iOS Software Update over cellular data

Question: How can I software update over cellular data? I've got enough data on my SIM but when go to update my iPad to iOS 8, it requires Wi-Fi. I do not have a router.
Comment: if you have an iphone use it as a hotspot, this would do the trick
Comment: How large is the update? I think there's a size limit over cellular.
Comment: Is there an option under  `Preferences` > `iTunes & App Store` > Switch on `Updates` (Automatic Downloads) and `Use Cellular Data`?
Comment: Do you have cellular data turned on?  on phone, Settings->Cellular->Cellular Data
Answer: Apple doesn't allow major iOS updates over cellular. You can update from 10.3.1 to 10.3.2 over LTE, but not from 10.2 to 10.3.
This is not a technical limitation of cell data or wifi, per se, but rather a policy limitation (though some carriers have limits of how big individual files transmitted over their networks can be). Major OS updates can run into the gigabyte range, and while many users have multi-gig or unlimited data plans, not all users do - so updates above a given size are disallowed, per manufacturer policy, from downloading over cellular.
If you hotspot your phone and download the update to your laptop, then run the install via iTunes, you can get around it. Or if you find a wifi connection elsewhere (that won't cut you off for excessive data use (as some free/public ones can/will)).

Side note:
It's - generally - fastest to do OS updates via iTunes from your computer, because the update does not have to download to your phone, then extract, then install, then clean up after itself (especially important to consider if you only have 3G free on your device, but the update download size is 4GB: the update will likely still install if you do it via iTunes, because it will be overwriting existing files (along with removing some and adding some) on the phone, using your laptop/desktop as its workspace for extracting the update archive).
Comment: Absolutely insane that Apple completely disallows it. Would be understandable if that was the default that the user could override.
Comment: Cripples iPad updates for those who rely on big cap cellular connections due to a policy decision. At least give people a choice.
Comment: Typical Apple protecting users from themselves for devil knows what reason... I'm currently struggling with this. And moreover I can't connect my computer to my hotspot, ostensibly because my iOS version is out of date. Bravo Apple. I wonder if they're aware of how bad this decision is.
Answer: All the above will not work. What you will need for this are two things: your iPhone, and a Mac or windows PC, with iTunes installed. After that, tether data from your iPhone to your Mac. Your Mac will believe it is a wireless connection. Then, launch the iTunes app from your laptop, and download and update your phone. Make sure, obviously, that your phone is connected via USB.
Answer: I don't think that there is any feasible way around this. Apple being Apple is going to try to make software that mainly appeals to the tech layman, which isn't always bad thing, 9 times out of 10 it's a great thing. It means iPhones don't (for the most part) get viruses, do get a steady flow of software updates (unlike another mobile operating system...), and many other great features which can only be made possible when a company is a "control freak".
So even though you have adequate data, Apple makes your iPhone take the "better safe than sorry" approach in making sure that you don't use it up, or worse, go over, by using it here.
I'd just ask one of my friends/family if I could use their Wi-Fi connection to download iOS 9. I'd advise against using a public connection, though, since one must enter his passcode, Apple ID, and password.
Comment: The sensitive data is all transmitted over SSL connections. As long as one heeds any certificate warnings it should be fine.
Comment: The security is same whether on your data or Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi has better change of getting hacked AFAIK.
Comment: Android gets updates all the time: but very few *carriers* push them to their subscribers. Apple's big strength here is they handle their own updates, carriers are not involved in any way in getting your iPhone (and its apps) to update.
Answer: Here are two ways to download iOS updates over the cellular network:

Share iPhone's Internet connection and use iTunes on a computer to download the update. Warning: a backup Internet connection is required to verify the update after the device reboots. Otherwise the iPhone will get bricked, requiring a DFU restore erasing all data.
This method requires advanced technical skills. Enable Personal Hotspot, and connect USB to an OpenWRT router. Then navigate to Wi-Fi settings and connect to the same router. Now the iPhone thinks it is connected to a Wi-Fi and will prefer using it, but the OpenWRT router will forward all traffic back to the USB port, and the iPhone will route it to the Internet. I just upgraded to iOS 14.5 using this method.

The OpenWRT router should be configured to access the Internet over the USB Ethernet interface. Required OpenWRT packages:
kmod-usb-net-ipheth
libimobiledevice
libusbmuxd
libplist
libimobiledevice-utils
libusbmuxd-utils
plistutil
usbmuxd

It might me possible to exploit method 2 using a computer: if the computer can access Internet over the USB and share it using the Wi-Fi adapter back to the iPhone.
Comment: Have done this many times without "a backup Internet connection" and never once was bricked. This seems like misleading information. Please cite a reputable source.
Comment: Personal experience: When using iTunes to upgrade the firmware, iTunes attempt to connect to the Internet and verify the upgrade is allowed by Apple. This happens after the phone reboots so a backup source of Internet connection is required.
Answer: Turning on cellular data for updates and iTunes only lets you download app updates under 100MB and iTunes purchases.  There is currently no way around this other than tethering to another phone's wifi connection.
Comment: You can download 200+ MB apps over cellular from the App Store on your phone
Answer: Go to Settings> iTunes & App Store> UPDATES(on)> Use Cellular Data
Answer: There is a way around this:
Simply go to Settings>iTunes and App Stores, and turn on "Use Cellular Data".

iOS Software Update over cellular data


Getting large amount of ropsten ether

Question: I want to get about 150000 ropsten ether for testing. Is there any way to get it? I've seen some faucet websites but they have limitations.
Comment: you don't need this for tests, unless you are doing tests with division operations on the amount. For tests, 1 Wei is enough , you could do 5^18 tests with the amount given to you for free.
Comment: @Nulik Yes that's my reason for that. I want to test my smart contract which has a complicated computations with that number.
Answer: It will be very hard, if not impossible, to get 150,000 RETH. Your best bet will be to use a private chain and configure an account to have this amount. You would do this by doing the following:
ganache-cli --account="<private_key>,<balance>"
In your case, this would be something like:
ganache-cli --account="0x3a1076bf45ab87712ad64ccb3b10217737f7faacbf2872e88fdd9a537d8fe266,150000000000000000000000"
Comment: Sorry but i'm looking a way just for ropsten.
Comment: @zediziza anyone with a 6-digit RETH amount would be able to flood and hang the whole testnet. There's a good reason for not giving away that much test currency - being relatively stable and similar to mainnet in as many ways as possible is the whole point of a public testnet. You can always try mining it though: https://github.com/asseth/ropsten-miner

Getting large amount of ropsten ether


How to calculate 21-limit just intonation

Question: I am looking for ratios of 21-limit just intonation tuning system to later compare it with the 31-EDO tuning system since they are to some extent similar and close. How could I calculate 21-limit just intervals and ratios?
Comment: "since they are to some extent similar and close": do you have a source for this?  If so, what is it?  It could help us to understand your question better.
Answer: You unfortunately seem to have a certain amount of misapprehension as to what is referred to by "[something]-limit just intonation". I will try to clarify this for you here.
Just tuning systems are based on the natural harmonics that occur when you have some object (– in our case, we are thinking of a musical instrument or some part of a musical instrument) resonating in a "one-dimensional" manner. The classical teaching example is a string of a fixed length and tension, but identical principles apply to, e.g., a key of a glockenspiel, or the length of tube of a brass instrument. A string of a fixed mass, length and tension has a corresponding "fundamental frequency" which can be calculated by a mathematical equation, which is the frequency it resonates at 'along its whole length'. But we can get the string to resonate at other frequencies, by dividing its length up into equal parts. For example, if we 'stop' the string exactly halfway along its length, the string will resonate with twice the fundamental freqency. If we stop it at one-third of its length, it will resonate with three times the frequency. Interestingly, if say we were to stop the string at two-fifths of its length, which is not an equal division of the string, since you can't make a whole up out of combining parts of size two-fifths of the whole, the physical forces will work out the 'simplest' equal division of the string corresponding to being stopped at two-fifths of its length: hopefully you can yourself see that a division into fifths is this simplest solution; and so the string will resonate with five times the fundamental frequency.
These exact divisions of the resonating body/exact multiples of the fundamental frequency have an interesting psychological effect on a human listener: we hear notes that feel 'similar' or 'related' to the note produced by the fundamental frequency. In fact, it is broadly accepted that when we double the frequency, a listener experiences this as being "the same note, but higher", or "a higher version of the same note". So, for the remainder of this explanation I will adopt the view that doubling or halving a frequency gives us "the same note", in a different octave, as this view is adopted by all the tuning systems in scope and does not mark a point of difference between just intonation and equal division of the octave.
Slightly more interesting is tripling the frequency. We generally experience this as a different note, but one that feels like a close companion or neighbour of the note given by the fundamental frequency, in a sense we have come to call consonant. To start making this concrete, take a fundamental frequency of 220Hz. The note with frequency 440Hz feels like "the same note but higher". But the note with frequency 660Hz feels like "a different but very consonant note". We express the relationship between this note and the fundamental note in terms of a ratio of frequencies: the ratio here is 3:1. Of course, I can take this note of frequency 660Hz and move it down an octave, by halving the frequency (to 330Hz) and it will sound like "the same note"; so I can look at the relationship between the fundamental frequency and the new note by looking at the ratio 3:2 (– that is, the ratio between 330Hz and 220Hz).
Multiplying the fundamental frequency by 4 gives us "the same note again", because 4 = 2x2, so we have doubled the note we got from doubling the fundamental frequency, and we are assuming that doubling any given note's frequency gives us the same note.
I am going to temporarily skip over multiplying by 5 to immediately observe something about multiplying by 6. This gives a frequency of 1320Hz. But if I want to move this note into the same octave as the fundamental, I can divide by 4 (that is, divide by 2 and then divide by 2 again), which again gives me a note of 330Hz. So multiplying by 6 gives us the same note, up to octave equivalence, as multiplying by 3. We note that the prime factorisation of 6 is 2x3; essentially what has happened is any multiple of 2 in the prime factorisation doesn't change the note as they can be divided out by moving to a different octave.
Multiplying by 5 gives us 1100Hz / a ratio of 5:1, but if we move this note down until it is in the same octave as the fundamental, we divide by 4 to give a frequency of 275Hz and a ratio of 5:4. This sounds like a different note to either of the ones we have encountered so far (that is, the fundamental (which you could express as 1:1, I suppose) and the 'multiplying by 3' note / the ratio 3:2): it again sounds like it 'matches'/'fits with' the fundamental, but maybe we feel it has a bit more content/a bit more personality/is a bit more distinctive/specific than the 3:2 note, which was quite neutral/plain/austere. We should pay attention to how this note feels against the fundamental.
I am again going to skip over multiplying by 7. Multiplying by 8 is just doubling then doubling then doubling again: it is 2^3 (two cubed; two to the power of three).
Multiplying by 9 gives 1980Hz; in the same octave as the fundamental this is 247.5Hz and 9:8; but let's (for purposes which will become clear) move this up one octave to 495Hz (9:4). If we play the 1:1 note then the 3:2 note, or if we play these two notes together, we hear the nature of the realtionship between them. If we give ourselves a bit of time to clear our heads, and then play the 3:2 note followed by this 9:4 note, it feels like the same kind of relationship – the notes feel "the same distance apart"/"separated by the same interval" as the 1:1 and 3:2 notes did. And then to our astonishment, we notice that we first applied a ratio of 3:2 to the fundamental (1:1) to get 3:2; and then if we apply that ratio again to the note 3:2 itself, we get 9:4. So applying a ratio feels like/sounds like moving by a (musical) interval. Mathematically, looking at 9:4, or the 9:8 that we started with, on the left hand side we have 3x3, and on the right hand side we just have repeated multiplication by 2 which just moves octaves, and what we have done is moved by a certain interval twice: that is, however many times we have multiplied by 3 on the left is how many times we have moved by this interval (- the interval that I'm sure we all recognise as a (just) perfect fifth).
What does it sound like if I apply a 5:4 ratio to the 3:2 note? I get a frequency of 412.5Hz / a ratio of 15:8. If I play this 15:8 note and the 3:2 note together, their relationship to each other sounds like/feels like the same relationship that the 5:4 note had to the fundamental: again, ratios correspond to moving by an interval. Looking mathematically at 15:8, on the left I have 3x5 and on the right repeated multiples of 2. So I have moved by a perfect fifth ('timesing by 3') once, and by this new different interval ('timesing by 5') once. So, multiplying by 5 on the left corresponds to moving by a just major third.
We can hopefully see that moving around by only intervals of perfect fifths and major thirds (and octaves) will gives us ratios m:n where the prime factors of m and n are taken only from 2, 3 and 5, and where the power of each of these primes in the factorisation gives, respectively, how many octaves, just perfect fifths and just major thirds we have moved by, upwards if on the left of the ratio and downwards if on the right – that is, the 'intervallic' content of a ratio is completely determined by its prime factorisation and we only get "new" intervals from (new) prime numbers.
The notes we get from doing what I say in the previous paragraph is called 5-limit just intonation, because 5 is the largest prime I use.
21-limit just intonation doesn't exist, because 21=3x7 is not a prime number.
Answer: An X-limit system is one in which the interval ratios can all be expressed in terms of prime factorizations in which X is the largest prime. So a "21-limit" tuning would be equivalent to a 19-limit tuning (or even a 7-limit system), since any ratio involving 21 could be expressed in terms of 3 and 7, and any ratio involving 20 could be expressed in terms of 2 and 5.
Ratios for a 19-limit system and others can be found at Xenharmonic Wiki.


How to use dapper.fluentmap in Dapper?

Question: Does anyone know or have link in how to use https://github.com/henkmollema/Dapper-FluentMap in my Dapper CRUD?. Right now I am using Dapper.Contrib but we are trying to implement Clean architecture which we remove the Dapper.Contrib in our structure. Now I am trying to use this Dapper-FluentMap to map the properties but there documentation is very poor.
Answer: I've wrote an article and a sample that shows how to use Dapper-FluentMap:
https://medium.com/dapper-net/custom-columns-mapping-1cd45dfd51d6
Comment: Is there any way we can Register the Fluent Mapper only once instead of adding the newly created Map every time in the registry. Something like Register all classes ending with "Map"
Comment: There is not native support for registering all classes automatically, but you can do it using a bit of Reflection, looking for all classes derived from EntityMap and then instantiate it using Activator.CreateInstance
Comment: it's a nice article and all, but how does one use nested objects, like the Company class in your User class, you never gave an example of that in your article, why did you stop short only binding the id column in the example?
Comment: @inifus 'cause I think the best solution is to use Custom Type Handling. See the last two article here: https://medium.com/dapper-net/dapper-net-tutorial-summary-79125c8ecdb2. In the GitHub sample, anyway, you have the full mapping sample with the three classes. In the article I favored brevity and clarity and I left the full implementation details for the GitHub repo :)
Answer: After beating my head against a few brick walls, I have established this much as fact (at least as of late 2018, which is after the date of the OP)...
Answering the question "Is FluentMap supposed to work with Dapper.Contrib extensions?", henkmollema (author of Dapper.FluentMap) responds, "Nope, it does not work with Dapper.Contrib".
So there's your answer, user3928241.
However for me as well as for user3928241 and others desperately searching for answers, he adds, "Shameless plug: it does work together with Dommel using the Dapper.FluentMap.Dommel integration component."
YMMV, but I'm pressing on. Going to try Dommel now.

How to use dapper.fluentmap in Dapper?


What would cause all my gfi recepticles to not reset in my kitchen?

Question: All my recepticles that are gfi except one will not reset nor will the outlets that are protected by them work? My house was built in 2006 and the receptacles are levitons. It tripped the breaker about a week ago then all of them stopped working except one. The one gfi has a crack in it. What do I need to check?
Comment: Which "one" is cracked; the one that works? Are these load fed together or are they individual GFIs? Have you tried unplugging everything that is served by them to see if it will hold?
Comment: Have you reset the breaker?   Most GFIs will not reset with the power off.
Answer: Assuming the GFI isn't defective, there are three common things that can keep it from resetting:

There is no power to the outlet.
The GFI is wired in backwards: the wires coming from the breaker box are connected to the "load" side of the outlet rather than the "line" side.
There is a ground fault somewhere in the circuit the GFI is protecting.

Given that the breaker tripped, (3) is very much a possibility.  Alternatively, since you say there's a crack, the GFI may have been damaged.
Answer: I reset breaker and tried to reset and still didn't work. I don't understand why all but one quit working. Is it possible that they are all connected together?


Microsoft Windows UVC Extension Unit sample compilation troubleshooting

Question: I have been trying recently to get UVC (USB Video Class) extension unit up and running.I did make some progress (by getting vidcap_i.c by a lead from a message from another forum),but I have not been able to go through due to compilation errors and I hope I could get some help here for the subject.
I have created all the necessary files ,which I was guided by the sample at Microsoft site,except the sample application.
Their content is the same as at the UVC sample link.
*Note:I got a little confused by the line that says "Copy Extend.def from the WIA extend sample and edit it. Uvcxuplugn.def should contain".I hope I got it correctly - I have copied the extend.def file from WDK samples directory to
c:\xu directory ,edited the file ,added the necessary content and saved it as Uvcuplugn.def file.
After building using the Build environment ,this is the output of the compilation :
C:\xu>Build -cZg
BUILD: Compile and Link for AMD64
BUILD: Start time:
BUILD: Examining c:\xu directory for files to compile.
c:\xu Invalidating OACR warning log for 'root:amd64chk'

BUILD: Building generated files in c:\xu directory
Configuring OACR for 'root:amd64chk' -
Running MIDL on - interface.idl
BUILD: Compiling c:\xu directory
Compiling - interface_i.c
Compiling - vidcap_i.c
Compiling - uvcxuplgn.cpp
1>errors in directory c:\xu
1>c:\xu\xuproxy.h(69) : error C2017: illegal escape sequence
1>c:\xu\xuproxy.h(71) : error C2059: syntax error : '__uuidof'
1>c:\xu\xuproxy.h(71) : error C2017: illegal escape sequence
1>c:\xu\xuproxy.h(71) : error C2332: 'struct' : missing tag name
1>c:\xu\xuproxy.h(71) : error C2011: '' : 'enum' type redefinition
1>c:\xu\uvcxuplgn.cpp(7) : error C2143: syntax error : missing ';' before '{'
1>c:\xu\uvcxuplgn.cpp(7) : error C2447: '{' : missing function header (old-style
 formal list?)
1>c:\xu\uvcxuplgn.cpp(31) : error C2065: 'ObjectMap' : undeclared identifier
Compiling - stdafx.cpp
Compiling - xuproxy.cpp
Building Library - objchk_win7_amd64\amd64\uvcxuplgn.lib
1>link : error LNK1181: cannot open input file 'c:\xu\objchk_win7_amd64\amd64\uv
cxuplgn.obj'
BUILD: Compile errors: not linking c:\xu directory
BUILD: Finish time:
BUILD: Done
12 files compiled - 1 Warning - 8 Errors
1 library built - 1 Error

I get the same errors no matter what the target is (x86,x64,ia64)
Now,let's review errors one by one ,starting from the last :
LNK1181->No idea about that error.I have done clean ups of the build and that did not help
at all.But this is probably the easiest error to resolve,hope you would be able to give me
a lead on the subject.
uvcxuplgn.cpp,Line 7 ,the problematic syntax is :BEGIN_OBJECT_MAP(ObjectMap).
According to Microsoft's documentation (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/10fb0d3e(v=vs.90).aspx) , this directive is defined at atlcom.h,which is included
 in the file ,so I am really confused about the cause of this error.
The last errors relate to last 5 lines of extension unit proxy header file (cannot post code here due to errors-check this page (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/ff568134(v=vs.85).aspx)
Again,no idea ,why it shouldn't compile.Hope I could get some lead on the subject
Sorry for the long post,hope you could help me (and probably many others) who struggle with this Windows UVC extension unit subject
Answer: First, you always have to look at the first error that happens. The others are often following errors. So just delete the wrong escape sequence () in line 69 and in line 71 in xuproxy.h.
The linking error only happens, because the compiler couldnt compile the .cpp files earlier, so the object file is missing.


Office 2011(mavericks). Attachments from outlook only open word & excel as read only

Question: Whenever I receive an email in Outlook that has either a word doc or excel attachment it only allows them to be opened as "read only" documents.  How can I have them open as regular documents as they did with Entourage 2008?  Thanks.
Answer: This is a feature of Office 2011 Outlook.  The behaviour is not limited to Mavericks or Word or Excel files.
When you double click an attachment to open it, a copy is saved under your Library folder (in ~/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems/Outlook Temp).  This folder is not generally visible or intended to be accessible to users hence the "Read Only" attribute of the file.
You can either

double-click the attachment in Outlook (to Open it in its default application) and then Save As... to, for example, your Documents folder before editing or
right-click and Save As... in Outlook itself, in which case the file will not be "read only".
Answer: I'm not sure if it's a good idea, but you could try giving yourself write permission to ~/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems/Outlook Temp with chmod.
Answer: If you click on the "preview" button next to the attachment file name in the message header and then click "Open with MS Word" on top of the preview it will open as a regular word document that can be edited.  Works the same with Excel and presumably other file types, though I haven't tried any others.
Answer: Here is the easy work around.
In your email, either preview the attachment by clicking the preview button in the email, or click on the attachment and press spacebar (both will preview the attachment). In the actual preview window, there is a link to "Open in Microsoft Word" or "Open in Microsoft Excel". When this link is clicked from the preview pane, it opens as the full version, not a read only version.  Solution obtained!
Answer: You can't. They did it on purpose so you don't accidentally ruin the original.
Comment: not true, you can unlock it just click the down tab next to locked in the title and it gives you the option to unlock. still v annoying that there is no universal fix tho


Dynamically change connection string for UI tests

Question: I'm using WebAii library for UI testing - I want to test whether my component displays the same records as there are in database therefore I need to switch my application's connection string to point to the test database just for the time of running tests. What is the best way to do it? How to dynamically change the connection string prior to running the app? Thanks
Answer: Are you storing the connection string in the Web.config file? If so, I would deploy a new Web.config just before starting the test and then use the command line to send an IISRESET.
FYI, these are the kinds of questions we answer all day long on our public forum dedicated to WebAii.
Cody
Telerik Technical Support
Answer: What kind of application is it? This is first probably an indication of not-well-factored code. Next, it is common to have a separate environment for testing code.
If you are, for example, deploying to ASP.NET with Visual Studio, you can use Web.config file transformations to set a different value when you deploy to e.g. test.contoso.com vs. www.contoso.com. The transformation syntax allows you to define a new connection string, or change an existing one from the base Web.config, when deploying a different configuration.
If you have a single environment, and control over it, you could probably write a couple of (Power)shell scripts to copy a web.config with "test" connection strings to your app root prior to the test. Then run a second script to reset the original web.config after the test is run.
If you have access to your deploy directory within the context you will be running your tests, you could even simply have a Web.test.config file included in your unit test project. In [AssemblyInitialize]:

File-copy  _\\{your app server}{your app directory}\Web.config to \\{your app server}{your app directory}\Web.config.orig.
File-copy Web.test.config to \\{your app server}{your app directory}\Web.config.
Sleep for a few seconds?

Then do the reverse in [AssemblyCleanup].
Other strategies exist, too. You could build in an override to your application when in debug mode, that checks various things (special file, additional config, cookies, extra query string). Or you could have a Settings manager in your app that you can instrument in test setup when arranging your test (click through UI to change DB settings).
Very likely, however, you may get the best compounding rewards by factoring your code to reduce dependencies. Then you can write unit tests which stub/mock/fake the database. You can use code coverage tools to verify that you've tested specific scenarios, or to see that additional integration tests would be duplication of coverage at that point.


Moving from mac to pc for post

Question: I'm moving more into audio for picture lately and I am trying to decide to go for a new  PC or Mac running Protools.
I know all the arguments for and against but I'm trying to come at it from a different angle.
If I went with PC would there be any issue working with clients.
For example if I get OMF's , video files to sync and external hard drives to provide me with audio and video elements
could there be anything that would be an issue for me?
Answer: I made the switch to PC for my home system over two years ago now. I haven't had any issues, and I occassionally move projects between my system at home and at work (where I use a Mac). Most of the time, I use flash based media or data DVDs to transfer files. You'll only have trouble reading from flash based media if you format it on a Mac (no issue if you leave it the same format as you purchased it).
If you do make the switch to PC, you may want to purchase a copy of MacDrive by Media Four ($50 for the basic version). It will allow your computer to format and read Mac formatted (HFS/HFS+) drives. You can even keep an internal drive on your system formatted that way. The only caveat with that is that I would suggest keeping all files for any given project restricted to a single drive format (all on NTFS drives, or all on HFS+ drives). Reading files from the multiple formats within one session can cause problems...not always, but why give yourself the potential headache?
Comment: Same here, have always used PC, but interface with Mac-based editors/stages all the time without issue.  MacDrive is definitely key (when considering that most of our peers and facilities are sharing HFS+ formatted travel drives).  The only recommendation I have is not the use MacDrive to format HFS drives, use OSX.  I've spoken with them on this and they currently don't support formatting drives Journaled (but they read/write to Journaled just fine).  Learned the hard way on this when a bug in MacDrive 9 (now fixed) resulted in my FX drive catalog file/drive header corrupting.
Comment: The drive was formatted in HFS+ with MacDrive, and that lack of Juornaling which I never new that it DIDN'T HAVE resulted in the drive's data being blown out - even if it was Journaled it could have been a problem, but likely smaller. Needless to say that was a pain to rebuild, but thank god for backups. Again though, I held their feet to the fire pretty hard with this bug and the finally determined the source of the issue and fixed it - it had to do with how the drive header was accessed/buffered in memory (leaving the drive structure open to instability should something go awry like a BSOD)
Comment: The one caveat about v9 of MacDrive though is that they dropped support for steams (basically, resource-fork dependent file types like SD2).  If you use v9 and do ANYTHING to an SD2 file (copy, rename, move, etc) that file will immediately be corrupted.  They wrote me a custom Registry toggle to re-enable this legacy functionality so that SD2s can be handled and even transferred to NTFS drives without issue - ultimately trying to get a bunch of SD2's converted but as it's taking a lot of time, I needed this functionality fix in the interim.  Would be happy to share if needed.  But it a caveat.
Comment: And by corrupt I mean not even Quicktime nor even the lower-level Sd2toWAV could read/convert it (even when forcing what the known parameters of the sample rate/bit depth were.  When the fork gets stripped, the file was useless.
Comment: @Stavrosound - thanks for the copious documentation. I hadn't encountered that formatting issue, as I haven't actually bothered to create a Mac formatted drive using my PC. The bit about SD2 files is interesting as well, though you're probably the only person I know who still deals with them ever. ;)
Comment: @Shaun Sure thing! Most of what I've learned with it has been through trial and error and dealing with their support dept, most of this low-level stuff isn't documented anywhere. Yeah, I know, trying to ditch the SD2 files. the only thing that seems to work efficiently for conversion is SD2toWav but it won't do nested hierarchies so it's taking a long time to convert, so that's why I needed the feature re-enabled so I wouldn't risk an issue when organizing/converting. Man I just wish a tool like Barbabatch had a PC version. Can't find any comprehensive solution for SD2 conversion.
Answer: You can also make a Windows partiiton on your hard drive for your Mac so that you can boot into either platform. You can then install ProTools on both operating systems so that you can use either for your sound work.
Answer: I have been on mac for many years now since I got tired of constantly having trouble mounting mac discs on my pc and the other way around. It probably works better today, but I would seriously consider looking into what the other guys in your area use. There is no reason to be the only pc guy in an all-mac neighborhood (or the opposite).
I live in Copenhagen, Denmark, and I have made around 15 feature films as supervising sound editor /sound designer over the last 10 years. I have only once encountered a pc based system in audio post, that I had to exchange files with. It was a foley recording facility in Paris, France, which used Pyramix. They were able to export their project into an old ProTools format, and I was able to import it. I have recieved ProTools files from Stockholm, Prague, Germany, Macedonia, New York and London, most of them using mac as their platform.
If mac is the answer, you may have to spend more on the computer, but you might spend a lot less time on converting files. Go for the solution with the least technological hassle, and spend more time on working with sound.
-Morten
Comment: it is MUCH better now, Morten. there's no time spent converting files if the system is set up properly. i wouldn't have made the switch to pc if the workflow wasn't efficient.
Comment: That is good to hear, Shaun.
Comment: +1 to Shaun.  I'm a PC user and most of my peers are shocked when they find out... because when we've worked together over the years, even with large stages on big shows, they never knew I wasn't using a Mac.
Answer: If you and who you work with stick to the supported and standard file formats (which have cross-platform and cross-application support), then no.
One situation where you could run into problems is if your client uses Apple's software (e.g. Final Cut). As obviously Apple's file formats have little to no support on Windows.
Comment: MacDrive from Media Four eliminates any issues with Mac files on Windows systems, but it's really only a problem if you're trying to copy files from Mac formatted drives. Transferring via FTP/Dropbox/etc., unformatted flash based media (how you bought it) or data DVDs is not an issue.
Answer: When it came to the comments I got a bit lost about Juornaling but overall from what I've read I should be safe enough with a PC if I use Mac Drive.
Comment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journaling_file_system  (Think of it like auto saves every so often versus everything being held in RAM - journaling is a different concept, but the basic metaphor explains the gist of it - essentially, you always want an Journaled file system, such as HFSJ versus vanilla HFS)
Comment: Another way to understand it is, let's say you have one HFS drive and one HFSJ drive, both of which are trasnfering files to your main drive. If the HFSJ one crashes mid transfer (loses bus power, system crashes, etc), as long as the hardware didn't short out or something, when you fire everything up again usually the only corruption (if there is even noe) will be on whatever specific file was being transferred at that moment. If this happens with an HFS drive, it's quite safe to assume the entire directory structure/catalog file is completely corrupted, so a great chance everything is lost.

Moving from mac to pc for post


A Frozen Metropolis

Question: Scientists have discovered an Earth-like planet in another solar system, with the same gravity, atmosphere composition, etc, and they decide to colonize it. There is only one problem, though. It is beyond the Goldilocks zone. Not so far as to make it completely uninhabitable, but enough to freeze the whole surface. There is an underground lake deep under the surface, so water would not be a problem. Would it be possible to sustain towns, and even cities, when the only season is winter? Could it even be remotely plausible?
Comment: Hi, Firebird, welcome to Worldbuilding! Do you want to just sustain human colonies (inside the domes or caves), or you want to terraform your planet?
Comment: Well, we have human settlements in places like Alaska and Greenland, where it's cold for large portions of the year, so I don't see why not.
Comment: @Alexander inside domes or caves
Answer: The same atmospheric composition must mean that there is life already - presumably a Great Oxygenation Event has happened.
Indeed, 'Snowball Earth' is the term given to our planet when it was completely covered in ice, glaciers and snow, for a period spanning over 300 million years. During this period life existed in many niches and in fact thrived, with evidence of microbial life (photosynthesising from within ice), hydrothermal vents, geothermal hotspots and underwater lakes.
In your situation the planet will still have some geothermal energy for which could be used to sustain your community quite adequately. Rarely do you get a planet without some form of molten core or magma - particularly in your case when the planet is similar in composition. This would be a good power source to heat your city and crops, if surface solar panels or wind power is insufficient.
Regardless life would still be able to exist in the niches above too.
So your frozen metropolis is very easy to thrive, in fact if we can journey through the vacuum of space, we can easily exist on frozen worlds.
Answer: Not a problem.
You only going to need an energy source. If can be arrays of solar panels, wind turbines, nuclear, or more futuristically, thermonuclear reactors, or anything else. As long as the environment is not particularly hostile (too hot, high radiation, high gravity etc.) and you have access to necessary elements (hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, they even can be imported), your colony is good to go.
Inside a dome (or another type of enclosed habitat) a comfortable temperature can be maintained, and all necessary foods can be grown. The outdoors can be a frozen winterland, but indoors you can house as many people as your energy resources will allow.

A Frozen Metropolis


set up amazon auto scaling command line tools windows

Question: i have downloaded the zip file of amazon auto scaling command line tools from this link:
http://aws.amazon.com/developertools/2535
after having unziped it,and renamed it AWS (C:\AWS)
i have installed java and  created a bat file following the read me instructions below(README file):
 **Auto Scaling Command Line Tools
Installation:

Ensure that JAVA version 1.5 or higher is installed on your system: (java -version)
Unzip the deployment zip file
Set the following environment variables:
3.1 AWS_AUTO_SCALING_HOME - The directory where the deployment files were copied to
    check with:
       Unix: ls ${AWS_AUTO_SCALING_HOME}/bin should list as-create-auto-scaling-group ...)
       Windows: dir "%AWS_AUTO_SCALING_HOME%\bin" should list as-create-auto-scaling-group ...)
3.2 JAVA_HOME - Java Installation home directory
Add ${AWS_AUTO_SCALING_HOME}/bin (in Windows: "%AWS_AUTO_SCALING_HOME%\bin") to your path
Configuration:

Provide the command line tool with your AWS user credentials.  There
are two ways you can provide credentails: AWS keys, or using X.509
certificates.
Using AWS Keys

Create a credential file: The deployment includes a template file ${AWS_AUTO_SCALING_HOME}/credential-file-path.template.
 Edit a copy of this file to add your information.
 On UNIX, limit permissions to the owner of the credential file: $ chmod 600 .
There are several ways to provide your credential information:
  a. Set the following environment variable: AWS_CREDENTIAL_FILE=
  b. Alternatively, provide the following option with every command --aws-credential-file
  c. Explicitly specify credentials on the command line: --I ACCESS_KEY --S SECRET_KEY

Using X.509 Certs

Save your cetificate and private keys to files: e.g. my-cert.pem
and my-pk.pem.
There are two ways to provide the certificate information to the
command line tool
a.  Set the following environment variables:
    EC2_CERT=/path/to/cert/file
    EC2_PRIVATE_KEY=/path/to/key/file
b.  Specify the files directly on command-line for every command
     --ec2-cert-file-path=/path/to/cert/file --ec2-private-key-file-path=/path/to/key/file
Running:
To check that your setup works properly, run the following command:
$ as-cmd --help
  You should see the usage page for all Auto Scaling commands
$ as-describe-auto-scaling-groups --headers
  You should see a header line. If you have auto scaling groups
  already configured, you will see a description line for each
  auto scaling group**

My  bat file looks like:
<code> REM Path should have bin\java.exe under it
 set AWS_AUTO_SCALING_HOME="C:\AWS"
 set JAVA_HOME="C:\Program Files\Java\jre7"
 set PATH="%PATH%";"%AWS_AUTO_SCALING_HOME%\bin"
 REM Path to Primary Key and Certificate retrieved from AWS
 set EC2_PRIVATE_KEY="C:\AWS\pv_pk.pem"
 set EC2_CERT="C:\AWS\cert-pk.pem"
 cls
 cmd
</code>
after executing my the bat file ,i try to execute the command ec2_describe_groups it's not recognized.What's wrong with my bat file.
Answer: the command is "ec2-describe-group" not "ec2_describe_groups" please see the documentation here http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/CommandLineReference/ApiReference-cmd-DescribeSecurityGroups.html


Remove and replace 5.4 liter motor on 2007 F 150

Question: Wondered if any one can give an idea of how many hours, by flat rate manual , are allowed for removal and replacement of complete engine assy?
Comment: Can you be more specific? R&R times vary from 12-22 hours (22 doesn't include manifolds etc...) depending on how disassembled the engine is and whether it's RWD or 4WD. A Safe estimate would probably be in the 28-30 hour area including tune parts fluids etc... Removal Installation and Overhauling shows as 36 hours.
Comment: Book time or time by skilled mech on a bonus scheme or time by a novice reading each step in the manual?
Comment: @SolarMike - Book time, as in, what does a reputable shop who charges by the book? Not how long does it take to do ... this is the *whole* purpose behind *book hours*, is it not? To have a general idea of how long the industry says it will take and can therefore charge the customer? I'm sure you have access to this type of information ... or am I making a bad assumption?
Comment: Book time is that specified by the manufacturer as the benchmark time for qualified and model-trained mechanics / technicians with access to all the manufacturer supplied special tools and equipment. Amazingly I don't have that manual as supplied by Ford ... Do you?
Comment: @Pᴀᴜʟsᴛᴇʀ2 after a google search - the most common indication was $1000 for the work but no mention of time...
Comment: @SolarMike - Don't need something provided by Ford. Most reputable shops (even those which aren't run by Ford) have such manuals (or can look it up online through subscription services). I thought with your connections you'd have it available to you. Obviously I was wrong. No worries. I'm sure someone will have it available.
Answer: Book time is 14.8 hours. This includes transferring all fuel and electrical units.
It does not include transferring of optional equipment. Source is Repair-Source
Answer: I pulled a 5.4 out of a 2007 F150 2WD and put a new remanned in the truck in under 10 hours. So saying anywhere close to 30 hours is out of this world rediculous. I didn't have a vehicle lift or any of that.
Comment: Welcome to Motor Vehicle Maintenance & Repair! Remember, flat rate (or book rate) is the hours the repair manual states it should take to get the job done. This has nothing to do with how fast the mechanic can actually do the work. A good mechanic can do it faster, while a more meticulous one might do it slower. Book hours were put in place a long time ago so the customer wouldn't get screwed. It levels the playing field between the shop and the customer.


Storing a Pre-Hung Door

Question: I ordered a pre hung exterior steel door the other day, and now I don't think I will be available to install it the day it arrives. Is it better to pop the door out of the frame and store them separately, or leave the door in place? TIA!
Answer: Keep the door in the frame. This will help prevent the frame from warping.
Store the door as upright as possible to prevent the frame (especially if it's wood) from warping. Even a steel door frame could bend a bit if it's stored at an angle.
Answer: It doesn't matter. They're stood and leaned in stores and lumber yards for years. Unless you have extreme moisture exposure the wood will be fine. Most jambs are made from clear or finger-jointed boards and don't really warp, and you're straightening it all when you hang it properly anyway. (If you think hanging an exterior door mostly involves nails through brick mold, think again. :) )
Comment: They are, absolutely, leaned in all sorts of ugly directions at the store, but for _years_? That's a retailer that needs to reassess his stocking habits.
Comment: Some sizes are less popular, and lumber yards in particular have many dusty corners where returns and defectives linger.

Storing a Pre-Hung Door


Use DD-WRT router as repeater without first router access?

Question: Is it possible to set up a DD-WRT router as a repeater or client bridge without having access to the gateway you are trying to repeat/bridge?
Comment: Can you clarify what it is you are trying to do. By "repeater or client bridge" do you mean it should bridge wireless clients and act as a range extender?
Comment: yeah, I guess simply put, a range extender
Comment: Unfortunately, that's not possible without cooperation from the other access point. The security scheme used by WiFi causes an access point to reject packets whose origin hardware address is not one of its clients unless a protocol like WDS is used, and WDS would have to be configured into the router. You can use two routers back-to-back to create a new WiFi network bridged to the original one.
Comment: I believe that DD-WRT can do this, because my friend used it to steal^H^H^H^H^Hborrow his neighbours unsecured WiFi
Comment: @Farseeker: Sure, you can use it to link wired clients into someone else's WiFi. And you can use two back-to-back to create a new wireless network bridged to the existing one.
Comment: @David Schwarts is it possible to create a client bridge off an access point? like a router that is already extending the original gateway? Let me explain my situation. I run all the IT aspects of a small non-profit library. They were recently given a room in a college library basement. There is wifi in the library upstairs, but it doesn't reach very well downstairs. The library wifi is secured, and the college IT department is swamped and can't help. With out the IT department's help, is it possible to extend the range of the wifi to the basement?
Answer: No. You can create your own WiFi that's routed to the existing WiFi. You can bridge wired clients to the existing WiFi. But bridging wireless clients will not work.
We tend to think of WiFi as working just like wired Ethernet. But unfortunately, it's really not. It has its own rules and this is one case where it's just different.
The short version of the problem is this: An access point will not accept packets with origin hardware addresses that are not paired with the access point. Since some clients won't be able to reach the existing WiFi network, they won't pair with it, and those access point will reject bridged/repeated packets from them.
What might work, and I stress might, is two bridges back-to-back, connected by wired Ethernet. The specifications say it shouldn't work, but in practice it seems to. Apparently, while the WiFi hardware isn't capable of proxy registration, the DD-WRT software is. Bridging from wired to wireless is done in software in these routers, and DD-WRT is smart enough to proxy register a software-bridged packet. (It knows it has to do the WiFi magic on behalf of its wired clients, since they obviously won't be able to do it themselves.)
For this setup, you connect two wireless routers, LAN-to-LAN. You configure the WiFi on one as a station on the existing WiFi. You configure the WiFi on the other as an access point on a new network. You will probalby need to use a different SSID though, so people will specifically have to choose to connect to your network.
Theoretically, you could use the same SSID and encryption, if any. This would allow clients to automatically connect to the strongest network. You will have two issues. First, you have to make sure your two routers don't connect to each other wirelessly. That obviously won't work. Second, clients will typically show a temporary disruption of service when they switch to and from your access point because the existing network won't know where to find them. MAC learning takes up to a minute. You might get complaints if you 'steal' people who momentarily came into range of your access point and experienced service disruptions as they switch to and from it.
Update: The way back-to-back bridges work is by a form of NAT. The bridge doesn't proxy register its clients but instead re-writes their source hardware addresses.
Comment: Actually, you can Bridge wirelessly. I am using it right now. I didn't even have access to the router. It was a unsecured linksys router running the default firmware. I have also done it at home on my 2WIRE secured router. But for some reason, using the same steps that worked at home and on the unsecured router, I cannot get it to work at the library. I must have a setting wrong somwhere, but I can't find out what exactly. Could a firewall setting prevent it?
Comment: It's sort of a firewall, but it's part of the hardware implementation of an access point. Unless WDS or the like is enabled, any packets with source hardware addresses not paired with the AP are dropped. It's part of 802.11. If you got it working, something is probably pairing those MACs with the AP. (Perhaps you found a rare router that uses software bridging for wireless-to-wireless? Perhaps you are internally using two radios? Hard to be sure. It's not supposed to work, but it sometimes does.)
Answer: The Repeater Bridge mode does what you're looking for, without access to the configuration of the gateway you're trying to repeat. All you need is the SSID and security key of the source network, and follow the instructions (precisely). Especially make sure that the DD-WRT repeater uses the same channel as the gateway to be repeated.
There's one caveat: the gateway to be repeated needs to use a static wi-fi channel. If it's set to change its channel automatically, you'll have to reconfigure the DD-WRT every time the channel changes.
For example when repeating wi-fi network "MyNetwork" with WPA2 key "secret" on channel 6 from a gateway, the configuration of the DD-WRT should essentially be this:

Set channel to 6, use wireless mode: Repeater Bridge, SSID "MyNetwork", security WPA2 with key "secret"
Virtual access point (optionally), SSID "MyVap", security WPA2 with key "myVapKey"
Additional config as per the Repeater Bridge instructions

What clients will see is three SSID's:

"MyNetwork", channel 6, key "secret" (the original network)
"MyNetwork", channel 6, key "secret" (the DD-WRT repeated network)
"MyVap", channel 6, key "myVapKey" (the virtual access point of the DD-WRT)

When clients are configured with the SSID "MyNetwork" and key "secret" they will transparently connect to either the original (1) and repeated (2) networks. How the client handles this depends on the client, and in my experience this works smooth with most devices. When moving away from the original AP and toward the DD-WRT, eventually the client will detect that the wi-fi signal is low, search for a new access point and connect to the repeater. And vice versa.
The virtual access point (3) is not necessary for this to function, but it's practical if you want to make sure that you're connecting to the DD-WRT and not the original gateway.


How to turn inviscid data to viscous?

Question: I have used Panel method to calculate Cp vs x/c graph and CL. But as panel method assumes attached flow it does not give an flow separation and thus in CL vs alpha graph I could not find any stall. My question is, I have all the inviscid datas, how do I turn into viscous flow data? I know that I have to involve reynold's number, skin friction coefficient and all to make it stall in CL vs alpha curve. How to I do that? What formulas, equations or method I should use?
Answer: You can still use the panel method and implement along with it an integral method for the boundary layer (like it is done in the xfoil software). The lift will be modified with the theory of displacement while for the drag the viscous drag will be computed directly by considering the friction coefficient found thanks to the integral method. One of the most common integral method (and one of the most used at my knowledge) is the Thwaites's method. You can find a reference here and an awesome review about the different methods here. I describe here one of the possible procedure:

You define the stagnation point on your profile, starting from the pressure coefficient distribution obtained from your panel method
Strating from the stagnation point the BL that is developing is laminar, hence to compute the friction coefficient (and the displacement boundary layer) you will use initially the Thwaites method. Here I will limit in describing this method. If you want to know more about transition you can couple with Michel criteria and you will find all the information in the hereby reference.

The Thwaites method is an empirical method based on:
 The Von Karman integral equation for the BL:
$$
\frac{d \theta}{dx}+\frac{\theta}{U_e}\left(2+H\right) \frac{d U_e}{dx}=\frac{1}{2}c_f
$$
 The shape factor (we define as $\delta^*$ the displacement BL thickness)
$$
H=\frac{\delta^*}{\theta}
$$
 A local Reynolds number
$$
Re_{\theta}=\frac{U_e\theta}{\nu}
$$
 The Thwaites parameter
$$
l=\frac{1}{2}Re_{\theta}c_f
$$
 The Polhausen parameter, that gives an index of the local pressure:
$$
\lambda=\frac{\theta^2}{\nu}\frac{d U_e}{dx}
$$
The Von Karman equation has three unknowns $($\theta$, $H$, $c_f$ )$, and hence we will need 2 closure equations. The first one is an empirical relation:
$$
\frac{U_e}{\nu}\frac{d\left(\theta^2\right)}{dx}=2\left[l-\left(2+H\right)\lambda\right]\approx 0.45-6\lambda
$$
By substitution we arrive at the following ODE:
$$
\frac{d}{dx}\left(U_e^6\theta^2\right)=0.45\nu U_e^5
$$
It is here that you will use your velocity computed with your panel method. in fact $U_e$ is the sum of the asymptotic velocity and of the perturbation velocity computed with your non viscous method. In this way you will obtain $\theta$ and it will be possible for you to compute the necessary quantity for each point of the discretization.
Starting from the stagnation point you will need a first $\theta$. This is approximated throught the following empirical relation:
$$
\theta=\sqrt{\frac{0.075 \nu}{U_e/R_0}}
$$
For the points that will come after this, after having computed $\theta$ you can obtain $\lambda$ using a second empirical relation and finally the friction coefficient $c_f$:
\begin{equation}
    \lambda=\frac{\theta^2}{\nu}\frac{dU_e}{dx}
\end{equation}
\begin{equation}
    l(\lambda) = \left\{ \begin{array}{rcl}
0.22+1.5\lambda-1.8\lambda^2 & ,& \lambda>0\\
0.22+1.402\lambda+\frac{0.018\lambda}{0.107+\lambda} & , & \lambda<0
\end{array}\right.
\end{equation}
\begin{equation}
    c_f=\frac{l(\lambda)}{1/2 Re_{\theta}}
\end{equation}
once obtained all the local $c_f$ it is possible to obtain the total $c_{d,f}$ by the integration of the local contribution over the profile.
Through the computation of the displacement thickness you can start to correct your lift coefficient with the viscous data.
To predict the stall the queation is a bit more complicated. I suggest you to have a look at the paper I proposed you for the transition and  to this paper. Even if it is not of the best quality is quite explicative.
Comment: How can I use panel method datas to compute velocities for viscous mode? I mean I have the slope angles for all the panels, beta angles, phi angles, length of each panels, tangential velocities of each panels, pressure coefficients of each panel, coordinates of all the control points and all. These all, I have stored in different columns of excel. How to manipulate these datas to turn into viscous mode datas? I am a bit confused how can I use these datas in Thwaites method? Please help!

datas are here--> https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DKVyhafMxI-0isfE0NcqylkEgVNyGQE4/view?usp=sharing
Comment: I tried to answer tou in a more extensive way.
Comment: Thank you so much! I can not explain how much I am relieved... Thank you so so much for helping me...! You are awesome, man
Comment: Can you give me your LinkedIn ID so that I can connect with you and get to know you more? I have calculated so many things, and things are getting so complicated at each step. I believe I am so close but still, I am not able to calculate the CL vs alpha curve accurately and get the curve to stall. We can also discuss these things in gmeet/ video call if you could just give me some of your time. I am already following you on twitter but can not start a conversation there cause twitter does not allow that. However, I am just asking for a healthy scientific discussion for a scientific research.

How to turn inviscid data to viscous?


Facebook Shared Album

Question: I created on a shared album. It is possible that one day in the future, I may delete my account. If I, as the owner of a shared album on Facebook deactivate my account, does that delete the shared album?
Answer: Yes, that deletes the shared album as well since it's associated with your account.
Answer: Usually if the owner you have shared album got deactivate then the album would be removed.The thing is if an user is sharing  the album then the album wont be sync & downloaded  to other account but the link is added to the other account so once it is deactivated,album would be disappeared.

Facebook Shared Album


Why is IntelliSense support for C# lacking when compared to VB.NET?

Question: For me, developing for the Java ecosystem payed the bills for many years.  However, for several years now, I have been working primarily in the .Net space.  Initially, my transition into the .Net world consisted of writing and maintaining VB.Net code.  VS provided almost all of the nice intellisense support I came to expect after years of working with the Eclipse/Java combo.  Eventually my employer decided to do new development in C#.  My initial impression of the intellisense support for C# was less than stellar.  At times it seems as if VS has no background compiler for C#, but occasionally it does something smart, indicating there is some background processing there, but not quite enough to really boost productivity in meaningful ways.  Is there any sane technical reason for this discrepancy regarding intellisense support between the two languages?
Comment: The only hiccups I've found are that C# is a case-sensitive language, so sometimes I don't trigger it properly. Can you post an example of what you mean?
Comment: It's all about VB.NET has the background compilation from the beginning.
Comment: C#'s Intellisense updates after a source code edit, even before a build/recompile; that's why I wondered whether the OP's machine is simply slow for some reason.
Comment: I find the new title much clearer.
Answer: There has been a gap between C# and VB for awhile now. VB generates a lot of code for you. For example, hitting enter after finishing an "If" statement will automatically add the "Then" at the end of that line if you left it off, and close it off with the "End If" portion. In C# it's up to you to add those starting and closing {} curly braces.
VB has had background compilation long before C#. In fact, that was one of the major appealing factors of using ReSharper, which provided such functionality. However, as of VS 2008 / .NET 3.5 SP1 that all changed. You can read Scott Gu's post about that here, but I'll paste the relevant part:

"The C# code editor now identifies and
  displays red squiggle errors for many
  semantic code issues that previously
  required an explicit compilation to
  identify.  For example, if you try to
  declare and use an unknown type in the
  C# code-editor today you won't see a
  compile error until you do a build.
  Now with SP1 you'll see live red
  squiggle errors immediately (no
  explicit compile required)."

Using CodeRush or ReSharper definitely enhances the experience with the autocompletion of common statements which would make a VB developer feel like there has been a seamless transition.
That doesn't quite address technical concerns, but the development teams are different and didn't necessarily do the same thing. In other words, there's not likely to be a shared approach. This blog post excerpt, by a Technical Lead on the VB team, supports this:

"Background compilation" is the
  feature in VB that gives you a
  complete set of errors as you type.
  People who move back and forth between
  VB and C# notice this, but VB-only
  developers may not realize that other
  languages such as C# don't always give
  you 100% accurate Intellisense and
  don't always give you all of the
  errors that exist in your code. This
  is because their Intellisense engines
  are separate, scaled-down compilers
  that don't do full compilation in the
  background. VB, on the other hand,
  compiles your entire project from
  start to finish as Visual Studio sits
  idle, allowing us to immediately
  populate the task list with completely
  accurate errors and allowing us to
  give you completely accurate
  Intellisense.

One final note is the recent Channel9 interview with the Group PM of the C#/VB/F# team, Luca Bolognese, where he emphasized how the languages are no longer going to stray off in different directions and will begin to share their similarities. So it looks like the future holds great things!
Comment: There is a small voice in some small, banal area of my brain thinking this is a bad idea. Why? These languages are not similar for pragmatic reasons. They should be allowed to evolve independently.
Comment: Sadly, I suspect this is the death knell for VB.Net.  MS is relegating it to second/third-class status.  I'm an old-school c/c++/java/c# (and unix guy) but I realized after working with VB.Net, that it is a damn fine language and has an undeserved crap rep among many in the programming community.  I will miss it.
Comment: @Todd: I've worked with both but prefer C# overall. The negativity you mention, from my understanding, was from the VB6 days. I worked w/VB.NET on a few projects & I've gained some healthy respect for it coming into it with a clean slate (C/C++/C# background, no VB6). I really doubt it's going anywhere anytime soon, or that C# will inherit its features then MS will close the curtains on it. Recently VB got XML literals and C# 2.0 got yield. Useful features. I'd welcome some convergence with VB implementing yield rather than having to write my own state machine for an iterator block.
Comment: I must admit that I haven't read all of this answer yet, but the first paragraph doesn't seem entirely accurate. You mention what essentially sounds like a code snippet for an If statement in VB - C# also has snippets like this: Type "if" and hit tab to generate the entire block. There are plenty of other similar snippets as well.
Comment: @Ryan: I'm familiar with code snippets, and they are useful, but as you stated you have to hit tab to generate them. My If Then example is not a snippet in that sense, but something the IDE does once you hit the right combination (no tab), just as the IDE reformats C# code after a closing brace/semicolon. VB handles that w/o me thinking, meanwhile in C# I'm more of a CTRL+K+D junkie. I imagine a VB dev going to C# quickly realizes how much VB did for them. Ex: the trivial code encapsulation between If Then/End If protects from unintended 1 line statements; absent C# {}s can spell debug trouble
Comment: @Ahmad: I can't say that I use VB too often, so I was under the assumption that snippets worked in the same way between them. Thanks for clearing that up!


near independence of markov chain observations at high lags

Question: I have to simulate independent draws from a very complicated distribution. They only feasible way appears to be using MCMC. I was considering running thousands of chains in parallel, but that would slow things down from me considerably. So I am running one long MCMC chain. Assuming that MCMC chain run did converge nicely ( I realize even determining this is practically impossible in general). . Can I argue that the thinned sample obtained from selecting every 100th observation (or at a sufficiently high lag at which the observed autocorrelation function is close to 0) effectively approximates ,in some sense, a i.i.d draw from the desired distribution. If yes, any references would be greatly appreciated.
Comment: yes - and that is what people usually do in statistics. You could try to plot the autocorrelation function to get an idea of the lag to be used. What is the dimension of the target probability distribution ?
Comment: 12. I want to justify the low correlation implies independence.
Answer: From talking to statisticians, it seems like the standard thing to do is assume a yes. For a specified sequence or thinning, one can create Markov chains which exhibit 0 autocorrelation but a 'very large' amount of dependence despite the thinning, but the idea is that this should be pretty pathological, and so you are probably 'pretty safe'. The examples that come to mind for me are chains like '$X_{t}$ is iid 0-1 for t not divisible by a million, and equal to the sum of the previous 999,999 $X_{s}$ mod 2 for t divisible by a million'
So, you won't get any sort of theoretical justification without telling us something about your chain, because there really are bad chains out there, where what you want fails badly... but in the real world, you can probably wave your hands. Note that just increasing your thinning isn't enough to get rid of this - for any finite amount of thinning, there are bad chains which horribly violate independence despite having 0 covariance.
There is a big world of convergence diagnostics out there. Gelman-Rubin, as pointed out, is a standard. Some other standards include the Geweke test, Mykland-Yu's Cusum test, Raftery-Lewis, and Heidelberg-Welch. There is a lot of literature on each of these, but with the slight exception of some easy calculations in Mykland-Yu, it is all extremely handwavey.
Answer: Hi,
Thinning samples won't change your target distribution. It's probably a good idea since you'll end up with very unweildy data files otherwise (A brief mention of this is made in Bayesian Data Analysis by Gelman et al page 295).
Another unrelated point is that even though running parallel chains won't help reach convergence faster, it does open up possibilities for testing convergence ( eg Gelman Rubin diagnostic ).
Comment: I am not attempting to change the target distribution, I am trying to get approximately independent samples from the target distribution.
Comment: Sorry if I wasn't clear ... basically what I was trying to say is that you can thin with whatever interval you like.  Your thinned set of samples will come from the same distribution as your unthinned set.
Comment:
I agree, but the autocorrelation among the members of the thinned
sample will be smaller in general (assuming the convergence went well), making it closer to being an independent sample.

I just found a link where the point I am trying to make has been made : http://bit.ly/dyIqEj .

However, the justification is too hand wavy for my taste, I would prefer a more mathematical justification.
Comment: No worries ... now I finally understand your question properly :). From my very hand wavy practical perspective it seems reasonable that if the thinned samples are not autocorrelated then they are independent? I'm not in a position to provide any rigorous proofs though .. sorry.


binding a datagrid to nested collections within collection

Question: I'm trying to bind a datagrid to data from within a collection of a collection of the datacontext.  The result should be as though all of the nested collections were just one collection with the parent collection properties still available.
For example
I have a series of products associated to an order and each product can have multiple cost values.  I want to be able show this data in a datagrid with a row showing each cost for every product ideally without grouping the data.
The structure is (pseudo, I'm using VB)
<code>Class Order
dim Reference as string
dim Order as Date
Dim Products as BindingList(of Product)
End Class

Class Product
Dim ProductName as string
Dim PartNumber as string
Dim Costs as BindingList(of Cost)
End Class

Class Cost
Dim Supplier As string
Dim Value as double
End Class
</code>
The DataGrid I'd like to see would be
ProductName | PartNumber | Supplier | Value
This would show all the costs associated to the order.
I can easily set the itemsource the datagrid to Products and create columns which bind to ProductName and PartNumber. However, how would I show the cost values and ensure that if a product had more than one cost, multiple lines for the same product was displayed?
I've seen examples which show dynamically creating extra columns for nested data but not extra rows
Hope this makes sense
Thanks
Answer: I think you'll have to use a DataGrid that allows hierarchical data. I use the one from Telerik and it's quite simple.


Particle hair colour

Question: Let's say I have a carpet with a picture of an ornament as a texture. The carpet is black and the  ornament white. I want the carpet to be with hair particles. My question is how can I colour the hair particles that form the ornament.
Comment: How detailed is Your ornament? if it is not to detailed, I would subdivide the mesh until I could weight paint the ornament manually via an overlay ref image.
Comment: @sorenfroststaal that's my problem, it's complex https://previews.123rf.com/images/turr17/turr171502/turr17150200235/36237627-floral-vector-oriental-pattern-with-arabesque-and-floral-elements-abstract-ornament-for-background-b.jpg (i've removed in photoshop the white trademark letters)
Answer: Okay, I tried to see if it was possible to model the pattern and got this result. I took a plane in top down mode and modelled it on top of the referance picture, and via array modifier and mirror came up with this result. I dont know if it is useable, as the computer I am currently using have some troubles, and crashes during hair simulation. Try it out and let me know if you can get some good results. You can add two seperate hair modifiers as it is 2 different meshes. So it should be possible. I am uncertain if the resolution of the mesh is high enough, or if the scene become too system heavy. Also there might be an issue with the hair modifier clutching the same amount of hair on the small faces as on the large faces.
The file is spread on 3 layers, so you can see some of the progress, and also contain the meshes before the modifiers are applied.

Comment: Thank you for all you work, but I was looking for a simple/automatic method, I mean what you did is time-consuming. I can't believe that blender doesn't a have an option for this. It's so basic. What if you want to make a tiger fur with the stripes and stuff. Or something more complex than this ornament. Thanks again for trying to help.
Comment: Yearh! I know what you mean! I actually also thought of the tiger example! I can't believe it either..

Particle hair colour


Interfacing atxmega128a with SD Card

Question: So I was trying to write a code to connect an SD card to my atxmega128 . Code is nearly ready but when I want to compile it in Atmel Studio, I get errors about not declaring some codes. Some of the undeclared codes are "PORTD , PORTD_DIR, ... " .
Question : Aren't these port codes part of the atmel studio software? Do I need to define some source codes for them ? What should I do to make it work ?
Comment: Did you forget to include ``? Are you writing IAR code for the GCC compiler?
Comment: Nope! I didn't forget that.
Answer: These sort of things should be included in avr/io.h, which you should be including at some point.  Check to make sure you have
<code>#include <avr/io.h>
</code>
in the appropriate locations (top of C files and/or included header files).
Comment: There is no iox128a.h.  Only iox128a1.h, iox128a1u.h, iox128a3.h, iox128a3u.h, and iox128a4u.h.  All of these files define PORTD and PORTD_DIR, among many other things.  However, you should not have to include anything beyond avr/io.h as this file will automatically include the device-specific file.  Are you correctly specifying what the target device is to the compiler?
Comment: I've included io.h and iox128a.h . problem still remains. actually there's nothing about ports and port_dir in these h files.
Comment: try #include "avr/io.h"
Answer: If you're using ASF then put an include to asf.h in the header file of the part you're working on. It's the easiest way to fix any of these problems.
<code>#include <asf.h>
</code>

Interfacing atxmega128a with SD Card


How do I send an arbitrary message to an ethereum address?

Question: How can I send a message to another Ethereum address? And how would that user receiving know that its a message? Is there an Ethereum wallet that will show that I sent a message to that address? And what is the max size I can send?
Answer: ethereume is not social media or any platform to contacting.
Only way to send msg is send msg as data by myetherwallet or some other method, he can check your msg by read input way in TX.
Answer: Ethereum itself does not provide a messaging service. But it provides an infrastructure that allows to build such applications, such as Toshi (formerly token) and Ethychat, for example. The notification of user depends, although it probably requires some external and most likely centralized part, since Ethereum does not provide a native support for that. Also the maximum length of the message depends on the application.
Additionally, Ethereum has Whisper, which is a protocol for secure messaging between DApps. This protocol seems to be the proper way to implement messaging on top of Ethereum, even though it does not seem to be used widespread.


Is it possible to overload the getValueAt method on the abstractTableModel?

Question: I am making a JTable that uses an arrayList for data population. I have two sets of data in the arrayList. one for one type of table and another for another type of table.
What I am hoping to do is overload the getValueAt method on the abstractTableModel so that it takes in an argument to which set of data I want.
Is this possible or should I think about this a different way?
Answer: Nobody stops you from overloading the method. It's just that the JTable code won't call your new method. You will have to overwrite the regular public Object getValueAt(int rowIndex, int columnIndex) and call the other method from inside it, based on your business logic.
Answer: you can do so, however the problem is that whoever in Swing components is calling this method currently would not call the oveloaded one :)
It would not be too much usefull.
From my point of view, you have basically 2 options, as you need to present the specific data in 2 different table types:

either I'd go for 2 different table models and keep all the data separated
or  the other approach might be to have some specific flag (new field) on model, that would indicate the table you use it in. This one could be set by setter or directly in constructor if you know which type you'd go for.

However the 1.st one would be a recommended way from my point of view.
Answer: There's nothing wrong with the accepted answer, but also consider a second TableModel that shares a reference to the given List with the first. A single JTable could display either model by simply invoking setModel().
In this exmaple, EnvDataModel obtains a its data via System.getenv(). A PropDataModel might obtain a its data via System.getProperties(). Both share access to System.
TableModel first = new EnvDataModel();
TableModel second = new PropDataModel();
JTable table = new JTable(fisrt);
...
table.setModel(second);


Getting Bitcoins into my wallet from MtGox

Question: I have purchased bitcoins from MtGox and they appear in my account. However, I can't figure out how to get them into my wallet.
Answer: I don't have a MtGox account myself, but you should be able to find a function on MtGox that is called "withdrawal" or similar. There it will ask you to provide your Bitcoin address and set the amount that you want to withdraw.
Be sure to use one of your own addresses from the wallet (depending on what wallet you use look for "receive payment" or "your address"), it has happened before that people used an address of one of their business contacts instead of their own.


reading data back from lm016l LCD(HD44780)

Question: How to read data back from a lm016l lcd(HD44780 based)?I couldn't find any useful data on reading except writing.I have followed hd44780 datasheet ,but when i try to display what i read back,the whole display clears off.could anyone help me with the reading procedure?
Comment: Are you absolutely sure that the R/W line is being driven HIGH during your read operation? If it isn't, you will overwrite the existing data, possibly clearing the display.
Answer: The datasheet seems fairly clear on this.
First, set the RS line appropriately ie LOW to read the status register, or HIGH to read the data register. If you reading data, the address register must of course be written-to first.

Set the R/W line HIGH.
Wait at least 40ns (\$t_{AS}\$)
Set the enable line E HIGH.
Wait at least 160ns for the data to settle (\$t_{DDR}\$)
Read the data lines.
Set the enable line E LOW
Wait at least 5ns (\$t_{DHR}\$)

I will add the caveat that I have never had a reason to read the character data before. However I've not had a problem reading the status register (RS=LOW).

EDIT ...
In answer to your comment about 4 bit mode, I'm not aware of any problem (although I have not personally used 4 bit mode). I would add that I have always used the initialization procedure on pages 45-46 rather than rely on the automatic initialization working correctly, but I doubt that this is an issue if you can write to the display OK.
Are you sure that the display clears as a direct result of the read operation, or is it possible that a previous write operation has cleared the display, resulting in the read operation returning space characters?
Comment: thanks for your reply Mike.still it doesn't work.I'm using the LCD in 4 bit mode.Anything else there I should be taken care of when using LCD in 4 bit mode?
Comment: @raforanz - I have added some extra remarks, but I'm not aware of any problem in 4 bit mode.


Generating 3D noise quickly in python

Question: I need a method to generate 3D simplex noise in python rather quickly. What methods are there out there to solve this problem?
Answer: $ pip install noise

http://pypi.python.org/pypi/noise/

This package is designed to give you simple to use, fast functions for
  generating Perlin noise in your Python programs. Perlin noise is famously
  called the "salt" of procedural generation, as it adds considerable flavor in
  its application. Noise is commonly used for imparting realism in textures,
  animation and other procedural content generation -- placement of hairs,
  heights of mountains, density of forests, waving of a flag, etc. etc.. ....
The noise library includes native-code implementations of Perlin "improved"
  noise and Perlin simplex noise.

Example code is included in the package, e.g. 2dtexture:
Answer: use a mod function with a suitable period. there are quite a few pages around the www explaining mod functions.
just make sure it is also suitable for 3 dimensions, some mods that are suitable for 1 or 2 dimensions may not be suitable over 3.
Answer: For more info.
http://snup.org/code-snippets/1153/python-n-dimensional-simplex-noise/
It has a simple code to generate simplex noise.
Comment: The link is dead now so this answer is useless now :-(

Generating 3D noise quickly in python


Spoof sender through Gmail SMTP in Thunderbird

Question: Gmail allows its users to send emails as though from another email address, as long as that address has been verified. Is doing so possible through Thunderbird and the Gmail SMTP servers?
Answer: Yes, as long as the e-mail address is verified in your Gmail account and you can send messages from it using Gmail's regular web interface.
Just add a new email account to Thunderbird with the appropriate name and e-mail address and configure it to use smtp.gmail.com with your usual credentials.
This can be in a new Profile, or an additional Identity in the same Profile.

Using Identities
When you configure an account, Thunderbird creates a default "identity" for the account that contains information like your name, your email address, the location where your messages should be stored, signature, etc. You can manually create additional identities for your account (via Tools > Account Settings…, Manage Identities). When you create (or reply) to a message, you can specify any of the identities you have configured by selecting it from the From drop-down list.
Read more: Home / Thunderbird / Using Identities

Create a New Identity:

In Thunderbird, click Tools > Account Settings…
Select the desired account from the list on the left, then click the Manage Identities button in the bottom right.
Click Add
In the the identity dialog, you'll specify:

Settings: name, address, signature, etc
Copies & Folders: cc, bcc, and where to store messages
Composition & Addressing: text format, quote management, signature, etc
Security: digital signatures and encryption
Source: Thunderbird Support, Using Identities


Finding the right DeleteCases pattern for <<199>>

Question: I have a list in Mathematica with several items like <<199>> and <<104>>, I would like to get rid of them using DeleteCases, but none of the patterns I have tried so far has worked.
Comment: `<<199>>` typically indicates that 199 items are not *displayed* in the output, however, those items are still part of the list.  Are you certain that this is not the case in your application?
Comment: `_Skeleton -> Sequence[]` (related: http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/q/15188/5)
Answer: Presumably you are dealing with something like this:
x1 = {1, 2, 3, 4, Range[0, 10, 1/3], 5, Sequence @@ Range[6, 99]};

x2 = Shallow[x1]

{1,2,3,4,{0,1/3,2/3,1,4/3,5/3,2,7/3,8/3,3,<<21>>},5,6,7,8,9,<<90>>}

You may not have an explicit Shallow or Short in your code; rather it may be applied automatically as part of a formatting function.
It is important to understand that this appearance of Skeleton is typically only a matter of formatting; underlying that display form is a complete expression.
Perhaps you only want to see the entire expression (see InputForm) but since you are seeking to use DeleteCases I assume you wish to work with this display form itself.  How you do that will depend on the origin of the expression.  In my example above Shallow does not actually change the expression; it remains as an invisible head that is not displayed in the output, but rather changes how the output is displayed.  (This is similar to other formatting wrappers such as MatrixForm.)  To operate on the display form one must actually convert the expression into Box form, as explained here: Graphics in Notebook Different from Graphics Expression?  Further, there appears to be a bug in parsing the Box form RowBox[{"\[LeftSkeleton]", "21", "\[RightSkeleton]"}] therefore one cannot directly use ToExpression which would simplify this operation.  However one can still use patterns that operate on the Box form expression itself:
Replace[
  ToBoxes[x2],
  h_[x___, ",", RowBox[{"\[LeftSkeleton]", _, "\[RightSkeleton]"}]] :> h[x],
  {0, -1}
] // ToExpression

{1, 2, 3, 4, {0, 1/3, 2/3, 1, 4/3, 5/3, 2, 7/3, 8/3, 3}, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9}

Another approach would be to mimic the behavior of Shallow and circumvent it.  For example:
Replace[
 x1,
 a_ /; Length[a] > 10 :> Take[a, 10],
 {0, -1}
]

{1, 2, 3, 4, {0, 1/3, 2/3, 1, 4/3, 5/3, 2, 7/3, 8/3, 3}, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9}

I'll wait for a better description of the problem you actually face before taking this further.


My profile picture seems to have vanished?

Question: My profile picture (or whatever the kids are calling it today) is gone and I don't have another one to upload. Is there a stored copy somewhere? That took me a long time to make.
Answer: I found copies of your previous profile pictures here:

https://i.stack.imgur.com/JZEl9.jpg
https://www.gravatar.com/avatar/4de3df4fa010cd20c1c226fda92b3b83?s=512&d=identicon&r=PG

But please don't use, on this site, the one that's a modified version of an image of Hitler (see also As a moderator, how do I handle a potentially inappropriate profile picture?).
Comment: I've little or no insight into why you posted it (and I don't assume that you did it "for the purpose of offending people"); but if (or because) other people react to it, it's easier (less work) for me and for other moderators if don't use it.
Comment: Thank you for finding it but that isn't Hitler, it's Angulimala. You can tell by the "Metta smile" and the title "Metta for Bullies" that it isn't the Hitler like you are thinking. The point is to remind people that we are Hitler and Hitler can change into Angulimala.  I love that picture because it's a teaching in itself. It makes me feel that if this horrible guy can do it, then so can everyone. You would have known this is someone would have asked.  I'm a little offended that you think so little of me that I would put a picture up for the purpose of offending people.
Comment: Really you don't? Then I should appoligize, sorry :) This comment is reasonable enough I suppose, maybe I am the one who is  assuming things, huh? I know you are well intentioned.
Comment: Please, the next time you have no insight maybe you could ask me? ...anyway I just told you and then you say you have no insight? I'm kinda surprised by that. What am I missing here? :)
Answer: I removed your picture 2 days ago while at the same time sending you a moderator message explaining the reason why.
This is clearly a picture of Hitler and such material is not allowed on Buddhism SE.
Such an avatar:

Depicts or promotes hate in any form and
Insults, is insulting to or negatively objectifies those belonging to a certain race, gender or religion.

Please refrain from using such images on Buddhism SE in the future.
Comment: @ChrisW It's not a big deal. I must admit, I am merging you and Lanka together and that isn't fair. I can see your trying to do the right thing. Thank you. :)
Comment: Where did you send the message? To my email because I never got anything here although it's not outside the realm of possibility that I missed it or something.
Comment: Hello Lanka, I appreciate all your feedback....            How does it promote hate? Why does it promote hate?  Where are you getting that? What is "such" images? I have no idea where your line that can't be crossed  is exactly so maybe all images uploaded should be checked by you first to make sure you agree before an image is uploaded?
Comment: @MettaforBullies If you read [this topic](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/243285/139866) (including all comments), moderators don't have "a clear policy about what sorts of images are inappropriate". Instead they must "discuss the problematic image in mod-only chat rooms, and in doubtful cases, consult the community team". However "the most common offenders seem to be explicit nudity and Nazi symbols".
Comment: @MettaforBullies. See the answer I just wrote.
Comment: @ChrisW There is no Nazi symbol. The purpose of the image isn't to offend anyone it's quite the opposite. Instead of asking me, you go ask other people! I mean that's just common courtesy. Even when I tell you what the thing is about you still say I can't upload it? You said you didn't think I was offending people, or something...I guess I read it wrong.
Answer:
Hello Lanka, I appreciate all your feedback....            How does it promote hate? Why does it promote hate?  Where are you getting that? What is "such" images? I have no idea where your line that can't be crossed  is exactly so maybe all images uploaded should be checked by you first to make sure you agree before an image is uploaded?

You are welcome.
As far as I know this is the first time a profile-picture has been checked and moderated in my time on Buddhism SE.
I had no experience regarding this issue so I asked in a chat room for all Stack Exchange Network moderators on how to proceed and if they knew about any guidelines/politics regarding inappropriate profile pictures.
Another moderator sent me the guideline "As a moderator, how do I handle a potentially inappropriate profile picture?". Be sure to read it through, comments too. As you see there does not exist a rigid formular on how to deal with these things so in the end its a decision made by the moderator in agreement with other moderators from the same SE, e.g. Buddhism SE.
As ChrisW also mentions then images displaying nudity and Nazi-symbols are not welcome.
I also discussed the procedure with the other moderators which is to remove the inappropriate picture and sent a moderator message to the user explaining the reason behind the decision and give a warning.
If the user continues to upload inappropriate pictures then a timed suspension-period will follow.
Hope this helps.
Comment: A next step (or *another* step) might be to confirm with a community moderator (i.e. with Stack Exchange employee) whether the specific picture is acceptable? I think there's reason to find it questionable, at least ... and having to ask/bother an SE employee about this could be avoided, if the OP would simply desist from using this image.
Comment: @ChrisW. I agree. Answer edited.


In multiple regression, a coefficient gets opposite sign in subsample than in the full sample

Question: In a multiple regression, the regression coefficient of the two subsamples is opposite to that of the full sample. Both coefficients are significant. The sum of the number of obs in the two subsamples is equal to that of the full sample. Is this normal? What are the possible causes? Thanks.
Comment: Sounds like a case of [Simpson's paradox](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox) (- see the diagram in particular). What are these subsamples? Are you splitting on the values of one dichotomous variable?
Comment: Yes, I split the data based on whether they are pre-year 2000 or post-year 2000
Answer: Consider the following data (low noise, so you can see it with small sample size)
<code> x    y   g
 1  16.1  1
 2  16.9  1
 3  17.9  1
 4  19.1  1
10   5.9  2
11   7.1  2
12   8.1  2
13   8.9  2
</code>
If $g$ represented the before vs the after, then each could have a line with slope coefficient of one sign, while the overall data (ignoring the variable $g$) had a line with slope coefficient of the opposite sign:

The red and black lines are individual regression lines, the blue line the overall line. The right thing to do in this data is to add the factor $g$ as a predictor in the regression model (e.g. to add an indicator variable that is "1" when in the second group and "0" otherwise), either as main effect only (for parallel lines) or with interaction (for two lines of different slope).
This is an example of Simpson's paradox - though it's not particularly paradoxical, since it's really just failing to account for an important variable.
So yes, it's possible for example, for the level to change between the two periods, which could result in flipping the sign when you ignore the time variable, as in the diagram  above. Since it's quite easy for this to happen, my guess would be Simpson's paradox.
Comment: An example from Peter Huber, http://www.amazon.com/Data-Analysis-Learned-Probability-Statistics/dp/1118010647/ y is expenditure on cosmetics, x is income, g is gender. In each case expenditure increases with income, but women have higher intercept and lower average income. Similar to the diagram above: schematically women are black data points, men are red. I'm not clear whether the data were real.
Comment: Simpson's paradox is a veridical paradox in Quine's sense. What seems false or impossible is seen to be true or possible on more careful examination. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox#Quine.27s_classification_of_paradoxes
Comment: @NickCox Yes, I get that it formally counts as a paradox in that sense. I guess my issue is that many of those (and that is one, at least for me) seem rather less paradoxical than others. But it's an issue I've been aware of so long (and that I have explained so many times) that I guess I've lost the sense that it can be so surprising.
Comment: I agree. The difficulties in statistics for me are two-fold (1) recognising it in a fresh dataset (even though you have met it before), especially when it is only one facet of a pattern of relations (2) needing a graph to make it clear, to oneself and to others. Do people who work with tables all the time find it easy to spot in tables, even with all categorical data? In regression problems, you really need a graph.
Comment: That's very interesting! I just tried  including a dummy for the time variable. The full sample results are now consistent with those of the two subsamples!!! Now it's time to go back and figure out why this has happened. Thanks a bunch for enlightening me on this issue.


Entity framework 4 - Table with Identity column addition

Question: I have a table defined in a SQL Server database as follows
Columns

MID     Int foreign Key
MRUOMID Int foreign Key

All columns in this table are foreign keys and referring to other entities.
I wish to add an Identity column to this table. If I do so and update the EDMX model from the database, I get the following error.

problem in mapping fragments starting at 7462. You must specify mapping for all key properties.

I need an identity column to be added which I can refer to in my Entity model further.
Please let me know on this issues.
Thanks.
Answer: While updating, make sure you include the foreign keys too.


Modifying Mix Mode Modular Arithmetic in IDEA Cipher

Question: IDEA uses Mix Mode Modular Arithmetic that includes Addition Modulo $2^{16}$ and Multiplication Modulo  $2^{16}+1$. If Multiplication Modulo with  $2^{16}$ is used instead of $2^{16}+1$ (where $2^{16}$ is not a prime field) how this modification affects IDEA (specifically Decryption & Probability distribution).
Comment: @poncho No, I m doing some research on Mix Mode Modular Arithmetic
Comment: Is this a homework question?
Answer: If replacing IDEA's multiplication modulo $2^{16}+1$ by multiplication modulo $2^{16}$ (and dropping the replacement of $0$ by $2^{16}$ on input, and vice versa on output), then

For the cipher to be reversible, we need to use odd subkeys for these that enter a multiplier ($k_1$, $k_4$, $k_5$, $k_6$ of rounds, and half rounds for the first two). This follows from the fact that $x\mapsto k\cdot x\bmod m$ for $0\le x<m$ is reversible if and only if $k$ is coprime with $m$; that is, when $k$ is odd for $m$ a power of two.
There is no longer any operation in the modified IDEA that diffuses a bit flip to the right within a 16-bit word. This is a complete disaster. For example, it allows a trivial distinguisher: randomly changing the high order byte of 16-bit words of input has no action on the low-order bytes of the 16-bit words of the ciphertext output! And I guess key recovery (perhaps of an equivalent key) is feasible by attacking the cipher and sub-keys bit-by-bit within 16-bit words.


How to bind my controls permanently?

Question:
Possible Duplicate:
Can I get Skyrim to remember my custom keybindings?

When I change my Skyrim controls, the next time I want to play the game, I need to change them again.
Can I permanently change my controls? If yes, how?
Answer: Are you running the game as an Administrator? If not, the game's config.ini file is not being saved because of permission problems.

How to bind my controls permanently?


"Web services" menu is missing

Question: I faced a problem with the menu item "Web services". I tried to add a 3d party module, but I couldn't do that because in my admin menu System I couldn't find the "Web services" menu item.
I already check all models, controllers, and config XML files. All the same as in default Magento installation. I have not any modules that can impact on that menu. Also, SOAP installed and enabled.
Answer: I've fixed this problem.

Got to the  "app\etc\modules"
Find files Mage_Api.xml   Mage_Api2.xml    Mage_Oauth.xml
In these files, you need to change false to true
rebuild Magento cache

"Web services" menu is missing