Why not save a copy of the person after transport in case they don't return?

Question: Why can't a transporter save a copy in the buffer and regenerate a copy at that instant if the original doesn't return? There have been many references to patterns degrading quickly and the transporter needing the exact matter it started with however there are examples where these rules have been broken. In TNG "Relics" Scotty kept himself locked in a buffer for 75 years. In TNG "Second Chances" a copy of Will Riker was created due to an energy surge at the time of transport. The amount of energy required should be related to the composition of the human and surely there is enough stored in the ship or they could convert an few hundred tons of rocks and shrubs to regenerate essential crew such as the Captain if he happened to be killed. If they have a corpse even better most of the matter is there just some added, removed or rearranged.
Comment: @1252748: How's that?
Comment: @1252748: _"Buffer is temporary storage"_ Doesn't inherently mean it can't be copied. Indeed, your computer copies buffers all the time.
Comment: @1252748: That is the common local use for a buffer. It does not state a constraint that the data stored in such a buffer cannot be copied as well as moved. Again, this does happen. Frequently. Something like a hundred times in order to transmit your last comment to me, for example. This is one of the many, many scenarios in which a quick "Google" doesn't give you a proper and full understanding of the topic.
Comment: @1252748: That's something that has to be deliberately programmed. A buffer is not a temporary storage because its contents somehow decays after a while or disappears automatically, but because the programmer decides to *use the respective storage as a buffer* and thus has the system replace the data within the "buffer" once certain parameters are fulfilled that indicate the data is no longer needed.
Comment: @1252748 Was Scotty able to accomplish this, or not? How could a hack change the technical limits? (Was Scotty "more-or-less" retrieved, or what?)

Just as on our own PCs, buffer being temporary storage is wholly irrelevant.

Buffer storage is "temporary" because it will be re-assigned once the operation is completed. That's purely administrative, not technical.

If no new operation comes along yes, by definition what's in that temporary memory will be stored indefinitely.
Answer: Storage Space
As noted in Borkz' answer, DS9 established that the mental patterns needed to be stored at a quantum level, while other data could be stored at an atomic level, so it required relatively enormous amounts of storage space. That said, DS9 was a very old military station, so it's likely Voyager and such could have had much more available storage (in fact, we see an entire holographic village complete with fully-conscious people on that ship).
From here, we see that humans require between "fifty gigaquads" (to store Chakotay's brain) and "billions of kiloquads" (to transport a person) of data. Taken as normal prefixes, that's between 50 and 1000+ gigaquads.
Note that this conflicts with the DS9 canon, which says the brain itself is far more complex than the rest of the body, while this data considers the brain much less complex than the overall body (which is (reasonably) consistent with the notion that everything is scanned and stored at the same scale). Considering the 50 gigaquads were used during a conversion process (from something alien to a human brain), maybe that was just a buffer, and the entire brain would have taken far more storage. Regardless, we're still looking at less than 10 teraquads per person.
Given that the EMH alone used up to 1000 teraquads for assimilating data (and some "50 million gigaquads", or 50000 teraquads, for the original program), it seems likely the Voyager and newer ships would have no problem hanging onto copies of every crew member while on their away missions, updated on return, with the backup copy stored until the new copy is definitely not an alien or something.
The TNG Enterprise, on the other hand, typically had computers with quads to kiloquads of storage space. Given the DS9's age, it was likely in a similar place. This means the earlier ships would have been simply incapable of storing transport patterns longer than it took to transport the people across.
Lack of Need
The transporters in TNG and beyond are extremely safe. There's very little reason for the majority of ships to bother with backups as a general rule. And it's pretty unlikely you're going to die on a random away mission unless you're a red shirt on the Enterprise.
General Philosophy of Death
As long as I didn't have any philosophical reasons to avoid transporters in general (like, "the thing coming out is just a copy and the real me is dead"), I personally would be ecstatic about the idea of keeping two copies of me at all times. One for my current brain, and one for my best body (relatively young, right after a year or two of intense body training). Then the transporter could just use the prime body with my current brain every time. Further, in the event of my untimely (or timely) demise (which is going to happen eventually), they could just restore me from the last backup, Borderlands-style.
However, the Star Trek universe generally avoids scenarios where humans live much longer than normal. This is mostly an out-of-universe design philosophy, but there is some in-universe rationale for avoiding "unnatural" humanity, from genetic alterations to immortality.
The Scotty Case
My understanding of the episode where Scotty stored himself for 75 years was that he was basically looping himself through a single buffer with some technobabble that doesn't quite make sense. But the idea was kind of like having a mirror and a repeater.
The data is stored in the buffer, then sent towards a mirror. About the time it's returning from the mirror, the last of the data is being sent out of the buffer, so there's just enough time to keep all of Scotty's data in this big loop. Since each repeat cycle slightly degrades the data, there was a limit to how long this could go on.
Overall, it was a crude hack that just barely worked once, and then only because Scotty's awesome, and couldn't have worked for multiple patterns, or during normal use.
A Note on TNG vs. Voyager
As mentioned on the Memory-Alpha page, there is a really substantial boost in reported memory between TNG and Voyager, and it took place over a pretty short time period. Enterprise-D was launched in 2363, while Voyager was launched in 2371.
It's certainly reasonable the Voyager would be substantially better than the Enterprise-D, but we're talking something like a quadrillion (million billion) times more storage space in only 8 years (10 million teraquads vs 10 kiloquads is a factor of 1015).
Given how many highly-advanced aliens the Federation encounters, it's by no means impossible, but it seems more likely the Voyager writers thought "teraquads" sounded cooler than "kiloquads". Using a parallel to the real world, personal computers were using megabyte or lower hard-drives in the mid-80s when TNG came out, so kilo "quads" weren't too crazy of a leap. By '95 when Voyager came out, gigabyte hard-drives were common enough, and kilo was thing of the past. At that point, "tera" was a "futuristic" prefix. (Note, this paragraph is total conjecture.)
We definitely know Voyager was capable of storing multiple fully-sapient holographic people, but it's probably best to assume Voyager "teraquads" are more like TNG "kiloquads", and the total storage increase is thousands to millions instead of quadrillions.
Comment: @zabeus: There are cases where that seems true, but other cases where it's not. There's at least one instance of two people being rebuilt from old copies of the transporter (I believe TNG, but I don't remember the episode), and the Riker incident shows two complete Rikers being constructed from one data stream. Then there's the DS9 incident where they translate between "pattern buffer" data and "holosuite" data, then back again once the transporters are sorted.
Comment: Except that Transporters are *not* a scan-destroy-rebuild technology like the molecular teleportation in other scifi.
Comment: My understanding was Scotty was still there because never beamed anywhere.
Answer: Quantum Mechanics
As noted in Borkz' answer, and repeated in MichaelS answer, mental patterns have to be stored at a quantum level.  That means you run into the No-cloning Theorem, which says that it is impossible to save a copy of a quantum state - basically, you can't have your cake and eat it too.
There are incidents during the series that violate this rule, e.g., Riker being duplicated, so it would appear that the No-cloning Theorem is not an absolute limit in the ST universe.  However, that doesn't necessarily mean that Federation technology is able to do so intentionally.  If such a technology did exist, it would likely have significant sociological effects which we see no signs of.  (I won't go into detail, but there are a number of other science fiction works based on this premise.)
The most reasonable conclusion is that even if it is theoretically possible, the Federation does not (as yet) have the necessarily technology.
(It does have the technology necessary to permanently store people's patterns at the level necessary to reconstitute their bodies.  This was occasionally used for medical treatment, e.g., in the second season episode Unnatural Selection.)
Answer: I'm not sure how Scotty's entire pattern would saved. A buffer generally just stores small chunks of a larger set information at a time (Like when youre streaming a video, your computer only stores the part of the video youre watching in memory since the entire video is so big. Now you could probably save it to your hard disk on your computer of watching an HD movie on cable box, it wouldnt even be able to store the movie if you wanted to.
In DS9 "Our Man Bashir" Eddington does manage to save the crew from a transporter malfunction by saving their patterns elsewhere but he explains how their neural patterns take an extreme amount of data and has to erase the entire station's memory to store them. I dont think that entirely answers the question but I think thats the real crux of the issue
I dont think it has anything to do with lack of energy or matter. The amount of information required to produce a corpse is nothing compared consciousness. If you have a corpse thats just the tip of the iceberg in maintaining a constant consciousness. The amount of energy required to produce a corpse could be the same as a living body, but that has nothing to do with the fact that you have to store the arrangement of every neuron or state of every synapse, etc. in order to store its consciousness which is much, much, much more complex. And thats not even factoring in all the other philosophical dilemmas associated with that you could get in to.
Comment: Buffer is more generic. It might be a small part only, but it could also hold the whole amount of data and there might even be additional free discs. Typical computer science example: working with text or data in general. E.g. An output buffer might hold a complete file until it's closed and written to disk.
Comment: A data buffer is just temporary storage for data that is being moved/processed. It's often used when the input vs output/processing rate aren't perfectly in sync. E.g. when you're streaming video, the download rate might be faster/slower than the playback rate. If it's slower, then the video stream gets stored up in the buffer until it's far enough along that you're likely to be able to watch the video through till the end without interruptions. If download is faster than playback, then the video stream still needs to be stored somewhere until it can be played back.
Comment: Thats all correct as far actual computer science/engineering but I think its safe to say that the transporter buffers are specifically akin to a video buffer like in my analogy that stores the data chunk by chunk. If the buffer held the entire pattern[s] at once why would they have to erase all of DS9's memory to continue storing them?

As an aside I also like that idea because it fits in with the ship of theseus idea nicely, but thats more my opinion and a whole new discussion I think.
Comment: Buffers are dimensional, as in there is Width and Depth. The width could be one "chunk," as mentioned earlier, but the Depth determines the total memory capacity of a buffer. Then there is Virtual memory which could be used to further expand the buffer's depth by saving extra data to a disk. Adding virtual memory is likely why they had to erase DS9's memory to make room.
Answer: There is actually an episode of TNG where it seems like it might be protocol to store copies of at least some of the high-level personnel serving on a starship. Dr. Pulaski gets infected with a genetic vector that makes her age rapidly, in a shuttlecraft. O'Brien suggests they use her last transporter pattern to reconstitute her on board, ignoring recent changes and thereby eliminating whatever vectors carry the disease. Picard contacts the captain of the ship where she was last posted, who informs him that Dr. Pulaski's pattern was deleted from the buffer once she was safely transferred to the Enterprise.
It sounds to me like they probably store the patterns of mission-crucial personnel as a safeguard, but that's just conjecture. Nobody actually talks about it directly in the episode, they just act as if it's the norm.
But, that just makes you wonder why Tasha Yar wasn't saved in the same manner after she was killed by that oil monster. They transported down to that planet, and Chief of Security is a pretty high-level position. But, it's difficult to expect perfect logic in TV writing separated by entire seasons.
Comment: _"O'Brien suggests they use her last transporter pattern to reconstitute her on board, ignoring recent changes and thereby eliminating whatever vectors carry the disease"_ That's not correct. He wanted to examine her DNA using her "transporter trace" — in the end they used a used hairbrush instead, which shows you how similar a "transporter trace" is to "the actual essence of a person". The unaffected DNA served as a baseline by which the computer was able to repair actual Pulaski as she was actually beamed back.
Comment: Since they wanted to use the transporter trace to look at her previous genetic code and compare it to her current genetic code, I'd argue it /is/ correct. The vectors are genetic. They would have to read the genetic code from both traces, compare it, then make the changes. I was going from memory and a quick glance at memory alpha, so I didn't say "DNA", but I still described the essence of what was attempted, I just missed the detail about the hairbrush because I was going from memory and a quick glance at the Memory Alpha page.
Comment: Storing a DNA sample (or whatever the equivalent is that is a "transporter trace" - clearly a strand of DNA from a hairbrush was enough to perform the same job though) and storing an entire actual person that you can "restore to life" are two very different things.
Comment: Okay so if that's your point, that they wanted DNA (not a full trace) then bear with me. The point I'm driving at in my answer is that when Captain Picard calls up the other ship's captain looking for an old copy of Dr. Pulaski's trace, one possible interpretation of that is that it's possible that the other ship might have stored her trace (full or no) as a matter of protocol, even some time after she'd left for another assignment. I'd argue then that this does make sense in the context of Tasha Yar's death. You can't resurrect someone with just DNA, but you could save them from other things.
Comment: I guess a record of her DNA wasn't useful in saving her from the evilness monster. Probably because DNA corruption wasn't the problem in that instance :) (Scriptwriting was *ahem*)


What, other than genetic factors, influence which individual survives a parasite and which perishes?

Question: What factors other than "good genes" are at play in determining whether one individual survives a parasite and another individual in the same species perishes as a result of the same parasite?  For example, is there variation in the amount of the parasite (not in the amount of parasite species but in the amount of one species) with which an individual is infected and how might this occur?  I'm mainly interested in this first example, but another example:  Might infection occur at different parts of life-history in which vulnerability varies? (I am asking generally about any parasite species and any host species.)  Thank you very much.
Comment: @David, thank you for the edit.  Wondering if you have an opinion on the question.  For just one example, take the 1918 influenza crisis that killed 40 million people.  Does it make sense to suggest that some individuals just happened to be exposed but exposed to some dosage that was sublethal?
Answer: I am neither a parasitologist nor an immunologist, so these suggestions are only provided as a starting point and may meet valid criticisms from others. However, as your comment mentions the 1918 flu epidemic, a couple of general suggestions.
Assuming that resistance to pathogenic organisms can involve the immune response, then at least two factors that might affect that — and hence resulting mortality or morbidity are:
Nutrition:
It is popular wisdom that undernourished individuals are more susceptible to disease. This might have diverse causes, but there would appear to be an extensive literature on the role of nutrition in the immune response, e.g. this article by  Chandra has been highly cited.
Previous immune challenges: There is, of course, the classic case of milk maids being resistant to smallpox because of immunity provided by the related cowpox. Thus exposure to previous strains of a virus may provide some protection. Speculating widely here, there may also be affects on the non-specific components of the immune response (macrophages and whatever).


Why photon only have helicity other than spin?

Question: When learning angular momentum in quantum mechanics, a spin 1 particle have 3 states. Then I saw from sakurai's modern quantum mechanics that photon's two polarization are just like spins, but with several differences.
I looked up on the web, and find that: first, the zero mass of photon is the reason that when calculating spins we can not choose a rest frame, which will induce the spin of photon have only 2 values instread of 3.  Second, there is  a paragraph says that actually photon does not have spin at all, it only have helicity, which is the projection of spin on the propagation direction. And there is this concept "chirality" which is connected with circularly polirization of light.
I got confused with relations of this 4 concept of photon: polarization, spin ,helicity, chirality. Can anybody tell me about it?
Comment: Related: http://physics.stackexchange.com/q/29766/2451 , http://physics.stackexchange.com/q/1111/2451 , and links therein.
Comment: But why do some say photon doesnot have spin, only have helicity?
Comment: Because that's the way it is: the photon doesn't have spin, it only has helicity. Essentially, massive particles have spin, massless ones have helicity.
Answer: Consider a one-particle state of a relativistic quantum field theory, and let this state be an eigenstate of the 4-momentum operator, $\hat P^\mu |p^\mu\rangle = p^\mu|p^\mu\rangle$. Other than the 4-momentum, what other quantum numbers can the state have, and how should they transform? That is, if there are any quantum numbers collectively labeled by $s$, then for a Lorentz transformation $\Lambda$, $$\Lambda |p^\mu,s\rangle = \sum_{s'} D_{ss'}|\Lambda^\mu{}_\nu p^\nu, s'\rangle $$
what can we say about the quantities $D_{ss'}$?
There are two distinct classes of physical 4-momenta: $p^2 = m^2 > 0$ and $p^2 = 0$, both with $p^0 > 0$. We can pick standard 4-momenta for these classes, say $p^\mu =(m, 0,0,0)$ and $p^\mu = (\omega, 0,0,\omega)$. Any 4-momentum in a class can be boosted to this standard momentum. Physically, we can go to a restframe of a massive particle, or align the propagation of a massless particle with the $z$-axis.
The conditions described above do not fix the frames completely. In the massive case, there is still $SO(3)$ freedom. A rotated rest frame is still a rest frame. In the massless case you can rotate around the $z$-axis, but you can also do null-rotations around $(\omega, 0,0,\omega)$. The group that preserves the standard momentum is called the little group.
With some algebra, which you can find in full in [Weinberg], Chapter 2, one can work out that the quantities $D_{ss'}$, up to a normalization factor, have to form a representation of the little group. The representations of $SO(3)$ (actually, of its double cover $SU(2)$) are familiar: for each representation you can use the eigenvalue of $J_z$ as a quantum number; this is the spin.
The massless little group has three generators, but two of those have a continuous spectrum. Because no continuous quantum number other than 4-momentum is observed, we ignore them (discard states not in their nullspace). The third generator is $J_z$. An irreducible representation of a one-dimensional group is characterized by the eigenvalue of the single generator; this is the helicity. This is what people mean when they say that because the photon is massless you can only measure $J$ along its momentum. It is also what is meant by that photons have helicity, not spin.
It seems like I have argued that the photon field has only one polarization. But note: helicity is the component of $J$ along the momentum, $J$ is a pseudovector, the momentum is a vector, hence helicity changes sign under parity. Therefore, in a parity-invariant theory like QED you have to include both the $+1$ and $-1$ helicity photon fields. The representations do not have to be irreducible, so no one can stop us from thinking about a photon field with two polarizations.

Reference

[Weinberg] Weinberg, S. The Quantum Theory of Fields, Volume 1 (Cambridge University Press, 2005)
Comment: I was looking for a quick summary of the mathematical formulation of photons helicity, and this excellent quick summary of Weinberg by @RobinEkman was just what I was looking for -- thanks! I will note one quick point that I fear sometimes gets overlooked in many physics formulations, which is that sometimes the deepest answer is not the math, but rather "because that is what we see experimentally." So, why really do photons have only two discrete helicity states?: "Because no continuous quantum number other than 4-momentum is observed, we ignore them (discard states not in their nullspace)."
Comment: Excellent answer! So, when people say that photons are spin-1 particles, they say so because we can essentially deduce a value for spin when measured along its direction of motion? In other words, people should technically be talking about the helicity of the photon (not spin) but because of the relationship between helicity and $\vec{J}$, they can freely refer to its spin instead. Am I correct?
Answer: Indeed, the photon doesn't have spin, what it has is POLARIZATION. For a photon emitted from an atom the polarization is CIRCULAR. That means, if we look in a fixed plane perpendicular on its motion, we see that the electric vector does not have a fixed position, it rotates.
If so, if the electric vector rotates counter-clockwise the circular polarization is RIGHT, and if the electric vector rotates counter-clockwise the circular polarization is
LEFT. You can see this in Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_polarization#From_the_point_of_view_of_the_source
Now, about what you saw, when the photon is right-polarized, it behaves as if carrying an angular momentum of ħ ALONG the direction of flight. When left-polarized it behaves as if it carries an angular momentum of -ħ along the flight direction.
Thus, when in an atom the electron jumps from a level with, say ℓ = 1 to a level with ℓ = 0, a photon is emitted with right-polarization, i.e. it carries the difference of ħ in linear momentum.
So, the circular polarization of the photon is another phenomenon than, e.g. the spin of an electron. You see, the circularly polarized photon has a rotating electric field, while the electron has no such thing.
Now, chirality is the property of an object to be non-identical with its image in a mirror. If we send a photon to a mirror, its image will look as having opposite helicity.
I hope it helps.
Good luck.
Comment: Thanks a lot. So when we talk about helicity of photon, we are talking about the projection of its polarization on the propagating direction, right?
Comment: No, you'll understand better if you look at the animated picture in Wikipedia, address: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_polarization#From_the_point_of_view_of_the_source The electric vector rotates in a plane PERPENDICULAR on the direction of motion. When the photon comes TOWARD YOU, and the electric vector appears to rotate against the clock, this is right polarization. Well, the right polarization is EQUIVALENT to an angular momentum ALONG the direction of motion. In short, polarization is PERPENDICULAR to the direction of motion, the angular momentum is ALONG the direction of motion.


Just say no vs dealbreaker

Question: If player 1 plays a dealbreaker for player 2, can player 3 place a just say no card or can it only be the person the card is played to? In this example, can only player 2 place a just say no?
Answer: Player 3 is not able to counter the "DEAL BREAKER" card.
As per the rules text on the card, you can only play a "JUST SAY NO!" card when an action has been played against you, you can't play it to cancel action cards played against other players.

Just say no vs dealbreaker


NTFS compressed folders: is it possible to tweak compression ratio?

Question: As it seems, Windows compresses the NTFS compressed folders with the lowest compression ratio possible. While this maybe good for increasing speed and decreasing CPU load, for the files that are accessed rarely (backup folders) it would be more sensible to have the possibility to increase the compression ratio. Are there some parameters that may be tweaked to achieve this?
Comment: They say about "compression format": "Any other value indicates that a file is compressed, using the compression format specified by the compression state value." I didn't find what this "format" means and how it is set.
Comment: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa363849(v=vs.85).aspx & http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa364219(v=vs.85).aspx
Answer: Generally it's not possible, as indicated in and31415's answer.
However Microsoft has added some new NTFS compression options and algorithms in Windows 10, so now there's a way to change the compression ratio:
COMPACT [/C | /U] [/S[:dir]] [/A] [/I] [/F] [/Q] [/EXE[:algorithm]]
        [/CompactOs[:option] [/WinDir:dir]] [filename [...]]
...
  /EXE       Use compression optimized for executable files which are read
             frequently and not modified.  Supported algorithms are:
             XPRESS4K  (fastest) (default)
             XPRESS8K
             XPRESS16K
             LZX       (most compact)

The new algorithms are intended for the new Compact OS feature (as you can see in the /CompactOs option above). The idea is to compress read-only, backup and less frequently accessed system files with the highest ratio. The recovery partition is removed and the compressed file will then be used for both executing (if it's already the latest version) and recovery purpose
The LZX algorithm is quite efficient at archiving. And despite the option name and description are all about "executable files", the option can be applied to any files

E:\test>compact /a

 Listing E:\test\
 New files added to this directory will not be compressed.

  1050909 :   1050909 = 1.0 to 1   sometext.txt

...

E:\test>compact /c /exe:lzx sometext.txt

 Compressing files in E:\test\

sometext.txt          1050909 :    176128 = 6.0 to 1 [OK]

1 files within 1 directories were compressed.
1,050,909 total bytes of data are stored in 176,128 bytes.
The compression ratio is 6.0 to 1.

However unlike the old algorithm they don't support on-the-fly editing, so writing back to the file uncompresses it.

E:\test>echo x >> sometext.txt

E:\test>compact /a

 Listing E:\test\
 New files added to this directory will not be compressed.

  1050913 :   1050913 = 1.0 to 1   sometext.txt

An important note is that you can't set the folder to mark new files to be compressed automatically using those new algorithms, because as stated in the help part of compact (emphasis mine)

/C         Compresses the specified files.  Directories will be marked
           so that files added afterward will be compressed unless /EXE
           is specified.
/U         Uncompresses the specified files.  Directories will be marked
           so that files added afterward will not be compressed.  If
           /EXE is specified, only files compressed as executables will
           be uncompressed; if this is omitted, only NTFS compressed
           files will be uncompressed.

Therefore if you want to use them for back-up files you might have to run a script to compress manually after backing up or periodically after some time
Unfortunately this new in Windows 10, therefore it can't be used in older versions. However NTFS-3g does support it, therefore you won't have problem accessing it from Linux. If you don't use Windows 10 you can run a Linux live USB or Windows 10 PE to open those files
Answer: Short answer
No, it's not possible at this time.
Long answer
Files and folders1 are compressed and decompressed by passing a FSCTL_SET_COMPRESSION control code and a compression state to the DeviceIoControl API function. The compression state can be one of the following:
COMPRESSION_FORMAT_NONE = 0
COMPRESSION_FORMAT_DEFAULT = 1
COMPRESSION_FORMAT_LZNT1 = 2

Any nonzero value means the target item is going to be compressed. From the official documentation:

The LZNT1 compression algorithm is the only compression algorithm implemented. As a result, the LZNT1 compression algorithm is used as the DEFAULT compression method.
Source: FSCTL_SET_COMPRESSION control code

The LZNT1 algorithm is designed for speed, and there's no way to set a custom compression level.
1 Folders aren't actually compressed: their compression attribute only gives a default compression state to new files and subfolders.
Additional information

The NTFS file system volumes support file compression on an individual file basis. The file compression algorithm used by the NTFS file system is Lempel-Ziv compression. This is a lossless compression algorithm, which means that no data is lost when compressing and decompressing the file, as opposed to lossy compression algorithms such as JPEG, where some data is lost each time data compression and decompression occur.
On the NTFS file system, compression is performed transparently. This means it can be used without requiring changes to existing applications.
If you compress a file that is larger than 30 gigabytes, the compression may not succeed.
Source: File Compression and Decompression
The compression algorithms in NTFS are designed to support cluster sizes of up to 4 KB. When the cluster size is greater than 4 KB on an NTFS volume, none of the NTFS compression functions are available.
Source: File and Folder Compression

Further reading

File Compression and Decompression
File and Folder Compression
Understanding NTFS Compression
LZNT1 Algorithm Details
Answer: You can increase compression ratio by 3rd-party apps. The prime example is zipmagic.co  I've used it on my laptop for a year without any problem. But notice that using NTFS or Zipmagic compression needs SSD hard drive because compression will make your drive totally fragmented and make it useless! If you have SSD drive, so go ahead and enjoy!
Answer: It would be possible to compress with maximum compression by directly compressing files and bypassing NTFS compression API but afterwards compressed files will be accessible as LZNT1 decompress works same for any compression strength.
Answer: Unfortunately as of now, the NTFS file system under Windows only supports Xpress4k, 8k, 16k, and LZX, which are several compression methods.
However, if you move the option away from NTFS, such as WinBtrfs, you may get a better compression ratio and usage experience.
Comment: the question is whether it's possible to "tweak compression ratio" and by changing the compression method like above you already change the compression ratio


SEO lite - remove company name

Question:
Hello,
Hope somebody can help? I only have very little experience with EE. I want to remove the company name - marked with yellow (see picture). Can anybody tell me how to - and where to do it. I am using Seo Lite?? Many thanks.
Answer: It depends on how it was set up by the developer, but possibly all you will need to do is update the SEO Lite Template.
Go to Add-ons > Modules > Seo Lite and check what's in the template field. I'm guessing the <code>{site_name}</code> variable is what you'll want to remove (or possibly the actual text "zumoQR - DK"), but hard to know without seeing your setup.
Documentation: http://wedoaddons.com/seo-lite/configuration
Edit your original question to add more detail if you are still stuck after checking your SEO Lite settings.

SEO lite - remove company name


disable transform in rectangle selection tool

Question: I am new in Photoshop,
I wanna turn over the corner of the gray square.
first, I draw rectangular marquee tool and second, press Ctrl+T but as you can see the small squares appear in the corner of gray square instead of rectangular marquee.
Answer: If you want to transform the selection and not the layer itself - in other words, alter the selection not what's inside it -  choose Select > Transform Selection.
The standard transform (command/Ctrl-t) always transforms the layer contents.
Answer: First, you have to control-click on your Shape 1 layer and select Rasterize Layer from the menu, then, when you'll make a selection (marquee) on that same layer, you will be able to CTRL-T (Transform) your selection, rotate or modify it the way you want.
Hope this helps!


Crate exploit in Spelunky HTML5

Question: I've recently been playing Spelunky HTML5, on a chromebook downloaded from the chrome web store. I've heard that there is an exploit that allows you to open up an item crate an infinite amount of times. Apparently it involves starting near a crate, and will not work if you jump or collect any money. I haven't been able to do this exploit, can anyone tell me how?
Answer: a general population of people seem to be able to replicate the bug doing the same thing, the bug itself is to do with only being able to jump half a block high.
To replicate it you have to not jump and not pickup gold, When you spawn near a box you simply walk up to it and press up+x this should then give you items and you should be able to keep using up+x to loot.
Hope this helps.
Edit: if you do pickup gold or jump you may have to restart your game, equally if you dont spawn near a crate you will need to restart.
Answer: It is really hard to do, but you have to start near a crate. You cannot jump or collect gold. If you're lucky, it will work.
Comment: Any additional clarification?

Crate exploit in Spelunky HTML5


Do I need to install MiKTEX on my system before installing Texmaker?

Question: Do I need to install MiKTEX on my system before installing Texmaker or Texmaker will work even without installing MiKTEX?
Comment: Welcome! The answer to the first question is 'no'. The answer to the second is 'no'. You could install it after, rather than before. Or you could install another TeX distribution e.g. TeX Live rather than MikTeX. However, TeXmaker will not work without a TeX distribution in the sense that you won't be able to compile documents. You could still use it to edit the source of those documents, but you could not typeset them. TeXmaker is *just* an editor - it edits plain text files. That's all. It has some syntax stuff and fancy buttons to help edit and compile `.tex` files. Nothing more.
Comment: While it is not necessary to install a TeX distribution (MikTeX or TeX Live) before the editor, as cfr points out above, it is often advised to do so if you have the option. That is because the automatic detection of your distribution in the editor which takes care of filling in the correct paths for the executables *might* prefer to find a distribution already installed. (But that might not be a problem with all editors.)
Comment: @cfr, let me ask you, just out of curiosity, is there a backlash against editors, in the TeX community? Is this ... to avoid self-promotion from some developers of these editors? ... Of course texmaker or whatever editor won't work without a tex distribution, o b v i o u s l y  . . .  but in more than occasion, I had (for some odd reason) the impression, that editor's questions although welcome here, are just answered, out of courtesy to get it over with. Would have been possible the creation of TeX without an editor? o b v i o u s l y not duh. http://www.linusakesson.net/programming/tty/
Comment: .. the reason of the previous comment, is because 6 members of this community agreed with all your "no's", and I assume there is factual data from the same members of this community who agreed with you, that corroborates (after testing and evaluating) that the order in which a tex system (Miktex or TeX Live) and any version of texmaker are installed, across different versions of Windows, because the op did not specify at the time of this comment what version of Windows he/she uses, but that the order, does not matter. I'm just surprised that 6 members agreed with you, and yet have not answered
Comment: @doed Sorry. I seem to have offended you, but I have no idea why. It may be obvious to you that an editor won't work without a TeX distribution (in the sense of compiling the code to produce a document). But it is not at all obvious to somebody completely new to TeX. And, as I understand this question, the OP is in precisely that position. Why should it be obvious? If I install LibreOffice, that's it. I don't need something else to make it work. It may seem obvious to you that TeX is not a word processor, but that is a completely unfamiliar - not to say alien - concept to most people.
Comment: @cfr no problem dear. No, I didn't feel offended. I have a way of writing which may sound the wrong way sometimes, when I truly don't mean it.... I sincerely asked if there was a backlash against editors, but I didn't take into consideration, (like you pointed out) that there are users who are not aware of it, or haven't read http://ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/~cottrell/wp.html for example, and assume a text editor is all that is needed. The reason why I try to help out with editors' questions (even though most of these editors I don't even use) is to get the job done through TeX, of course.
Comment: How to install MiKTeX and Texmaker: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6rRVFoa07A
Answer: If you want to run LaTeX on Windows you need to install a TeX distribution for Windows, MiKTeX or TeX Live.
With pdflatex mwe.tex you can then compile the TeX code in file mwe.tex from terminal/console.
So we need a programm, an editor, to create such a file mwe.tex!
For example TeXmaker, TeXworks, TeXstudio, TeXnicCenter, WinEdt, Notepad++, etc.
A "good TeX editor" knows about the two distributions so it makes life easier, if you install the editor after the tex distribution, because the editor can recognize which distribution is installed and can do an automatic configuration.
Do you install the editor first you have to do the complete configuration by your own.
That's the reason you should first install the tex distribution and then the editor.
The editor is only to create a file containing the TeX code to be compiled  with the TeX distribution. Without TeX distribution you get no pdf file!
Comment: Upvoted comment by cfr is harmful for LaTeX newbies like myself. I installed Texmaker and nothing worked. Then figured out I needed MiKTeX and installed that, and still did not work. Clean all: started with MiKTeX then Texmaker and only then did it work.
Comment: I'm using Windows and have tried several TeX editors (because my students do use several editors).  Because MiKTeX runs only with Windows I wrote only for that.  Is there a windows version of kile? I do not know and have not tested.
Comment: I don't think order matters for all editors. Kile can pick up stuff installed later, for example. Don't know on Windows, but on other systems, installation of the editor is highly unlikely to configure it based on probing for a distribution.
Comment: Yes, Kile is cross-platform.
Comment: In my case, if you install TexMaker before MiKTex, to uninstall TexMaker is not enough, the system remains the configuration of the old TexMaker installation that will be used by a new installation automatically. I had to find out the config files (TexMaker.ini) and deleted them, then reinstalled TexMaker (after the MikTex installation).


Artifice for Objective-C?

Question: Is there an Objective-C version of Artifice?
If not, how would I design/develop/create it?
Related Questions

Mock HTTP response via Objective-C
Mock NSURLConnection
Answer: I think I might be able to help you here.
I have a Ruby library that is somewhat similar to artifice, albeit more self-contained and built on top of Sinatra, called Mimic. I'm pretty happy with it and one of my favourite features is that as well as being configured using it's Ruby DSL (or using the Sinatra API directly), it can be configured remotely or from any process that speaks HTTP. This means you can use it in your Objective-C tests and configure it from the tests too (rather than having say, a set of external fixtures in a Ruby file).
In the name of eating my own dog food, I recently converted the acceptance tests for my Objective C RestClient port, Resty to use Mimic. The Mimic daemon is started up as part of the build process and my stubs are configured directly in the tests, using a thin Objective-C wrapper around the Mimic REST API.
As you can see, I strive very hard for test clarity!
Those tests use OCUnit but you can use this with Kiwi. In fact, the assertEventually macro in the above tests was the basis of the asynchronous testing support that I ported to Kiwi.
I've since extracted the Objective-C wrapper for Mimic from LRResty and moved it into the Mimic repository. You may want to check out the Resty project to see how my project and the tests are configured. If you have any questions, please ask.
One caveat: I haven't found a way of getting these tests to run successfully in Xcode 4, using the "Test" option, due to the way that it runs. In Xcode 3, I rely on Run Script build phases to start and stop the Mimic daemon, but because Xcode 4 doesn't run the tests as part of the build process this doesn't work. I've tried to accomplish something similar using pre/post test actions but unfortunately these are woefully inadequate due to various bugs.
Bonus tip: I find Charles Debugging Proxy as massive help when working with web services and you can use it with Mimic too; the Objective-C wrapper can be proxied through Charles so you can see exactly what is happening, both in terms of stub configuration and actual HTTP requests (Mimic can even be configured to return some helpful debugging data in the response headers).
Do let me know if you have any questions.

Artifice for Objective-C?


How do I write a behat test to go to user/UID/somewhere when I only know the username?

Question: I'm trying to write Behat tests to verify my Drupal Commerce store.
My test creates some users, so I know the usernames but not the UIDs (the UIDs are assigned by Drupal in the test, so they will be different each time).
So, I want to get the UID based on the username, and then redirect to the payment method page for that user with a step like When I go to the payment method page for username ABC.
Here's my code:
  /**
   * @Then I go to the payment method page for username :username
   */
  public function iGoToThePaymentMethodPageForUsername($username) {
    $user_object = $this->userManager->getUser($username);
    $uid = $user_object->id;
    if (!(is_int($uid))) {
      throw new Exception("UID is not a number ('$uid')");
    }
    $this->visitPath("user/$uid/payment-methods");
  }

However, this code fails with the following error message:
  No user with ABC name is registered with the driver.

When I checked this->userManager->getUsers(), I found that it only has the users generated by the Drupal extension in the current scenario; I cannot access the users who have been registered in other scenarios or users who have already registered outside of Behat.
What's the correct way to get the user object for such a user?
Answer: You could use Sub-pathauto which will allow you to use /user/username/somewhere instead.


Image Renditions with a fixed width and a maximum height?

Question: Is it possible to use the SharePoint image rendition with a fixed width and a maximum height?
Answer: No,
You only have the option to either specify a height, a width or both when you create a new image rendition.
You would have to also use some CSS where the image is used for it to work (you could for example specify an image rendition as the background of a div with a fixed width and a maximum height)


Can I sync network folder with a Google drive?

Question: The brand new released Google drive allows to sync a folder which resides under My Documents (on Windows systems). However, I would like to sync a folder that resides on a network-mapped drive. Would it be possible please and if yes then how?
Comment: I guess you can select the location for your "Google Drive" folder in the network-mapped drive. You should use advanced setup when installing the program, then change the location of Google Drive folder. If you've already installed and began using it, you can disconnect and connect again, so that you can do the setup once more.
Comment: When I did this I got some sort of timeout issue which lead to Drive not working at all. I ended up using the default location and then shared that folder with everyone. Then mapped the shared folder on the other machines.
Answer: You can choose any folder during the Google Drive install.
Firstly select "Advanced Setup" on the second page of the Getting Started screen.
Then click the "Change" button next to Folder Location
Select any folder you want, including network shares and mapped network drives.
Voila! You have Google Drive on any folder you want.
Comment: Does the Google drive client run even when no-one's logged onto the server?
Comment: I know this is an old question but it appears that newly synced file from Google drive just do not have the shared permission as its parent folder. Wonder if there is a way to fix this...
Comment: Unfortunately no longer working.
Comment: thanks! Just a piggyback question - will all the files be included?
Comment: the files included will follow your normal google drive preferences, the location of the folder on your computer/network should not make a whit of difference.
Answer: If this functionality is not explicitly included (you go into the preferences of Google Drive, add the folder on the networked computer and it does not allow that folder to sync)
You could mirror that folder on your local computer. (Or really simply just install google drive on that network computer, but I would guess that you would not be asking this question if that was an option).
To mirror it locally I would suggest using a version of rsync (do a quick google search to find a bunch of options).
Or use another technique to mirror the contents onto your local machine.
Answer: You can sync a network folder with DropBox.  Maybe the same method will work for Google (I haven't tried yet).
1) Log in on the CONSOLE of the file server (that is hosting the network share/folder).
2) Install Google Drive (I installed DropBox).
3) Set the location of the Google Drive to be in a sub-folder of the network share (on the physical drive of the server that you've just installed it on).
4) Use the Google Drive account to share the Google Drive as appropriate.
5) Log off the Console of the server.
Now...
Go to any client that's connected to the network share, navigate to the new sub-folder you just created, and place files in it.  You'll now see those files on Google Drive.
WHAT I USE THIS FOR:
I have all the sales and technical staff using Drop Box, and subscribed to the Network Shared folder.  There are two sub-folders, one for Sales and the other for tech staff.  I simply place files in their respective folders, and sales has all the sales/marketing brochures, videos, pdf, spreadsheets, etc.  And Tech staff has all their stuff separate too.
It works for BOTH iPad, and laptop users!  Love It!
Answer: I am pretty sure I have found a working solution. I'll also run down the things I have tried that didn't work so that people can be spared the time to try these things.
I have a Drobo and have some shares mapped as windows drive letters. Several months back, I set the share permissions to "Everyone" on the Drobo dashboard, and I was able to set that share's mapped drive as the Google Drive root folder in the past.
HOWEVER, something happened with an update somewhere and it stopped working. I kept getting the message that the folder is not writable. I was clearly able to write to the folder through explorer. I tried connecting to the share as Administrator and then running sync as an administrator. That didn't work either, so I concluded that it wasn't a permissions problem, but perhaps Google updated the sync program to flat out reject UNC paths. But I tried some permissions tweaks anyways...
I tried going into the folder properties through explorer and changing the ownership, and setting permissions to full control. Windows couldn't do it.
I tried changing the credentials that windows uses to map the drive. Nothing worked there. I tried using different ways to try and fool the sync program into thinking it was not a UNC path. Nothing worked there. (subst, mklink) It kept seeing the UNC path through the mask.
I also tried InSync, but for a terabyte of data in 100's of thousands of small files, downloading 2 files at a time would take WEEKS.
I also tried ExpanDrive, and although I was able to map a drive letter directly to Google Drive, it was a very slow connection and still left me with the need to set up some sort of sync between the mapped cloud and my NAS. When I tried using CrashPlan to back up from the mapped Cloud, it couldn't see the drive letter that ExpanDrive had mounted. So I gave up on that.
I tried creating a VHDX on the share, and then mapping it to a folder on my C drive. That seemed to work but Sync kept crashing. ( \drobo\share\GDrive.VHDX -> c:\GDrive\ )
Then I tried mapping the VHDX directly to a drive letter. That seemed to work, but sync was getting hung up on the System Volume Information and Recycle folders. ( \drobo\share\GDrive.VHDX -> G:\ )
SO... I created a folder, on the root of the VHDX that is mapped to a drive letter. I set that folder to the Sync folder. It has now synced 3249 files and 2GB without a hiccup. I have a TB of data to download, so (fingers crossed) I am feeling confident that this solution works. I will update the answer if I discover any issues with this. ( \drobo\share\GDrive.VHDX -> G:\ ) THEN created a GDrive folder on G:\ and then selected G:\GDrive\ in the Sync application.
HTH
As an added bonus, mapping the VHDX to a drive letter makes thumbnails work in explorer even though they are in a network location. Woohoo!


What is a good justifying reason and timing for a flashback?

Question: What is a good justifying reason and timing for a flashback? I noticed today that without a justifying reason and good timing that a flashback is just terrible. For example, in my story there's a soldier who's having a flashback in the middle of a fight and is thinking about the meal he had 2 years ago. Usually, a flashback is at the beginning of a chapter or something like that, and from what I recall it is also good to do it for exposition or explaining a character's background to show the readers why the character is evil or behave in a particular way, but I doubt this is exhaustive. Is there a general reason or better reason for doing a flashback and how do we time them correctly?
Comment: In your example, the problem is probably less about where it takes place in the chapter (beginning, middle or end) but that an exciting action sequence is interrupted by a comparatively boring one. Could still work, of course.
Answer: The secret, to any device, is to make the reader desire it so that when you deliver it they gobble it up. If enough curiosity is stoked in the reader, first, about that thing that happened way-back-when, then the reader will love the entire chapter of back story.
Imagine the flashback scene of Severus Snape, James and Lily Potter, and some of the other characters, when those characters were students. We learn that Severus was falling hard for Lily and some of the other students bullied him.
Enough intrigue had been built up around the history of those relationships, previously, unfulfilled knowledge, that the audience was salivating for details.
And so, if you are determined to use a flashback instead of gradual reveal through context and recollection, make the audience want the flashback before you deliver it.
Answer: My rule of thumb is: only do flashbacks--or give background information in any form, period--when it's relevant to the story.
Start close to the action and stay with it, and only give background information if something is happening in the story that makes the reader think some kind of question like: geez, huh, how was he able to do that? Or why do they hate robots? etc.
Answer: A little backstory goes a long way. Read Anton Chekhov's short story, The Bet. He starts off with a smidgen of backstory and that's it!
Or the first chapter of Carson McCullers's Heart Is A Lonely Hunter. She places background about the protagonist, Singer, past the denouement.  The entire amount of backstory in the book is 14 sentences in two compact paragraphs. Here's how it starts:
"There was one particular fact that he remembered, but it was not at all important to him. Singer recalled that, although he had been deaf since he was an infant, he had not always been a real mute. He was left an orphan very young and placed in an institution for the deaf. He had learned to talk with his hands and to read… (next paragraph) At the school he was thought very intelligent."
This backstory increases the tension because now we know that Singer has no other family, and she also adds that he's smart, and he had only known Antonspoulos, the other deaf mute, since moving to the town. McCullers doesn't even say why he moved there.
McCullers starts off the scant backstory with the words "…,but it was not at all important to him." It is as if she knows backstory will help the reader, but she resists it, too.
Comment: As it's currently written, your answer is unclear. Please [edit] to add additional details that will help others understand how this addresses the question asked. You can find more information on how to write good answers [in the help center](/help/how-to-answer).
Comment: I edited my response thank you helping me improve the information.
Comment: Thank you for taking the feedback into account and improving your answer. However, it's still unclear for the opposite reason as before: it's now one giant paragraph that's hard for me to read. Would you be able to break it up into paragraphs to make it clearer?
Comment: Good advice again. Many thanks.


target_log_prob_fn for JointDistributionNamed

Question: I'm currently learning Bayesian approaches through the book "Rethinking" and would like to utilize TensorFlow Probability.
Specifically, I'm working on this chapter : https://colab.research.google.com/github/ksachdeva/rethinking-tensorflow-probability/blob/master/notebooks/04_geocentric_models.ipynb
In this example, the model is defined using a function. However, I prefer to use the JointDistributionNamed approach as it closely aligns with how models are written in "Rethinking."
I'm facing issues when running HMC, particularly with the target_log_prob_fn function. I'm unsure about the type of object returned within the HamiltonianMonteCarlo function.
Here is my code and the corresponding error message:
import tensorflow_probability as tfp
from tensorflow_probability import distributions as tfd
tfb = tfp.bijectors
import pandas as pd
d = pd.read_csv('rethinking-master/data/Howell1.csv',sep = ';')
height= d.height
model = tfd.JointDistributionNamedAutoBatched(dict(
    s = tfd.Sample(tfd.Exponential(1), sample_shape=1),
    alpha = tfd.Sample(tfd.Normal(0,1), sample_shape=1),
    beta = tfd.Sample(tfd.Normal(0,1), sample_shape=1),
    y = lambda s,alpha,beta: tfd.Independent(tfd.Normal( alpha + beta * d.weight.values,s),
                                          reinterpreted_batch_ndims=1),
))

def _trace_fn_transitioned(_, pkr):
    return pkr.inner_results.inner_results.log_accept_ratio

num_chains = 4
num_leapfrog_steps = 4
step_size = 0.8
burnin = 500
params = ['s', 'alpha', 'beta']
init_state = list(model.sample(num_chains))[:-1]
bijectors = [tfb.Identity() for i in init_state]
observed_data=(d.height.values)

def target_log_prob_fn (**x):
    print(x[0])
    return model.log_prob(model.sample(y = observed_data, **x))

hmc_kernel = tfp.mcmc.HamiltonianMonteCarlo(
        target_log_prob_fn, num_leapfrog_steps=num_leapfrog_steps, step_size=step_size
    )

inner_kernel = tfp.mcmc.TransformedTransitionKernel(
    inner_kernel=hmc_kernel, bijector=bijectors
)

kernel = tfp.mcmc.SimpleStepSizeAdaptation(
    inner_kernel=inner_kernel,
    target_accept_prob=0.8,
    num_adaptation_steps=int(0.8 * burnin),
    log_accept_prob_getter_fn=lambda pkr: pkr.inner_results.log_accept_ratio,
)

tfp.mcmc.sample_chain(
        num_results=544,
        num_burnin_steps=burnin,
        current_state=init_state,
        kernel=kernel,
        trace_fn=_trace_fn_transitioned,
    )

error: target_log_prob_fn() takes 0 positional arguments but 3 were given
Thanks,
Answer: To use the unpacking approach with **x, you would need to adjust how the HMC kernel passes the arguments. Unfortunately, this isn't straightforward because the TFP MCMC framework is designed to work with positional arguments, and I have no idea how to help you there.
The standard way to define target_log_prob_fn would be
def target_log_prob_fn(s, alpha, beta):
    return model.log_prob(s=s, alpha=alpha, beta=beta, y=observed_data)

Moreover, there's an issue with how you're sampling initial states and creating bijectors. Since you have three parameters (s, alpha, beta), your initial state should be a list of tensors, each corresponding to one of these parameters. The bijectors should match these parameters as well. You can do it like this
init_state = [model.sample()[param].numpy() for param in params]
bijectors = [tfb.Identity() for _ in params]

Running it on my machine has the desired outcome, so I believe that it should be the same for you. Although it may not be the reply you were looking for, I hope it stil helps
Comment: Thank you for your answer, Giorgio. Indeed, HMC kernel is generating a list and not a dictionary. I managed to evaluate this by printing x within the target_log_prob_fn function. Thank you also for the suggestion for initial states and bijectors.


Use flags in Chrome command line without root

Question: I'm using Chrome version 74.0.3729.136. My phone is not rooted. I'm trying to use flags in Chrome command line without root.
I use the guide from Run Chromium with flags. According to that guide, with flags, it can be done.
The guide said:

For production build on a non-rooted device, you need to enable "Enable command line on non-rooted devices" in chrome://flags, then set command-line in /data/local/tmp/chrome-command-line. When doing that, mind that the first command-line item should be a "_" (underscore) followed by the ones you actually need. Finally, manually restart Chrome ...

I successfully set up the flag "Enable command line on non-rooted devices". But then I need to copy the data file to /data/local/tmp/chrome-command-line - and I cannot do that.
I tried:

Command like that:
C*:\WINDOWS\system32>adb shell 'echo --unsafely-treat-insecure-origin-as-secure=TestTest > /data/local/tmp/chrome-command-line'*
The system cannot find the path specified.

Recommendation from Run Google Chrome with flags (not from chrome://flags)
# echo "chrome --sync-url whatever" > /data/local/tmp/chrome-command-line

Use different Android OS (5-7).

Use construction like the following for copying files:
run-as com.example.app "cat /sdcard/temp_prefs.xml > shared_prefs/com.example.app_preferences.xml"

but nothing happened.
Anyone has tried it?
Answer: It worked. You need to set the flag and next, from the command line:
adb shell

shell@:/ $ echo "chrome --user-agent=MyUser" > /data/local/tmp/chrome-command-line

To confirm it, you can download the file from the phone
adb pull /data/local/tmp/chrome-command-line C:\


What action is required to reinstate this patent?

Question: In reference to the patent: US 6499671 B1
What action is required to reinstate this patent?
Answer: This link describes How to Reinstate a Patent
I'm guessing it's more than 24 months lapsed, so see the second paragraph below.  My other guess is that you're trying to figure out how much you'd owe.  I didn't see how to determine that (aside from the fee schedule displayed, but then you need to know what is already paid).  Near the end of the page they list a phone number (also shown below).

From the linked page:

If a maintenance fee has not been paid in a timely manner and the owner of the patent wants to get the patent rights reinstated, a petition and proper fees are required.

...

If the date of expiration is more than 24 months, file a petition by submitting the completed form SB/66 and paying the proper fees; there are significant processing delays and the filing does not guarantee a granted petition. Contact the Office of Petitions at 571-272-3282 for assistance on filing a petition to accept unintentionally delayed payment of the maintenance fee.

...

If you need additional assistance, please contact the Maintenance Fee Branch by telephone at 571-272-6500
Comment: I'm needing help with my software utility patent. Ta a really good idea and I'm willing to add someone else as a second inventor with me. I'm just really not trying to throw away $400.00


What exactly is a "mighty man of valor"?

Question: In Judges 6:12, the Messenger of the LORD spoke over Gideon calling him a "mighty man of valor". In Hebrew, the phrase is "Geebor He'Chayeel":Mighty/Powerful/Prevailer of Value/Worth/Wealth/Force/Power.  What exactly does the name/phrase "mighty man of valor" mean and what would one who possess those qualities look like in this day and age?
Comment: "Gibor-Hechayil" גִּבּ֥וֹר הֶחָֽיִל simply means 'Valiant'-'Warrior'. * When Gideon גִּדְעוֹן֙ begins a spiritual battle to believe in monotheism and worship only YHVH.
Comment: @חִידָה hi, what do you mean by *spiritual battle*, could you give me a definition?
Comment: Gideon - was a good son that honored his father who worshipped Baal. Gideon was afraid to destroy his father's household Baal idol to honor YHVH. [Judges 6:25-30]
Comment: @חִידָה Does חָֽיִל and גִּבּ֥וֹר have only one meaning?
Answer: NIV translate it as "mighty warrior". But if Gideon only had bravery and strength, he only worth the title of warrior. The Lord called him "mighty" because he had something more.
Judicious

In Judges 6:11-18, Gideon had a dialogue with someone appeared to have
authority. He proposed an unusual request, suggested bringing him an
offering but asked the person to stay. He took hours to prepare the
meat and bread. So maybe he thought, a stranger would not wait for
him. He returned and saw the angel awaited for him, giving him the
sign, and he exclaimed, "Alas, Sovereign Lord! I have seen the angel
of the Lord face to face!" (Judges 6:22). Immediately he knew he had offended the Lord but the Lord said, "Peace! Do not be afraid. You are not going to die." (Judges 6:23)

Obedience

In Judges 6:25-27. The Lord told Gideon to tear down his father altar
to Baal and cut down the Asherah pole. Gideon did it the same night
right away, avoid the daytime that might have resistance from his
family and the townspeople.

Assertion

Judges 6:36-40 was an incredible event. He asked for a sign once and
he lived. Now he asked again for another sign, and another, to confirm
he was the chosen one. The Lord must have seen quality in him to grant
Gideon the sign. "Assertion" may not be the right word and anyone is
welcome to correct it.

Fearless

Judges 7 recorded the battle with Midian. Gideon raised 32000 men,
which the Lord cut it down to 300, against an army of Midian, Amalek
and all the other eastern peoples that described as "thick as
locusts". Gideon might still have a little doubt, but the Lord gave
another sign, and since then, he was fearless moving on.

In our modern day, do we have anyone like Gideon? Spiritually we are mighty warrior against Satan. For we are

Judicious to chose righteousness
Obedient to our Lord Jesus
Assertive of our salvation
Fearless of death to glorify Him
Comment: I appreciate your answer, as it brings a different perspective that I have yet to come across. Thank you.


If a zoom lens has a distance scale, is it parfocal?

Question: If a zoom lens has a focal distance scale on it, does that mean that the lens is parfocal? Or does it just mean that the distance scale is inaccurate?
Answer:
If a zoom lens has a focal distance scale on it, does that mean that the lens is parfocal?

No, many zoom lenses are varifocal. As it's used in photography, the term parfocal means that the lens should remain focused at the same distance as the focal length changes. Every zoom lens that I can think of has a distance scale, but most change focus slightly as the lens is zoomed.

Or does it just mean that the distance scale is inaccurate?

I wouldn't say that they're inaccurate; it's more that they're just not that precise. In other words, they don't tell you very precisely where the lens is focused even if you haven't changed the zoom setting. The distance scales usually have relatively few markings; for example, the scale on a Canon EF 70-200 f/4 L ranges from 1.2m to infinity over a distance of a little more than an inch and with only about 5 intermediate markings.
Answer: I have never heard the term "parfocal" applied to a zoom lens, however I understand your question. Parfocal in the jargon of microscopes and telescopes pertains to an interchangeable objective and/or eyepiece.  Microscopes often sport a turret that holds an array of objective lenses of various powers. One switches objectives by rotating the turret causing a different objective lens to become optically aligned. The same arrangement is available for telescope eyepieces. Various eyepieces are organized on a rotating turret. Parfocal objectives and eyepieces are adjusted as to their barrel lengths. Such an arrangement maintains focus as the adjustments are made.
If a zoom lens has a distance scale, it likely is accurate throughout the zoom range. It will be easy for you to check. Identify several objects of known distance, now zoom;  note the scale readings and the degree of sharpness observed.
Comment: Searching for *parfocal* here in Photo.SE generates [enough results](https://photo.stackexchange.com/search?q=parfocal) to give the impression that the term is used pretty widely.
Comment: The word parfocal just means that a lens (or microscope) doesn't change focus when the zoom setting (focal length) changes.  In the case of microscopes, the zoom changes by swapping objective lens elements, whereas for a zoom lens, it happens by changing the distance between elements, but the same basic concept applies equally in both cases.
Comment: Plenty of high dollar Cine zoom lenses are *parfocal*. That's one reason, along with no *focus breathing* that they often cost $15K or more.


Is there a valid reason to wrap built in type with your own

Question: I am editing some c++ and all of the built in types have been wrapped in a corresponding wrapper class. All of the operators have been overloaded to do bizarre things like operator[] coded to ignore the argument or to exactly what the underlying type would do.  Is this malevolent or is there some possibility this is a good idea in some other universe.
Comment: Sounds like madness to me.
Comment: I really dont understand the point of your question. I think you should make a better description about it...
Comment: Do you literally mean 'class CDouble { double _data; ctor(), operator=(), operator==(), operator<(), operator !=()}' ?
Comment: Yes.  In every class &= was redefined to swap the values of the two operands
Answer: IMO, your question is made of 2 questions:

Is a good idea to wrap built-in/3rd party types in own types?

Depends. Having own types around existing types is great when you change the underlying type because the existing logic can be preserved (ideally) with no changes. Is like having a 3 tire architecture and you can change the database without changing the business logic. However, creating all those types takes time and developers also need time to learn them...

Is a good idea to code own types that behave different from the original types when using the same syntax?

No. Is bad because it has side effects. Strange bugs may appear because one wasn't aware of the new behavior. Also makes debugging complicated and increases the time/cost of the development process.
Answer: Though I have never seen C++ code used this way. In C, stack implementations typically do not use built in types directly. They usually have some MY_INT_32 (not event int32_t from stdint.h). This is required for very high portability. You will be amazed by the peculiarities of some of the platforms (12 bit integers anyone?).


When is the quote object is generated in Magento?

Question: I believe it should be made when we add an item in cart, but I need to find code in Magento core where quote ID is generated and an object is made and similarly in the DB.
Answer: Yes, the quote is created as soon as you interact with the cart for the first time in your current session.
In the code, the object gets created in Mage_Checkout_Model_Session::getQuote(), if no quote id is stored in the session yet:
 $quote = Mage::getModel('sales/quote')->setStoreId(Mage::app()->getStore()->getId());

and saved to the database in Mage_Checkout_Model_Cart::save()
Answer: Most probably you are looking for app/code/core/Mage/Checkout/Model/Cart.php -> public function save() -> lines:
$this->getQuote()->save();
$this->getCheckoutSession()->setQuoteId($this->getQuote()->getId());

which calls app/code/core/Mage/Sales/Model/Quote.php -> public function save().


Thermodynamic temperature

Question: In Feynman's lectures an argument for efficiency of engines goes as: If an engine absorbs heat $Q_1$ at temperature $T_1$ and heat $Q_2$ at temperature $T_2$, and both times give the same heat $Q$s at thermodynamic temperature $1\,\mathrm{K}$ then $\frac{Q_1}{T_1}=\frac{Q_2}{T_2}$.
Does this imply that no matter from which temperature the body absorbs heat the heat it gives to the standard temperature will always be constant? Because then only it makes sense for the relationship to hold for any two temperatures $T_1$ and $T_2$.
Comment: Could you include a citation to the specific part in the Feynman lectures you're talking about?
Comment: It's Book one, lecture in thermodynamics where he talks about the Carnot engine
Answer: I am not familiar with this part of Feynman's lecture, but based on the information you provided I think his point was regarding entropy.  Specifically:
$$S = \frac{Q}{T}$$
Where $S$ is entropy [J/K], $Q$ is heat [J], and $T$ is temperature [K] (stricly speaking it should be $\Delta S=\Delta Q/T$ for the change in the amount of entropy and thermal energy due to it being transferred, but I'm trying to be consistent with your notation).  This tells you how much entropy is transferred by $Q$ joules of heat at temperature $T$.  If in both cases (1 and 2) the heat engine rejected the same amount of heat, $Q_{s}$, to the cold bath at the same temperature, $T_{s}=1K$, then that means for both cases the heat engine rejected the same amount of entropy, $Q_{s}/T_{s}$, into the cold bath.  At steady state operation a heat engine accumulates no entropy (by definition of "steady state" it means no quantity--entropy included--changes over time).  This means that the heat engine must dispose of all entropy absorbed or generated by rejecting it into a cold bath (this is why all heat engines require a cold reservoir).  Therefore, if the heat engine rejected the same amount of entropy in both cases, it must have absorbed the same amount of entropy from the hot bath for both cases (no entropy generation assuming Carnot heat engines).  So, the entropy absorbed was the same for case 1 and case 2:
$$S_{1}=S_{2}$$
And so, it follows that
$$\frac{Q_{1}}{T_{1}}=\frac{Q_{2}}{T_{2}}$$
It is entirely possible, however, for the heat engine to absorb a different amount of entropy in a different cycle (either from absorbing a different $Q$, or from a different $T$, or both).  In this case, the heat it gives to the standard temperature (the cold bath) would be different.

Thermodynamic temperature


How does the Doctor keep track of his age?

Question: Throughout the Dr. Who series, the doctors have claimed to be hundreds, even thousands of years old, (the tenth and eleventh both claim to be around 900, but throughout the series, eleven jumps into the thousands, even though its only been a few years for his companions, and now the 12th claims to be 2,000) but in relation to what?  He is constantly jumping around through time, making it difficult to track.  Does he claim his age to be in relation to Gallifrey as if he hadn't left or it hadn't been burned, (or saved, it's all too timey-wimey for me to make sense of) or does he simply not know?
Comment: I find it difficult to believe he isn't reasonably confident about his own age.
Comment: This begs going into Special Relativity...  The age of something doesn't need to be in relation to anything - it can simply be the amount of time that object has experienced.  Therefore if the Doctor wore a watch his entire life that would tell his age correctly as it has travelled with him - but since the Doctor doesn't there is no way he knows his exact age unless he can somehow read it from his own internal "body clock".
Comment: In relation to "Tardis Mean Time" ( joke - not canon)
Comment: The sixth Doctor also said he was 900 years old. If he does know how old he is, an in-universe answer might be that he is using local time (i.e. years of whatever planet he's on) sometimes, or that the automatic translator translates his speech into the local time system of whoever he's talking to, no matter what planet they're on.
Answer: Welcome to Doctor Who - full of inconsistencies.
This question is discussed here. Here's the theory subscribed to by the executive producer and scriptwriter:

"He has no clue"
A simple and self-evident theory is that the Doctor doesn't know how old he is because he has lost count, constantly travelling backward and forward through time making it difficult to measure one's lifespan at all. This theory began as fanon, with the Doctor occasionally admitting to being unsure of his age in spinoff media (COMIC: Doctor Who and the Time Witch, PROSE: Vampire Science); eventually it became solidified as canon in a televised story. (TV: The Day of the Doctor), although the War Doctor's immediate response suggesting he was 400 years younger than the Eleventh complicates matters.
This is the theory subscribed to by Doctor Who's current executive producer and head writer Steven Moffat in an interview with SFX:
"The thing I keep banging on about is that he doesn't know what age he is. He's lying. How could he know, unless he's marking it on a wall? He could be 8,000 years old, he could be a million. He has no clue. The calendar will give him no clues." - Steven Moffat, SFX, May 2010


Hadoop and 3d Rendering of images

Question: I have to make a project Distributed rendering of a 3d image. I can use standard algorithms. The aim is to learn hadoop and not image processing. So can any one suggest what language should I use c++ or java and some standard implementation of a 3d renderer. Any other help would be highly useful ..
Answer: Hadoop uses Map/Reduce functions for its data processing.  The data gets split up into manageable chunks for processing (Map phase), then recombined to give the result (Reduce phase).
There are specific languages for data processing (see Pig and Hive), or you can write your own M/R scripts using Java, C++, python etc.
I don't know anything about image processing, but if you're going to use Hadoop your first task will be to figure out how you can break your problem down into chunks which can be passed to the M/R process.  Michael Noll's Map/Reduce tutorial may help you get started.
HTH

Hadoop and 3d Rendering of images


Which database type to use

Question: I want to implement database for following application:-
User creates task and assigns to other user who can furthur split it into subtasks and assign it to other users.creaking a tree like structure.
Should i use graph database or what?
Answer: You could use a graph database, or a plain old relational one:
/* set parent_id for child tasks */

create table task (
  id serial primary key,
  parent_id integer null references task(id),
  subject text not null,
  body text null,
  due_at date null
);

create table task_role_type(
  id smallint primary key,
  name text not null
);

insert into task_role_type values
(1, 'Created By'),
(2, 'Assigned To'),
(3, 'Completed By');

create table task_role (
  task_id integer not null references task(id),
  party_id integer not null references party(id),
  role_id smallint not null references task_role_type(id),
  from_date timestamp not null default current_timestamp,
  to_date timestamp null,
  primary key (task_id, party_id, role_id, from_date)
);

Create a task:
insert into task (subject, due_at) values ('do stuff', '2013-02-18');

insert into task_role (task_id, party_id, role_id) values (1,1,1);

Assign a task:
insert into task_role (task_id, party_id, role_id) values (1, 2, 2);

Split up a task:
insert into task (parent_id, subject) values (1, 'do stuff B');
insert into task_role (task_id, party_id, role_id) values (2, 1, 1);

Complete a task:
insert into task_role (task_id, party_id, role_id) values (1, 2, 3);

I would recommend PostgreSQL, as it can handle hierarchical data better than MySQL
Comment: Thanks this helped how to do things in sql.but are there any advantages of using graph over sql or sql over graph database?
Answer: In terms of SQL vs Graph databases, assuming your database can handle hierarchies well....
The major tradeoff is this schema flexibility vs reporting flexibility (it's more complicated than that, but that gives you an idea).
Basically SQL dbs usually[1] operate over sets of tuples.  Graph dbs usually operate over individual entities.  Aggregation reporting is usually managed using MapReduce.  SQL aggregation reporting tends to be done using well understood approaches (and on some clustered databases these have some similarity to MapReduce, but significant differences as well).
The big difference typically  is in reporting.  In general your reporting will be much easier on SQL.  In general if you need or may need ad hoc reporting, SQL is the way to go.  If you know for a fact that you never will, NoSQL, including graph dbs may be the way to go.
The best way to go IMO is to start with PostgreSQL with the idea that if you need to add a graph db as an auxiliary, you can do so.  Many of these dbs have a great deal of utility when used as adjuncts to the RDBMS, but if you start with the RDBMS, it will be easier to add the other than it will be to go the other way around.
[1] Informix is an exception, as it operates over sets of objects.  This leads to interesting results when child tables have more columns than parent tables.  In that case, the rows of child tables will be returned when the parent table is queried using select *, but with the additional fields, meaning that different rows may have different fields and field semantics.

Which database type to use


Reproduction in aeroplankton

Question: I'm working on a low gravity planet, and I've thought that aeroplankton might be able to exist here, floating on wind currents using dandelion-like wings.
I only have one problem:reproduction. The animals would need to find eachother mid-air to mate and lay eggs while not ending up on the ground, overall not a great strategy.
My question is: Is there an easier way for these things to reproduce? If so, how?
Comment: Plants are not animals, so do you want plants or animals? Question needs an edit I think.
Comment: @Pelinore has a good point. Plants propagate basically in two ways. (a) Pollen, which on Earth is moved around via bees and similar insects or the wind and (b) runners or root expansion, meaning that as the plant grows, roots develop into new centers of the plant. Either solution works for you.
Answer: Many sea creature like corals, sea urchins, corals and so on reproduce without any problems in the broad open space of the ocean without recurring neither to pronube insects nor to physical intercourse. They simply disperse their reproductive cells in the water all together and then let chance play its part.
Your creatures can do the same: at a given moment, all of them release their reproductive cells in the air, the wind will take them over and mix thoroughly, ending in some gametes meeting and continuing the species.
Answer: Your creatures are themselves reproductive cells
Usually when these things are floating around they reproduce asexually by simple fission.A haploid cell reproduces its DNA and becomes transiently diploid (and larger until probably less buoyant) then splits into two haploid offspring.  I could imagine when times are good the dna duplication uses mitosis to keep
Genes consistent and maybe scrambles things some with meiosis when times are tough and some novelty as regards genotype could help offspring.
But sometimes one such organism bumps into another in midair.  If the mood is right they fuse, becoming a transient diploid organism that is the product of both partners.  Sex! This then splits into two haploid organisms each a mix of the two parents.
Answer: They can drop their genetic materials into the water
Since plankton is plankton they can not really move and instead only get carried by the currents. In the air you get another chalange which is feeding. In water plankton simply absorbs bacteria passively but in air you cant really do that as the particles of air would carry to little organic matter. This is true especially for low gravity planets where particles of air are even more spread out, making the air thinner and pour in any material they could eat. This is why the plankton might opt to drop down every once in a while to snack and than reopen their dandelion structure to take it to the sky again. In this time when they feed they could also pour organic material in the water, creating the next generations in puddles and lakes or if you want to be more dramatic, when reproducing they drop their reproductive cells from the sky, creating a "plankton rain"

Reproduction in aeroplankton


Can GARCH be only be used to model a return series?

Question: That is, can I use GARCH or ARCH to model something like sales, gas consumption, data consumption etc or is GARCH/ARCH only for financial applications (i.e. return series)?
Comment: GARCH/ARCH can be used on any time series, but it's not necessarily a good model in many situations. Anytime you think it is a good model, there's absolutely nothing stopping you using it.
Answer: Yes, you definitely can use GARCH/ARCH models for those data sets if you are concern about volatility in your time series. See for example page 15 in Vlatility In Natural Gas and Oil Markets where they fitted a GARCH model. I have seen GARCH models in population modeling. See e.g. the plot in here. These models are mainly developed to take into account the volatility. But this does not mean that they should only be used in financial applications. The data you have should first exhibit that these models can be considered as some candidate models and then you will use them.


Transferring domain registration to new registrar and switching email hosting at the same time?

Question: I need to transfer an existing domain that's currently with SiteGround to Porkbun. I also need to move the existing custom email addresses from SiteGround to Zoho Mail. I'm not sure if I should transfer the domain first and then tackle migrating the email hosting to Zoho Mail or vice-versa. It's important that there's as little downtime as possible with the emails. What's the best plan of action for this?
Comment: Are you transfering registration or hosting from SiteGround to Porkbun?
Comment: @StephenOstermiller Just transferring the registration. The web hosting with Siteground isn't needed anymore since the site has already been moved to another hosting provider.
Comment: And how about DNS hosting?  Are you changing that?
Comment: I was going to use Porkbun for DNS too
Answer: You can do this either way but it would seem to me its more logical to move DNS first.
My suggestion would be to migrate the domain and DNS to Porkbun first - keeping the DNS records as they are for Siteground at the moment - with 1 important exception - I would make the TTL's for each record as low as practical (1 minute or 5 minutes if supported).
Once this is bedded down (give it a couple of days if you are not very familiar with testing DNS), then migrate the email.    Because you have low TTLs you should be able to minimize the downtime migration changeover window.


How to find vector representing altitude of a triangle?

Question: I'm trying to find this green vector and I've got three points A, B, C. How can I find that vector in Unity code-wise?
Answer: You can do this more simply. This vector in green is just AC with the portion parallel to AB removed.
So:
Vector3 AC = C - A;
Vector3 AB = B - A;

return AC - Vector3.Project(AC, AB);

Comment: Also, thank you for naming your points in such a way that the answer includes `AC, AB`
Answer: Given the input vectors
   Vector3 AB =  Vector3(Bx, By, Bz) - Vector3(Ax, Ay, Az);
   Vector3 Caxis = Vector3(Cx, Cy, Cz) - Vector3(Ax, Ay, Az); // This is the vector from A to C

The direction of the result vector C we seek is the same direction as (AB cross Caxis) cross AB
   Vector3 Cdir = Vector3.Cross(Vector3.Cross(AB, Caxis), AB).Normalize();

Finding the magnitude is more involved.  We know that starting at the point Cz and going in the direction Cdir must intersect along AB
   Caxis - alpha * Cdir == beta * AB

and we need to find unknowns alpha and beta.  We can find a vector perpendicular to Caxis  by projecting AB onto the plane to which Caxis is normal
   Vector3 Cperp = Vector3.ProjectOnPlane(Caxis, AB).Normalize();

so our equation with alpha and beta can be reduced to one unknown
  - alpha * (Cdir . Cperp)/(AB . Cperp) == beta

So solving for alpha (which is in fact the magnitude of our final vector C)
   Caxis == alpha * (Cdir - AB* (Cdir . Cperp)/(AB . Cperp) )

This is a vector equation, but we can solve for alpha by taking the dot product with Caxis on both sides.  Writing code again this is
   float num = Caxis.magnitude*Caxis.magnitude;
   float denom1 = Vector3.Dot(Cdir, Caxis);
   float denom2 = Vector3.Dot(AB, Caxis) * Vector3.Dot(Cdir, Cperp) / Vector3.Dot(AB, Cperp);

   float Cmag = num/(denom1 - denom2);

C is then, using the sign convention from your diagram,
   Vector3 C = Cmag*Cdir;

I'm leaving it without checks for cases where you get a divide by zero, such as when points B and C are identical.
Comment: perfect! Thank you!


What is meant: "Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced."

Question: Does someone have some reliable source what was meant by quote by Søren Kierkegaard in the title? Can you elaborate?
Does it mean for example I shouldn't think how to solve some problem, rather say go out and experience a nice walk for example?
Comment: This is what became the general motto of existentialism, ["*man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world—and defines himself afterwards*"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existentialism#Existence_precedes_essence), as Sartre formulated it. It is meant as a global outlook on the meaning of life and person's priorities, not an instruction on what to do in specific circumstances. If you do not solve a problem with your leg you cannot go out and experience nice walks. But fixating on "solving problems" instead of living life is to look for meaning where it won't be found.
Comment: Hello! Also compare it with Wittgenstein's [TLP](https://people.umass.edu/klement/tlp/tlp-hyperlinked.html#bodytextPearsMcGuinness): *"We feel that even when all possible scientific questions have been answered, the problems of life remain completely untouched. Of course there are then no questions left, and this itself is the answer."* (6.52, TLP)
Answer: I don't think that's what the author meant by the quote at all. He's not dissuading us from thinking logically or analytically, but attempting to shift our focus from that of problem-solving to enjoying life.
As humans, we are natural thinkers and problem solvers. Our brains are wired to seek truth and to find solutions to questions and issues that arise throughout our time here on this earth.
The trap many philosophers seem to find themselves in is one of constant pondering. Sure, everything can and should be open to intellectual debate, but is this the true purpose of our experience?
Instead of thinking about why the grass feels the way it does on our bare feet, we should simply quiet our minds and enjoy the fleeting moment for what it is.
Life.
Answer: Of course you should regard solving problems as your serious main business, while enjoying life as a vacation period after long persistent effort drowning in your business. As Farady once famously said: the strong prove, the weak enjoy... Also anyway, aren't problems must also be reality to be experienced? Otherwise it's just a fake manufactured "problem".
Don't read too much words into you heart, different people have different or even opposite styles and ways to express similar innate ideas. The real issue I observed from my experience is people will easily attach too much importance, value, and ego into their main business, their domain of problems, to such an extreme that they begin to overlook, disregard, and even say bad words to other people's totally different businesses. So under this context, a saint saying your above words are totally fine and appropriate. But we all know a saint's major job is to solve other people's sufferings (problems)...

What is meant: "Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.”


SPFx v1.5 building Extension and WebPart as single solution

Question: I recently updated my SPFx framework to v1.5.0 and I wanted to create a solution that has both Extensions (Application Customizer) and Client Side Webparts. Now if I try creating a WebPart first and then try adding an Extension with
(yo @microsoft/sharepoint), I get prompted asking :

Add a new Web Part to solution ######
?What is your Web part name ?
The same thing applies for Extensions as well.
My ask is has MS removed the ability to add both Extensions and WebParts to single solution ?  Any pointers is/are welcome...
Comment: MS has identified this as a bug, [link](https://github.com/SharePoint/sp-dev-docs/issues/1991). More updates to follow this week.
Answer: This was indeed a bug with SPFx v 1.5.
It was fixed with recently released SPFx 1.5.1. Simply update your yeoman generator and recreate the projects using the below commandlet:
npm install @microsoft/generator-sharepoint@latest -g
Reference - SPFx v1.5.1 Release notes


How to add a drawer of apps on the dock?

Question: There are way too many app icons on my dock.  Is there a way to add drawers of apps on the dock so each drawer contains a list of apps?
Comment: There are a couple of possibilities, but first: which version of OS X are you running? The features I'm thinking of differ between them.
Answer: While the Dock doesn't have the concept of "folders" for the apps that are pinned to or running in it, as of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard the Stacks feature can provide something similar.
Dragging the Applications folder from the Finder into the "Stacks section" (right of the white-dashed line) of the Dock will add it as a Stack. You can then click the folder to see something like this:

If you want subsets of your Applications as separate Stacks, you can create folders for each somewhere in your filesystem, and add aliases for the desired applications. (Note that dragging an app from the Applications folder to another folder makes an alias by default. Convenient!)
The results look like this:

All this being said, an alternative if you have OS X 10.7 Lion is to use Launchpad to organize and access your apps, keeping the contents of your Dock as minimal as possible.
Answer: I realize this question was asked awhile back, but if someone with a newer OS stumbles upon it, here's another trick you can try.
Add comments or tags to the applications you want to group, making a new Smart Folder in /Applications, and then setting the search criteria to be the comment or tag you chose. Then, save the search, which adds it to your Finder sidebar.
From there, right click on the new Finder sidebar item, and choose 'Add to Dock'. Note that some built-in applications like Safari won't allow you to modify tags or comments. But, that's when you just make an alias and add the tag or comment to it, instead.