: This: http://askubuntu.com/questions/205112/how-do-i-get-amd-intel-hybrid-graphics-drivers-working?lq=1 works for me


Choosing a ground for ltspice circuit

Question: I am just getting into this software. I construct my circuit, and it tells me to choose a ground. I only have experience with "ideal" circuits and circuit elements, and have only seen "ground" in the context of the node-voltage method for solving circuits. My question is: What does this term "choose a ground" mean, and where should I put it in a simple circuit with a voltage source, a resistor and an LED all in series?
Comment: Very loosely speaking, "choose a ground" means "choose the point where the black lead of your voltmeter will be connected".  As Brian correctly points out, that node is, by definition, the the reference node to which all the node voltages in the simulation are referenced.
Comment: Well, loosely speaking, you **are** in the context of something resembling the node-voltage method for solving circuits!!!  You have to teach the software where your idea of 0V is, otherwise some of the numbers that come out of the simulation (absolute voltages) cannot be meaningfully reported. It would be nice if the software made an educated guess for a default choice of ground (like CircuitLab does!)
Answer: Ground is a notional "0V" point : all voltages are referenced to it. In principle it could be applied to any node in such a simple circuit; however the usual convention is to choose the -ve terminal of the voltage source (or any point directly connected to it, i.e. on the same net). Any other choice runs the risk of confusing people!

Choosing a ground for ltspice circuit


Grease pencil is appearing infront of other objects

Question: my grease pencil is appearing infront of other objects, z pass is checked and stroke depth order is set to 3d location. In viewport everything appears to be fine, but as soon as i render the image strokes appear infront of the object
Blender file: https://www.mediafire.com/file/4asy6ckxvnnfuav/RoomWith_shader.blend/file
Comment: Showing just an image with the problem is not often enough. Please edit the question and add a screenshot of how it looks like in different view, how it is supposed to look like and if possible an example blend file with the issue.
Comment: Hi, and thank you for the reply, i edited the post to add image from another view, not sure how to upload a blender file, ill add it to my post as soon as ill figure it out
Comment: Blender file added
Answer: There are 3 View Layers.
The names of the View Layers are "View Layer", "Masking" and "Cube". You are using Compositing for the final render with View Layers - "Masking" and "Cube"
If compositing is disabled and only "View Layer" is rendered - there is no issue with the baked grease pencil shadow.
When comparing all View Layers - it seems there is only one difference in the render settings that may have caused the issue:

The Z value pass is turned off for both "Masking" and "Cube" View Layers

Enabling that option for both "Masking" and "Cube" View Layers seems to resolve the problem when rendering with Compositing enabled.

I hope that helped.
Comment: It worked, thank you very much!
Comment: Hi Nwarp, you're welcome.


Playing a midifile through a workstation

Question: Can you play a midifile thorough a workstation (via connected laptop) but play a sound on the keyboard not in the midifile? And if so, how? Thank You.
Comment: It's not quite clear what's being asked here, but I think it's close - could you edit your answer to clarify?  Maybe give an example?  I *think* you're asking if it's possible to play back the contents of a MIDI file, but at the same time ALSO be sending in new MIDI information from a keyboard as it's playing.  But I don't want to answer the wrong question!
Comment: do you have an example of what you are trying to do? What software are you using?
Comment: @Bob, I think that is what he is asking. Though I don't understand where the laptop comes in.
Answer: Yes, this is definitely possible.  What you want to do is hook up that keyboard/synth via MIDI to your computer, and set the MIDI out to the MIDI that goes to the keyboard.
In XP, you can find this under Control Panel, Sounds and Audio Devices, the Audio tab, and down towards the bottom, MIDI music playback.  Change the default device.  Once you've done this, play a MIDI file with just about anything, and your keyboard will handle it.
Sequencer software will often use its own independent MIDI configuration, so if you are using something more than a typical media player, check its settings for the primary MIDI out to use.
Answer: Depends on the workstation you are using.
Most should be able to play MIDI files.
You should not need to use a laptop if you can load the MIDI file into the workstation.
Comment: At this point it's not clear what the question is. "Workstation" may not be a general purpose personal computer workstation.


Where do search engines start crawling?

Question: What do search engine bots use as a starting point? Is it DNS look-up or do they start with some fixed list of well-know sites? Any guesses or suggestions?
Comment: This question appears to be off-topic because it is not about programming. See [What topics can I ask about here](http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic) in the Help Center. Perhaps [Web Apps Stack Exchange](http://webapps.stackexchange.com/) would be a better place to ask.
Answer: Your question can be interpreted in two ways:
Are you asking where search engines start their crawl from in general, or where they start to crawl a particular site?
I don't know how the big players work; but if you were to make your own search engine you'd probably seed it with popular portal sites.  DMOZ.org seems to be a popular starting point.  Since the big players have so much more data than we do they probably start their crawls from a variety of places.
If you're asking where a SE starts to crawl your particular site, it probably has a lot to do with which of your pages are the most popular.  I imagine that if you have one super popular page that lots of other sites link to, then that would be the page that SEs starts will enter from because there are so many more entry points from other sites.
Note that I am not in SEO or anything; I just studied bot and SE traffic for a while for a project I was working on.
Comment: A good portal to start at is yahoo, they are pretty fresh.
Answer: You can submit your site to search engines using their site submission forms - this will get you into their system. When you actually get crawled after that is impossible to say - from experience it's usually about a week or so for an initial crawl (homepage, couple of other pages 1-link deep from there). You can increase how many of your pages get crawled and indexed using clear semantic link structure and submitting a sitemap - these allow you to list all of your pages, and weight them relative to one another, which helps the search engines understand how important you view each part of site relative to the others.
If your site is linked from other crawled websites, then your site will also be crawled, starting with the page linked, and eventually spreading to the rest of your site. This can take a long time, and depends on the crawl frequency of the linking sites, so the url submission is the quickest way to let google know about you!
One tool I can't recommend highly enough is the Google Webmaster Tool. It allows you to see how often you've been crawled, any errors the googlebot has stumbled across (broken links, etc) and has a host of other useful tools in there.
Answer: In principle they start with nothing. Only when somebody explicitly tells them to include their website they can start crawling this site and use the links on that site to search more.
However, in practice the creator(s) of a search engine will put in some arbitrary sites they can think of. For example, their own blogs or the sites they have in their bookmarks.
In theory one could also just pick some random adresses and see if there is a website there. I doubt anyone does this though; the above method will work just fine and does not require extra coding just to bootstrap the search engine.

Where do search engines start crawling?


Is it bad to paste a big code block in an answer?

Question: There was a question asking for a cross platform timer, and I had written one a while ago, so I just pasted it as an answer with a little bit information how to use that code. but that I'm wondering is it a good practice? or is there any other (presumably better) way to share that code? side note: I really don't mind sharing that code on codeproject or any other site like that, I just don't feel like creating an account there!
Comment: In my opinion, if you're pasting code and it's going to end up as a big snippet/answer - I would see if I could condense it down into psuedo-code and let the person asking the question do the actual implementation.
Comment: in that case I'm not pretty sure if it was possible, since he was asking for the code itself.
Answer: If it's a good answer to the question, then go right ahead. Just ensure that the code doesn't do things besides answer the question. For example, if someone was asking how to check a certain type of collision and you pasted your entire collision handling library, that wouldn't be a very good answer; you should post only the relevant part.
In the case of your example, your timer module probably had several platform-specific timer bits, wrapped in if statements checking what platform the code is running on, right? So in this case, your answer could have been several code blocks, each one handling a different platform, and then an example of checking the current platform. Together it would be all the code you pasted anyway, but it's probably a more helpful answer since it walks them through step-by-step instead of just throwing a bunch of code at them and relying on them to either figure it out or just copy-paste it into their code without any thought as to how it works.

Example answer for inspiration
Here is code to check the time in Windows:
[some code]

Here's how to do it in Mac:
[some code]

And here's how to check the platform:
[some code]

I implemented that in a single method that I called getCurrentTime(), and then I implemented a Timer class which used that method to track differences in time, ......
I pasted the full source of my Timer class in this pastebin. Consider it public domain. If you want to use it in your project, you will need the foo and bar libraries.

You're also welcome to put your code elsewhere and link to it, but I would still recommend you include at least the most vital parts of your code in your answer, or maybe pseudocode for what you did or how you came up with the algorithm. Links elsewhere aren't guaranteed to last as long as this site, and maybe you're familiar with the feeling of clicking a link that promised to solve all your problems and hitting a 404 -- I certainly have. It's sad. Semi-relevant XKCD.
Personally, I like to store bits of code like this in a Gist, if they don't deserve their own repository. Besides being a typical Pastebin-type website, a gist can have multiple files with filenames, you can do a git clone on it and push changes back into the gist, download it (all files) as a tar.gz, and I trust Github to last a long time. But there are many pastebin websites out there, and other technologies that also allow you to store and share files (Dropbox public folder, Amazon S3, etc.).
See also this question from Meta SO: Best way of pasting a lot of code into a question or answer?
Answer: I've had a couple of times i have wanted to share a file from a private repo of mine and found the easiest solution is to use http://pastebin.com/.
Comment: the problem is none of those code sharing sites save your code permanently or at least I don't know any that provide the link. this means my answer might get usefulness without anything happening to this site. still it's not a very bad idea.
Answer: I think it is fine to share a lot of code. It is more readable to explain how the code works and share the actual code as a link unless it is very short and self commented. Pasting a lot of code in the answer makes scrolling to other answers more difficult.


What version of node.js is embedded with Omnis Studio 10.2 31315

Question: The Omnis docs state "node.js is embedded into Omnis Studio".
I understand I can check node.js version in terminal node -v, however this is the version on my machine itself.
How do I determine what version of node.js is bundled within Omnis Studio?
Answer: After installing it, you can go to the directory that contains Omnis' Node executable. On Windows, it may be:
C:\Program Files\Omnis Software\OS 10.2 31315\clientserver\server\remotedebug

Then you can run node -v from that directory. The latest version looks to be 16.6.1. (This may well be a different version from the global Node on your personal machine - for example, my global Node version is 14, which I get when running node -v elsewhere, outside of that directory)
The latest release notes also say that the Node version in Macs is also 16.6.1:

The version of Node.js released with the macOS version of Studio 10.2 is now V16.6.1
which supports node running natively on macOS on M1 machines.
Comment: Great. On the mac side I found "node" in /Applications/Omnis\ Studio\ 10.2\ 31315.app/Contents/Resources/remotedebug/node . However, I had to drop it into terminal which then gave me the version number - v16.6.1.


Notepad++ alternatives for Ubuntu?

Question: I just switched to Ubuntu as my OS and i am asking is their any alternative for Notepad++ for Ubuntu?
Answer: By default Ubuntu shold come with GEdit if using the default Gnome environment or Kate with the KDE environment. There is also Pluma which is available from the repository. If you're really set on Notepad++ you can install WINE and then run it directly.

Notepad++ alternatives for Ubuntu?


Can Haskell's Control.Concurrent.Async.mapConcurrently have a limit?

Question: I'm attempting to run multiple downloads in parallel in Haskell, which I would normally just use the Control.Concurrent.Async.mapConcurrently function for.  However, doing so opens ~3000 connections, which causes the web server to reject them all.  Is it possible to accomplish the same task as mapConcurrently, but only have a limited number of connections open at a time (i.e. only 2 or 4 at a time)?
Comment: The `unliftio` library has a `pooledMapConcurrentlyN` function http://hackage.haskell.org/package/unliftio-0.2.12/docs/UnliftIO-Async.html#v:pooledMapConcurrentlyN
Answer: A quick solution would be to use a semaphore to restrict the number of concurrent actions. It's not optimal (all threads are created at once and then wait), but works:
import Control.Concurrent.MSem
import Control.Concurrent.Async
import Control.Concurrent (threadDelay)
import qualified Data.Traversable as T

mapPool :: T.Traversable t => Int -> (a -> IO b) -> t a -> IO (t b)
mapPool max f xs = do
    sem <- new max
    mapConcurrently (with sem . f) xs

-- A little test:
main = mapPool 10 (\x -> threadDelay 1000000 >> print x) [1..100]

Comment: Many thanks, this solved my problem exactly.  Every thread being created at once turned out to not be a problem, the total memory consumption of the program stayed under 250 MB.
Answer: You may also try the pooled-io package where you can write:
import qualified Control.Concurrent.PooledIO.Final as Pool
import Control.DeepSeq (NFData)
import Data.Traversable (Traversable, traverse)

mapPool ::
   (Traversable t, NFData b) =>
   Int -> (a -> IO b) -> t a -> IO (t b)
mapPool n f = Pool.runLimited n . traverse (Pool.fork . f)

Answer: This is really easy to do using the Control.Concurrent.Spawn library:
import Control.Concurrent.Spawn

type URL      = String
type Response = String

numMaxConcurrentThreads = 4

getURLs :: [URL] -> IO [Response]
getURLs urlList = do
   wrap <- pool numMaxConcurrentThreads
   parMapIO (wrap . fetchURL) urlList

fetchURL :: URL -> IO Response

Answer: Chunking the threads may be inefficient if a few of them last significantly longer than the others. Here is a smoother, yet more complex, solution:
{-# LANGUAGE TupleSections #-}
import Control.Concurrent.Async (async, waitAny)
import Data.List                (delete, sortBy)
import Data.Ord                 (comparing)

concurrentlyLimited :: Int -> [IO a] -> IO [a]
concurrentlyLimited n tasks = concurrentlyLimited' n (zip [0..] tasks) [] []

concurrentlyLimited' _ [] [] results = return . map snd $ sortBy (comparing fst) results
concurrentlyLimited' 0 todo ongoing results = do
    (task, newResult) <- waitAny ongoing
    concurrentlyLimited' 1 todo (delete task ongoing) (newResult:results)
concurrentlyLimited' n [] ongoing results = concurrentlyLimited' 0 [] ongoing results
concurrentlyLimited' n ((i, task):otherTasks) ongoing results = do
    t <- async $ (i,) <$> task
    concurrentlyLimited' (n-1) otherTasks (t:ongoing) results

Note : the above code could be made more generic using an instance of MonadBaseControl IO in place of IO, thanks to lifted-async.
Answer: If you have actions in a list, this one has less dependencies
import Control.Concurrent.Async (mapConcurrently)
import Data.List.Split (chunksOf)

mapConcurrentChunks :: Int -> (a -> IO b) -> [a] -> IO [b]
mapConcurrentChunks n ioa xs = concat <$> mapM (mapConcurrently ioa) (chunksOf n xs)

Edit: Just shortened a bit
Comment: that's not optimal because let's say with n=3, if one task is particularly long, the other 2 threads will sit idle waiting for the third task to finish. Ideally you want to start the next thread as soon as a previous one is done.
Comment: Indeed. I made it as a quick workaround to memory problems, and threads speed was similar. Definitely not a general solution. Thanks for pointing that out.


How do I plant or bury things?

Question: I've heard that you can plant fruit to grow new trees, but I don't know how. Also, I've gotten a request to bury a time capsule for a resident, but I can't figure that out either. I've tried digging a hole with my shovel and dropping the item, but it just pops out away from the hole. How do I put stuff in the ground?
Answer: Dig the hole, then face the hole with your character and select the item in the inventory. Do NOT drag the item to the ground below your character on the screen; use the pop up menu instead. "Bury" will be an option if you're close enough to the hole.
Note you need to still be holding your shovel to bury items, even though you can fill in holes without the shovel.
If you still don't see the option, SteveKB may be right that you can't bury any more items; however if you've never buried anything in town before it's doubtful that you've reached this limit already, you can plant/bury many many things (I'm unsure what the limit is/if there is a limit in NL).
Comment: Make sure you have your shovel equipped when you are planting things.
Answer: if you have too many trees or spots with buried items the game will not let you bury anymore. you have to cut a tree down or dig something up if you hit this limit and then when you attempt to bury something and click the item next to the hole you will see the option to bury it.
so yeah your town has just most likely reached the buried items/ trees limit I think.

How do I plant or bury things?


Gnome-software not found from packagekit nor dnf?

Question: Fresh install of Fedora 34. Home software updater is packagekit behind, though gnome-packagekit says gnome-software and all comoonents like fwupd are not installed on the machine, dnf says the same.
Gnome-software installs stuff, however it does not uninstall some default apps, it says could not remove, package missing, although the packages successfully runs. It removes Flatpaks normally though. The interesting thing is that dnf and packagekit also say that such package is not installed. To remove it for real on the system, I need fo install it eith dnf or packagekit but not gnome-software, because there it exists and it actually works prior to installing it, after that I sill remove it by dnf kr packagekit (again gnome-softsare does not remove them) , only then gnome software will have launch button removed and inly an uninstall button with red left, which again does not work, bur upon reboot the package is gone succesfully from the store.
I tried refreshing and uodating and cleaning caches on both dnf and packagekit, I also tried btrfs rollbacks, to no avail. Additionally, I think I had packages saying that are inztalled through dnf, but not actually as the bins were missing, this could have been fixed with dnf history rollback, which I am not sure if should be the case.
Answer: Did you update the RMP repository? if not try this.
sudo rpm -Uvh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm
sudo rpm -Uvh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm
If you want to remove the packages  try…
Sudo def remove
Eg:> sudo dnf remove vlc-1:3.0.16-1.fc34.x86_64


Ubuntu 14.04 Installation Error - Root File Not Found

Question: I am trying to use dual-booting between Windows 7 and Ubuntu 14.04 I have Ubuntu on a USB with 8GB space, I have partitioned my hard-drive so that it has around 3gb space (as that is the maximum it will allow me to partition, even though I have a 1.7TB Hard Drive with over 1.5TB left), and it says No root file could be found? I do not know where to start, so I have not tried anything.
Answer: In this case, please shrink your hard disk on windows to create more space for ubuntu installation.
Login to windows and navigate to  system management> disk management, then right click on the drive which has more space and shrink the drive. You can refer the below article for partioning a drive on windows:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-au/windows/repartition-hard-disk#1TC=windows-7
Shut-down your system then boot to Ubuntu live. On the installation type select "something else".
Then create a ext4 partition in the free space you made in windows and set it to "/" and "format"
Then set the 100mb "UEFI" partition (if you have one) to boot but don't format it.
Click next and it should continue installation.
Comment: I can only partition to 3.44GB, when my HDD is 1.79TB


what to use instead of bulk load? Got error 'do not have permission to use the bulk load statement'

Question: I am trying to add a text file into SQL database table using BULK INSERT.
BULK
INSERT My_Tablename
FROM 'C:\testing\temptest.txt'
WITH
(
FIELDTERMINATOR = '|',
ROWTERMINATOR = '\n'
)
GO
But got error that 'do not have permission to use the bulk load statement'.
Is there any alternative way to do it?
I don't want to set TRUSTWORTHY ON or create certificate for BULK admin permission.
Comment: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14604416/how-to-enable-bulk-permission-in-sql-server
Answer: Try using the SQL Server Import and Export Wizard.

Right click on the database in in Object Explorer within SSMS.
Go to Tasks > Import Data
Select "Flat File Source" for your data source and follow the wizard to specify delimiters, etc.
Answer: Although @SQLChao definitely has the answer, I did not remember the location of said Import Data option and simply opened the delimited file with my favorite text editor, Notepad++ and did the following find and replaces with Search Mode set to extended:

Find: ' Replace: ''
Find: | Replace: ','
Find: \r\n Replace: ')\r\n
Find: \r\n Replace: \r\nINSERT INTO [DB_Name].[Schema_Name].[Table_Name] VALUES(\r\n'

The only issues should be in your first and last insert statements which can manually be edited as need be.
I then copied the text straight into Sql Server and executed.


What is the difference between "farthermost" and "furthermost"?

Question: What is the difference between farthermost and furthermost? In most cases, a quick Google search for the "word vs word" returns the answer on the first page. Not for this one.
Comment: I believe one is just a variant of the other
Comment: "Farthermost" sounds odd to me. I speak AmE. It's listed as a word in my AmE dictionary. I don't think I've ever used the word, even in contexts where I would use "farther." Am I the only AmE speaker who thinks it sounds funny? I think I just use "furthermost" in all cases.
Answer: As implied above, the distinction is the same as that between "farther" versus "further".
When the distance is literal – physical distance in space – use "farther". When the distance is only figurative, use "further".


How to prevent SOIC8 clip from backfeeding

Question: I'm trying to read the flash ROM using a SOIC8 clip, on board. I am horrible at surface mount soldering. Is there a way to use the clip on the board, without removing the chip, and not have the SOIC8 & reader (e.g. Bus Pirate) backfeed power into the board / processor? I've read about people shorting the processor's clock, or adding a capacitor, so that even though the the board is getting power from my Bus Pirate, the processor won't try to run instructions. What's the best way?
Answer: If you want to avoid strange problems from the microcontroller, hold its RESET pin on (usually low) and it should halt it from doing anything. For AVRs (Arduino's usual microcontroller) it resets internal registers to defaults, which means that everything is an input.
Other microcontrollers or components may do strange things, however. Without looking at a circuit diagram there's not much telling.


Who were the Furlings?

Question: In the episode of Stargate SG-1 called "The Fifth Race", there are 4 advanced races which are listed, namely the Asgard, the Ancients, the Nox, and the Furlings. The Asgard and the Ancients were extensively mentioned, the Nox had a few episodes that they were mentioned, but so far as I know, the Furlings never appeared, nor were heard from. Who are they?
Comment: The top four Google results for "furlings" are wiki pages that answer this. Are you looking for more information than that?
Comment: *"So much more to learn. Can you not ask the other aliens, the Asgard and the Nox, what they know of these Furlings?" "We've tried," Daniel replied. "We get the same 'you're too young' or 'you're not yet ready' reply. General," he added, turning to Hammond, "I can't categorically state that the Furlings built the skull network, but a race that advanced would surely keep an eye on the planets they seeded - unless, like the Ancients, they abandoned the galaxy.*  -SG1: #4 City of the Gods.
Answer: The Furlings never did make an appearance on SG-1, but there was mention of them in several episodes, and Furling ruins were found and explored.

The length of time that the Furling nature has remained a mystery in the series has given the producers the opportunity to tease fans with a running gag. When Executive Producer Robert C. Cooper was asked "Will we ever meet the Furlings?", his answer was "Who says we haven't?"

from wikipedia
There is also a lot of information on the sg1 wiki.
Comment: The furlings make a pretty funny appearance in the 200th episode, totally what I envisioned.
Comment: @horuskol No, that was an Ohne: http://stargate.wikia.com/wiki/Ohnes
Comment: yes, the 200th episode, "Wormhole Xtreme!" featured the furlings in the TV show within a TV show parody of itself.  It was a pretty brilliant episode, depicting the furlings like ewoks.
Comment: I actually imagined that the creature that kidnaps Daniel Jackson in the season 1 episode 'Fire and Water' to be a Furling - advanced technology coupled with hatred of Goa'uld. But this is just my own theory, not grounded in any rumour or fact.
Comment: @Daniel - thanks, didn't realise there were sources outside of the TV series
Answer: Over the entirety of the Stargate franchise to-date, only the Furlings remain mentioned but unseen. We have seen The Asgard (frequently), The Nox (more than once), and yes even the Ancients (Atlantis). The one depiction of the Furlings in the SG-1 episode "200" as Ewok-like is a fantasy sequence, so the actual Furling race does remain without any true depiction. The limited mention of them as "one of the four great races" is really about all we know of them, and probably all we ever will.

Who were the Furlings?


8-pin ARM JTAG interface header

Question: An embedded device based on ARM926EJ-S revision 5 (ARMv5TEJ) chip.
The PCB have 8-pin test points for connecting JTAG debug interface (2.54mm pitch).
I tried to find specification for this type of ARM JTAG header and interface pinout table, but can't find anything. I find some description of another device that based on same CPU, but its not too helpful.
Can anyone help to define a pinout for this type of JTAG connector? Or any specific implementation may not follow JTAG standard format?
Comment: There's no reason to assume it is a standard layout. You'll need to continuity test back to the chip or find a schematic to work out what does what.
Comment: "An embedded device" - Might help to mention what device in case anyone has experience or information with it.
Comment: Here is more detailed [pic.](http://cdn2.goughlui.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/2016021221172479.jpg)
Answer: That isn't a standard JTAG pinout. If it is JTAG, though (which isn't a given), there are ways of mapping it out. For the sake of reference, let's number the pins:
<code>7 8
5 6
3 4
1 2
</code>
Pin 8 is almost certainly ground -- it looks like it's connected to the ground plane.
Pins 3, 4, 5, and 6 look like they have resistors pulling them to ground. If I'm correct, this means they're inputs: they're likely to be some combination of TDI, TCK, TMS, and possibly TRST.
One of the remaining pins will be VCC. You should be able to find it by checking continuity to other known power nets on the board. Another one will be TDO; there's no obvious way to identify this one.

Beyond this, your best bet will be some combination of:

Look up the pinout of the CPU and map out continuity to known JTAG pins on the chip.
Guess a pin configuration, hook up a JTAG adapter, and see if it can pick anything up.
Use a software tool like JTAGenum to automate this guessing process.
Comment: Note: I just find that this chip, implemented on another device, have JTAG pins TRST_N, TCK, RTCK, TMS, RST_N, TDO, TDI, GND, 1.8V. In case with my device, its JTAG interface may be  limited and have some of these pins not enabled?
Comment: Is it possible find pinout without a BSDL file?
Comment: @sonex Yes, using the methodology I laid out in my answer. You don't need a BSDL file to establish basic JTAG communications.

8-pin ARM JTAG interface header


how i can create a Managed Property & Crawl Property for a List column of type Choice which allow multiple selection

Question: I have a Choice list column which allow multiple selection with internal name = Category. now since this is a list column not site column, so no managed property nor crawl property will get auto created. so how i can manually create managed property and crawl property for this list column, as i want to use it inside the PnP Search web part?
Thanks
Answer: Once the content is crawled, SharePoint should create Crawled Properties for you. If the column name is "category" the crawled property will be "ows_category". IIRC, this is also an out of the box field, so the property may already exist. In fact, if it's a choice field as you say it may get generated as ows_q_CHCS_Category. The real challenge is figuring out which one it is, which is why I would recommend creating the field with a unique "internal name" first, then rename it "Category" for display purposes after you are successful.
Once you know which crawled property (or properties) are your candidate fields, create a Managed Property and map the crawled property to it. This process has not changed since 2013, so you should not find it difficult to find out how. Here is one of my old, old, blog posts that relates to the topic. Search Based Site Directory
Remember, you need to populate the list with some data that you can search for. The data in the list will trigger the creation of the Crawled Property. Also, this can be a tedious process. Have patience, it's not instantaneous.
Comment: so will SharePoint automatically creates crawl property for list columns? i though it only do so for site columns
Comment: Yes, as long as there is data in the list it should create crawled properties for your columns. That's why I prefer to create unique internal names so they are easy to find.


How to increase resolution of 3D image in GRASS NVIZ

Question: I am trying to make 3D visualization of terrain data and orthophoto using GRASS NVIZ  via QGIS. I have been able to import both the DTM and the orthophoto in NVIZ window and successfully draped the image over DTM. But the resolution looks very poor. Is there any way to increase the resolution ? It seems like NVIZ GUI is not so user-friendly. For example, in Arcscene, there is a option to optimize the rendering that  can increase the resolution of the 3D draped image. Here is the screeshot from GRASS NVIZ:
Answer: I guess your GRASS region/resolution is based on your DTM (which is low).
You should set it based on your orthophoto :
g.region rast=orthophotoLayername

Refresh your 3D viz.
By the way, could you edit your question adding what's is displayed by both g.region -p rast=mnt_layer and g.region -p rast=orthophotoLayername? It will be useful to know the resolution of your layers.
Comment: Hello Simo, thanks for your reply. My DTM has a resolution of 1.6 m whereas orthophoto has 0.1 m. I set region's resolution to taht of orthophoto with the command, "g.region nsres=0.1 ewres=0.1". Now if i run NVIZ, I got the following error, Current region rows: 40288, cols: 49184
ERROR: G_malloc: unable to allocate 3631132672 bytes of memory at gsds.c:575. Do I have to maek a subset of my data ? But I need to visualize an area with 10 km x 10 km. Thanks
Comment: GRASS is looking for 3.4 Gb of memory. It seems your machine has not enough RAM. You can define a smaller region, or crop it : http://grasswiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Cropping_maps
Answer: There are many parameters for the resolution of rasters in Nviz:

the resolution(s) of the raster(s) (parameter Res)
Type of Map:  raster
  ....
  Number of Categories: 0
  N: 175738.80821982    S:   9070.736   Res: 19.91493275
  E: 298336.77386818    W:  62265.161   Res: 19.91493275
  ....
the resolution of the region (as Simo says)
the parameters of resolution in Nviz coarse, when you move the image, and fine, static representation.

- Fine= 1 means that the Nviz resolution is that previously fixed by g.region (current region resolution) and not the resolution of a specific raster

MNT seen with Fine= 1 or g.region  derived  from the MNT

The problem: what happens if you want to drape a raster with a different resolution on the MNT ?
If the current resolution is higher than the resolution of the raster used for topography, the raster is automatically resampled ( nearest neighbor algorithm) leading to a discontinuous surface with "steps".

Result with the draped raster an g.region = MNT

Result with the draped raster and g.region = raster

MNT with g.region = raster

To solve the problem:
1) you can adjust the fine resolution of Nviz (ratio between the two resolutions):

2) but if the only interest is to improve the 3D representation, the solution is to resample one of the rasters (but you can no longer use it in other treatments, so use g.copy) with:

r.resample.rst: regularized spline with tension and smoothing

or r.resamp.interp nearest neighbor, bilinear and bicubic interpolation

Draping other raster on the MNT (other resolution):


What is the magnetic effect of a spinning charge?

Question: A changing electric field produces a magnetic field, but if the electric field is spherical, this would mean that the field strength around the electric charge would be independent of such rotation, so my question is: does a spinning spherically symmetrical electric charge create a magnetic field?
Comment: Magnetic field aren't only caused by changing electric fields, a spinning non-pointlike charged object constitutes a current.
Answer: Yes. Any spinning charged object has a magnetic moment that produces a magnetic field. The magnetic moment of a spinning object is given in terms its angular momentum as
${\vec\mu}=G{\vec L}$, where $G$ is called the gyromagnetic ratio. This is described in any electromagnetism textbook


Improve elements position

Question: I'm designing an android app and the only elements I have are a text and two buttons, with a large white background. I would you set these elements to improve the user experience? This is what I've done, but I don't really like the text position:
Answer: What you already have is good. Listing a few things that may help improve –

Align text to left, so that both text and buttons are aligned.
Increase whitespace around the content to make it look more centered.
Use text-link for the secondary CTA. This will improve focus on the primary and maintain content alignment.
Answer: Depending on the context like what devices and orientation this app is supposed to run on, I'd pick the safest option and have a known mobile pattern where all of your content is laid down from the top, starting with the image header.
What you have shown here is more like a website layout and that's not something people would expect when downloading & using your app.

Improve elements position


GRX800 position

Question: I got a bike from chainreaction with GRX groupset on it.
The rear derailleur is not aligned with the cassette.
I think the hanger got bent during delivery, but the guy at the local shop says it's fine.
It works kind of fine, but not better than my previous lower-level setup. And it's slightly lagging on high gears.
It's my first 1-by, so, I'm not sure if it's normal.
Comment: It's not always easy to tell from photos but the hanger does look pretty bent
Comment: The shop should be able to whip off the rear derailleur, bolt on a derailleur straightness gauge, and test it around your wheel in a few minutes.  Are they just a bike seller not a LBS ?
Answer: It definitely does not look fine from the pictures. The pulleys should be in line with the cogs.
Hanger alignment is an extremely common issue that keeps things from being good to go out of the box on direct-to-consumer bikes. It's not surprising or weird for new DTC bikes to need it, even if everything else about the pre-assembly was great.
It's always possible for the misalignment to be in the derailleur and not the hanger, but that's not usually what happens.
It's not clear what the shop you took it to did beyond just eyeball it, if anything. Eyeballing it is really not enough anymore. Your best plan is to get someone to align the hanger and make it perfect. At that point the RD is re-attached and the visual you then get on how good the alignment is should be reflective of whether there's any distortion to the RD itself, which there hopefully (and usually) isn't. The RD may need to be re-adjusted at that point, or everything may come to life and be great since it was likely adjusted when it was aligned before getting boxed up.
Answer: It took some time because I just moved to Warsaw, Poland, and had to find English-speaking shops.
I found 2, and at both of them, I've been told that the only tool to check the hanger straightness is the eye of the master. Both masters said the hanger is perfectly straight and they would have to bend the mech itself.
The second guy had the entire Parktool set, so, I spotted the right tool, showed him a youtube video on how to use it and we did it together.
It's much better now, not ideal, but it will do until I find the replacement. The lagging is gone too.
Thanks for the help!
Comment: Thanks for following up!

GRX800 position


Library of posets in GAP?

Question: Is there a way to obtain in GAP the Hasse diagrams of famous posets like the partition lattice or the divisor lattice of an integer? If they are not saved, is there a way to get them somehow else, like with using SAGE?
If not, is there a trick to obtain the Hasse diagram easily without programming everything from the start?
Are small posets or lattice saved in GAP? Like the ones with at most 7 points.
Comment: I suggest to look at FindStat, especially http://www.findstat.org/Posets. See also https://arxiv.org/abs/1401.3690
Comment: Not that I am aware of. You may ask the [GAP Forum](http://www.gap-system.org/Contacts/Forum/forum.html) in case someone may have it (perhaps in some list encoding, since GAP has now such data type, but hopefully readable in GAP then). I have listed some standalone mathematical databases [here](https://github.com/alex-konovalov/gnu/wiki/Mathematical-databases) - will be interested to add it to the list, if it exists.
Comment: @AlexanderKonovalov thanks, so in GAP (or a GAP package) alone no librarys or similar things exist for posets?
Answer: Sage has a built-in Poset class with pretty broad functionality.  This Sage cell gives a pretty boring example:
P = posets(5)
for p in P:
    p.show()
    print('\n')

For something more specific, you can look at the catalog of posets/lattices and use some of the graph plotting options:
posets.IntegerPartitions(10).hasse_diagram().show(figsize=[10,10])

For a better experience you'll probably want to be more sophisticated with the plot options, such as using this option:

heights A dictionary mapping heights to the list of vertices at this height.
Answer: Concerning the specific question: No, GAP has no formal ``poset'' data type and thus also does not have a library of posets. However it is likely that such a library exists as a standalone resource on the web.
Comment: and for lattices?
Answer: Although GAP has no formal poset data type, the homology package does have such a type, and has some of the examples that you speak of built-in.  It's difficult to build the compiled portion of the library, but pretty much all of the poset stuff should work without compiling.  Unfortunately, I don't think the poset support in this package is hooked up to anything that will display Hasse diagrams.
There are two ways I know of to display Hasse diagrams of subgroup lattices in GAP, both requiring some additional software:
It's not too difficult to display Hasse diagrams in xgap or Gap.app.  The built-in code handles only subgroup lattices.  I have (unpolished) code that draws partition lattices in these systems.  For what it's worth, I'll post it to my webpage.  It at least will serve as a model for how to display Hasse diagrams of new posets in xgap or Gap.app.
Note that you need Xwindows (on Linux or other Unix-like system) to run xgap, or a Mac to run Gap.app.
You could also look at the routine DotFileLatticeSubgroups.  That exports a subgroup lattice to a GraphViz file, which you can then turn into a picture of the Hasse diagram.  See e.g. this question.
Answer: It does, it's mentioned in Macaulay2's docs here

The GAP package Simplicial Homology, available at http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~dumas/Homology/, provides methods for using posets within GAP. According to the documentation, posets are stored in GAP in the following manor: The ground set is the set of integers 1..n+1 and the relations are stored in a list of length n, where the ith entry is the set of vertices which cover i in the poset. In particular, 1 should be the unique minimal element and n+1 should be the unique maximal element.

The link is now dead, and seems to be https://ljk.imag.fr/membres/Jean-Guillaume.Dumas/Homology/ instead now. You can find the old link on the Wayback Machine.
Note that this is not the simpcomp package.
I'm looking into the same problem and didn't know about the heights parameter in Sage, I'll probably use that instead but leaving this note in case it helps.
Specifically, I was trying to see if it was simple to make an integer partition lattice like it is in Sage, but it doesn't seem to be.
Comment: Thanks for finding this! The package has never been submitted for the redistribution with GAP (I don't recollect all the details, but installing it seemed highly non-trivial). It may be worth checking how it is compatible with GAP 4.11, maybe also try to provide it in a Docker container based on https://hub.docker.com/r/gapsystem/gap-docker/ ...

Library of posets in GAP?


Should I remove nailed-down plywood before laying tile?

Question: In my bathroom there is vinyl on top of plywood, which is nailed to the sub floor. Should I pry up the plywood before putting down cement backer board for tile, or can I go over the plywood?
Comment: Have you considered what adding backer-board will do to the height of the floor?
Comment: I was mostly worried about the flatness. Where could the floor height present a problem? I can think of a few like toiletbowl seal, and under cutting the door /frame. Also,  the plywood ends an inch short of the bath tub. Can I extend the plywood?
Comment: I'd screw down the plywood where the nails are. Then use the self leveling cement to start the surface.
Answer: The plywood is there to make the vinyl the same height as the rest of the flooring in the house. If you add backerboard + tile on top of it, you are going to add somewhere in the range of 5/8" to 3/4" of height. That is enough to be a tripping hazard, and it also wouldn't look very nice.
Pulling up the plywood and the putting down the backer board is the right thing to do.
Answer: Tile should be sitting on a minimum floor thickness of 1-1/4".  Assuming the plywood sitting on your floor joists is 5/8", you need another 5/8" plywood which must be screwed down with floor screws every 6".  Drive longer screws into the floor joist to secure the original plywood and the new securely.
Another option is to use Schutler Ditra which is a 1/8" "membrane" that provides the same strength as 5/8" plywood but without the added thickness of the plywood. The product is fairly expensive however. The also have a thicker membrane as well.
Bottom line: insufficient thickness will result in cracked tile and grout over time.
Comment: There is diagonally laid wood subfloor under the plywood. Thanks for the info about thickness.


How to tackle with unique URL (with qs parameter) forwarded by one customer to another

Question: When we allow our customers to redirect to cloudpage URL from Email link using cloudpagesURL() AMPScript function there is a unique qs parameter generate for each customer and if that particular customer forward the exact link from the Email which he received to someone else in that case that another user also see same (personalized) details on cloudpage of our customer to whom email was originally sent , do we have anything to tackle with this scenario or do we need to implement anything to avoid this situation ?
Answer: There is legitimately no way to get around this without setting a login/pass or similar separate authentication method. As the URL is the unique identifier, it doesn't who views it or where, it will display the same information. Any attempts to alter or adjust would be based on assumptions and guesses.
Even were you to try to do something around this, there is not really much that can be done as all the content is made prior to the email going out and there is no Client-side language available in email to adjust this based on real time context.
Answer: I agree with @Gortonington.  This is precisely why forward-to-a-friend functionality is a bad idea.  You don't want someone other than the recipient to update their own data or worse, opt someone else into something without their consent.
I'm a fan of explicitly creating "share" CTA buttons and/or links on your CloudPage that strip QS & PII from the URLs for sharing.  More like a referral for opt-in.


How to run id3lib dll library?

Question: id3lib is an external library which I wanted to include in my code but it is showing build failed .Maybe, I am missing out some step.Please help!!
Or if there is any other such library(in java or c++) to parse mp3 headers,that would also do.
Comment: on linking it to my code,it shows the following error-can't create output/bin/debug..why so?have i missed out on anything?
Answer: You can use Java ID3 Tag Library but please try to find whether any JAR file is available that you can include. Currently, you are trying to use id3lib but I recommend you to check the dependencies as well if any which will not impact on your build. Else, any class or dependent libraries will cause a build failure if missing.
Thanks!
Comment: how do we actually include a library to our code snippet?

How to run id3lib dll library?


water boils in reserve tank

Question: i use a dodge caliber and I have noticed the water boils in the reserve tank when the engine is hot and also when I park it overnight ,I have to refill the reserve tank the next morning because it is empty. what can be causing this problem ??
Comment: What year/engine is your Caliber? Have you checked the radiator cap? What you describe can be caused by a bad radiator cap.
Answer: A strong possibility is that you have a small leak in the head gasket allowing combustion gas into the coolant system.  These usually leak both ways and so you may see excessive steam out the exhaust especially when first started.
You could also be simply overheating, but you don't mention any overheat light etc.

water boils in reserve tank


Is there software to copy existing music sheet?

Question: Is there software that I can enter (kind of type) an existing music sheet and play it on the computer choosing piano for example?
Comment: Yamaha were developing one years ago that could read a scanned score. idk whatever happened to it but it might be worth a Google.
Answer: Proprietary/Commercial: Finale, Sibelius
Free: MuseScore, Lilypond
Finale can import scanned scores.
MuseScore is acceptable for small projects, but for larger ones you should probably buy software. Long run, it is worth the investment because the free programs tend to have bugs and this slows down production, at least I have found it so.


importing projects in Xcode

Question: I have an iPhone app, that contains a lot of "sub-apps".  I basically develop each component separately as it's own project, and when I feel that it is ready, I manually drag all the files into Xcode. I know you can import Xcode projects into other projects, but I'm not really sure what this does.  Does any have a better way to do this?
Answer: You can specify multiple targets in one project with different source and resources making up each one. You can also (if necessary) specify dependencies between targets, if for example you have a plugin target which must be built and copied into a main application target.
This documentation from Apple is a good place to start:
http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/DeveloperTools/Conceptual/XcodeBuildSystem/100-Targets/bs_targets.html

importing projects in Xcode