Does the situation in which one Exalts in have a bearing on their caste?

Question: I am aware that rising up to the occasion is how one earns a Solar Exaltation but does the situation have a bearing on which Solar caste the newly Exalted will be a part of? For example would someone who decided to fight 1v1000 to earn time for refugees to flee and Exalted would they be guaranteed to become a dawn caste Solar Exalted or could they end up becoming a night caste Solar Exalted?
Answer: Does it have a bearing? Yes. But does it guarantee a caste? No.
The process of exaltation for the Solars is described primarily on page 35 of the core book. And it is described as unpredictable. There are some commonalities, they are normally people that have already displayed excellence and it normally comes during a time of stress. But the book is also quite explicit that this is not absolutely uniform and that it is expressly possible for someone that has potential they have not yet had the opportunity to express to become exalted. In other words, the circumstances of exaltation absolutely do not define the caste and while it would be uncommon it is perfectly consistent with the statements in the book for someone to exalt in a mundane and boring situation, but none of the castes are mundane.
As a slight tangent, because Solar exaltation can "bless anyone of sufficient mettle at any time and station of life..." I'm not certain that "earn" is the right word to use. They must possess "sufficient mettle" but that is the only firm condition and they do not necessarily need to have displayed or used that mettle yet.
With that said, the Solar exalted are chosen. The Zenith caste in particular can expect a short proclamation from the Unconquered Sun about what is expected of them and perhaps why they were chosen. Because of that, one might expect the circumstances of exaltation to have some bearing on the caste, but not necessarily to dictate it. Also, Exalted is very expressly a storytelling game that emphasizes stories over mechanics. It usually makes a better story for the circumstances to play into caste or expressly go against the caste but with an explanation than for there to be no bearing at all. That provides another reason one would expect the circumstances of exaltation to have some bearing on the caste.
As discussed on page 121, "Each solar is chosen for her Caste because it fits her, one way or another".In other words, the persons skills and temperament are far more relevant to caste than the circumstances of exaltation. And while the caste must "fit" the newly exalted, that is very broad, especially with the addition of "one way or another".
Answer: I've found 3rd Edition tends to keep things vague to allow GMs more flexibility, You and/or your GM can decide how things work in your own game. 2nd edition had a bit more information that 3e occasionally nods to but rarely confirms.
In 2e, with the exception of Lunars, all Exaltations (the divine spark that bonds with a mortal soul and elevates them as a Solar Exalt) is locked into a caste: Ie. it cannot exalt one mortal as a Twilight caste and another as a Night.
When unbound an Exaltation will search for an appropriate mortal to wield it. The exact criteria for how an Exaltation actually chooses a host is never elaborated on, though it is suggested that some powerful gods might be able to influence the choice. Regardless, they tend to bond to mortals during or after a pivotal/defining moment of their life.
A Dawn caste is much more likely to be Exalted on a battlefield than in a library, but it is not out of the question, for example; if they are studying or creating military tactics and have an epiphany on the nature of warfare.
It is probably better to say that the exalted-to-be's skillset and approach to the situation is more important than the situation itself. In your example of 1 mortal holding off 1000. If they are a career soldier and choose to hold the line like a one man thermopylae there is little question to my mind that that mortal becomes a Dawn. If they take out the army by using a firecracker to start an avalanche I could see them becoming a Dawn, Twilight, or Night, depending on their skillset.
There is nothing stopping a Zenith from being a sword master and exalting in combat, but the defining moment that Exalts them is not going to be the fight itself, but rather the sight of them fighting against all odd that rallies the civilians and ignites the revolution.


Found a taweez in parents home

Question: Could someone please translate this taweez? My mother randomly found it in her washer recently. It doesn't belong to any of my siblings. All my siblings are suffering some sort of ailment recently.Can someone tell me what the intentions were of the person that created this/left it at their house.
Thanks
Answer: This is an invocation to jinn. The numbers in the middle are their names (in the Abjad numbering system). It's not clear what the intention is behind their invocation. It could have been for "protection" or something else. It may have been with good intentions. Either way, it doesn't provide true protection (that only comes from Allah) and it is something forbidden (despite good intentions). The ailments are likely not related to this device. But there could be a different thing causing that if someone has contracted with a practitioner of sihr. It is also likely unrelated and has a purely medical cause.
You should dispose of it by reciting Ayat al-Kursi over it a few times, at least 3, and then burning or breaking it down outside.
Whatever evil is designed towards you, the protection is simple. Do the morning and evening adhkar always and recite Quran as much as you can.
Source: My teacher Sh Jallow who is a ruqyah expert.
Comment: Thank you so much!
Comment: Also my dad was told to dispose of it by putting in a stream/running water. He did that. Is it important to dispose of any photos we may have of it as well? Including this post?
Comment: The names on the sides are of Angels, could be a invocation to those Angels aswell.

Found a taweez in parents home


Is it possible to move components around the screen using the standard android apis?

Question: I would like to produce an android user interface which allows the user to move added components/widgets around the screen by selecting them and then dragging them around.
Is this possible using the standard android apis?
Answer: Yes. It depends what you are trying to achieve.
It can be done using the standard APIs, but this functionality is not part of the standard APIs. That is, there is no widget.DragOverHere() method unless you write one.
That said, it would not be terribly complicated to do. At a minimum, you would need to write a custom subclass of View and implement two methods: onDraw(Canvas c) and onTouch(MotionEvent e). A rough sketch:
class MyView extends View {

    int x, y;  //the x-y coordinates of the icon (top-left corner)
    Bitmap bitmap; //the icon you are dragging around

    onDraw(Canvas c) {
      canvas.drawBitmap(x, y, bitmap);
    }

    onTouch(MotionEvent e) {
      switch(e.getAction()) {
      case MotionEvent.ACTION_DOWN:
        //maybe use a different bitmap to indicate 'selected'
        break;
      case MotionEvent.ACTION_MOVE:
        x = (int)e.getX();
        y = (int)e.getY();
        break;
      case MotionEvent.ACTION_UP:
        //switch back to 'unselected' bitmap
        break;
      }
      invalidate(); //redraw the view
    }
}

Answer: To some degree. It depends on what degree of freedom you want to give the user. One solution that comes to mind is a TableLayout with predefined cells. A user can then tap and drag components. When dragging a component you'll just want to draw an image of it under the user's finger, but when they release, remove the component from it's previous parent and add it to the new parent using the ViewGroup add/remove methods.
While you can programmatically shift Views around, it would be difficult/impossible to switch layouts on the fly as far as I can see.
Answer: The way I have done this is to have an absolute layout and then just update the object position as it is dragged. You have to implement dragging yourself. If the widgets have a natural order (a toolbar where you want to be able to drag buttons around) you can stack an absolute layout on top of the toolbar and when the drag starts, you add it to the absolute layout and when it finishes, you add it back to the original layout in the new position.


In SSB how do receivers calculate the frequency offset without a carrier?

Question: On page 2-9 of the ARRL Ham Radio License Manual, it discusses how in SSB one of the side bands and the carrier are suppressed to conserve power and bandwidth. Given the explanation of how AM works, however, it seems like a receiver would need the carrier in order to determine the various frequencies in the SSB; it would need the offset distance from the carrier to understand what frequency the rightmost or leftmost sidebands represent. Are SSB receivers just guessing, looking for the cluster of sidebands and assuming the leftmost is some low phone frequency?
Answer: No, the receiver does not try to determine a carrier frequency, you do. When receiving SSB, you must adjust the VFO (main frequency control), not just until you hear a signal, but also to adjust to match the suppressed carrier frequency by ear.
Slightly-off SSB signals have a distinct sound, which is not just being too low or high in pitch, because the human voice contains harmonics. For some fundamental audio frequency $f$ you have $f, 2f, 3f, …$ in some proportions, but if the VFO is offset by some amount $\delta$, the demodulated audio will have $f + \delta, 2f + \delta, 3f + \delta, …$ which do not make up the same wave shape and therefore sound funny.
In principle a receiver could attempt to automatically tune in the way you describe, but this would only work at high signal-to-noise ratios (strong signals). Doing it manually takes advantage of your human skill at recognizing human speech.
You'll quickly understand this for yourself once you have a receiver in your hands — and learn why people care about the feel of the VFO knob.
Answer: Like Kevin already wrote, the receiver doesn't "auto-tune" in SSB. In fact, I think the only modes in which there is an appreciable amount of "auto-tuning" or allowance for being significantly off frequency is modes where the absolute transmission frequency offset does not carry any important information; in other words, frequency and phase modulated modes. In amplitude modulation modes, both the absolute offset and the amplitude carries information, and what business does the receiver have deciding what I am listening to?
That said; look at a diagram of a SSB (or CW; for our purposes here, they are the same) receiver. (I'm not familiar with the ARRL material, but I would be very surprised if it doesn't have some.) You will see that the VFO setting (either directly or through some other stage, sometimes separately handled) affects the beat frequency oscillator or BFO.
Very basically, the purpose of the BFO is to "re-inject" the carrier that was suppressed in the transmitter. This then allows for easy demodulation of the RF (at this point often IF) signal. If this re-injected carrier is at the wrong frequency relative to the station you want to listen to, then the audio will become distorted.
In CW, modern receivers usually offers some means of controlling the (receiver) BFO separate from the (transmitter) tuning VFO. This allows you to change the pitch of the CW signal -- not everyone likes their CW at 700 Hz sharp. This can be termed "beat offset", "CW pitch" or something similar, but what it really does is affect the frequency difference (offset) between the indicated VFO frequency and the internal BFO frequency. In the good old days of separate transmitters and receivers, it depended on whether the two shared a VFO; if they had separate VFOs, you just tuned them slightly differently and hoped for the best; if they shared a VFO, you basically had a transceiver occupying multiple boxes in your shack.
In practice, this means that for a SSB signal to sound right, your receiver's BFO frequency needs to be very close to the (suppressed) carrier frequency of the transmitter. (This is most often achieved by simply setting your VFO such that the frequency readout is the same as that on the transmitter, assuming both are frequency-accurate; in real life, you tune until the audio sounds right.) If your BFO is off by more than a few tens of hertz at most compared to the suppressed carrier, then the signal will start to sound funny or even garbled; the audio will start to sound somewhat like Donald Duck.
Sharp filters can make this effect even more pronounced, when a part of the intended signal falls outside the main passband of the receiver's filter (which is often approximately 300-2700 Hz at -6 dB in SSB).
Tuning a SSB signal accurately will quickly become second nature once you start listening, and absent split/IF shift/beat offset/etc. you will only need to worry about tuning the VFO until the signal sounds right and then you will be right on the other station's transmission frequency. The exact frequency readout at that point is basically unimportant. (Obviously, as long as you stay within the limits of your transmission license and ultimately ensure that your entire transmitted signal fits within the band limits.)
Comment: I think it's important to keep in mind that the existence of a BFO is not fundamental to SSB. Your receiver does frequency translation from RF carrier to baseband, and the number of stages it does that in is essential neither to the modulation __nor to the user interface__. (I suppose given that "IF Shift", misaligning to change filter response, is a feature, it's _slightly_ relevant.) For example, software defined receivers have no need for a BFO. They may have a CW BFO setting, but there's no reason for it to be anything but using a different VFO-frequency for transmit and receive.


How to tell default user from uploaded one?

Question: When a SharePoint 2013 User Profile is created, a default image is placed in the User's Profile.  Later a User may update that image themselves.  How do you tell if the image has been updated by the User?
Answer: We found the answer is that SharePoint will return "?t=" and a timestamp value after a user uploaded image in the Picture URL.  If it is the default user image, there will be no "?t=" in the Picture URL.
And there is an Internal Field called PictureTimestamp where you can verify if the ?t= value equals SharePoint's value for the timestamp to make sure that the image was not tampered with.


Why are Salts Removed before Ion-Exchange Chromatography?

Question: In my organic chemistry laboratory, we used centrifugation and salting out to begin the process of purification of Myoglobin from hamurger meat. After that process, we used to dialysis to remove the Ammonium Sulfate from the salting out process to begin ion-exchange chromatography. I was wondering why we had to use dialysis to remove the salts, and why the ion-exchange chromatography couldn't just occur in the presence of the salts?
Answer: Think about what the ion-exchange material does, and the mechanism of separation by this method. The ions of interest interact with the ion exchange sites to a different degree than do the other ions or other species in the solution, thus you get separation.  What if your solution is loaded down with ammonium sulfate?  The ion exchange resins have a limited capacity to accommodate ions and all of the sites would be swamped in ammonium ions and all of the much lower concentration ions of interest thus would not be able to be separated.


tripp-lite kvm B022-U16-IP factory default reset

Question: It's the weekend and tripp-lite support not available. I have a B022-U16-IP KVM, i used default password and set a new ip adress and re--logged in via web with default passwords. I replaced adminsitrator user and rebooted - and now cannot log in with new user or adminsarator. I have tried a variety of reset presses on the front panel pin button (twice in 2 seconds, with power on and off, holding for over 20 seconds), the button responds and reboots the device but it is still on the new ip and wont login. How to clear back to factory defaults?
Answer: a) when typing passwords in web browser it will not take " ! " exclamation marks.
b) for benefit of others, you can clear by openign the case with power off. THere is supposed to be a jumber for "Default password" on the main board J17 near the screw holding board down. Short jumper and power on - then power off and remove jumper.


Effect of reduction potential on particle size of chemically precipitated silver particles

Question: Is there no mathematical relationship between redox potential and particle size saying that an $X$ potential should yield a $Y$ particle size? Right now its general that large redox potential results in smaller particles, but I want to know if, for example, for silver particles I use $\ce{AgNO3}$ with glucose reducing agent and say the redox potential is $\pu{0.33V}$, what the ballpark for the particle size should be based on that potential (assuming $\mathrm{pH}$ does not change)?
Comment: "Is there no mathematical relationship between redox potential and particle size saying that an X potential should yield a Y particle size?" Electrode potential is a thermodynamic property, it can only say "yes, this reduction or oxidation is favorable" but particle size is a kinetic property. I feel it is very difficult to relate the two.
Comment: I do see a relation between the size of the attained *nano*particles and their electrochemical potential, of course. Still the main parameter should be the amount of current flown to the cell. A parallel would be precipitation, where fast means small. In case of a chemical reduction like in your case I would think of small particles with high reducer conc, though thinking of concentration suffices in this context.That the redox properties of the final particles are dictated by size should be out of doubt, as I said above, but I am not sure it relates to the question.
Answer: Here is an example of a study of fish oil nanoemulsions which examines, to quote:

The influence of surfactant-to-oil-ratio on particle size and physical stability was evaluated.

Here is yet another study to quote:

Although the role of surfactant in the synthesis of particles in the nanometer range has frequently been documented...The surface coverage per surfactant molecule could be related to the surface tension of the latex, thus providing a relationship between particle size and stability.

And, another more expansive work to quote:

It was reported that the formation process of these NPs could be divided into three stages: growth, incubation and Oatwald ripening stages. The higher boiling point of 300 °C of paraffin affords a broader range of reaction temperature and makes it possible to effectively control the size of silver NPs by varying the heating temperature alone without changing the solvent. Moreover, the size of the colloidal silver NPs could be regulated not only by changing the heating temperature, or the ripening time, but also by adjusting the ratio of oleylamine to the silver precursor.

While chemical reduction methods are connected to reduction potential, the multi-stage aspect of the creation process for NPs suggests only a partial correlation, so not a 'mathematical relationship', but perhaps a statistical one.


Get taxonomy name used in a current post

Question: Hello I have create a custom taxonomy for a custom post. I want to get the taxonomy term that is used in the current post. How to get it.
Comment: What is the taxonomy?  Can we see your code?  What you want to use is `$term_obj_list = get_the_terms( $post->ID, 'custom-taxonomy-here' );`
Answer: You can use below code to get the taxonomy by post ID:
$yourterms = get_the_terms( $post->ID , array( 'taxonomy_name') );
foreach ( $yourterms as $term ) {
 echo $term->name;
}

Answer: $tags = wp_get_post_tags($post->ID);
$html = '
';
foreach ( $tags as $tag ) {
$tag_link = get_tag_link( $tag->term_id );

$html .= "name} Tag' class='{$tag->slug}'>";
$html .= "{$tag->name} ";  //this will get the  taxmont term.
}
$html .= '
';
echo $html;

This will Help You


Better to go with a longer spindle length bottom bracket or shorter?

Question: I have a 1987 Panasonic dx1000 that I am converting to a single speed. I was planning on replacing the bottom bracket. To get the measurements I measured the tube to be 70mm (2 3/4") and the spindle to be 125mm (4 7/8"). When looking for replacements I cannot find this size. Would it be better to go with a 68x122.5 mm or a 68x127.5 mm? It was a double cog and removed one so that it's only a single. Any suggestions?
Answer: I have just rebuilt a 1990 Raleigh bike (exact model unknown) and tried several bottom brackets to find the best. This turned out to be the one that brings the smallest chainring (in your case only chainring) closest to the chainstay without touching it. The one I've ended up with is 117.5mm whereas the original was 122.5mm. The front derailleur works perfectly (not applicable for your setup) and the chainline looks great, albeit aimed at the larger cassette ratios rather than the smaller ones.
My logic is that when on the larger sprockets I am putting a lot of pressure on the pedals, so a straight chainline is best for chain strength and wear. When in the smaller sprockets I am usually on the flat or downhill, so a bit of chain angle is not such an issue.
Thus, I would go for the shortest BB you can get away with to keep the chainline close to the chainstay, and minimise flexing forces on the BB stubs (are they called that?)
Answer: The goal here is to make the chainline of the new SS setup correct while avoiding frame clearance issues with the crank/ring. Depending on what you're doing in back, you may also have some ability to configure Q-factor to your liking.
Using your existing bottom bracket and the crank with whatever ring you're going to use, measure what chainline it gives you and where the tight spots with the frame might be and how much room you have to work with there. Also ascertain that that BB is putting the cranks symmetrical in the frame. Then measure the existing spindle's length and its offset if applicable. You now have all the numbers you need to do the math for what spindle length will yield a given chainline. (As well as what spacer configuration is needed if you're going to be compensating for a crank that wants an offset BB.) Then just figure out what your rear chainline is going to be. If your rear hub setup is one where you have choices here, you're deciding it based on what Q-factor you want within the constraints of frame clearance.


How many different combinations of at most 30 balls

Question: Given are an unlimited amount of red, blue, black and yellow balls. We need to create different combinations of at most 30 balls. Out of every combination, at most one ball is to be replaced by a ball of another color. Is there a strategy to make sure the first 1000 combinations are all different even after the replacements?
Comment: What does " Out of every combination at most one ball is gonna be replaced by a ball of another color. " mean?
Comment: @lulu for example, if red-red-blue is a combination, then one of the balls is gonna be replaced by a ball from another color, so the new combination will for example be red-black-blue
Comment: This is not clear.  Are you asking how many combinations there are?  Are you requiring that any two of your list be connected by a single change of color?  Something else?
Comment: Suppose one combination is red-red and one is blue-blue.  Both of them can be changed to red-blue.  Is this allowable?
Answer: Hint: Start with 30 of one color (let's say red). Suppose you want to modify this combination to create a new combination. You take away one red ball and add one blue one. Now, these are distinct combinations, but if you were to take away the blue ball and add the red ball, you would be back where you started.
Suppose you take away two red balls and add two blue or one blue and one black. If you were to take away one blue and add one red, you have 29 red and one (black or blue). Starting with 30 red, if you take away one red and add one (black or blue), you wind up with the same thing.
Therefore, going from 30 red balls, you must move at least three balls to get a "distinct" combination up to replacing a ball of one color.
So, consider the number of solutions to the Diophantine equation:
$$3x_1+3x_2+3x_3+3x_4 = 30$$
There are only $\dbinom{10+4-1}{4-1} = 286$ solutions.
Edit: Now that I see Ross Millikan's response, consider all multiples of 3:
$$3x_1+3x_2+3x_3+3x_4 = 3n, n=1,2,\ldots , 10$$
$$\sum_{n=1}^{10} \dbinom{n+4-1}{4-1} = 1000$$
Edit 2: Here is a possible way to reword the problem:
Define $X = \{(x_1,x_2,x_3,x_4) \in \mathbb{Z}^4 \mid 0\le x_1,x_2,x_3,x_4\text{ and }0 < x_1+x_2+x_3+x_4 \le 30\}$
Define a relation $R$ on $X$ such that $(x_1,x_2,x_3,x_4) R (y_1,y_2,y_3,y_4)$ if and only if there exists $(a_1,a_2,a_3,a_4,b_1,b_2,b_3,b_4) \in \{-1,0,1\}^8$ such that $$|a_1+a_2+a_3+a_4|\le 1, \\ |b_1+b_2+b_3+b_4| \le 1, \\ \left|\left\{ k\in \{1,2,3,4\}: a_k = 0\right\} \right| \ge 2, \\ \left|\left\{ k\in \{1,2,3,4\}: b_k = 0\right\} \right| \ge 2, \text{ and } \\ (x_1+a_1,x_2+a_2,x_3+a_3,x_4+a_4) = (y_1+b_1,y_2+b_2,y_3+b_3,y_4+b_4) \in X$$
Let $A\subset X$ such that $R$ restricted to $A$ is an equivalence relation. Is it possible that $|A| \ge 1000$?
Then, $A = \{(3x_1,3x_2,3x_3,3x_4): x_1,x_2,x_3,x_4 \in \mathbb{Z}, 0\le x_1,x_2,x_3,x_4, 0 < x_1+x_2+x_3+x_4 \le 10\}$ satisfies this property with $|A| = 1000$.
Answer: Building on InterstellarProbe's answer we are also allowed to have combinations of $29, 28, 27,$ and fewer balls.  There are ${9+4-1 \choose 4-1}=220$ combinations for $27$ balls and we can extend all of those to combinations for $28$ and $29$ balls by adding one or two red balls.  The swapping of balls maintains the total number of balls so there is no confusion between combinations with different numbers of balls.  That is not quite enough, but there are ${8+4-1 \choose 4-1}=165$ combinations with $24$ balls and we are there.
Comment: Oh! Good point! I completely missed that you could have fewer than 30 balls.


Census data comparisons

Question: What is the best way to compare population of  children age 0-6 years old (head counts) across various regions? Population density (population per sq km) seems to make sense. A colleague mentioned looking at population per capita. Does that make sense? Any help is much appreciated. Tx!
Answer: It depends on what, exactly, you're interested in. All of your proposals can make sense given different research aims. Population density is also measuring the area of the territory that the children are in, which might not be relevant to your research question -- unless, e.g., you think there are some interesting urban vs. rural effects -- so you could inadvertently introduce some weird biases to your analysis.
The same arguments go for children per adult or children per total population.
Alternatively, is there any reason that you can't just compare the number of children directly?
Answer: In each case, 0-6 population is the numerator, and you will have something else in the denominator. The question you are trying to answer determines what goes into the denominator.
If you want to know the gross child population of different regions, the denominator is 1. Presumably you don't want this method because your regions have different sizes.
If you want to know something about regional fertility, then total population might make sense in the denominator - this is population per capita, and tells you how many children there are as a function of population size. To get closer to fertility, you might choose women aged 15-50 in the denominator, telling you the number of children per child-bearing woman.
Population density (regional surface area in the denominator) seems like a strange choice. For instance, you would likely conclude that Miami has more children per square kilometer than Atlanta, but this would be mostly driven by urban sprawl.

Census data comparisons


DNS natting on Cisco 6502e IOS 12.2

Question: We sell internet BW to small businesses, Because of how caching & peering services are configured our customers can only benefit from our local GGC and akamai node, with speed and performance only if it they use our DNS service. But despite multiple requests our clients use global google DNS services (220.127.116.11) or their own internal DNS servers and then complain about not getting decent speed or high latency. We keep telling them but it's not making any difference. One of the things we did to some of our clients who are connected through Mikrotik CCR routers is NAT their DNS requesting. Doesn't matter whatever DNS server they are using, we NAT the DNS requests to use our own DNS Servers. So far, in the last month or so, we haven't had any problems. We want to do the same thing Cisco switches/routers, Any idea how to do this?
Comment: Why not policy-route DNS to your Mikrotiks and NAT it there.  It might be better than maintaining two custom solutions to the same problem.  I am bound to say though, that if you were my provider, I'd leave you and find another.
Comment: My understanding was that some customers have a Mikrotik as CPE, other customers have a Cisco CPE. But then again, I now realize there is a reference to a cat6k in the title... so confused now. OP please clarify?
Comment: Please read my comments to the answer posted below.
Comment: I don't see how those comments address my question?
Answer: Perhaps something like this?
https://supportforums.cisco.com/discussion/12214771/destination-nat-inside-outside-dns-traffic
Also, as someone has mentioned, if I was your customer, I would leave. Altering customers' traffic without their consent is big no-no. Beside, you're selling Internet BW. If they're using other DNS, that would mean they generate more traffic and they have to pay more isn't it?
Anyway, good luck.
Comment: Unfortunately, it's not as simple as that. A very small % of users actually use private DNS, which is fine we are not making policy that users should use our DNS or we don't want to force others to use our DNS. But these users who don't use our DNS, they use their private DNS or google DNS and also complain about high latency to akamai traffic  or other peers we have. The way these peers work is that our DNS gets whitelisted with their node for us to able to use them - we don't make the rules, that's how they work.
Comment: They won't accept any third party DNS only DNS server who are directly peered to their nodes. We have been trying to explain to this clients that in order for them to get good latency to akamai or similar peers they need to use our DNS. We had countless meetings and over the phone conversation and we can't seem to make them understand. They are not technically proficient enough to understand this. But that's not going to stop them from complaining. We are trying to do this as an extreme measure. We don't benefit from this at all.
Answer: How about giving them a demo? "Look how slow this is... now I change the DNS on this PC to xx.x.x.x and I download the same content again, look how fast it is now".
That, or raise your prices with 2% and give a 2% discount to those who use your DNS. Or a free T-shirt. Whatever works.

DNS natting on Cisco 6502e IOS 12.2


Why ignoring the function $f(x)=1/(1+x^2)$?

Question: I heard that the function $$f(x)=e^{-x^2}$$
Is extremely important in probability and statistics, because it looks like the normal distribution (or something like that). But i noticed that the graph of this function is similar to the function $$g(x)=\frac{1}{1+x^2}$$
Furthermore, the area under this curve is pretty easy to calculate, since
$$\int_{0}^z \frac{\,dx}{1+x^2}=\arctan(z).$$
So why the first function is more important than the second one, although they look pretty similar?
Comment: There's a vast chasm separating "looks like" and "is equal to" or "is similar enough to have the same properties as." Your question is a little like asking why $e$ is so important if we could just round it to $3$. The reason that $e^{-x^2}$ is important isn't that it "looks like" a bell curve. It's that it has *exactly* the right properties with respect to certain mathematical structures (for example, the Fourier transform).
Comment: The central limit theorem is the reason.  Normal distribution appears everywhere. Your $g(x)$ is also useful though, it's basically the Cauchy distribution.
Comment: Also those distributions are rather different - the Cauchy distribution has much thicker tails.
Comment: @Jair Taylor Even worse, this distribution has no second order moment ($E(X^2)$ doesn't exist)
Answer: They are not very similar.
First let us note that $\displaystyle\int_{-\infty}^{+\infty} e^{-x^2/2} \, dx = \sqrt{2\pi}$ and $\displaystyle\int_{-\infty}^{+\infty} \frac{dx}{1+x^2} = \pi. $
But $\displaystyle\int_0^{+\infty} x^n \cdot e^{-x^2/2} \, dx<+\infty,$ no matter how big $n>0$ is, whereas $\displaystyle\int_0^{+\infty} x\cdot\frac{dx}{1+x^2} = +\infty,$ and a fortiori $\displaystyle \int_0^{+\infty} x^2 \cdot\frac{dx}{1+x^2} = \infty$
The reason for dividing by $2,$ so that $x^2/2$ appears in the exponent rather than just $x^2,$ is that that makes the variance, and hence the standard deviation, equal to $1.$
A large number of theorems characterize the standard normal distribution $\dfrac 1 {\sqrt{2\pi}} e^{-z^2/2}\,dz. $ Here are two of them:

Suppose $X_1,X_2,X_3,\ldots$ are independent and identically distributed random variables with expected value $\mu$ and variance $\sigma^2<+\infty.$ Then the distribution of $$ \frac{(X_1+\cdots+X_n)/n-\mu}{\sigma/\sqrt n} $$ approaches the standard normal distribution as $n\to\infty.$ In particular, the standard deviation of this sample mean is $\sigma/\sqrt n$ rather than $\sigma.$ Thus the dispersion of the sample mean goes to $0$ as the sample size grows.By contrast, if $X_1,X_2,X_3,\ldots$ are independent and are distributed as $\dfrac{dx}{\pi(1+x^2)},$ the Cauchy distribution then $(X_1+\cdots+X_n)/n$ also has that same Cauchy distribution. Its dispersion does not get smaller.

Suppose the vector $(X_1,\ldots,X_n)$ has a probability density that depends on the $n$ arguments only through the sum of their squares, i.e. the distribution is spherically symmetric and centered at the origin. Suppose further that these $n$ scalar components are mutually independent. Then each of these random variables separately is normally distributed.
Comment: i wonder...is saying that they are similar similar to saying hyperbolas and parabolas are similar?
Answer: I don't think this  function is being ignored.  It was studied by an Italian mathematician Agnesi, and before that Fermat, Newton and Grandi.  It has been called the "Witch of Agnesi". With no apparent connection to the circle, the area under it is $\pi$.  Try searching.  Apparently it is also useful in probability and statistics.
Answer: That function is also important in statistics. It is (a scaled version) of the $t$-distribution with one degree of freedom. See this Wikipedia article.
As the number of degrees of freedom approaches $\infty$, the $t$-distribution approaches the Normal distribution, which is a scaled version of $e^{-x^2}$. So the two functions are at different ends of a certain spectrum of functions.
Comment: @MichaelHardy I wrote "a scaled version", meaning $\frac{1}{1+x^2}$ (OP's function) gets scaled by $\frac{1}{\pi}$. And then with $e^{-x^2}$, I am referring to a simultaneous vertical scaling and horizontal compression to get the Gaussian bell curve.
Comment: Actually, the Cauchy distribution $\dfrac{dx}{\pi(1+x^2)}$ is the t-distribution with one degree of freedom. That parameter—the degrees of freedom—is _not_ a scale parameter. You cannot get from just one degree of freedom to more than that by rescaling.


Can it be called an 'illusion' if it can change things?

Question: In a sci-fi book that I am still to write, can I use the word 'illusion' to denote extreme cases of mind trickery where such an 'illusion' can alter things and space around, example: people are able to travel faster, fight of monsters, feel pain from pricking etc.? What's the work around if it's not possible? I don't want to use magic.
Comment: You can use whatever words you want for anything you want in your story. As is, I don't think this qualifies as a complete question.
Comment: The point of an illusion is that it is not real. If the alteration of the duration of travel is not real, then it may be and should be called an illusion; but if it is real, calling it an illusion would make the story very hard to understand. Not *impossible*, and definitely *allowed*; but you may want to put yourself in the shoes of the potential readers, and ask yourself whether they will find the story sufficiently rewarding to compensate putting up with calling chairs roofs. VTC as absolutely not about worldbuilding, but rather about poetry.
Comment: It's currently half off-topic, half need more details. Understand that you're mostly free to use whichever word you want in weirder worlds. A great example of free word usage lies in the old, very old [woodruff and the Schnibble](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FP9h8DEX6tA) point&click game. To be more on-topic and have more details, you'd need to think more with your culture, its origins, and its relationship with said "illusion", so we can make some kind of etymological work instead of a writer's choice ^^.
Comment: As other comments mention, you can make up your world's lingo as you need to. More details may help us understand your usage better and make better recommendations. If this is mainly a word choice question, you may also want to check the [English Usage SE](https://english.stackexchange.com/).
Comment: If a state of mental trickery allows people to change reality, then it's psionics, basically magic achieved through mental manipulation of the world. There is no middle ground.
Answer: Wikipedia defines illusion as

distortion of one's human perception of reality
a misrepresentation of a true sensation
they are generally shared by most people

When you talk about altering things or space, you are changing the physical perception of the concerned things or space. After the change everyone would observe the induced change but this does not always mean it is the new reality. Reality is still illusionary. Every velocity in the universe is relative and is reality only in one frame of reference. For some other frame, it is not even an illusion (a perceived reality) but something pointless. Even the absolute speed of light is absolute only because of the different perceptions of time in different frames. And all this is not even mind trickery but actual physical phenomena.
Therefore it is safe to say that whatever extent of mind trickery you do, you may say it is an illusion produced.
Answer: It is unclear what you are asking. An illusion is something that seems real but is not real.
If your 'illusion' can temporarily alter the way something looks, make your banana seem red, or make there seem to be two bananas, then calling it an illusion makes sense.
If your 'illusion' can make the banana seem to fly twice as far as I threw it, but once the illusion wears off, you see I only threw it 10 metres, not 20 metres, then fine, calling it an illusion is accurate.
If your 'illusion' can make the banana actually fly 20 metres instead of 10 then it's not an illusion. It's real.


Different cooking times and different dishes

Question: Merry Christmas! I would love it if all my dishes came out at the same time. Any ideas?
I am cooking a ham at 350, au gratin potatoes at 425 and a souffle at 350 what temperature should I cook at to have them all come out at the same time?
Answer: I don't think theres a good way to do this if you're cooking them fully from the start. Souffles are usually best done just before serving. Plus, your oven needs to have the capacity to do all this.
The Au Gratin potatoes should probably be cooked most of the way (you don't specify the recipe you're using, so its hard to say anything more) beforehand, refrigerated, then reheated in the 350 F oven (for a usual casserole dish, I'd guess this would take 30-45 minutes?).
So, if you do the Au Gratin a day or two in advance, throw it in the fridge, start the ham at serving time - normal cooking time needed. Then, at serving time - 1 hour, throw the gratin in and put the souffle in at serving time - normal cooking time.
You might want to finish the Au Gratin with the broiler after the souffle has been pulled out, maybe with a drizzling of cream + cheese (maybe subtract a few minutes from serving time for this).
Answer: You can sometimes make tradeoffs like this, but there will be compromises. For instance, cooking your au gratin potatoes at 350°F means that the top probably won't caramelize nicely; you'll just have a dish of cheesy potatoes which could have been cooked on the stovetop. And, soufflés are pretty picky; one cooked at a different temperature probably won't rise properly, or may even collapse. The ham (assuming it's already cooked) can be cooked at a higher temperature, but it may burn on the outside before it's warm on the inside; a lower temperature and the outside may not brown.


What is meaning of "cash out" when used for a theory?

Question:
Can someone please explain me what is the meaning of cash out in this context on the highlighed sentence? I have found in dictionaries meanings like "to convert (noncash assets) to cash" bu it does not seem to be true.
Comment: Please stop posting screenshots with watermarks and highlights. I understand that is the most convenient way for you to provide context, but it inconveniences others who try and answer your question or read your context. Please type out your quoted texts.
Comment: My guess when I first encountered this phrase was that it meant the same as "flesh out", i.e. to add the details ("flesh") to the "bare bones" of a theory or idea. I figured that some people are anxious about the sexual connotations of "flesh" or the idea that the use of the phrase could offend animal rights activists, because it alludes to meat on the bone. It occurs to me that someone could fear that there are unpleasant reminders of Frankenstein's monster, or of a creation myth in one religion or another (maybe in one such myth a Creator first makes a skeleton and then adds flesh).
Answer: "Cash out" usually means "to convert a non-cash asset to cash", for example, to convert gambling tokens to cash at the end of the night, or to convert stocks to cash money.
Wiktionary shows an obscure meaning in philosophy:
Wiktionary "cash out"
4. (by extension, often in analytic philosophy) To explain what is entailed by an idea or proposition.
The sense here seems to be akin to "sum up". The two ideals, "implausible utopian ideal" and "workmanship ideal" that are in tension are summed up as "theory of exploitation". This is done incoherently, and so is not convincing.


SharePoint Online - Profiles Missing From Import Question

Question: When a user is finally removed from Azure AD, their profile gets updated in SharePoint as "Deleted" and is then moved from Active Profiles to "Profiles Missing from Import." Is it necessary to manually remove these or will they eventually drop off as well? And if they don't automatically drop off, is there a good PS script that can query this? I've been looking but coming up short.
Answer: I would suggest you manually remove the deleted users from SharePoint Online since their profiles can be kept in sites for a very long time.
You can refer to the link below for a sample PowerShell script to find and delete orphaned users:
SharePoint Online: Find and Delete Orphaned Users using PowerShell.
Another document that might be useful:
Remove a former employee.
Comment: Thanks! I'll look into that first link and see if there is a good way to autmoate this. I really don't want to continue deleting users manually!


how to implement robust row filtering (by user) for Breeze+WebAPI+EntityFramework

Question: I need to have all access to particular entities limited by the logged-in user's identity (they can only see certain instances, based upon complex rules). It is too difficult to specify in oData $filter (I wouldn't want to do it that way regardless). I don't want to resort to repositories (I am trying to provide the fullest featured, most flexible data interface possible for a dynamic responsive web app). I would like to intercept the request at some point in the Microsoft (or Breeze) stack to modify the oData query or the EntityFramework query to inject the security filtration. I know how to do it easily for direct requests for the entities, but I want it to also work when requested indirectly (via navigation properties from related entities). Ideas?
Comment: only do security based on the authenticated user. Dont do it based on the data they post. You can post ANY data your like. eg fiddler . So that means repository pattern / EF layer and and a filter (where restriction) to selected records.
Answer: Queries that are the result of entity navigation loads are actually just regular queries against the "defaultResourceName" for each type.  So as long as you gate all of your "default" endpoints ( as it sounds like you are already doing for direct requests), you should be fine.
Answer: If you use Entity Framework 6 you could use the IDBCommandInterceptor interface to intercept all database commands at the lowest level.
Entity Framework Logging and Intercepting Database Operations (EF6 Onwards)


Proper use of a coma in a criminal sentence

Question: If inducing long-term comas was medically trivial and safe, and ignoring potential problems with muscle atrophy or bed sores or the like, would this come to be considered the only reasonable way to jail people? Or would "experienced imprisonment" continue to be the preferred route, even if it involved higher costs, as well as risks like violence and jailbreaking?
Comment: Clever title, by the way.
Comment: There are competing philosophies about the purpose of incarceration.  To some, it is for punishment, as a deterrent or for revenge.  For others, it is about rehabilitation.  And for others, it is simply about separating dangerous individuals out of society, so they can do no further harm.  I think a coma would only satisfy the last of these.
Comment: @cowlinator:  I know right?  I was coming in all prepared to defend the honor of the Oxford Comma.
Comment: Remind me of the movie "Demolition man" where the hero and villain are put in cryo-coma or something, but they are supposed to be "reprogrammed" during the coma, during which the hero learns knitting if i remember correctly.
Comment: So, would **everyone** or **no one** be let out early for good behaviour?
Comment: What's to stop me from pouring all my cash into investments, robbing banks to get more, and then commit a 1000 year crime? Hello easy retirement.
Comment: @BrydonGibson The fact that it's a coma, not suspended animation or cryogenics.  If your sentence is 1000 years, you'll just die in the coma.  In fact, if your sentence is over 100 years then they may as well just execute you.
Comment: In some countries you can take on courses, earn legit diploma/degree or do carpentry works for needy etc. Those who were given life sentences without parole can write books on their life and maybe ideology but then you want to do what? Nice title btw.
Comment: What is the reason for imprisonment and what is the expected outcome from it? Because I certainly don't see jail time as merely "person X is away from society for Y amount of time". It seems you do, however but I can't really understand the reasoning for that.
Comment: According to https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/8finas/people_that_have_been_in_a_coma_whats_it_like/ it's not very pleasant having been in a coma. Tha atrophy part is nothing to disregard, btw - you'll have to learn how to walk and talk again.
Comment: @Chronocidal my misunderstanding - so the punishment is still years off your life, whether or not you're suffering during them
Answer: Not useful, unless the sole goal is incapacitation
Punishment is said to have five objectives: deterrence, denunciation, incapacitation, retribution, and rehabilitation. Let's take these on, one by one.
Deterrence
Essentially, a punishment is meant to deter the would-be criminal from committing the crime. Thus, the stronger the punishment, the more effective a deterrent, so a coma is in no way preferable when it comes to jailing people, as the only downside is coming out of the it all Rip-Van-Winkle, as opposed to having to spend that entire chunk of time doing hard work.
Denunciation
Essentially, a punishment is a public announcement that 'this behavior is wrong'. If people got away scot-free with stealing, or didn't get visibly punished, then it would seem acceptable to the bystanders. Again, with this kind of thing a worse punishment is objectively preferable. After all, a light slap on the wrist isn't going to convince people as much as taking the hand off at the wrist.
Incapacitation
The coma is actually preferable here. Incapacitation is to make sure that the criminal cannot commit more crimes, and while jail is good at getting criminals to not commit crimes against the people outside of jail, it's not as good at making sure criminals don't commit crimes against other criminals. A coma would guarantee that this would be the case.
Retribution
Not necessarily an 'eye for an eye' in the literal sense. Retribution is more along the lines of 'if you steal money, we take the same equivalent amount of money from you plus the money you stole'. This is more philosophical than the other ones, and is directed to right a wrong. As for this, I don't see a practical difference between imprisonment and comas, as this is usually prescribing something harmful, i.e. taking away money, killing the criminal, etc.
Rehabilitation
A punishment also serves to send the criminal back on the straight and narrow, as it were. In prison, prisoners are supposed to reflect on the wrongs they've done and seek to improve themselves. Now, while that may not necessarily be the case, the fact of the matter is that imprisonment is far more conductive to rehabilitation than knocking someone out for the entire duration of the prison sentence. This is also what the American criminal system seems to be built around.
Summary
There are five reasons for punishment, and 3:1 in favor of imprisonment over coma, except when you just care about incapacitation.
Comment: Minor quibble about an otherwise perfect answer: The person doesn't Rip Van Winkle into the future. Rip doesn't age while sleeping, right? Those years are truly lost for our prisoner. One could argue that, depending on the prison environment, literally just deleting those years from the person's life is a stronger punishment than letting them live them in jail. A jail that focused primarily on rehabilitation could actually be quite nice -- they could provide education and therapy services.
Comment: You probably need to learn more about European penal systems if you think American prisons are built on Rehabilitation and not Retribution.
Comment: The problem is that rehabilitation is often not the prisons priority. In an ideal world, 10 years of rehabilitation is better than 10 years of sleeping. In the real world, 10 years of sleeping may be better than 10 years of hardening in a very dangerous and unsanitary space. Lot of prisoners come out worse than they came in... Maybe what OP would be looking for is bit of both. 80% of the sentence is sleeping, aka being robbed of time at a low cost for society (as punishment) and a few years of real rehabilitation at the end, because prisons have now more funds dedicated to it.
Comment: Retribution does have a practical difference. "Bob the Murderer spent 10 years in jail doing hard work" is a lot different than "Bob the Murderer went to sleep and woke up 10 years later". One is clearly lighter on the prisoner.
Comment: @Theik "One is clearly lighter on the prisoner." Which? Would you rather suddenly find yourself forty years older, or have to spend forty years of your life doing hard work? The latter would seem preferable to me, but it might depend on how lazy the person was.
Comment: I'd just like to point out that "years of hard work" is not a universal attribute of imprisonment, so any comparison should really take into account the various different options in between. Many prisons are more likely to induce _boredom_ than physical overwork.
Comment: Another (admittedly dark) argument in the "coma" column though - a comatose prisoner requires far less space than a conscious one.  You could basically keep them all in drawers like bodies in a morgue, stacked up like cord-wood.  Their dietary needs would also be considerably less since they're not active.  So this would save a bundle on both space and resources involved in incarceration.  Obviously, this is dehumanizing and all around horrible, but might be a valid excuse for whatever dystopian future government comes up with it.
Comment: @Zwuwdz ageing is a complex thing, but metabolic damage is a big contributor. You're not burning many calories whilst you're asleep. There's no wear and tear on your joints, no UV exposure, no enivronmental contaminants. No injuries to heal, no diseases to fight off. A 40 year nap will take its toll on your lifetime, but you'll come out of it without the wear and tear that you'd have experienced in 40 years of normal active life.
Comment: I would caution about considering deterrence to be linearly proportional to severity of punishment. While there seems to be a minimum neccessary punishment for people to take it seriously, making the punishment more severe does little to increase deterrence - this is something that has been studied extensively in terms of the discussion about capital punishment.
Comment: As far as dystopian dehumanizing and minimum resource treatment of prisoners, we already have plenty of (mostly fictitious, thankfully!) examples of that. Granted, a 3'×3'×8' cubicle is a little bigger than a morgue drawer. OTOH, you can always plug them into VR instead and either torture them or force them to do useful work for you.
Comment: Agree with @Echox, the current system sees some criminals being rehabilitated while others just get more deeply entrenched into gangs and other criminal circles. The national recidivism rate isn't too far from 50%, and if those people are committing worse crimes than before, prison might actually have a net negative effect on the likelihood of committing severe crimes. A strictly neutral replacement might actually be preferable to ineffective rehabilitation.
Comment: @NuclearWang "The national recidivism rate": Which nation? [This article](https://www.encartele.net/2018/04/what-can-us-correctional-facilities-learn-from-scandinavian-jails/) suggests Norway is about 20% and USA is 75%
Comment: Uhm no. REHABILITATION is actually far far better with a partial-coma approach. Reserve 1 (or half a?) year for rehabilitation training, but the rest for coma.
Why? Because you break up criminal networks. Since the person does not loose life time, you could double or so the sentences. Then, when someone comes out for armed robbery after lets say then 20 years) any support or network they had, the people who motivated him for the crime will have moved on.
Comment: @MartinBonnersupportsMonica I had meant the US - the Wikipedia article on recidivism cites two figures of 43% and 60% recidivism rates from different studies in the US, but I now see some studies report figures that are even higher. Regardless of the precise number, it's pretty clear that US prisons aren't terribly effective at turning people away from a life of crime.
Comment: @Hobbamok [citation needed].  One of the best predictors for whether someone will re-offend on release is how well they maintain family relationships while imprisoned.  Your approach would reliably destroy such relationships.
Comment: In addition to those traditional 5 purposes, there's an ancillary to 'incapacitation' that needs to be considered - reduction of future harm to victims from potentially encountering the offender, even if they don't actually re-offend. An induced coma potentially makes implementing 'separation' between victim and offender less retributive than living out time in jail.
Comment: As for rehabilitation, prison could potentially drive the prisoner insane, making them more likely to do bad instead of good.
Answer: I think induced comas like this cause issues with all reasonable moral guidelines, utility and sympathy.
There.  You deserved that!
Okay, while typing this, Halfthawed put forth an excellent answer, but I wanted to point out a particular issue on the rehabilitation side of things.  20 years ago, I had a 56k modem dialup connection to the internet.  Phones were actually related to calling people, instead of texting them (or not even interacting with people at all!).  People didn't even use their turn signals to indicate they were going to change lanes.
Okay, so 1 out of 3 didn't change.  Still, just think of how hard it would be to wake up after all that has happened in the last 20 years, and learn from scratch.  Prison is considered by some to already be enough of problem because its too hard to rehabilitate people... now truly advance the rest of the world 20 years without them having a chance to respond.
The only valid solution would be to fall back on a family they can rely on to take care of them while they desperately try to catch up.  For many, this would be their family of crime.
There is an ongoing debate as to whether prison leads to more prison time because you can't get out of the feedback pattern.  I think putting people in a coma for that time would make it far worse.  Its unlikely that that particular debate would go in the favor of coma.  Anyone waking from a coma would almost certainly find themselves facing a coma sentence once again.
However, I could see it reserved as a penalty for the most heinous crimes.  Personally, I think of Minority Report, where basically any major future-crime resulted in you wearing a Halo, which was basically your long term coma.  I can certainly say how I reacted to that particular punishment, and it would qualify as a punishment for only the harshest of cases.
Answer: Strange, but I don't see anyone addressing the elephant in the room.
This is a heck of a lot like Demolition Man.
Ok, that movie used cryo storage of inmates rather than a medically induce coma, but it served the exact same purpose.  Put criminals is a position where they can't do anything at all during the sentence.
Other answers all covered the reasons for incarceration pretty well and they are right in that an induced Coma would serve no purpose other than to remove a criminal from society.  But in your scenario, you don't have to be limited to that alone.  It's all going to hinge on how active your inmates brains can be.
In a Sci Fi setting, I have often seen and read about using hypnotic suggestion or other handwavey stuff in order to implant information, training, and conditioning during some sort of sleep state.
So you could use that coupled with an induced coma in order to satisfy both the necessity of removing criminals from the populace AND rehabing them at the same time.
Comment: Similar used in the Red Dwarf tv series. Lister is placed in stasis for a few days - that becomes a few millions year because of a malfunction.
Comment: The implanted conditioning angle is a good one. Ten years asleep, drifting in and out of dreams, and the whole time you're listening to the audiobook series IngSoc Model Citizen Doubleplusgood on a loop.
Comment: @Robyn  Not dreams....nightmares.  You'd wake up a fruitcake
Answer:
Do people age with your coma technology?
Many fictional cryosleep technologies are supposed to stop or slow aging. If that is not the case, then a sentence of "10 years coma" takes 10 years of lifespan away. So does "10 years prison," but the traditional prisoner remains aware all the time. Is coma the lesser or more severe punishment?
Loss of the peer group.
If people do not age significantly, a sentence of "100 years coma" means that everybody they have known will be long dead. (Unless they were sentenced to coma as well. If so, stagger revival times.) Odds are that many marketable skills will have become worthless, so the prisoner has to work up the social/professional ladder from the bottom.
This is very much like a sentence to permanent exile with no way to come back, ever.
Answer: There are more fundamental legal problems not mentioned by other answers.  A person convicted of a crime has a right to appeal their conviction, but person that is placed by the state into a coma can't act in their own interest to appeal their case.  This probably violates the convicted person's right to due process of law.
It's possible that this punishment could be applied only after all appeals are exhausted, but even in that case this could be considered a violation of the convicted person's right to bodily integrity.  A convicted person has the right to refuse medical treatment and is protected from punishment that would violate that right, e.g. removal of limbs.  While capital punishment is the obvious exception to this right, consider that the only punishment allowed to overcome a person's right to bodily integrity is punishment for a crime so heinous that the law allows and the judge sentences execution (and many jurisdictions have outlawed capital punishment due to their belief that it violates the condemned person's human rights).  So, if this line of reasoning holds then the coma punishment would seem to only be acceptable if the prisoner agreed to it, or possibly if it were sentenced in lieu of execution.  There's even a potential problem with sentencing life comas instead of execution - judges may see this punishment as less severe than capital punishment and be more willing to sentence it, even though we've just established that it should only be issued if the judge would have otherwise issued a death sentence.
Answer: I'll take a page from my answer to another prison-related question.
Prison serves three purposes:
Imprisonment. For people who pose a threat to society, imprisonment serves to protect said society. Here, putting people to sleep, to death, or in a confined environment works just about as well.
Punishment. Prison strips inmates of some of their freedoms and rights. Freedom of movement, obviously. Depending on your jurisdiction, it could also include voting rights, freedom of speech, etc. Putting inmates to sleep essentially deprives them of all their rights, much like death penalty, with the meaningful difference they regain those rights in the end. That may be a little harsh still.
Rehabilitation. A prison system that doesn't rehabilitate inmates is a system that doesn't work. And that's your problem here, you're putting people to sleep, they won't change, meanwhile time flies, society changes, and you think that returning these people to a society they won't recognise is somehow going to solve something. Basically you're giving convicted criminals the ability to time travel for some reason, when you should be trying to educate them into being functioning members of society.
Comment: However, with a part-coma approach, rehabilitation can be massively boosted.
Because you dont steal their lifetime, you can freeze people for a tad longer, then use a part of the sentence to rehabilitate. That way when they come out, they will be removed from the bad circles that brought them there. Which would be especially good with organized crime and self-perpetuating problematic groups
Answer: I don't see any benefit to using induced coma as an alternative to regular imprisonment. It is essentially equivalent to execution, and really is nothing more than an indefinitely paused execution. (Part of the death sequence is to administer sodium thiopental as the coma inducing portion of lethal injection executions.)
The only benefit to incarcerational coma is that the prisoner can never escape confinement without medically knowledgeable & competent assistance. Likewise, the prisoner being lethally injected can't escape his fate either.  The downsides of incarcerational coma far outweigh the only benefit. You need trained nursing & medical staff to properly set up the IVs, administer the drugs and assess and care for the prisoners 24/7. Each prisoner will have to undergo surgery to place a feeding tube, though IV feeding is also a possibility. Trained nursing assistants or care techs will be required to move the prisoners every one to two hours, take care of basic hygiene routines like daily baths and tooth brushing / oral care.
Every prison essentially becomes a 1000+ bed ICU.
The other major downside is that victims' families never get "closure".  By "closure", of course, is meant that satisfying sense of vicarious retribution that civil society grants to the victim's loved ones because they can't just go and lynch the bastard themselves. The problem here: the prisoner never experiences a sense of punishment and is never allowed to ponder the grave nature of his crimes.
Comment: @VLAZ - You are quite correct! As for security, I'd suspect that it will mostly involve some kind of gatekeepers. Guards that thoroughly screen vehicles entering the compound; no outside vehicles enter the compound; strict id checks; 24/7 prisoner monitoring (video, vitals, posey alarm, IV pump alarms, etc) most of which would be de rigeur for ICU patients anyway.
Comment: "*the prisoner can never escape confinement*" - correction/addendum: *by themselves*. Others can certainly try to break them out and wake them up early. Sure - a random mugger who got jailed, probably not. A more powerful criminal boss - probably yes. So, it gets even more complicated then, as you need security - probably less than in a normal prison now however you also need to maintain medical staff. I can really see this being a very big issue, honestly, since an attempted break out that turns violent can harm others - staff and comatose, defenceless prisoners alike.
Answer: I've said it in a comment but I think it may deserve an answer :
Do a bit of both.
The punishment in prison time is because the convict is being deprived of a part of his life. Forcing him to sleep instead of living could have the same deterrent effect (it depends on people of course but I think I'd prefer to live in prison than just waking up 20 years older, I find it terrifying).
About the rehabilitation, it's rarely done efficiently unfortunately. It's not unheard of that people come out of prison with a worse mindset than they came in (I would bet it's actually the most common case). So having them sleep all along could actually be a better solution, in an absolutely utilitarian mindset.
So what I would do in the end :
People with sentences longer than a few years spend 80% of it sleeping. That's the punition. And then, you use the funds you saved to create real and efficient rehabilitation centers, where people only stay one or two years, to learn a craft, see a psychologist...
Answer: I agree with Halfthawed reply it would not make any sense as a type of sentence for convicted criminals.
But I see a gray area where some exceptions could be found. In some countries for serious crimes like murder pre-trial detention could reach up to two years. In this case an induced coma would not be considered a flawed punishment, but just a confinement period to prevent more crimes and reduce the perception of this period in case of acquittal. But actually you can't put people in coma during their trial because they could not defend themselves. The only justification could be found in a dystopian future in an overpopulated world and overwhelmed tribunals where just waiting for the trial to start could take years. The practice could be prone to abuse so it would need a lot of phoney justifications and an authoritarian government, but still it could make sense, well, sort of.
EDIT:
I just realised there is another gray area. Death sentence. There could be a period of 10 to 20 years before the sentence is actually carried out. In this way should some new evidence emerge during the suspension there could be a revision of the process.
Comment: "You are hereby sentenced to death.  You will be put in a coma for 20 years. If evidence to exonerate you is not found in 20 years, you will die without ever waking up. If you are found not guilty, or if your sentence is transmuted, you will be woken up."
Answer: Clever clever title! Your answer lies in it, methinks. Just like a comma, i think the prisoner is getting a break in his sentence if he is fully comatose.
If you approach it from a retribution / punishment point of view, the prisoner is only suffering somewhat if he is in a conscious kind of coma, aware of his position, but not able to move or communicate or interact with his surroundings. Also, life support machines and IV drips would likely also be quite expensive, along with the hospital stay - potentially exceeding the cost of the average prison membership.
If you approach it from a rehabilitative viewpoint, coma is practically useless, and or negative. The prisoner is not learning any skills to better his life, nor any real mental development that could change his moral compass and attitude to being a fitful member of society again. Perhaps if he's semi conscious, the care of doctors and nurses might have a small bearing. Coming out of the coma, the prisoner would potentially be a further strain on the healthcare system too. The comatose state might also mess with his brain, leading to lack of employment opportunities. Which as we all know, can lead to poverty and desperation, then crime!
If you approach it from an incapacitation perspective, a coma sounds on par with or even better than imprisonment. The prisoner here can't do anything, unless he develops consciousness and his neurosurgeon accomplices develop a system to transmit his desires out to his vast criminal network xD- very unlikely.  Unlike in jail, where corruption and loose system rules still leave room for committing crimes from inside, via hiring goons, contact with outside friends, bribing guards.
From a deterrence perspective, I'd say it's probably stronger than jail. For the criminals that lust for the thrilling life, being in a coma will likely be much more of a deterrent than in jail, where they can still somewhat have freedom and fun.
Comment: Welcome to the site Jackiesaurus, please take the [tour]  and at your leisure read-up in the [help] about how we work. Excellent first post BTW.. +1 ([From review](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/review/first-posts/66468)).
Answer: In a comatose state a criminal is fully incapacitated. In my opinion this would introduce more problems then solve.
First of all resources are scarce. No matter where you are and which timeline you follow resources (such as food, housing, water, air etc.) are always something to consider. A criminal put into an induced comatose state would only be consuming and will never be able to produce something that others can use or profit from. Unless you use their bodies for various purposes such as extraction of vital bodily materials such as blood, stem cells etc. You've probably seen the Matrix film series where people are used as batteries while put into a coma-like state with their minds bound to a central system that simulates an alternative virtual existence and fed with liquefied human remains as primary nutrition source. Of course in this case a moral dilemma arises namely what sort of society would use actual human beings for such purposes. In itself, unless the society follows different rules, this is a criminal act and the justice system itself should be held accountable for it.
Second reason I would rather go for "typical" jail time because, while not perfect, it does allow better use of human resources. You can use prisoners for construction work, you can use them for research purposes in order to improve society, you can educate them and - unless it's a hardcore criminal we are talking about - rehabilitation is always a possibility. Needless to say USA prison system is not a fine example when it comes to that.
Third what happens if a natural or human-related disaster occurs? A conscious person can be directed to the nearest escape route, can help others etc. If you have a vegetable, you will have to use additional resource to re-locate that person.
Last but not least you need to consider what happens AFTER the criminal wakes up and is returned to the outside world. Imagine "sleeping" for a decade or two with the world around you changing rapidly. Even in prisons nowadays information from the outside is hard to get but induced coma puts things on a whole new level. That person's mind would be completely disconnected from everything (unless you do something similar like in the Matrix) hence once set free that former criminal will be even more out of touch with society. This is very likely to increase the level of uncertainty in that person's mind thus leading to fear and anger. These two feelings are like putting out fire with gasoline.


How to wind an inductor

Question: When winding an inductor and you reach the end of the other side, do you jump the wire across to the beginning and continue winding or can you continue to wind from the other side to the beginning for the second layer of wire? Would there be cancellation of the inductance value. I want to make a choke for an Radio Frequency oscillator. It's hard to make my question clear.
Comment: What shape do you wish to form your inductor? Do you want it to be a toroid? a square? cylinder?
Comment: I want to make it a cylinder
Answer:
Would there be cancellation of the inductance value

Picture the current in a single turn of wire. Let's say the current is 1 amp travelling clockwise at a particular moment in time. If you have two turns wound the same direction, then the currents in each wire are both travelling clockwise.
You have created a magneto motive force (MMF) of 2 ampere-turns with those two wires each carrying 1 amp. That MMF could equally have been created with 1 wire carrying 2 amps or a thousand wires carrying 2 mA. The magnetic field produced would be identical.
Now, if you picture one turn carrying current counter-clockwise, its magnetic field would cancel one turn carrying the same current in a clockwise direction.
So, providing the currents are all travelling in the same direction around a common centreline then there will be no cancellation of either magnetic field or inductance.
Comment: Thank you, that was very clearly explained. I guess the coil of an AC relay would be wound alike since the direction of current is changing wholly.
Comment: Correct @RonaldArjune
Answer: As long as you keeping winding the wire the same way round the cylinder, it doesn't matter whether you wind the first layer up and the second back, or the first up, send the wire straight back to the first end, and then wind the second layer up as well.
Most people wind up and back, but there is a subtle advantage to winding only up, retracing the wire between layers. The self capacitance of a coil wound this way will be a little lower, and so the self resonant frequency will be a little higher. This method is rarely used however, as if self capacitance is important, there are other winding arrangements which work even better to minimise it.

How to wind an inductor


PC configuration for smooth performance in Photoshop and Illustrator?

Question: How to organise Moderate configuration to setup a PC for smooth performance with Photoshop and Illustrator? I would like to assemble a PC for best performance when doing day long graphic design.
Comment: By "configuration" do you mean hardware or settings on the OS/software?
Answer: Good RAM, and lots of it, for Photoshop is the most important thing. By lots, I mean 32GB. This is relatively cheap and lets you use symbols and smart objects freely, without concern for slowdowns.
Next up, a very fast SSD, with plenty of space for caching/virtual memory, and be lean with it. Don't let it get more than 50% full. And be sure it's compatible with TRIM on your favourite Operating System. By which I mean Windows 7 ;)
CPU should be an i7, quad core. Don't even look at AMD or bother with the i5 range. The hyper threading will make a difference.
GPU is a the tricky point. You can spend anywhere from $200 to $1200 USD and not see much difference in Illustrator and Photoshop, so it depends on what your gaming habits are. Get Nvidia, don't bother with AMD/ATI, Adobe seems to have decided to favour CUDA, for a very long time.
You don't need a huge GPU unless you're doing a lot of touchup stuff on print resolution stuff, wherein you can need the best pan and zoom.
OR... if you're doing 10bit colour work, you need a pro card.
Power supply seems like the most boring thing in your computer, but a good one will protect you from a lot of niggling crashes and lockups that are otherwise a mystery.
And then push/cram it all into an old Silver/BlueTone Mac Tower case, to be that guy ;)


Fixed Effects Estimation

Question: Consider the following regression model:$$y_{it}=x_{it}'\beta+\alpha_{i}+\epsilon_{it}$$
 Here, $\alpha_{i}$
  is an individual specific intercept (fixed effect). Now, by estimating the model by fixed effects, we are effectively demeaning both the response variable the regressors. As such, we are using only within individual variation and are unable to identify coefficients on those variables that are time invariant. However, I wish to use between individual variation as well for one of the variables. Can I demean a subset of $x_{it}$
  such that the estimator uses only within individual variation for $x_{it}$
  by between variation for the other regressors?
Answer: I don't think that you can treat different variables differently with a fixed effects model specification like yours. You will be demeaning all variables in $X_{it}$ and utilizing the withing individual variation. Also note, however, that if you instead used a random effects model with following assumptions

$E(\varepsilon_{it} | X_{it}, \alpha_{i}) = 0$
$E(\alpha_{i} | X_{it})$ = 0,

then you will be using both within and between variation in your regressors (all the variables in $X_{it}$ however will be used).
Check Colin and Trivedi, Chapter 21 and 22, Microeconometrics: Methods and Applications.

Fixed Effects Estimation


Finding product of two unknown numbers each raised to a known power

Question: Let $G$ be a group, and let $a, b\in G$, and let $[3] = \{0,1,2\}$. Let $(x_i,y_i)$ for $i\in[3]$ be known constants. Assume that I know the elements:
$$c_i = a^{x_i}b^{y_i},\quad i\in[3]$$
Then, given $(x', y')$, is there a way to efficiently compute $a^{x'}b^{y'}$?
Comment: Could you tell us where this is needed in Cryptography?
Answer: To say more about this, you need more assumptions on $(x_0, y_0),\dots, (x_2, y_2)$.
For example, if you write
$$B = \begin{pmatrix}x_0 & x_1 & x_2 \\ y_0 & y_1 & y_2\end{pmatrix}$$
to be the $2\times 3$ matrix of your known constants, and let:
$$\mathsf{span}_{\mathbb{Z}}(B) = \{(x', y')\in\mathbb{Z}^2 \mid \exists \vec{\alpha}\in\mathbb{Z}^3\text{ s.t. }(x', y') = B\vec{\alpha}\}$$
be the span of all of their integer linear combinations, then you can efficiently compute $a^{x'}b^{y'}$ for any $(x', y')\in\mathsf{span}_{\mathbb{Z}}(B)$ by writing:
\begin{align*}
\prod_{i\in[3]}c_i^{\vec{\alpha}_i} &= \prod_{i\in[3]}(a^{x_i}b^{y_i})^{\vec{\alpha}_i}\\
&=\prod_{i\in[3]}a^{\vec{\alpha}_i x_i}b^{\vec{\alpha}_i y_i}\\
&=a^{x'}b^{y'},\quad (x', y') = B\vec{\alpha}
\end{align*}
The above technically uses the assumption that $G$ is abelian (commutative), but this is likely intended.
So if $\mathsf{span}_{\mathbb{Z}}(B) = \mathbb{Z}^2$ (which is definitely possible), you can compute your desired function for any pair of $(x', y')$. But if the span of $B$ is not all of $\mathbb{Z}^2$, it is not clear how to compute your desired function for $(x', y') \in \mathbb{Z}^2\setminus\mathbb{span}_{\mathbb{Z}}(B)$ (at least the prior technique no longer works).


YouTube Javascript API: load doesn't work in Firefox

Question: I have an implementation of the YouTube Javscript API that works perfectly fine in Chrome and Safari, but not in Firefox. Yes, I'm doing this on a webserver ;)
On document ready, I call my function showVideo();
This is all the relevant code:

In all browsers the player shows, but in Firefox the video doesn't load. My log shows the "loading video" message on firefox, but nothing else happens after that. Not even an error. If I try to call ytplayer.loadVideoById('jc8n44ddy9A', 0); manually after everything is loaded, I get the error ReferenceError: ytplayer is not defined.
I realize that ytplayer isn't explicitly defined as a variable by me, but my guess(?) is that the YouTube API does that because it works in the other browsers. Also if I defined just var ytplayer globally somewhere it doesn't fix it.
Any advise is much appreciated!
Answer: Not sure where the other browsers get the ytplayer reference from, but you should have it defined globally (for the example you've given, anyway) and add the reference to it in onYouTubePlayerReady:
ytplayer = document.getElementById( playerId );
You would likely be better off using the iframe player, for support in browsers without Flash, too.  I believe it can be loaded without controls using the "controls" parameter.


In choosing a postdoc, how should I prioritize mentorship versus research opportunity?

Question: I am an experimental physicist looking for postdocs in applied physics and materials science. In choosing groups to inquire about a position, I am trying to determine how to prioritize potential mentorship versus potential research opportunity. I see large "super" groups with huge numbers of postdocs and students. These groups have a high potential for research with lots of funding. However, I am worried about entering an ultra-competitive environment where I will receive very little mentorship from an advisor. I am wondering if choosing a smaller group will have an advantage because of receiving quality mentorship, despite the fact that the research topics might not be as leading edge or popular.
Answer: I think that the choice of mentorship versus. research opportunity* entirely depends on your own way of working/your preferences.
If you are very good at working independently, enjoy working on your own and have the ambition to become a full professor then I would pick research opportunity over mentorship.
If you need or desire a lot of guidance, or flourish when you have lots of discussions with someone 'higher up' and you don't really care whether you do cutting edge science or just good science then you might be better of going for mentorship over research opportunity.
*As a sidenote, mentorship and research opportunity don't have to conflict necessarily. There are small research groups with excellent mentoring that do very cutting edge science


Is there any reason not to perform rogue actions?

Question: So far, my octopath party is the thief, Therion, and the hunter, H'aanit.  The game box says that both of their path actions are 'rogue' actions.  Are there any negative repercussions for stealing everything and attacking people for free money, xp, and items?
Answer: Rogue Path Actions have a chance of failing and can also damage your reputation if you keep failing. If your reputation takes too much of a dip, NPCs will no longer react to your Path Actions, and you'll need to head to the local tavern keeper and hand over some Leaves (money) to bump that reputation back up. Sauce.
Noble actions, on the other hand, have no negative repercussions. Both Rogue and Noble actions do NOT impact the storyline for each of the eight protagonists.
A primary reason to use one over the other is that sometimes you are not able to do one type of action, but can do another.
Comment: One thing worth mentioning is that sometimes you can _only_ do Rogue actions, and vice-versa.
Comment: This talks about negative repercussions on a failure, but nothing about successes.  If I never fail a rogue action, do I never have any negative consequences?
Comment: @Tal you will not get a dip to reputation if you do not fail a Rogue action, however in my playthrough it's not unusual to fail several times


Class Diagram - Aggregating over a class that has physical presence or logical presence?

Question: In the below figure, a CD shop has CD cupboards, and inside it has shelves. CDs could be rented, and class CD Copy represents the actual CDs that are rented. My question is, should I represent Shelves as aggregation of CD copies or CDs?
Comment: P.S. Could you also clarify your question further - you mentioned generalization in the title, which suggests to me that it has something to do with your concerns, but you didn't describe how it comes into play in the text of the question itself. What is it about it that bothers you? Also, why you have it in there (what's the motivation)?
Comment: The first thing to know is that this is ultimately up to you, you are the modeler - you are the authority, since you're making the software. In a university setting, a professor might say a design is wrong, in the real world, no one can *really* tell you that you're wrong. How "right" or "wrong" you are will be ultimately decided by how well the software is performing its job. A design that better matches the *needs* of the real world usage is "more correct". 1/2
Comment: That said, a business will generally be more interested in tracking an actual instances (copies) of a physical product, with the more abstract CD being a more of a catalogization thing. So it probably makes more for the shelves to contain CD Copies; now there might be a rule that all copies of the same CD go on the same shelf, so you might be tempted to connect to CD, but that rule might easily change. Furthermore, the model doesn't have to follow the real-world physical structure; you may decide, for example, that it's enough for a shelf to be a string property on CD Copy. Up to you. 2/2
Comment: It is not clear whether this a question about diagramming or software design?
If it is the former, the answer is simple: The diagram should reflect the software design.
If it is the latter, we would need more information about your specific use cases to give you a meaningful answer.
Comment: Thanks all for comments. I changed the title of question, hope it is more accurate now. The figure above is part of a bigger figure. My question is mainly regarding the correct application of UML standards while working with diagrams. @FilipMilovanović, you mentioned "be a rule that all copies of the same CD go on the same shelf, ..." that seems very interesting. Could you elaborate? I am not experienced in UML.
Comment: What I meant was, when making software for some hypothetical CD store, you want to have features that the store needs, and there are various designs that will be able to provide that. Now, the store itself might have an organizational policy where "all copies of the same nominal CD are kept on the same shelf", and you may be tempted to hardcode that into your software, by having the Shelf class contain the CD class. 1/2
Comment: However, after speaking with the store staff, you find out that this rule was different in the past and might change in the future, so if you hardcode it in the design, they'll have a hard time using your software if they decide on a different organizational policy, and you'll probably have a hard time changing the code. So a design where a Shelf contains a CD copy is probably better and more flexible. This has nothing to do with UML in itself, but with how you approach the problem. UML is just a tool to document your decisions. 2/2
Comment: Side question: why is a **Shelf** composed of **CD Organizer Cupboard(s)**? Isn't the composition relationship [going the wrong way?](https://cdn-images.visual-paradigm.com/guide/uml/uml-aggregation-vs-composition/07-uml-composition-example.png)
Answer: I work mostly in SysML rather than base UML, but the question and the diagram are similar. What I tell students and clients who ask this question is to use the destruction test:  "If the shelf gets destroyed, do the CDs get destroyed along with it?".  The way you have it designed, there is a latent assumption that it/when the store remodels and upgrades the shelves, the CDs will be retained (somehow). Someone else could argue that in a building fire, the CDs would be destroyed along with the shelf. As such, your design problem is right on the edge.
From a software point of view, if you call the destructor for the class "Shelf" do you expect it to in turn call the destructors for "CD" for each CD instance?  Your current design suggests that destructor for class "Shelf" will not be designed to call the destructors for the "CD" instances. In that case, you had better have another class (perhaps "Master Inventory List") that is also keeping track of the same CDs that are on the shelf.  In the case of "Master Inventory List" it might make sense for that class to have a composition relationship with the CDs. Ie: if the store goes out of business and liquidates its entire inventory, the CDs get liquidated as part of the inventory.
However, as others have mentioned, it is all up to your use case and design.
By the way, you have used an undirected aggregation relationship. What that means is that the CDs are aware of which shelf they are on. That might be handy if you are producing a store guide for customers who want to first look up the CD and then next check which shelf in the store they can find it on.  However, if that is not part of your design - ie: you want the CDs to be oblivious of the shelf - you want a directed aggregation, that is the hollow diamond arrow with an arrowhead at the other end.
Answer: In your comments you have clarified, that this question is mostly about how apply UML correctly.
UML class (as well as object) diagrams are very close to the (potential) code.
That means your class diagram should represent the static structure of your (planned) code.
That is with your diagram, I would expect to find the five classes EntertainmentItem, CD, CDCopy, CDOrganizerCupboard and Shelf in your code.
Where to put an aggregation depends on how you see your future code.
If Shelf aggregates CDCopy I would expect code similar to this:
class Shelf {
  private Set<CDCopy> cdCopies;
  [...]
}

If Shelf aggregates CD I would expect your future code to look somewhat like this:
class Shelf {
  private MultiSet<CD> cds;
  [...]
}

So the question how to create class diagrams is easily answered with: Draw the diagram in a way that they reflect the code best.
Which of these both variants makes more sense is hard to answer without knowing more about your use cases. Do you need to know which exact copy is on which shelf? Do you need ever need to find a certain copy and know which shelf it is on?
Answer: Scenario 1 : the real world shop
What you call CD corresponds either to an abstract catalogue item that describes a CD content,  or an original CD (which would be kept in a safe in the back office and used only to clone new copies).
What the customer can see on the shelf and rent are CD copies, the physical media with a content.  Your current model correspond to this scenario. Go for it.  It allows you to have two copies of "Imitation game" and locate them on two different shelves.
Scenario 2 : the risky shop
You could also imagine that on the CD would correspond to the original CD and that these are put on the shelves.  When a customer picks a CD, the cash desk operator puts the original CD aside and replaces it with a copy.  This could correspond to the alternative scenario that you have not represented.
This scenario is however very a very risky one and seems highly improbable:

no one in the audiovisual industry would expose a CD master to the public in an environment without heat control (damage risk).
the cash desk operator could make an error and handout the original (damage and loss risk).
the shop's staff would have extra work: find the right copy, hand it out, remit the original cd on the shelf (risk of economic inefficiencies).
When a CD is picked, it'll be temporary unavailable for other customers until the staff puts it back on shelf (risk of missed rental opportunities).

By the way,  where would the copies be stored, if this would be the model?
Scenario 3: the virtual shop
The shop could be Netflix in 1997: The CD corresponds to an abstract catalogue item that describes a CD content.  The Shelf corresponds to an virtual shelf displayed in the user's browser. This could also correspond to your alternative model.  When the user check out, the real CD copies are sent.  But again, where would these copies be stored or real physical shelves in some warehouses and these would be missing in your model?
By the way some UML:
If a Cupboard is composed of several Shelves, the black diamond should be on the cupboard side.
If CD copies are on a shelf, the shared aggregation in your diagram is a valid option. However, keep in mind that the semantic of the shared aggregation is not defined in the UML specification.  Rumbaugh even called it a "modelling placebo" (full quote here).  You can therefore replace it with an ordinary association and avoid any ambiguity.
Answer: You modeled with the physical world in mind. This may technically be correct but it usually isn't very helpful when you are building an information system.
A shelf may be a piece of wood but that does not matter to you. To your model it is a sub-location within a cupboard. Every logical CD has a home expressed as a cupboard id and a shelf id.
Likewise you would not model a physical CD. You would model CDs as a number for the number of CDs you have (one number for each logical CD, this could be a property of logical CD). Then I would expect a client class and a rental class that represents a CD currently lent out to a client.
The hardest part about modeling is determining what matters to your purpose. Your purpose may be an exercise but even then you should have a known goal: what should this system be helpful with?


How do I get the "Ethically Questionable" achievement in Black Mesa?

Question: I've almost completed Chapter 3 "Unforeseen Consequences" and haven't seen anything which looks like it could be related to this achievement. What do I need to do in order to unlock this achievement?
Answer: The Ethically Questionable achievement comprises of the following actions and occur during the 'Questionably Ethical' chapter;

Killing an alien grunt with poisonous gas
Using the tesla discharge on the bullsquid
Using poisonous gas on the headcrabs in their habitat
Shooting the headcrabs with a laser
Firing the snark cannon until it breaks

As mentioned by PWhite these are all segmented off in their own separate rooms where you're generally presented with a button to press to activate lasers.
Comment: To me, these seem more like *terminating* questionable experiments rather than performing them.
Answer: I am unsure about in BMS, but in the original Half-Life, some room contained what could be considered "questionable experiments." They occur later in the game, and take the form of rooms where there are (usually caged) aliens and a button. Pressing the button will kill the aliens. This may be what you are searching for.
Comment: This is pure speculation.
Answer: In black mesa firing the snark cannon until it breaks is a separate achievement, you need to shoot the little attack crawler aliens out of the potato cannon thing to finish the ethnically questionable achievement. The room for this is between the grunt that you poison and the bull squid that you zap. I missed it somehow on my first go.
Comment: I'm not familiar with this game, but it sounds to me like this answer adds nothing to the already accepted answer. Is there something new in your answer?


How to set page size for Postscript output file in Adobe InDesign CS5?

Question: I want to export a document to a postscript file in InDesign CS5. How can I set the page size for the document? Sadly, the option is disabled in my preferences window.
Here is a screenshot of a Russian copy of a program:

Any help would be appreciated.
Answer: Change the PPD file!
When you print to a PostScript printer, PostScript file, or PDF, Indesign automatically uses the default PPD (PostScript Printer Description) for that device. You must switch to a different one to suit your needs.
Choose File > Print.
From the PPD menu, select one of the following:
A PPD that corresponds to the current output device.
Other. Lets you select a custom PPD, such as one provided by your service bureau for use with the specified printer. The PPD's filename corresponds to the printer's or imagesetter's name and model, and may display a .ppd file extension (depending on how your system is set up.) Navigate to the PPD you want, select it, and click Open.
Note: Certain PPD features commonly found in imagesetter PPDs aren't accessible from the Indesign Print dialog box. To set those printer-specific features, click Setup (Windows) or Printer (Mac OS) in the Print dialog box.