securing my product image that i am selling online

Question: I am an online tunics seller. I buy my product from some companies in India and the company itself do online retail like me. I want to sell my products in the US. I don't want my customers to know from where i am buying my products.. Especially not through my product picture. I added watermarks, change the background and tried to search my product image in google, but i can see the manufacturer as well as other sellers selling the same product with the same image. I completely understand that its almost impossible to hide those manufacturers, but my question is can I make my image more secured, so customers can't search other online sellers who is selling the same product like mine, through my product image. I have added one of my pictures below. I have 1000 more pictures too.
Answer: If you are using the same image online the manufacturer is using online you can't obfuscate that fact. The connection will be discovered if someone wishes to look hard enough.
In addition, if you are trying to alter the image to be different than the manufacturer's image but the actual product is the same, you would be showing images which are not representative of the items you are selling. That may present legal issues due to misrepresentation.
Ultimately, I do not think this is a graphic design question. It's a business management question.
Answer: Flip the image horizontally. It makes the human pose totally different, but LR-symmetric suit stays intact. Google analyzes posing and secondarily the clothing details. If anybody other hasn't already done the flipping, the image vanishes from searches.
Unfortunately flipping the posing can have some meanings that your customers see, but western males like me cannot see. Check that before.
Comment: I was a bit skeptical that flipping would work. BUt i guess flipping does change the fourier transform so...
Comment: @joojaa not at all sure you guessed right - Fourier transforms can save space if they assume mirrored signals in relative to origo. That as reversed is...
Answer: I apologize in advance if this answer sounds arrogant, but to me the only true solution is:
Make your own product images.
The manufacturer offers you to use these 1000 product images for free (apparently). That is quite a gift for you since it would be relatively expensive to make 1000 new product images. The downside is that there always will be a connection to the manufacturer. Too bad.
The simplest way to appear original to your customers is to actually be original. But that costs money.


How do I disable DVD player auto start when a DVD is inserted by using Terminal

Question: If anyone can help me with this it would be the best! I have just installed 150 Mac minis in a hotel and I'm using remote desktop management to control them. Now I need to disable DVD player auto start when a DVD is inserted. I would like to know if it's possible to do this by using Terminal?
Answer: Couldn't you just copy the preference files? I don't know anything about managing multiple Macs, but there's probably some better way to do this.
Opening DVD Player can be disabled with
defaults com.apple.digihub com.apple.digihub.dvd.video.appeared -dict action 1

To reenable, use
defaults com.apple.digihub com.apple.digihub.dvd.video.appeared -dict action 105

The preference for the desktop picture is in ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.desktop.plist, but I don't know how to change that directly.
You can find where the preferences are stored by diffing the output of defaults read before and after changing a preference.
Comment: `command not found` on Catalina.  Is there an update for this answer?
Comment: @james.garriss The command name was missing from the commands :-)
Answer: I've never used ARD for this sort of thing, but can't you set system preferences en masse for a group of Macs? If so, the preference you're looking for is in the CDs & DVDs preference pane.


Is it possible to see a list of all my comments?

Question: Would like to see if I'm anyway near getting to the Pundit badge...
Answer: Not directly, but you can do this using the data dump. Here's the query on Data Explorer for your comment score distribution, which you can run online.
Answer: No, not currently.  It has been brought up for discussion in the past however.  You can get all the comments using the data dump.


Is Matthew 13:18-23 specific to Matthew's congregation?

Question: Is there any textual evidence to suggest that the explanations to Jesus' parables such as the explanation given to the disciples regarding the Parable of the Sower in Matthew 13:18-23 were not Jesus' own words?
Answer: I'm going to focus on just the explanation of the parable of the sower and not (for the moment) consider other explanations.  Conveniently, that text is found in all three Synoptic gospels.  Assuming Mark was the first written, we can get a pretty good idea of how Matthew handled the material:

When you look at the diffs, the changes are:

Plural => singular.
Add of the kingdom and does not understand it.
Satan immediately => evil one.
takes => snatches.
Add his heart.
Remove and the desires for other things enter in and.

There are a few word order, punctuation, and style changes, but they don't really have a huge impact on the meaning.  If you do the same exercise with Mark and Luke 8:11-15, you've find similar results.  Neither accepts Mark's wording as "gospel truth", but neither starts over from scratch either.  It comes as no surprise to careful readers that Matthew inserts the idea of the kingdom into the text.  He has a slight aversion to the word Satan it seems.  These changes are of focus, not of fact.
Therefore, we can be certain that neither Matthew nor Luke are the source of this particular teaching.  But that merely pushes back the question: did Jesus or Mark orginate this particular explanation of the parable?

Unfortunately, the text itself doesn't help us here.  Or at least, the text clearly puts these words in Jesus' mouth, but it can't prove to a critic of the text that it wasn't added to the tradition sometime after his crucifixion.  It's fair to say that if Matthew is really Matthew/Levi, one of Jesus' chosen twelve, and if Luke talked to some eyewitnesses about this particular section of Mark, then the words are from Jesus himself.  Why else would these witnesses accept Mark's text more or less intact unless it was more or less how they remembered events occurring?
However, to a scholar who is skeptical that Jesus' original followers had a hand in any of the gospels, the above analysis is pretty good evidence that Matthew and Luke simply accepted and tailored Mark's account without verifying it.  And if Mark were separated from Jesus by several steps, he might have confused the commentary on Jesus' teaching with the teaching itself.  Matthew 13:10-17, which explains why Jesus taught in parables and why most people didn't understand him, sounds like a plausible post hoc justification of the unpopularity of Christianity among the Jews of the 1st century.

Personally, texts like this one confirm to me that the gospels accurately recount the teaching and life of Jesus.  This passage follows a section particularly critical of the folks who listened to Jesus teach.  All four canonical accounts (Mark especially) relentlessly portray the twelve disciples as clueless.  Matthew and Mark recount how immediately after Peter confessed Jesus as the Messiah, Jesus calls him Satan for failing to understand that the Son of Man must suffer.
Later accounts, the non-canonical Gnostic works in particular, tend to elevate one or more of the disciples as particularly aware of what Jesus was trying to say.  The idea that the twelve just didn't get it must have been strange to early observers of Christianity and one solution might have been to retcon the narrative.  That the canonical gospels refrained indicates that they are historically reliable.
Conclusion
My analysis suggests that Jesus sometimes explained his teaching to his followers privately and some of those explanations made it into the text of the Synoptic gospels.
Comment: Have you ever heard of the notion that Jesus didn't explain His parables?  The priest in my parish is the only one I've ever heard say this, but he says it year after year.
Comment: @PeterTurner: I think it would be fair to say He didn't explain parables unless someone asked.  And I don't recall Him explaining them to the large crowds.  But that's a very weird thing for a priest to say, I think.  Does he say _why_ Jesus didn't explain them?
Comment: I think he said that He didn't explain them because they had different meanings and Jesus probably told the same parable quite often while preaching but only one instance would naturally be recorded in the Gospel. He said that this explanation was given to solve the problems of a particular group, but even the explanation is not the only explanation. I can buy that , I just wonder if he really meant "Jesus didn't actually say that". I wish i could remember to ask him.
Comment: @Peter Turner: The question of whether or not parables were intended to have separate meanings for separate audiences is an interesting one.  Do you feel like asking it?
Comment: Yeah, that's something I really want to know the answer to.  I don't think I could ask my parish priest without sounding like I'm picking a fight, but he keeps on bringing up all this stuff especially cultural relativism with respect to Eph 5:21 (which incidentally was the Mass reading this weekend)
Comment: Asked it on [Christianity.SE](http://christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/9352/did-jesus-parables-have-different-meanings-to-the-different-gospel-writers-con) because it probably is too broad to ask here.


What happens to a stop loss order if I don't have any underlying shares?

Question: Let's say a stock "XYZ" is currently at 100$. I put a stop loss order of 95$. I own 0 shares of XYZ currently. The market moved down under 95$. What will happen? Will the order be cancelled or will it short 1 share?
Answer: A stop order may sometimes be called a "stop loss" order.
What happens is that when the price of the stock reaches a certain level (the stop price), the broker sends a market order to buy or sell the stock at the market price.
If you enter a stop sell order and the price reaches the stop price, the broker will enter a market order to sell the stock.  If you do not have the stock, then your broker may allow you to short the stock, where you are selling stock you borrowed stock from the broker that you agree to buy back back later.
Depending on your broker and the rules around your account, you may not be able to short the stock, and therefore not able to enter a stop loss order if you do not have the stock.  But if you have a margin account and your broker is able to locate the stock, then you would be able to enter such an order.
Answer: Your broker will not allow you to enter a stop-loss on non-existing shares.
When you pick 'sell', you need to pick which of your shares, even before you can pick the order type 'stop-loss'.
Comment: Some brokers do allow you to enter a sell stop on a stock in which you do not own any shares. If the stop price is hit, then you will have a short position in that stock.


Why my question got deleted?

Question: Would like to know why my question got deleted. Sure the question was closed, but it needed just 1 vote to get reopened. As can be read in the question, there are a similar question, but about Russia and that question got not deleted.
Answer: You appear to have answered your own question in your question with accusations that several politicians have sent their children out of the country to avoid having to serve in the war. It seems very much like a push question designed to discredit members of Ukraine's government.
Comment: @convert And I explained that it was those claims that made the question look like you where pushing for an answer to discredit the Ukraine government.
Comment: @convert that doesn't change how people looked at the question. Your repeated complaints about my answer is why people don't normally explain things like this because they don't want to deal with complaints about why they are wrong for saying why they took an action.
Comment: I just mentioned, that claims exist hat several politicians have sent their children out of the country to avoid having to serve in the war. Have never saied that claims are true. Wanted to know if that claims are based on any facts, or just false claims.
Comment: I edited the question to explicitly show that it was not my intention to blame somebody.

Why my question got deleted?


What is the difference between a Process and a Process Framework?

Question: Can someone explain what are the differences between a "process" and "process framework"?
Comment: Welcome to PMSE. Please improve your question by providing some context for your question. What process or framework are you asking about? What have you already done to find the answer, and why was that insufficient for your specific case?
Comment: Going beyond what @CodeGnome already mentioned, a [Google definition](http://goo.gl/OTkKt) already makes clear the relationship between both: `A **Framework** is a model: a hypothetical description of a complex entity or **process**;`. So, what's the underlying problem you're facing related to 'Framework x Process' concepts?
Comment: Exactly, @MarkC.Wallace. Once, as Code suggested, the user improves its question to the point he got stucked on (after Google research, for instance) then I'll be more than happy to upvote. For now, the downvote is on the sense that the question needs to be improved as it stands now.
Comment: I think that an answer could be a valuable reference for the PM student.  I agree that the question should have referenced the material in @TiagoCardoso's comment (google search should be a precursor to a question), but I know that PM jargon can be confusingly self-referential.  What part of the google definition posed a problem?
Comment: thank you all, could you please take a look at the
comment in answer
Answer: They aren't the same. A process framework provides the general principles for a process. It is the core if you will. A process implements the process framework, but it can have other tailored, unique or company specific components. For example, RUP is a process framework (it is generic), and when your company follows the principles of RUP (it is company specific the basic ideas are the same), it is a process.
Comment: thank you @Zsolt .i think i have a misunderstanding between those concepts so i liked to correct
1)a process framework(such as RUP,MDA,..etc) considered
as a methodology for managing and implementing the set
of processes and each process is A series of actions

#Does those actions need a methodology for implementing
them as what we are noticed in implementing process?

2)the steps that lead to perform a RUP or any other
methodology is called processes
#Does this mean that using UML in any phase of RUP
considered as a process?
Comment: 1, No they don't. The process framework explicitly defines what to do. 2, UML is a tool. If the process says that that tool must be used, you use it. Look at this way: process framework -> how you should do it, process -> how you actually do it.


What is the relationship between a quadratic model and categorical model?

Question: Using logistic explore the association between lung reactivity and risk
of chronic respiratory disease.
The dataset contains information on a combined measure of lung function exposure respcat taking values 0, 1 or 2 representing the number of lung deciencies: 0 = none, 1 = either airway closure (AC) or bronchial hyper- responsiveness (BHR) but not both and 2 = both AC and BHR. The dataset also contains a binary outcome variable copd indicating whether or not the individual has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
What is the relationship of the log-likelihood for the quadratic model to the log likelihood of the categorical model?
I note these are the same value (-155.4) but am unsure how to explain this
What is the relationship between a quadratic model and categorical model? How could you prove the assertion about this relationship?
For reference, I have run both models in Stata and get the following outputs:
Model estimates for a model with respiratory category as a categorical variable are:

Model estimates for a model with respiratory category as a linear term, and a quadratic term are:

I am assuming Stata will not allow me to comapre the quadratic and categorical models using the likelihood ratio test procedure, as for the likelihood ratio statistic to be valid, the simpler model must be a special case of the first.
The likelihood ratio test would only work if covariates in the quadratic model were the same as in the categorical model ?
Answer: Consider that you have three groups (0,1,2), and with both a quadratic model and a "categorical" model, you have 3 d.f. -- either way fitting the average outcome in each group exactly.
They're different parameterizations of the same fit. For ordered models there can sometimes be advantages in parameterizing it using orthogonal polynomials (in particular, if the levels progress smoothly you might find that a lower order fit is a good description).


Is there a way to add profile2 forms in multistep registration

Question: Is there a way to add profile2 forms into a multistep registration form?...
First of all I am a beginner I only know small tidbits on how to do multistep...
What I need is step 1 to be basic user registration information, step 2 to be personal profile2 info and a conditional set up basically asking the viewer something in a radio or click box that should process if they need a second profile. If that conditional is met then they go to step 3 and fill out a second profile2 form.
I found out about multistep here
Comment: if you could just help me with the inserting of profile 2 form into this multi-step form i could probably find out about the rest...
Answer: yes definately we can create profile2 field as a multistep form for this we can use Field Group
By field group module you can include all fields in multipage group and after that create multipage group as per you need and include relevant fields in each break.
Comment: where do I start with this... It seems as though you are speaking about a module along side fieldgroup?


CH, GCH and axioms of set theory

Question:
Is there a set of axioms possible in which CH and GCH are provable
(and we can go on with our lives) ?
If so, why don't we use this set of axioms ? (i.e., what goes "wrong" with the rest of mathematics).
What can be said about large cardinals in a set of axioms under which CH / GCH are provable ?
Comment: Try to subdivide your question in several questions for better answers.
Answer: See this answer for reasons why some set theorists favor $\mathsf{CH}$ and some reject it. This should give you an idea why it is not simply a matter of adding an axiom that settles the question.
Anyway, yes, there are statements that imply $\mathsf{GCH}$. One is to state that $V=L$ or, more generally, that $V$ is a core model. Woodin has suggested a version of this statement, $V=$Ultimate $L$, that is also expected to be compatible with all known large cardinals. See here for some information, but the statement is technical.
Large cardinals are expected not to have a direct influence on the continuum problem, and also we expect additional axioms to be consistent with arbitrarily strong large cardinals if we are to consider them likely candidates to add to the usual list. Foreman, Magidor, Shelah proposed years ago a "maximality axiom" that implies that $\mathsf{GCH}$ fails everywhere and that there are no inaccessibles. But the axiom was not suggested as a serious candidate, but more as an interesting statement, whose consistency remains in question.
Answer: Yes. $\sf ZFC+GCH$ can easily prove $\sf GCH,CH$ and so on. More to the point, Godel's axiom $V=L$ implies $\sf GCH$ and much more.
We don't often use that because there is a very interest world in set theory beyond just proving $\sf GCH$. In a lot of sense, we care about unprovability almost as much (and sometimes more than) as we care about provability. Axioms like $V=L$ decide many things in set theory, but they also limit things. For example, $V=L$ is incompatible with many large cardinal notions (although $\sf GCH$ is generally compatible).
There are things like forcing axioms which can prove $2^{\aleph_0}=\aleph_2$, and thus disprove $\sf GCH$ and $\sf CH$. These are things we are interested in as well.
Finally, large cardinals are objects, or axioms, whose consistency strength exceed that of $\sf ZFC$. But $\sf GCH$ does not increase the consistency strength, and therefore we cannot prove much more than before (with the slight exception that "weakly inaccessible" are "strongly inaccessible" and similar notions).
Comment: That last paragraph is problematic, I think. Consistency strength should not be the only guiding force when searching for new axioms. Explanatory power seems far more important. Also, what precisely do you mean by "we cannot prove much more than before"? We can prove much that is not provable in $\mathsf{ZFC}$, much that is of direct relevance to working mathematicians.
Comment: Yes, you're right. But I have to go and teach soon. I'll revise this after that.

CH, GCH and axioms of set theory


Android App Testing for Samsung Galaxy Tab

Question: I want to test my app on a Samsung Galaxy Tab device emulator. But I don't have one installed. I want to know where can I get it from? I am using Eclipse Galileo.
Many Regards.
Answer: Galaxy Tab Emulator is already coming with the new SDK
If you have the updated SDK Manager (R_08) then you can download the Emulator as an add-on.
Download the new SDK Manager from the Android developer site, and try to update the platforms that you already have. It will give you option to download Samsung Galaxy Tab Emulator.
If you jump into any problem, hit it back here, or contact me via www.sheikhaman.com
Answer: Here you go http://innovator.samsungmobile.com/galaxyTab.do.


Double spaced footnotes with \autocite[]{} and \footnote{} in it

Question: I searched but not found a solution. I have to write a thesis and do this with article biblatex-chicago. This generate all ok, but the footnotes and bibtex entries (citations) within a footnote are single spaced between each. I need to have a double space between each footnote (not within a single footnote or a citation, rather every new footnote).
Answer: Just found it:
\setlength{\footnotesep}{\baselineskip}


Why did the steam locomotive take so long?

Question: The steam engine was invented around the start of the 1700s (don't quote me on that), but the locomotive was invented around a century later. Why is this? Did no one have the idea? Was the technology not progressed enough? To me, it just doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
Comment: Steam locomotives required high pressure steam engines. The first steam engines were very large because of the low pressures at which they operated. It took until around 1800 for the technology to be perfected enough to allow small (enough) high pressure steam engines.
Comment: Thank you for your question; please consider revising it to be more in line with our community expectations. Like other stacks, we expect questions to [provide evidence of prior research](https://interpersonal.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3227/1599). That helps us to understand the question, and avoids our repeating work you've already done. Our [help], and [other stacks](https://interpersonal.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3224/how-do-i-write-a-good-question) provide additional resources to assist with revisions. Please revise your question to document your preliminary research.
Comment: I suggest the real problem wasn't locomotives, but rather producing steel rails economically.
Comment: This seems to be covered by Wikipedia's [History of the steam engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_steam_engine).
Comment: Sheer weight; it took quite a while for it to be adapted for locomotive purposes, on both ships and trains. Just visit the afferent [Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_engine) article, read through it, then open all relevant links, especially those placed beneath the various subtitles of its *history* section, and read through them as well.
Comment: 1) All engineering takes time -it is worth researching how long it takes to introduce any new product to the market 2) Steam engine is useless without a lot of infrastructure (fuel, rails, trained staff). 3) Was it an incremental improvement or a revolution? Revolutions take time and disrupt lives?
Answer:
The steam engine was invented around the start of the 1700s

Thomas Newcomen's 1712 atmospheric engine — itself an improvement on Thomas Savery's 1698 steam powered pump, known for being prone to explosions — still presented one major disadvantage:

80% of the steam used by the engine was wasted

which was only solved by James Watt's critical addition of a separate condenser in 1765; thus, over half a century had to pass, just for this much needed improvement to occur, thereby moving our timeline from the start of the eighteenth century, to its middle.
Even so, the engine was still stationary, meaning that its colossal weight was yet a non-issue, given its initial or primary purpose, namely replacing older hydraulic equipment, employed mainly by the milling and mining industries, whose basic design remained virtually unchanged since antiquity.
It is only when the question of mechanically powering moving vehicles arose, that this fundamental problem was first brought to the forefront; but, for that to be even considered, yet another half a century had to pass, during which time, Watt was still busy perfecting the engine; meanwhile, important breakthroughs would eventually follow, including those by other inventors, such as John Fitch's 1787-90 steam-powered boats.
One such milestone was Richard Trevithick's 1801 high pressure engine, aptly called the Puffing Devil, a precursor to his 1802 experimental Coalbrookdale locomotive and 1803 London Steam Carriage, representing

the world's first self-propelled passenger-carrying vehicle.

One of the reasons behind said delay was Watt's legal patent expiring in 1800; indeed, the two men were fierce competitors in the engine-building market. It is within this wider historical context that

on 21 February 1804, the world's first railway journey took place.

Since the other answer mentions computers, think of how the furniture sized computers of the Second World War, used for cracking German Enigma codes, had to wait decades for the modern PC to evolve into something recognizable today as such.
Comment: Similarly, my first desktop computer, 1980s? required a whole purpose designed desk for the tower, monitor and keyboard, let alone the printer, together with myriad wires. My smartphone does more, faster, and fits in the palm of my hand!
Comment: @TheHonRose try 1970 for needing a whole desk. 1980 had many desktop computers including several where the computer was built into a keyboard (albeit a think keyboard) e.g. Acorn Atom
Comment: Nice answer, though I wish the formatting were less over-the-top.
Comment: @TheHonRose: You can really type faster on a phone's tiny little touch screen than on a regular keyboard?  Or read more than a short text on its screen?  Admittedly I've become a bit spoiled these days, but I find it rather limiting when I have to work with only a single ~20 inch display.
Comment: After John Fitch could not make money with his steam boat in a couple years, He sold it to Robert Fulton, the NY governors son-in-law.  Suddenly people were no longer afraid of the stem engine ; and Fulton "invented' the steam boat.
Comment: @blacksmith37: Coming up with a **concept**, *creating* a **working prototype** from scratch, and *improving* it to become **practical**, then *perfecting* it to become **[economically viable](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7oglIAdnJM&t=20s)**, are four distinct steps; five, if we take into account **mass production**, since the latter implies a attaining a certain reasonable *cheapness*, as opposed to simply being a financially *profitable niche* market.
Answer: As the adage goes, necessity is the mother of invention. If there isn't a perceived idea, it doesn't get invented. Things get designed to solve a particular problem. There is also the issue of the state of technology at a given time.
The first issue, was the earlier steam engines were not particularly powerful, so steam engines had to evolve before they could become powerful enough to become a locomotive engine.
The second issue was rail and wheel design. We now take it for granted that wheels used on railroads are flanged, but the metal wheel-rail configuration wasn't always this way. Initially wheels were straight, like cart wheels, and rails had grooves for the wheels to run in. This system used a lot metal in comparison and wasn't capable of bearing heaving loads. Putting a flange on the wheels and no groove in the rail was a vast improvement. Deciding on the profile of the rail was the next improvement.
The third issue was material used for wheels, rails and steam engines. For rails, cast iron was initially used and it was unsatisfactory. Cast iron was brittle and readily broke. Also, the rails were made in short lengths and were uneven. It wasn't until 1820 when rolled wrought iron rail was available that rail technology improved. This resulted in the expansion of railroads between 1825 and 1840. Making rails out of steel was the next significant improvement. This was then followed by limiting the amount of sulfur or phosphorus in the steel used for rail and wheels.
Answer: In addition to the excellent answers by Fred and Lucian, you also need to consider the economic situation at the time and the existing transport infrastructure.
The Industrial Revolution in the UK is generally regarded as beginning in the mid-eighteenth century.  By then there was already a transport system that provided for the needs of the country.  In 1707 the Turnpike Act had been enacted and this was followed by a growth in the road network.  By the 1750s an extensive stagecoach and flying waggon network had been developed.  At the same time, the rivers were being made navigable, and the canal network was starting to be developed.  These were supported by local farmers providing food for both the horses and the people. Coaching inns were already there.  Mills and factories were built alongside the rivers, canals and roads.  Everything was set up for road and water transport, there just wasn't anything pushing for railway development and the expensive research that would be needed to make it work.
It wasn't the Industrial Revolution was well underway that there was the money and the market for what the railways could provide.
Answer: That's because you look at the problem the other way around. You are accustomed that technology develops lightning fast. In 2000 very few people had internet access, and a lot of business was done without computers. Now, a mere 20 years later, in 2021 everybody has internet access and business cannot be done without computers. (This varies per country, of course.)
That became only possible with advantages in technology, and the infrastructure had to be in place first. Without affordable computers, you wouldn't have a computer to connect to the internet. You couldn't connect to the internet if you didn't have a connection first, even if you had a computer. Even so, in 1997 internet access was very expensive. My first browser was Lynx. To connect, I used Trumpet Winsock. Lynx didn't show images. That was faster and cheaper. You'd connect, download or find the info you needed real quick, and disconnected. Yes, it was in 1997 that expensive. I'm not even talking about flaky connections, it was quite normal you had to dial in many times before a more or less stable connection was achieved.
The same goes for the steam train. First, people had to come up with the idea of vehicles being propelled by machines. Don't forget, nobody had seriously thought about that before. It was something completely new.
The concept of rails did exist, mines used wooden rails. But wooden rails aren't good for trains. You need steel rails. Making steel was very expensive back then.
After the invention of the steam engine, people created affordable water transport with barges (pulled by horses), by building canals. That made transportation of coal and iron ore much cheaper. With that now cheaper and more plentiful steel, economically affordable rails could be build.
Only then it became technically and economically possible to think about building trains. People were afraid of that new highly dangerous technology, many people - not necessarily uneducated - thought passengers would suffocate travelling at such dangerously high speeds.
You need the technology, it must be economically feasible, and the popular mindset must be there. Only then an invention can take off.
If you know 2 variables in math, you can figure out a third. With those three, you can more quickly find a fourth, and so on. The same goes for technology. Once the steam engine was invented, it led to other inventions, for example machines that very accurately measured and reproduced metal parts. You need that technology in order to build locomotives. All that takes time. Quite a bit of time, but progressively less so between inventions.
That's in a nutshell why it took a century to use steam engines for locomotives, and less than 50 years before the Internet really took hold.

(Yes, I know, in The Netherlands they used extensive water transport and windmills for centuries already. But they didn't invent steam engines or railroads.)


PLS with one component

Question: I'm working with partial least square regression with 1 component, and I would like to know where can I find datasets for this model where the number of predictors p is greater than the number of observations n. I know this is a typical framework in chemometrics, but most dataset I found are with more then 1 component. Thanks
Answer: Firstly, I'm a little confused by your question. Are you using PLS to reduce the dimensionality of the regression model, remove multicollinearity, or do you only have one independent predictor variable? IMHO, PLS is inappropriate for the latter since PLS transforms your independent variables (X) into uncorrelated components that are then regressed against the dependent variable(s) (Y). There's absolutely no point in applying a PLS transform if you only have one independent predictor variable in your regression model!
I'm not familiar with chemometrics, but the Advanced Soil Geochemical Atlas of England and Wales has a freely available gridded dataset of soil geochemistry. It is a multivariate geospatial dataset; each pixel contains the estimated soil concentrations of approximately 53 elements.
It would require some pre-processing, but this dataset should give you a fairly large number of independent variables for PLS regression analysis. For example, you could choose a subset of the elements to predict another. Moreover, most of the elements are likely correlated with each other, thereby justifying the use of PLS to reduce multicollinearity by transforming the variables into uncorrelated components.

PLS with one component


Amplitude amplification in Grover's search

Question: In a two-bit string array i.e [00,01,10,11], how to find 01 & 10 together using the Grover search algorithm. What will be the amplitude amplification circuit?
Answer: In the example you mentioned in the question, the Grover algorithm will not work because there are as many marked states ($|01\rangle$ and $|10\rangle$) as unmarked ones ($|00\rangle$ and $|11\rangle$), and an imbalance is required for amplitude amplification of the marked states to take place. If you wish to amplify a single basis state (e.g., $|01\rangle$), then a single iteration of the Grover algorithm will suffice to obtain it with certainty. Cf. Chapter 8 of Jonathan Jones and Dieter Jaksch's "Quantum Information, Computation and Communication" for a detailed and pedagogical account of this case.
Answer: bm442 is correct. With a 2-qubit system, only a single iteration of the Grover operator is applied and the state ends up like this (printed in my own infrastructure):
<code>|000> (|0>):  ampl: -0.35+0.00j prob: 0.12 Phase: 180.0
|001> (|1>):  ampl: +0.35+0.00j prob: 0.12 Phase:   0.0
|010> (|2>):  ampl: +0.35+0.00j prob: 0.12 Phase:   0.0
|011> (|3>):  ampl: -0.35+0.00j prob: 0.12 Phase: 180.0
|100> (|4>):  ampl: -0.35+0.00j prob: 0.12 Phase: 180.0
|101> (|5>):  ampl: +0.35+0.00j prob: 0.12 Phase:   0.0
|110> (|6>):  ampl: +0.35+0.00j prob: 0.12 Phase:   0.0
|111> (|7>):  ampl: -0.35+0.00j prob: 0.12 Phase: 180.0
</code>
On measurement, each state has the same probability - whether or not you find the solution is random.
What you can do is perhaps add additional qubits and mark states like $|000 01\rangle$ and $|000 10\rangle$. If you use a matrix operator to mark those states, this appears quite straightforward.
If you wanted to make an explicit circuit, you have to construct it such that only these two states lead to an ancillary $a_2$ being set to 1. This can be achieved with 2 multi-controlled Pauli X-gates. For $|000 01\rangle$ you would have the first 4 qubits be controlled by 0, meaning you put a Pauli X-gate before and after the multi-controlled X-gate, to apply a multi-controlled X-gate on ancillary $a_0$. Similar for the other state, which will multi-control another ancilla $a_1$. Finally, an X-gate controlled by both $a_0$ and $a_1$ applies another X-gate on $a_2$.
This final ancilla $a_2$ (together with the first 5 qubits) you will then have to feed into the diffusion circuit.
Again, I have put versions with operators and circuits online, maybe this helps.


unsupervised classification VS supervised classification when data labels are known

Question: Can someone give me some scenario where it's better to use clustering (unsupervised classification) than supervised classification such as SVM ? I mean in a case where you know the data labels/classes.
Answer: It largely depends on what the goals of your analysis are. Labels only become labels when you decide that they are a feature of interest! In one context a dataset may be labelled but in another it could easily be considered unlabelled.
Consider a dataset containing information about apples with the features being height, width and price. Now a shopkeeper might be interested in a supervised regression approach treating price as the label (and width and height as predictors), in order to predict how much he should sell new apples for. On the other hand, an apple farmer might be interested in applying a clustering technique to the full dataset with all three variables (with no particular label variable) in order to figure out how many varieties (Granny Smith etc.) are contained in the dataset. Clearly, the latter is a case where clustering would be more appropriate.
Comment: That sounds to me like the general supervised learning problem statement and unfortunately there is no simple answer, in fact the field of machine learning is pretty much based on this question. This short post that I recently wrote might help clear up the supervised vs unsupervised question distinction for you (in fact please let me know how helpful it is!) https://alanjeffares.wordpress.com/2018/07/24/test/
Comment: What is the best approach when you want to know if the features that you use to classify/cluster are accurate. For example, you have 2 classes of subjects, healthy and sick and as features you have: blood pressure, weight, heart pain. and you want to know if those features are able to separate the 2 groups in your database. In that cas it doesn't matter if you use supervised or unsupervised classification, no?
Comment: good vulgarization. I just wished I had some references that show some cases where unsupervised classification is more adapted than supervised classification. thank you


Why is there no Earth 1 Jesse Wells

Question: In season 2 of The Flash, you meet Earth 2 Harrison Wells and his daughter Jessie. However, she has no E1 doppelganger.
Comment: Is there anything in the show to indicate that everyone has a doppelganger on every alternate Earth? Because I'd find that very hard to believe.
Comment: Actually, there is no Harrison Wells in Earth 1, then how Jessie?
Answer: Most probably because Eobard Thawne killed Harrison Wells too early and took over the identity that Harrison Wells got no chance to bear a child. Also, there is no Harrison Wells in earth 38 mentioned yet or Supergirl in earth 1 etc etc. So it seems every earth don't have the same person's doppelganger.
Answer: There probably isn't a Supergirl on earth 1 because Supergirl is originally from Krypton, so her doppelganger would be on Krypton in the Earth 1 universe, the same with Superman. Since doppelgangers tend to be different than each other they may have never come to earth 1 at all. I do agree with the idea that not everybody would have a doppelganger though, because if a person died before having children, like Earth 1 Wells, it would wipe out all of their possible descendants and this would be very unlikely to happen in every universe in the multiverse, leaving lots of people without doppelgangers.

Why is there no Earth 1 Jesse Wells


How do I completely wipe macbook?

Question: I was going to sell this macbook, so I needed to wipe it, however it doesn't seem like the recovery mode method will do everything, since I have 2 other partitions and I can't figure out how to merge them all to 1 partition with just mac os on it
Comment: You will need to describe what the other partitions are, name, description, etc. Unless it is a partition for Boot Camp or another OS or a partition that you specifically created, there is always more than one partition on a hard drive. It contains the recovery and boot partitions and contain no user data
Answer: To repartition your hard drive (under macOS Sierra)

Open Disk Utility.
Select physical drive (most top level), not any of the partitions you have.
Click Partition button in the top row of buttons.
Select first of your two other partitions and press - button. This shall remove selected partition.
Repeat for the second of your other two partitions.
Select your first partition (where macOS is installed).
Drag resize control (press ⌘ for it to appear) or enter size manually to use all available space and press Apply.

Then follow these steps to prepare your Mac for sale.
What to do before selling or giving away your Mac
When preparing to sell or give away your Mac, you may want to erase some or all files from its hard drive. But first determine whether you should back up your computer and disable certain features and services. These steps show the recommended sequence of actions:

Deauthorize your computer from iTunes, if applicable.
Back up your data using Time Machine or other backup methods.
If you use Find My Mac or other iCloud features on this Mac, complete these steps:

Back up your iCloud content.
Choose Apple Menu () > System Preferences, then click iCloud.
Deselect the Find My Mac checkbox.
Sign out of iCloud. When you sign out of iCloud, you're asked whether you want to remove iCloud data from your Mac. Removing iCloud data in this way makes sure that the data isn't also removed from any of your other devices that are using the same iCloud account.

Sign out of iMessage:

In the Messages app, choose Preferences > Accounts.
Select your iMessage account, then click Sign Out.

Reformat your hard drive and reinstall macOS.
After you reformat your hard drive and reinstall OS X, the computer restarts to a Welcome screen and asks you to choose a country or region. If you want to leave the Mac in an out-of-box state, don't continue with the setup of your system. Instead, press Command-Q to shut down the Mac. When the new owner turns on the Mac, the Setup Assistant will guide them through the setup process.

How do I completely wipe macbook?


Can't Find MacPorts (installed on OS 10.8.5

Question: How can I find MacPorts after it's been installed? I'm trying to use it to open GIMP but can't locate it. GIMP gave me the message "There is no application set to open the document fimp-2.8.14.dmg.torrent - so, that's why I downloaded MacPorts, and now I can't find THAT - Please Heeeeelp - Thank you!
Answer: For run MacPort you have to write sudo /opt/local/bin/port in your Terminal window.
Alias in .zshrc :
alias port='sudo /opt/local/bin/port'

However, a .torrent file can be open with uTorrent or Transmission without using MacPorts.
.torrent files explained : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torrent_file


Confusion with the proof that the Cantor set is closed

Question: I have encountered the definition of Cantor set and its property.
Cantor set is constructed by removing the middle third open set of each interval .So each time we get some union of closed sets.
As $F_0=[0,1]$
$F_1=[0,1/3]\cup [2/3,1]$
$F_2=[0,1/9]\cup [2/9,1/3]\cup [2/3,7/9]\cup [8/9,1]$
So on ,
That for $F_n$ we get the Union of $2^n$ closed interval .
I know that finite union of closed interval is closed, but this is not true for arbitarly union.
As I had a counterexample:  $\cup$ {{1/n}|for $n$ $\in N$} as this is not closed as $0$ is not in  that union.
So what is the argument here to say that $F_n$ is closed for any $ n$ .
As we are using this fact to prove the Cantor set to be closed as $F=\cap_{n\to \infty} F_n$ i.e arbitarly intersection of closed set is closed .
Where am I misunderstanding?
Any help will be appreciated.
Comment: For any fixed value of $n$, the set $F_n$ is a finite union of closed sets, therefore closed.  There is no set $F_n$ which is not closed.  The Cantor set is $\bigcap_{n=0}^{\infty} F_n$, which is a countable intersection of closed sets, therefore closed.
Comment: Since you are interested in closed sets you should be more concerned with intersections rather than union.
Answer: This is better interpreted via complementation: At each stage $n+1$ a set of open intervals is removed from stage $n$.  The completion of this as $n$ 'goes infinite' is the union of all removed open intervals, which is an open set.  The complement of an open set is a closed set.
Answer: Since the  $F_n^{\prime s}$  are closed their complements are open sets. So,the complement of it's intersection is given by
$$
\left(\bigcap_nF_n\right)^c=\bigcup_nF_n^c
$$
which is a union of open sets and therefore an open set.
Answer: For any large $n$, $F_n$ is the union of finitely many closed intervals so it is closed.
As you mentioned the intersection of an arbitrary family of closed sets is closed so $F=\cap_{n\to \infty} F_n$ is closed.
Note that for each $n$  we have finitely many closed sets, no matter how large $n$ is, so the union is closed.
Your example of the infinite union of closed sets ${ 1/n } not being closed does not contradict the counter set because you are dealing with an infinite union of closed sets not an infinite intersection of closed sets.


Combination of factors

Question: Let's say I have 10 factors and I want to find a combination (basically sum of exposures) of factors (of any length) from this set which has max sharpe. Is there an easy way to find this out rather than running simulations of all 2^10 combinations?
Answer: This seems like a portfolio optimization problem, but with factor portfolios. What do you mean by best performing? Do you refer to:

Minimum variance
Maximum Sharpe
Maximum returns

From what I recall, only minimum variance has a closed-form solution to find the weights and therefore there is no need to run simulations. There might be a variation of the maximum Sharpe where you have a closed form solution but I think it does not involve short-selling - honestly not sure for the maximum Sharpe part.
You can go into some portfolio optimization books or literature to find out, it should not be that hard. Good luck!
Comment: Yes, the optimal weights is your vector of exposure to your factors. You would need historical returns to generate your expected returns (not alpha) and covariance matrix. Depending on your objective function, you can obtain a vector of exposures that produces the max Sharpe.
Comment: By best performing, I mean maximum Sharpe. How will portfolio optimization help me choose a combination of m factors with max sharpe from set of n factors. Isn't portfolio optimization use to find optimal weights with given a given alpha and covariance matrx?
Comment: Hi @Anonymous, if you feel my answer has helped you, maybe you can give me an upvote or accept my answer as the solution (:

Combination of factors


RPi as a NAT-router - low performance seen

Question: I have a Raspberry Pi 3 NAT+router setup and I am seeing that RPi-3 has a lower packet-forwarding performance than RPi-2.
wlan0 is set up with a DHCP server and a wifi-access point. eth0 is used as the connection to the Internet.
I have had a similar set up with RPi-2 before with an external USB-wifi adapter. RPi-3 has a built-in wifi interface and so I am using it.
For the similar setups, I thought RPi-2 used to get 10-12Mbps NAT+routing throughput (i.e. running Speedtest on a PC that connects to RPI's access point). Yesterday I created the RPi-3 setup, and Speedtest shows only 3Mbps throughput (consistent over multiple runs of speedtest).
Is this is a known difference in the performance of RPI-3 vs RPi-2? Or am I doing something wrong? When RPI-3 is not in the path, the client PC sees about 40Mbps throughput and so the bottleneck is certainly RPi-3. I would also suspect the hardware configuration first, but I find it hard to believe it could to worse than RPi-2.
Link: A related question on this community - but that does not talk about the differences between these two hardware platforms.
Answer: Raspberry Pi3's On-board WiFi is known not to have good throughput.
https://netbeez.net/2016/06/01/iperf-wifi-comparison-on-raspberry-pi-raspberry-pi-3-vs-asus-vs-hawking-vs-linksys-vs-tp-link/
You may need USB WiFi dongle for performance purpose.


How to watch a DVD from only files off the DVD

Question: A while ago I copied a DVD from disk to my hard drive.  Instead of doing an image copy and writing an .iso file, it copied the file structure from the disk to a folder on my HDD.  That folder contains AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS folders, exactly as they appear if I open an actual disk in Windows Explorer to view files.  How can I watch this movie without writing the files to a new disk?  If I have to write a new disk, how do I ensure the disk is playable as a DVD, and doesn't just emerge a file system data disk?
Answer: VLC will allow you to open the directory and treat it as the filesystem normally found on a DVD (since that's what it is).
Answer: The KMPlayer is another choice that you can use to watch the .vob files that were created from the dvd copy.


How can my main character discover Philosophical Zombies?

Question: My main character lives in a world of magic. Nothing seems off about the people around them, but some of them are Philosophical Zombies, automatons without any inner life, for reasons important to the plot. What non-contrived ways could the character discover this fact without any doubt? Feel free to conjure any magic you want. It's more of a sequence of events that lead to the discovery I need.
Comment: We need to change the way you're asking this question.  From our [help]: "Questions relating to plot and character building are out of scope for the site."  As-written, this question is off-topic.  Please remove all references to your character and change the question to, "what aspects of my philisophical zombies would reveal their nature to others?"  You will need to provide a clear list of attributes for your zombies.
Comment: Let me add to that: this site is dedicated to helping you build your world (develop your philisophical zombies as an element of your world), not help you write a story (overcome writer's block or develop your plot).  That's why your Q needs to change from "how to help my protagonist" to "how to create my zombies."
Comment: *"some of them are Philosophical Zombies, automatons without any inner life"* Isn't that just normal human nature?
Comment: He trips and stabs a zombie, but it keeps on going about its daily life.
Comment: I think the Bladerunner movie offers both the test you are looking for, and the flaw
Answer: The whole philosophical point of zombies is that there is no way to distinguish them from outside.
Which obviously means that you need to distinguish them from inside. You need some kind of magic that lets you get inside the minds of other people—whether it's telepathy, or possession, or whatever.
At which point it becomes trivial: you get inside their mind, and there is no "inside" there.
It's hard to imagine how to stretch that out into "a sequence of events", short of by developing that magic over time. For example:

At first, you can just borrow the sense perceptions of other people (and animals?), and the zombies are the same as everyone else.
Then you learn to feel the effects of… not emotions, but the hormonal and other physiological changes that go with them, and still the zombies are the same.
Then you learn to read their memories, and even use their minds to figure things out for you, and still the zombies are the same.
Then you learn to access their thoughts, and… some people are just different in some way you can't explain.
Then you learn to access their second-order thoughts, their self-reflective stream of consciousness, and now you get it: the zombies don't have one.

If you can also control people, the way you control regular people and zombies will be very different.
With regular people, you essentially insert yourself into the arguments happening inside their conscious mind all the time and sway the "vote" the way you want, and the decisions and first-order thoughts and actions all follow from there. But this is more complicated than it sounds, because people are making decisions without conscious deciding all the time, and you have to sway them indirectly.
But with zombies, you just directly produce an order and it's followed. At first, you'd think this makes things easier—but in fact, because the orders have to be at a much lower level than the kind of things we determine consciously, it's actually a lot more effort to control a zombie in any useful way.
Maybe this leads you to realize that whatever's using the zombies must be either a pack of people or a superhuman force (a computer-god or something?), because otherwise they'd be useless.

If you've read Julian Jaynes and find his Bicameral Mind hypothesis interesting, you can put a twist on this—which doesn't really fit the use of zombies in philosophy, but might be more interesting for your story anyway.
Conscious people, whose left and right hemispheres are integrated, are just like the above, and you have to get involved in the discussions inside their brain to do anything useful.
Zombies are people whose hemispheres are independent. Their right brain issues verbal commands; their left brain follows them, using its intelligence to do so as well as possible, but unable to even think of disobeying. Zombies believe these commands come from the gods. This makes them different from non-zombies, and philosophical zombies, because they actually describe their motivation completely differently. Why did you build the house there? Marduk told me to build the house there and so I did.
Anyway, this means you can read and control the left brain of a Jaynes-zombie quite easily, putting yourself in the place of their internalized gods. But it also means that if you want to understand, or control, their deeper motivations, you have to talk to the right brain, which is like a cacophony of gods fighting over who gets to give the next command to the left brain. These gods are, of course, not superhuman, but in fact less than human, but that doesn't make them much less interesting than squabbling Olympians. And you've got a whole pantheon of them for each zombie—similar to, but independent of, each other.
Answer: Challenge the P-Zombies to any kind of activity that involves self-reflection or (mental) self-improvement.  Free will means more than just that we can decide to do what we want; it also means we can decide not to do what we want (I can decide not to have that piece of cake, despite the fact that I want it) and moreover, I can (with effort) decide not to want what I want.  We can in fact train our mental virtues -- self control, patience, courage, etc. -- the same way we train muscles, heart, and lungs.
I would suggest that philosophical zombies would be incapable of self-reflection.  They could tell you why they're doing what they're doing -- "I did X because I want X.  I want X because I'm a Y kind of person and I value Z"  because they're sort of programmed with this motivation, and may be programmed to give that explanation for it.  But the zombies wouldn't be able to change their motivations.  If you asked them what they like or dislike about their motivations (or personalities) I think they'd be dumbfounded by the question, incapable of reflecting on an interior life that doesn't really exist.
Your main character might discover/realize this while attending a meeting of a self-help group like AA, or perhaps even by hearing how others pray.  If your main character is a priest, he may notice that p-zombies confess their sins in a different way than normal humans.
Comment: Assuming philosophical zombism is a coherent idea in the first place, this wouldn't do anything. Zombies are, by definition, capable of acting in every visible way as if they were capable of self-reflection and free will. They won't be dumbfounded by such questions—there is no introspective "they" to be dumbfounded, and meanwhile, their non-conscious automatic responses will be the same as a conscious person who wasn't dumbfounded.
Comment: The key phrase being "assuming it's a coherent idea in the first place".  Frankly, I don't see how you can simulate self-reflection and self-change.  If we were talking about computer programs, to *write* the simulation program would be to *create* the routine for self reflection.
Comment: Only a small minority of the philosophers who write about philosophical zombies believe it's an incoherent idea. So you can't just assume that all of the philosophers are obviously wrong and therefore you're going to write about a different concept instead. David Chalmers' response to you would be that no, you just proved that a routine for self-reflection isn't sufficient to create consciousness.
Comment: (If you want my personal take, it mostly comes from Daniel Dennett:  The idea is not incoherent or logically impossible, but it's ridiculously physically infeasible, and the further intuitions people like Chalmers draw from the idea _are_ incoherent—in part because they're assuming it's not just conceivable but plausible, and in part because they're also assuming that consciousness has properties like unitarity that it clearly doesn't.)


Cant get correct value in UITextField using shouldChangeCharacterInRange method

Question: i have a detailView from one of my cell, and there it is. I have 2 of UITextField, in one i type value like 100, and point is i want another UITextField to display "a+b" value. For example. in my "a" text field i have a value 45, when i type in "b" text field it suppose to change dynamically, when i type 1 it should be 46, when i type 10, it should be 55, 100 - 145. But my problem is, it gets "old" value, so when i type 10 it only add 1, when i type 100 it add 10. And when i finally click on anywhere on screen, keyboard dissapear and then it get correct value, but it suppose to change dynamically. There is piece of my code:
<code>-(BOOL)textField:(UITextField *)textField shouldChangeCharactersInRange:(NSRange)range replacementString:(NSString *)string {

    NSString *calculator=[calculateField text];
    int modifyer = [calculator intValue];

    intProtein = [protein intValue];
    int prot = [protein intValue];

    self.intProteinResult = prot+modifyer;

    [proteinTextField setText:[NSString stringWithFormat:@"%i", intProteinResult]];

    return YES;
}
</code>
And yes, i did try search topics similiar to mine, and did tried other method stringByReplacingCharactersInRange:range withString:string. But i cant figure out how to work with it. Please help, any advice will be appreciated.
Answer: Use this code to assign the value to the calculator variable:
<code>NSString* calculator = [[calculateField text] stringByReplacingCharactersInRange: range withString: string];
</code>
The above should always work no matter which character is replaced or edited.


Debugging python2 under windows

Question: For a while I've been trying now to get python debugging under windows to work with a precompiled GVim to work (with dynamical python2/python3 support):
MS-Windows 32 Bit GUI Version mit OLE-Unterstützung
Übersetzt von mool@tororo
Riesige Version mit GUI. Ein- (+) oder ausschließlich (-) der Eigenschaften:
...
+autochdir          +clipboard          +dialog_con_gui     -farsi              +job                +lua/dyn            +num64              +python/dyn         +spell              +terminal           +vertsplit          +writebackup
+autoservername     +cmdline_compl      +diff               +file_in_path       +jumplist           +menu               +ole                +python3/dyn        +startuptime        -termresponse       +virtualedit        -xfontset
...

Until now, I've tried vdebug and vimspector
vimspector.
But I have not managed to get one of this working (under windows) when trying to debug a python27 project (I need to use a dedicated python 2.7 interpreter, which is part of the project, not the builtin one, and not an installed with a windows installer, but rather checked out/copied from a repository). Does anybody know if it's possible to do debugging with the given requirements (precompiled vim, windows, python27 Interpreter from the project which is not installed using an installer)?
Answer: If using vimspector, you can set the python launch argument to point to the python interpreter that debugpy uses to debug your application.
It's even in the example https://github.com/puremourning/vimspector#python

Debugging python2 under windows


How can I remove value that was previously registered via [NSUserDefaults registerDefaults:] call

Question: I have bunch of preference values registered via [NSUserDefaults registerDefaults:] call on application startup. I need to replace them at some stage with new ones but new values scope (keys set) is less than initial one. So after I call [NSUserDefaults registerDefaults:] again I have new values with some old that weren't replaced. Is there a possibility to remove previously registered values?
Comment: If you're working on iOS, the docs(http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/Cocoa/Reference/Foundation/Classes/NSUserDefaults_Class/Reference/Reference.html) mention that "The contents of the registration domain are not written to disk; you need to call this method each time your application starts. You can place a plist file in the application's Resources directory and call registerDefaults: with the contents that you read in from that file." So I assume that, if you leave them out, they are left empty. Do you have any idea why the old values are left in the defaults?
Answer: To completely replace the registered defaults, you will replace the NSRegistrationDomain domain (which is volatile, by the way).
To remove individual registered defaults, you get the values in the NSRegistrationDomain, remove the offending key(s), and replace the domain.
A category on NSUserDefaults might look something like this:
@implementation NSUserDefaults (UnRegisterDefaults)

- (void)unregisterDefaultForKey:(NSString *)defaultName {
    NSDictionary *registeredDefaults = [[NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults] volatileDomainForName:NSRegistrationDomain];
    if ([registeredDefaults objectForKey:defaultName] != nil) {
        NSMutableDictionary *mutableCopy = [NSMutableDictionary dictionaryWithDictionary:registeredDefaults];
        [mutableCopy removeObjectForKey:defaultName];
        [self replaceRegisteredDefaults:[mutableCopy copy]];
    }
}

- (void)replaceRegisteredDefaults:(NSDictionary *)dictionary {
    [[NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults] setVolatileDomain:dictionary forName:NSRegistrationDomain];
}

@end

Motivation:
The reason I need this is because I want to turn on user-agent spoofing (for reasons of 3rd-party compatibility). User-agent spoofing only appears to work when the value is set via registerDefaults:, so set...:forKey: won't stop the user-agent string it. If I want to stop spoofing the user-agent some time later (without restarting the app), I need a way to remove defaults. Further, I don't want to clear the other registered defaults my app users. The above solution appears to accomplish this perfectly.
Comment: Coincidentally ran into the exact same problem.  Thanks!
Comment: Great stuff. You should put that on GitHub. Thanks!
Answer: Swift 3 port of EthanB's original answer:
extension UserDefaults {
    /// Unregisters a value set in the UserDefaults.registrationDomain, if it exists
    func unregister(defaultsFor key: String) {
        var registeredDefaults = volatileDomain(forName: UserDefaults.registrationDomain)
        registeredDefaults[key] = nil
        setVolatileDomain(registeredDefaults, forName: UserDefaults.registrationDomain)
    }
}

Used in deinit of my UIWebView to restore the default user agent back to my app.
Answer: You can use removeVolatileDomainForName: to remove the NSRegistrationDomain. This clears all values registered via registerDefaults:. But if you  need to do this you're most likely doing something wrong. The right way would be to actually store the new settings using one of the set...:forKey: methods.
Comment: This solution won't fix my issue due to removeVolatileDomainForName works in level+1 stage than defaults


No network after installing the new Ubuntu 13.10

Question: Installed the new version, having trouble engaging the network. I cannot sign on to the internet. Do I need to go find the wireless adapters for my laptop?
Comment: what information does ifconfig give you?
Answer: i had this problem fixed by : first I connected to internet with Wired Connection then i went to software & updates > Additional Drivers but i didn't find any driver there (even with searching) then , I'm updated with software updater and refer to the Software & updates again and after clicking on Additional Drivers i found the broadcom 802.11 Wireless driver and clicked on use it (it worked) , so
first go to : software & updates > Additional Drivers if you can't find driver there updater and check again !


What if someone locks some bitcoin with a script which only requires a user to know a preimage, but it matches the p2sh template?

Question: The basic script for a lightning network HTLC output has a conditional branch which requires a user to know a preimage of a hash. It also requires the user to give a valid signature, but it got me thinking, what if before P2SH was a thing (back in the day) a user created a locking script which just so happens to match the P2SH template? For whatever reason, the user only intended to lock the bitcoin with a "spender must know the preimage of this hash" requirement. But this preimage is not a bitcoin script itself, so can't be executed even though it matches the P2SH template. Do P2SH-knowing nodes lock this bitcoin forever?
Answer: Yes, that could happen. However it is also possible to inspect the blockchain for such outputs, and none exist that weren't known to be for testing.
Comment: Looks like there might have been a handful, but were these all known at the time? https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/115803/did-the-p2sh-bip-0016-make-some-bitcoin-unspendable
Answer: I think this question is effectively asking what happens if you try to pre-empt future soft fork rules and broadcast a transaction which can only be spent after a future soft fork lays out the rules for spending that output(s). Today such an output would be anyone-can-spend on broadcasting so it would be the complete opposite of being locked up forever. But at the time of the P2SH soft fork (2012) it would have been locked up forever unless the transaction constructor was able to perfectly pre-empt the future rules for spending the output. Any slight mistake when attempting to pre-empt those future rules could have resulted in them being locked up forever so it wouldn't have been advisable to try this.
Comment: I was thinking the opposite, where a user creates a script which is unintentionally restricted by a future softfork.


Mean free path of molecules

Question: So in the book concepts in thermal physics(by Stephan and Katherine Blundell) the expression of mean scattering time is derived as shown(please refer the book for more). If we replace vdt in the derivation by dx then we will get mean free path and we will find mean free path to be equal to 1/nA. n is number density and A is collision cross sectional area(denoted by symbol 'sigma' in book). However later in the chapter an additional factor of 1/under root 2 is there in the expression of mean free path. Which one is more correct and why?
Answer: The difference is due to the fact that in the first derivation the assumption is made that all of the other molecules, the so called target molecules, other than the one under consideration are stationary whereas in the second derivation the target molecules are also moving.
Thus, instead of the relative velocity between the molecule under consideration and the target molecules being $v$, the relative velocity is $\sqrt {2}\,v$ which increases the rate of collision and hence decreases the mean free path by the factor $\sqrt {2}$.
Compare the section "Scatter Theory$ and section "Kinetic Theory of Gases" in the Wikipedia article Mean Free Path.

Mean free path of molecules


How to delete SQL rows based on source file last modified date, using SSIS package?

Question: I have created a functioning SSIS package which pulls rows from a flat file into a SQL table. I just need to be able to delete old rows in the table, once they are older than 10 days.
The only thing is, there is no date column and I'm wondering if there is a way to do this, using the DateLastModified property from the source file? I'm not sure if this can be done via a script task or something else?
Your advice would be appreciated. :-)

So I've tried to include the date of the source file by creating a FileDate variable, along with FilePath and SourceFolder variables. I've utilized the FileDate variable by adding a derived column, Date_Imported w/the expression, @[User::FileDate]. The FilePath variable is assigned the location, "d:\inputfiles*.txt", as indicated in the below code. The SourceFolder has been given the value, "D:\InputFiles\".
   However, I'm receiving an "Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation.

System.MissingMemberException: Public member 'GetFiles' on type 'FileSystemObject' not found."

The following is the content of my script task to delete records older than 10 days; please disregard any commented out lines, as I've been trying different things...I appreciate any guidance you can give:
Public Sub Main()
    ' Add your code here

    Dim FilePath As String

    'Dim SourceFolder As String
    Dim iMaxAge = 10
    Dim oFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")

    Dim myConnection As SqlConnection
    Dim myCommand As SqlCommand

    myConnection = New SqlConnection("server = localhost; uid=sa; pwd=; database=StampsProj")

    FilePath = "d:\inputfiles\*.txt"
    'SourceFolder = "d:\inputfiles"
    'SourceFolder.ReadOnly = True

    'To delete records, older than 10 days from AddUpIn table
    'For Each oFile In oFSO.GetFolder(SourceFolder).Files
    For Each oFile In oFSO.GetFiles(Dts.Variables("User::SourceFolder"))
        Dim FileDate As Date = oFile.DateLastModified
        If DateDiff("d", oFile.DateLastModified, Now) > iMaxAge Then
            'If DateDiff("d", oFile.FileDate, Now) > iMaxAge Then
            myCommand = New SqlCommand("Delete from AddUpIn", myConnection)
        End If
    Next

End Sub

Comment: If there's nothing in the table to base your decision on, I don't see how you want to find those rows that need to be deleted..... can't you include the `DateLastModified` from your file into the rows that you insert into the SQL Server table??
Answer: Sounds like you need to add either a datetime column onto your import table and set its value to the date you run the import. Or create a seperate FileImport table which logs the filename and an identifier, then add the identifier to the import table so you can identify the rows to delete.
Comment: Thanks for the input, Marc_S and SPE109. So I've tried adding a Date_Imported column to the table and in the data flow, added a derived column to correspond; for the expression, I tried using the GetDate() function. In the Control Flow to delete the old records, I've tried using an Execute SQL Task w/the SQL statment, "DELETE FROM dbo.AddUpIn
WHERE     (DATEDIFF([day], Date_Imported, GetDate()) > 10)", but upon running the package, the Date_Imported column is populating with Nulls and the old records are remaining in the table. Any idea of what I'm doing wrong?? I appreciate your feedback.


Has the Brexit referendum had a negative impact on sales of foreign-language literature in the UK?

Question: In July 2016, the UK voted to leave the EU in the (in)famous Brexit referendum. The Guardian recently reported that "British 'linguaphobia' has deepened since Brexit vote, say experts" (28 May 2018). In other words, the foreign language deficit in the UK has gotten worse since the Brexit vote. However, has the outcome of the Brexit referendum also had an impact on sales of foreign language literature, including translations, e.g. from French, Spanish, German etc.?
Answer: Before Brexit, sales of European and international authors had increased in the UK: Paula Erizanu wrote in September 2016,

according to Nielsen, which undertook research for the International Man Booker prize this year, the number of translated books bought in Britain increased by an astounding 96% between 2001 and 2015. Translated fiction sells better, overall, than English literary fiction and made up 7% of all UK fiction sales in 2015.

The increase looks impressive, but Erizanu adds that "only 1.5% of all books published in the UK are translations", which is a considerably lower percentage than the book market for translations in Germany (12.28%), France (15.9%) or Italy (19.7%).
Blogger Ann Morgan, who read one book from each of the world's independent countries in 2012, said that

at school in the UK we don't really read translations, we just don't develop that habit.

The above article was published in September 2016 but was based on data that predate the referendum. So what happened after the referendum?
According to Alison Flood, who consulted research commissioned by the Man Booker International,

overall sales of translated fiction in the UK were up last year [2018] by 5.5%, with more than 2.6m books sold, worth £20.7m – the highest level since Nielsen began to track sales in 2001.

French literature accounted for 17% of these sales; Leïla Slimani's novel Lullaby alone was sold around 100,000 times.
Other literatures were often represented by authors that sold particularly well, for example, Jo Nesbø (Norwegian literature), Jonas Jonasson (Swedish literature), Olga Tokarczuk and Andrzej Sapkowski (Polish literature) and Liu Cixin (Chinese literature). (Porter's article for Publishing Perspectives contains a list of the top 20 translated fiction works sold in the UK in 2018.)
Anderson Porter's article also mentions that there was a significant growth in sales of translated short stories and anthologies between 2017 and 2018, i.e. 96 %.
Flood's article concludes with a comment by Charlotte Collins, co-chair of the Translators Association, who said that

the amount of international fiction now available for sale in the UK has almost doubled in recent years, now accounting for 5.63% of all published fiction.

Apparently, Brexit has had no negative impact on sales of foreign-language literature in the UK. (Since this trend already existed before the Brexit referendum, I don't see a causal relationship, though.)
Sources:

Carr, Lucie: "The boom in translated texts", The Boar, 24.03.2019.
Erizanu, Paula: "Translated book sales are up, but Britain is still cut off from foreign literature", The Guardian, 30.09.2016.
Flood, Alison: "Translated fiction enjoys sales boom as UK readers flock to European authors", The Guardian, 06.03.2019.
Porter, Anderson: "Nielsen Reports Translated Literature in the UK Grew 5.5 Percent in 2018", Publishing Perspectives, 06.03.2019.


How do I reply instead of Answer?

Question: I must be stupid or this site has a weird interface.  How do I reply to someone's question so that it shows as a threaded discussion item instead of a regular answer?  I don't see any button or link to do it.
Comment: There are no threaded discussion items here, by design.
Comment: If you mean comments - you can't until you have 50 reputation (on anything but your own questions and answers)
Answer: The Stack Exchange user interface is completely different than that of a traditional forum for a very specific reason:  These are not traditional forums. Instead, Stack Overflow and the network of Stack Exchange sites are Q&A, or Questions and Answers sites.
The problem with many forums is that discussions tend to create a lot of noise and bury actual answers to problems. Just think about the last time you read through 4 pages of discussion only to find out that no one's suggestions solve your problem or that the link included on page 3 is now broken.
On Stack Exchange sites, the answers that are most helpful or that solve a problem are voted to the top. This helps a visitor quickly determine if there is a solution on that page and either benefit from that answer or quickly move on.
Furthermore, comments are known in the Stack Exchange community as second-class citizens. Although not always the case, their existence is intended to be temporary. Comments are intended to seek clarification on a question or help a user improve an answer. They are not intended to hold extended discussions or debate.
If a question is missing lots of detail, then it may need to be edited and improved, or flagged for moderator attention and either closed or removed.
Answer: Commenting is available at 50 reputation. You're pretty close :). See here.
Answer: I think you need a certain reputation score before you can comment on other people's post.  You can always comment on your own.  I think the score is 50 (and you're at 46, so you're close)
Answer: you can leave a comment using the "add comment" link...

How do I reply instead of Answer?


Must one fast if her stomach hurts?

Question: If someone's stomach hurts on Sheva asar b'tammuz, should she fast? Or do these extenuating circumstances free her from her obligation?
Comment: It's hard to imagine there's a specific categorical exemption of "stomach pain".
Answer: On 17 Tammuz, like on Tzom Gedalyia and 10 Tevet, the law is that

One who is ill, even if his life is not in danger, should not fast
(Kitzur Shulchan Aruch 121:9)

adds the Mishna Brura (550:4)

Indeed it is prohibited for one who suffers greatly by the fast to be
stringent upon himself and fast.

As to what considers "ill" and "suffers greatly", one should ask his or her Rav, who can ask further questions and personalize an answer for the particular person.
Refua shlema !
Answer: According to Jewish law no. According to science yes. A middle path would be to fast according to Jewish law on Jewish holidays but on a regular basis, fast according to biology (on every other day of the week).
Comment: "Because according to Jewish law one should fast unless one is terminally ill." This is patently false. See, for example, the answer right above you, which says explicitly (with a valid source) that a non-terminally ill person need not fast.
Comment: Would you mind clarifying why Jewish law prohibits it and why science allows it?
Comment: Science doesn't tell you what to do. It may tell you what is likely to happen if you do or don't do something.
Comment: Not sure why this is downvoted so much. It answers the question, albeit without sources.
Comment: @YosefZaghi Because according to Jewish law one should fast unless one is terminally ill. A stomach cramp would not constitute as being terminally ill.
Comment: @Alex yes, but I am telling you (readers) that it is good to fast every other day. When you fast your body is repairing itself. Also, sufficient sleep and a gallon of water a day are very useful.
Comment: Are your first two sentences an answer to the first sentence in the question, or the second sentence in the question?
Comment: @Alex Yes, that is correct. The second sentence is my own opinion.
Comment: @Salmononius2 You may be correct.

Must one fast if her stomach hurts?


I have booked flights tickets for 3 and got one confirmation number, so what should I do to get seats together for no cost?

Question: I am travelling in US (domestic), and have a one conformation number for 3 passengers, so I want all three of us sit together without paying anything.
Comment: Which airline? Any reason you can't just check in together?
Comment: In addition to the airline, which fare? Most airlines have different conditions depending on the fare (discount or flexible or whatever the airline calls it).
Comment: If it's you, your spouse and a young child, _many_ (but by no means _all_) people are reasonable and it's likely that you'll find someone willing to swap seats to allow the three of you to sit together if you can't reserve them together. Understand, though, that they person you're trying to swap with may have _paid_ for his seat (on the aisle, or up front) and she may not be willing to give it up for free, so don't be miffed if you don't find someone willing to swap.
Answer: Some tickets include free seat selection, others do not. That's a decision you need to make when you buy the ticket.
If your tickets do include free seat selection you can just picks seats online at the airline's website. Even with a single confirmation number, you can select seats for each passenger.
If your ticket does NOT include free seat selection you will have to pay for it.
If you don't have a reserved seat, you can pick one at check in from whatever is left. You can try to check in as early as possible and hope for the best but on most US domestic routes the chances of finding three empty seats next to each other during check in are slim.
Comment: "on most US domestic routes the chances of finding three empty seats next to each other during check in are slim."

This isn't necessarily true. Many US airlines block a row or two of seats for families to either select together at check-in (If their ticket type allows it) or to be assigned together at the gate by the agent.


Will the Genius Bar help me transfer my files between macs?

Question: I have a new macbook pro and would like to transfer the files from my old macbook pro. I need a firewire->thunderbolt cable to do this. I don't really want to pay $30 to buy a cable that I'm going to use once. Will the genius bar do this for me?
Comment: A second option would be to connect the two computers directly via a single ethernet cable.  The thunderbolt/ethernet adapter for the new MacBook Pro is roughly the same price as the cable you quoted; but maybe has a slightly higher probability of being used again.  http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5872 has details.
Answer: As a former Genius, I can say that we were always willing to lend cables to customers for in-store use, but we would not overtly assist with data exercises. Then primary reason is the legality: if Apple gets involved with your data, they become liable for your intellectual property...which can be a legal mess. It's the same reason Apple doesn't offer a guaranteed backup/restore service during a repair.
So, my advice would be book a Genius Bar appointment, explain your situation to a technician, and go from there. The worst they can say is no.
P.S. Unless Apple Retail Store policy has changed, you have a 14-day return policy. I had customers buy a cable, use it for a few days, then return it due to "buyers remorse." ;)
Answer: There are many ways how to achieve this - see Apples documentation for file transferring: http://support.apple.com/kb/PH11466
If both MacBooks are at least on OS X Lion (OS X 10.7), I recommend the AirDrop solution.
If you any MacBook is on an older version than OS X 10.7, you may want to copy them over your LAN via ethernet or WIFI connection.
However, if you'll be transferring a lot of data, you may want to use an external drive for exchange.


How can I merge an image with text

Question: I want to create a greeting card and send to the users email. How can I merge text on an image?
Thanks!
Comment: Similar: [Drupal 7 view Image Text overlay on Hover](http://drupal.stackexchange.com/q/149191/1908)
Answer: Look at Image Cache Actions:

Effects provided

Watermarking - a much requested addition that enables
  you to place any image anywhere over a source picture, with alpha
  transparency
Overlays - Add photo-corners etc to the image
Text overlay - add a short copyright notice to your image, using available
  system fonts
Color-shifting - Colorize images. Also invert.
Brighten/Darken Alpha blending - turn an image into a transparent
  mask, and back into a flat image against another color
Canvas manipulation - add padding, either onto color or transparent
  backgrounds
  *Background - Place your image onto another source
  background
File Format switcher - If you need tranparency in JPGs :
  make them PNG. If your PNG thumbnails are 30K each, save them as JPGs.
  (This is distributed as part of the color-actions submodule)
Rounded corners (transparent). With input from canaryMason, we can even set
  different radius for different corners, and round just one corner etc.
Aspect Switcher - lets you perform different actions or use different
  dimensions based on whether the image is 'landscape' or 'portrait'
Custom Actions - Execute your own PHP/GD code in the middle of an
  imagecache generation process. Requires some familiarity with imageAPI
  internals.
Posterize new as of 7.x-1.4- Reduce the image to a limited
  number of color levels per channel. This effect can be used to reduce
  file size on png images.

How this module adds text over an image (which is your question) I leave to you to figure out by browsing and deconstructing the module sourcecode.

How can I merge an image with text


Idiom for unexpected solution?

Question: Is there an idiom for an unexpected solution?
For more specificity, I want to write about how if you're sincere enough, sometimes you can find a solution in unexpected places.
Comment: Not clear what you mean by **sincerity**.  Persistent? Dedicated?
Comment: I wonder if OP has English as a second language. For example, in French, I have noticed sincere has other nuanced meanings. An English idiom suited to OP's request might be "if one keeps one's nose to the grindstone", but that only refers to persistence of effort and doesn't address the unexpected, presumably positive result.
Comment: In the context you seem to be Asking about no, there is no such idiom.

'… more specificity…' confuses the issue but the real problem seems to be what 'sincerity' could have to do with this?
Answer: Serendipitous (Merriam-Webster) fits the bill.  M-W defines it as "obtained or characterized by serendipidy", and serendipity is "the faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for".
Comment: True.  "Fortune favours the prepared mind" (Pasteur), if they want a proverb rather than a single word, perhaps?
Comment: It's an excellent word to have in your vocabulary, but I'm not sure exactly what OP intends with *if you're sincere enough.* To me, that implies ***if you look hard enough***, whereas serendipity usually involves good fortune or a discovery that *wasn't* explicitly being sought, as you say.
Comment: Yeah - in OP's context, "Fortune favours the prepared mind" might specifically imply you *noticed* a possible solution in an unexpected place (but "unexpected" still implies you weren't actively searching at the time). But adapting Gary Player's *The more I **practice** the luckier I get* from golf, perhaps *The harder I **look / work**, the more I find / get.*
Comment: I think 'serendipity' means 'fortunate co-incidence' which does seem to fit your MW citation but hardly to come close to the 'unexpected solution' in the Question.
Answer: You can stumble upon a solution.
You encounter it on your search for a solution, and trip over it. You find it by chance.
Comment: @tchrist In some respects, yes.  Both have the element of chance but **stumble upon** has an additional element of self-deprecation, it seems to me.
Comment: Is that different from chancing upon a solution?
Answer: The term I propose is perhaps not very much used, but as it represents  the concept of fortunate discovery ("fortunate: lucky, favoured by fortune"), it might be found to be a close enough term.

(SOED) eureka  noun
2 A fortunate discovery

It is found a lot in attributive function. Apparently, it is sometimes found between quotes or capitalized.

(Collins)

It was the classic eureka moment.
The Guardian (2016)

eureka
• (Genius: A Very Short Introduction - Andrew Robinson · 2011)
... a 'eureka experience': a sudden, surprising illumination that produces a breakthrough.
• (Handbook of Creativity - John A. Glover, Royce R. Ronning, Cecil R. Reynolds · 2013)   ... a eureka event. Here I will propose an initial definition of the extreme case of a pure eureka event as an extremely sudden, reorganizing, extraordinary break away from the subject's previous ideas.
• (The Radical: Vol. 9 - Sidney H. Morse · 2023) ... the eureka of one who has attained the vision of the ideal Helusion -the eureka of one whose eye has caught sight of the summits of the unconditioned-  the eureka of one who , his Alps surmounted , peers from wild heights of intuitition ...
• (The Bodily Roots of Experience in Psychotherapy - Ruella Frank · 2022)  the "eureka" of "I can." In this discerning progression, Husserl gives assiduous analyses of animate organisms that "document their foundational unity with psyche in the fact of 'feelings,'
• (The National Quarterly Review - Volume 2 - Edward Isidore Sears, David Allyn Gorton, Charles H. Woodman · 1860)  the eureka of Professor Lindley , in 1830 , was not his eureka of 1836 , and that in 1845 he ignored what he had then so triumphantly propounded as the veritable and perfect natural system . But we would not lightly regard the labors of ...
• (The Secret Doctrine of the Kabbalah: Recovering the Key to ... -
Leonora Leet · 1999) ... the "eureka" of mentally discovered connections. This practice of descent and ascent through the vowel series has two further ramifications that should be explored in view of their extraordinary richness of implication
• (Lacanian Affects: The function of affect in Lacan's work -
Colette Soler · 2015) ... the eureka of knowledge that one receives, and the affective effect as an added benefit (surcroît) 21 can be forgotten.
Comment: *Eureka* is not a noun. Please show where the *SOED* says this. The *OED* lists only "The proprietary name of an alloy of copper and nickel..." for noun usage.
Comment: @TinfoilHat Here is the full entry (bar etymology), in the 1993 edition page 861: "**eureka** *int.* & *n.* Also **E-** E17. […] **A** *int.* Expr. exultation at a sudden discovery. E17. **B** *n.* **1** A cry of *eureka!* M17. **2** A fortunate discovery. M19. **3** (**E-**) (Proprietary name for) an alloy of copper and nickel used for electrical filament and resistance wire. E20.". The noun is rare but is found in the references I provide in "noun territory".
Comment: Lacan? Ha ha, c'est une traduction. Et peu de traducteurs arrivent a bien traduire des textes sur lui.
Answer: A well-established idiom for one kind of unexpected solution is cutting the Gordian knot.  Its implication is that the solution is found by decisiveness and imagination — and especially, by discarding preconceptions about what the solution should look like.  Whether this fits OP's goals depends on what OP means by "…if you're sincere enough…", which as noted in comments is a little unclear.
Answer: I offer these two similar idioms.

Fortune favours the brave
Fortune favours the bold

Referenced by Farlex as brave and bold.
The OP writes

I want to write about how if you're sincere enough, sometimes you can find a solution in unexpected places.

One needs to be sincere to be brave or to be bold. Even people who are acting rashly in their boldness or their bravery, believe their action is right.

Idiom for unexpected solution?


Replace missing fonts in OpenOffice

Question: I have a Word document that uses fonts not available on my system. How can I globally replace these fonts? I've tried both Find/Replace (with formatting) and Tools / Options / OpenOffice / Fonts, but both of these only seem to support replacing one installed font with another -- typing the name of the missing font in manually doesn't work.
Answer: I believe you can do this using the following dialog available under the Tools -> Options pulldown menu.

This will replace the font Arial with Caladea, for example. I realize you said you tried this but these are the exact same directions as described here on Debian Wiki in this topic: SubstitutingCalibriAndCambriaFonts, specifically in this section.
The key thing you have to do is, after making a mapping such as this, you're required to restart LibreOffice. I would assume the same holds true for OpenOffice too.
NOTE: You'll need to type any names for fonts that are not installed when filling out the above dialog.
Comment: I thought I'd tried that and it didn't work, but it turns out I just underestimated the number of different buttons I had to press to get it to apply. `:P`
Comment: This worked for me. Libre Office Draw. I had a pdf with fonts missing my system that showed up horribly. I opened it with Libre Office Draw, Tools > Options > Fonts then for me Font: Impact Replace With: Akkadian AND CLICK THE GREEN CHECK ICON to the right of Replace with. Check the Always and Apply replacement table as shown and when the Options dialog was OK clicked the font change was applied. When selecting the text the old Font name is still shown.
Comment: In Libre Office Writer there should be a better way. Edit > Find & Replace, clear the Search text, click Other Options, uncheck any Attribute selected, then . . click in the empty Search test, then Format, Font tab, select the Font name to replace. Click Find All and it should show info and highlight any matching text. Then click in the empty Replace with, then Format, Font tab, select the Font name to substitute. Click Replace All and it should do the replace. BUT I could not do a replace with the font that was missing on my system.
Comment: This doesn't work if the font is missing (not available on the system) :|
Comment: This worked for me: I had managed to get a font called "var ff-mono" to ruin my world and it caused major havoc with everything defaulting to "Liberation Mono". The trick is to enter the Missing Font Name with a Capital Letter I.E. Var ff-mono, else the little green tick wont appear.

Replace missing fonts in OpenOffice


Why Silica and normal alumina can damage or destroy many metal complexes?

Question: in case of organic ligand there r several techniques for purification,but in case of metal complex(Cr,Mn,Fe,Co) with schiff base ,  i have not seen any literature for the purification of them except recrystallization. give some suggestion
Answer: There are a lot of reasons why silica and alumina can damage a compound: they are not neutral, they contain 12-15% water, they have a huge specific area (typically 550 m2/g) which greatly enhances interactions between the compound and the stationary phase, they can sort of "chelate" metals... Furthermore, in your case, imines (Schiff bases) are usually not stable to chromatography.
Although your metal complexes will likely not be stable enough, you can give it a try on 2D TLC to check for decomposition. Maybe adding 2-5% TEA in the eluent can limit damaging your compounds. If oxygen is a problem, you can manage to remove it from the solvents and carry out your column chromatography under argon.
HTH