Seq2Seq loss function

Question: I was reading the paper neural_approach_conversational_ai.pdf. And in the section Seq2Seq for Text Generation there is a formula that i feel a bit wrong
[1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/sX0it.png
Can someone help me confirm this formula?
Comment: That formula is not correct. Just check any negative log likelihood and you will see they differ.
Answer: This is the loss function that you aim to minimize by tuning the parameters theta given the data x,y. the loss is actually the negative conditional log-likelihood of the output sequence y given the input sequence x. what you want to find is a distribution P(y|x) parametrized by theta that gives you the most probable output sequence y given an input sequence x. minimizing the loss function means that you shape the distribution based on the examples in your training data such that for every sequence x in the training data the most probable output sequence y_predict agrees best with the actually observed output sequence y. You do this in the hope that the model will generalize well on unseen data, i.e. when you feed in a new sequence x that the model hasn't seen before, it will give you an accurate estimate of the corresponding sequence y that most likely will be associated with x.
Comment: The sign is not placed correctly and the indices and conditioning are not correct either.

Seq2Seq loss function


Damage to diodes by exceeding Vrrm

Question: How is a diode damaged by exceeding its Vrrm (maximum peak repetitive reverse voltage)? At this point it conducts more current than usual, so is it the current flow that damages it? Why would that be any different from being forward biased when it conducts almost unlimited current? Or is there some other factor?
Answer: From looking at a diode curve you can see that its reverse current sharply rises at Vr much like the forward current does. From this I would imagine that repetitively hitting the diode with reverse voltage in excess of Vrrm would cause the diode to conduct significant current and the resultant power dissipation to either melt the silicon and fail open, or, if the supply is limited, fail shorted.
A diode will certainly not "conduct almost unlimited current" -- the device has a designed power dissipation and will not conduct more than this amount for very much time. When reverse-biased you are essentially damaging the thin junction and it is for this reason that it's not the same as simply forward-biasing the diode.  Avalanche and Zener diodes are designed to operate reverse-biased and have differently-formed junctions which are designed to withstand this mode of operation. Zener diodes especially have a much more heavily doped junction than normal diodes.
Comment: My answer was posted 2 minutes before yours, I think it's more accurate to say that you summarized my answer, not that I elaborated on yours. :-)
Comment: sure, write what i do in more detail. +1 as your reward.
Comment: An ideal diode will conduct almost unlimited current. Of course one would be damaged by excessive current. But how would being forward biased be different from being reverse biased - one drops 0.7V and one drops 0V (at the point of breakdown), right?
Comment: Take a look at the characteristic curves. Diodes do not conduct zero current when reverse-biased.
Comment: Andrew, I did not mean to say that you expanded on mine. I wrote it in class and as I hit post the message popped up saying yours had been posted. It told me a minute before, but the concept of peak reverse voltage has one clear answer.

Damage to diodes by exceeding Vrrm


Which is better for healing, power or crit?

Question: When making a healer, is it better to focus on power or crit in early/mid/late games?  Can someone provide some concrete examples with numbers on which is better in what situations?
Comment: Unsure about swtor yet (haven't gotten a heal), but in other games of this type - crit generally leads to over-heal.
Comment: @DavidB you beat me to the bounty I was going to add one later today.
Answer: All three healing trees have some amount of synergy with Crit, and will want to achieve at least some baseline amount.
I've tried to use spell and talent names interchangably, often alternating between Republic and Empire talent names for the same effect. I always use both together the first time, and will generally alternate thereafter.
Mercenary/Commando healers (Bodyguard or Combat Medic trees), will probably want to get to get enough crit to keep Critical Reaction/First Responder up as much as possible. This is a 5% Alacrity (haste) bonus that lasts for 6 seconds after a critical heal. Since most heals for this spec are Instant or 1.5 seconds to cast, and the lone exception is a 2 second cast. That means that you'll want somewhere in the range of 25-33% crit to have an average uptime of 100%, and probably a bit more than that for it to be a sure thing. This is the only class for whom Crit is purely a throughput stat.
Operative/Scoundrel healers (Medicine or Sawbones trees), get 2 Energy back from Diagnostic Scan crits thanks to the Patient Studies talent. Given the 'gated regen' model and HoT centric healing style of this class, DS is the primary 'filler' heal, and is used to fill free GCD's, and is an important piece of the regen puzzle that makes Operative healing work. Scoundrels also have substantial bonuses to Critical Healing further up the tree, making Crit a pretty desirable stat.
Sorcerer/Sage healers have the Force Surge or Resplendence talent respectively. This causes critical ticks of Innervate/Healing Trance to allow you to use Noble Sacrifice or Consumption for free. Both spells tick 4 times, and when used under the effects of Force Bending/Conveyance, a Sage will have a bonus +25% chance for each tick to crit. A decent baseline of crit from gear will minimize the frequency with which you find yourself casting Healing Trance without a Consumption proc. This is important, because Noble Sacrifice is the Sage's primary regen mechanic - being able to use it without a health penalty or regen penalty is critical to keeping your force pool full and having enough longevity to make it through the fight.
One thing to keep in mind in all of this is that you will always prefer your 'primary' stat (Aim, Cunning, or Willpower respectively) over either Crit or Power, as it provides both. Furthermore, you may well find, especially in the case of the Sorcerer that just this crit is 'enough' for you. Additionally, it's important to maintain a balance between Crit and Surge, as each of those stats make the other stronger. Surge increases the critical effect bonus of your spells. An important thing to note about healing in TOR is that unlike most MMO's, there is no stat that directly effects the size of any healers resource pool, or the rate at which it regenerates. The only stats available are 'throughput stats' that happen to function in a variety of ways. Alacrity allows you to heal more often, but at a cost to your resource efficiency. Crit allows your heals to provide much more throughput, but at a cost of predictability. Power provides less risk, but also less reward - consistent increased throughput and predictability. Another key consideration is that because of the resource model in TOR, all three healing classes rely heavily on HoTs, and in the case of the Trooper and Agent, on a 'filler' heal that has no resource cost, for which Crit is obviously very beneficial.
At the end of the day, healing is as much about style as it is about math, and different players are willing to accept varying amounts of 'randomness' in their playstyle. Adding additional crit will increase the variance in your healings effectiveness, while decreasing the variance in your regen for Sages and Operatives, and speed for Commandos.
Comment: I think this answer is worth the bounty.  It doesn't include concrete comparisons of stats, but does survey many abilities over many classes where crit should be considered specially - and it does that well.
Answer: I haven't played healer in swtor, but speaking of experience from other games crit is not a desirable stat for a healer unless a critical heal results in a bonus of some kind (other than extra healing). The reason for this is that you want to be able to predict your healing out put so that you don't over heal and so you don't put faith in the randomness of crits
Comment: SWTOR values line up with other similar games, so yes this answer makes sense and applies for this game as well.
Comment: Granted, but I am willing to wait until I see some actual numbers.
Comment: Crit is a desirable stat for many healers in WoW as well. Modern MMO class design has come a long way from the traditional way where many stats were simply 'useless'. It's much more interesting this way.
Comment: there is a big differences between not desirable and useless, and the reason why it is a desirable stat for many healers in WoW is due to the added effects that they get talents.
Answer: Depends on the class and the skill tree you choose. Some skill trees and options expand on your crits.  Some classes even depend on crits to do the real healing so you're better off adding crit instead of power. But you need to analyze the skill trees you're using to see if they depend on criticals or not.
I've played Scoundrel and Consular to high levels, and if I remember correctly, the scoundrel depended more on criticals than the consular, but it might have been because of the skill path I chose.
Comment: All three healing trees have some additional benefit from crit. What varies is just how much benefit there is.
Answer: Do the math - In SWTOR:
<code> +1 Primary skill -> 0.14 HP per heal
 +1 Power         -> 0.17 HP per heal
 +1 Crit          -> 0.017% better chance to crit
</code>
How convert this into HP? Consider the HP of your heals! Assume 70% surge +1 Crit results statistically into
<code>  500HP heal:    + 0.06 HP
 1000HP heal:    + 0.12 HP
 2000HP heal:    + 0.24 HP
 4000HP heal:    + 0.47 HP
</code>
Now it's easy to decide when crit is a must have.
Comment: Both mainstat's and crit's contributions to healing/damage are non-linear, so your numbers are nonsense.
Answer: In 4.0, Crit is always better than Power.  This is because Surge was merged into Crit, meaning that 1 point of Crit increases both your chance to do more damage as well as the actual amount of extra damage that is done.  Point for point, it contributes far more on average than Power does (even in the best gear currently available, when Crit is deeper into its diminishing returns).
Please see this forum post for exact stat recommendations, as well as the mathematics and methodolgy behind them.


What can I use to tunnel under a walkway or driveway?

Question: I have seen Walkway Tunnel Kits being sold in the US, unfortunately I can't find a similar product in the UK.  Are there alternative products or methods, that can be used when a product like this is not available?
Comment: It appears to simply be a jet nozzle for your hose. Seems that any garden center should have one.
Comment: @DA01, it is more then just a jet nozzle, as it fixes onto a PIPE, a hose is not stiff enough to push on it's own.   However I am thinking of using my power waster inside of a old down pipe to get the same outcome.
Comment: You don't really even need a nozzle, just a pipe thread to hose thread adapter, and some pipe. I've tunnelled under a walk with just a garden hose, no pipe, no nozzle. No direction control, comes out where it wants, but it did get to the other side. Obviously need pipe for longer distances. If you want more water velocity, just drill a hole in an end cap and attach to the pipe.
Answer: I have tunneled under a concrete pad using lengths of rigid pipe, a hose, and lots of dedication.
You dig a substantial hole on both sides, then you put the hose in the pipes with a pressure nozzle, then you hammer the pipes through the ground and put them together as you need length.


Copy SSRS Subscriptions from one SSRS server to another

Question: I am having to migrate reports and subscriptions from one SSRS server to another. I have already migrated the RDL and Datasources. I only have the subscription information to move. I am trying to use the ReportingServicesTools (https://github.com/microsoft/ReportingServicesTools) and an example from here http://wragg.io/managing-sql-server-reporting-services-subscriptions-with-powershell/ to accomplish this.  I exported the subscription information using Get-RsSubsctiption | Export-RsSubscriptionXml to a file.
I am trying to import it using Import-RsSubscriptionXml | Set-RsSubscription. When this executes, I get no messages, error or informational. When I look in the SSRS database, I don't see the subscription.
Here are the commands:
Get-RsSubscription -ReportServerUri 'http://sql2017/reportserver' -RsItem '/Cooperative Technologies/1035/1035YellowPages/Billing Reports/LookupActivityReport' | Export-RsSubscriptionXml "c:\users\logsdone\desktop\SSRS Subscriptions\1.xml"

Import-RsSubscriptionXml "c:\users\logsdone\desktop\SSRS Subscriptions\1.xml"  -ReportServerUri 'http://sql2017/reportserver'  | Set-RsSubscription -ReportServerUri 'http://sql2017/reportserver'

Thanks for any suggestions or additional documentation or examples.
Eric
Answer: you are using this PowerShell module from the gallery.
You need to use Copy-RsSubscription if the subscription on the destination does not already exist. Set-RsSubscription updates only already created subscriptions.
Get-RsSubscription -ReportServerUri 'http://sql2017/reportserver' -RsItem '/Cooperative Technologies/1035/1035YellowPages/Billing Reports/LookupActivityReport' | Export-RsSubscriptionXml "c:\users\logsdone\desktop\SSRS Subscriptions\1.xml"
Import-RsSubscriptionXml "c:\users\logsdone\desktop\SSRS Subscriptions\1.xml"  -ReportServerUri 'http://sql2017/reportserver'  | Copy-RsSubscription -ReportServerUri 'http://sql2017/reportserver' -RsItem '/Cooperative Technologies/1035/1035YellowPages/Billing Reports/LookupActivityReport'


Adding new row to wp_post table

Question: I want to add 2 more rows (for voting up or down) to my default wordpress posts table. Would those rows be deleted when I update my WP version, or cause any other problem? An alternative would be to create a separate table but it's much faster and easier to query from 1 in my case.
Answer: First, I assume you're referring to columns, not rows.  To answer your question, no, the upgrade process will not remove the extra columns from the posts table.  That said, WordPress has the wp_postmeta table that should be used to store extra data about posts rather than adding columns to the posts table.  I would suggest using the postmeta table instead of modifying the core database.
Comment: Thank you for the response! I wanted to add the columns to avoid complicated queries but I guess you're right.
Comment: I'd strongly suggest following the advice given, using the existing structure will cause you less problems long term, and it's really not that hard to formulate queries to the meta table. You can most likely rely on the existing WP functions to perform your post/meta queries to..

Adding new row to wp_post table


how to remove horizontal scroll bar in listview in .net compact framework

Question: i am using listview while developing windows mobile 5.0 application. When items are added at the end it shows vertical as well as horizontal scrollbar. How can remove horizontal scrollbar?
Answer: Just adjust the width of Listview.
That is if you have a list view with width 50 and there is five columns. The sum of widths of columns should be less than or equal to 45. So you can get a 5 at end and the horizontal scroll is not shown. Horizontal scroll is only visible if u drag a header.


How-to Cut Baking Chocolate bar clean for perfect squares

Question: My recipe calls for 1/2 square of baking chocolate per cookie. But trying to cut thru the bar into the indicated squares just crumble and are not neat or exact. Is there a method of somehow either warming the chocolate or softening it, so that it will cut easily/nicely from the solid bar?
Comment: The recipe calls for an intact half-square of baking chocolate per cookie? I'd hate to bite into that...
Comment: @sourd'oh Baking squares come in sweetened too.
Comment: Why don't you just make an even number of cookies...?
Comment: @sourd'oh) The recipe calls for semi-sweet baking chocolate, not unsweetened.
Comment: @starsplusplus) The square of chocolate hides underneath half of a large marshmallow so using an entire rectangle would be far too large. Not to mention awfully expensive cookies as you would be doubling the amount of baking chocolate which currently is two bars.
Comment: Oh, I see. I thought you just meant the total quantity needed was half a square per cookie.
Answer: You can score and snap.  You make a shallow score in the chocolate using a knife or other sharp object (gentle!).  Then you snap it.  It works better on harder chocolates.  Since all I have around the house this instant is a leftover halloween candy, I'll show the sequence here, but with this soft chocolate it would be easier to actually cut it through...
1) Score.

2) Pinch it. Here I pinched it between a plate and a cutting board.  You may be better off using a cutting board and your fingers -- so long as your hold it down stiffly with your fingers.

3) Strike it with a blunt object.  Or depending on the chocolate you can often just bend it with your fingers until it breaks.

(This basic approach is used in industry to make straight cuts in glass, tile, and silicon chips!  The harder the object, the better it works.  You can also try this on brittle candy, etc.)
Comment: This is, of course, brilliant. Especially since it makes perfect sense! No more brittle squares!
Answer: Although the other answer is pretty genius (pretty much how you would cut bathroom tiles) it does seem a little labour intensive or over the top for the sake of cutting chocolate.
How I would personally do it at work is.

Heat large knife, either over stovetop or using a blowtorch.
Cut chocolate...
Repeat as necessary when knife gets cold, giving the knife a wipe beforehand so as not to have burnt chocolate stuck to your knife.

The above method also works great for cutting jelly and cheesecake when you want a nice smooth cut.
Comment: Yes, I have often used it for cutting cheese cakes and/or ice cream or frozen pie(s) as well. But normally heating up the knife with hot water so as to not melt the product in the process.
Comment: To be honest I also tend to use boiling water for softer things just as it's easier to wash the knife after each slice. The reason I suggested this for chocolate is obviously it's going to take more heat to slice through in one go. Personally the slight melt caused I think of as a perk as it has a cleaner presentation which is important when working at 2 rosette standard :-)


Online SharePoint Portal for testing purpose

Question: Do we have any online site where we can create SharePoint Demo portal with master page and page layouts? I need to try a few things for a testing purpose.
Comment: When you have your test tenant, you can use https://lookbook.microsoft.com/ for inspiration as well as add the designs / layouts to your own tenant
Answer: I have a test SharePoint site set up, you will be able to create this via https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/developer-program/office-365-developer-program-get-started
You have a 12 month subscription with this program.
Hope this helps.
Thanks,
Gavin
Answer: You could apply a free developer SharePoint Online subscription for One Year, please visit here for register:
Join the Office 365 developer program today!
I think this will meet your test purpose.
Answer: You can subscribe 30 days trail version of SharePoint online by using This link
Answer: It depends ;-)
https://demos.microsoft.com/  is available for Partners and each MSDN subscription comes with a free tenant for dev and test
Answer: For the - "Join the Office 365 developer program today!" option
You need a Visual Studio subscription to qualify for the instant sandbox.
"Any Visual Studio subscriber with a standard Professional or standard or monthly Enterprise subscription qualifies"


Is there a word for laughing when faced with a hopeless situation?

Question: A word for the unexpected reaction of laughing in a situation of complete hopelessness or laughing with sad undertones
Comment: You might need to be more specific - there's ***sardonic wit, nervous / embarrassed laughter, grim smile***, etc. All of which could have different implications. I think it's also relevant what *national culture* you have in mind (based mainly on the movie *Platoon*, I believe many if not most people in the Far East grin / smile when they're terrified).
Comment: *Acceptance*? *Fatalism*? *Defiance*? Please explain what *sense* you're looking for.
Comment: "sardonic wit" sounds promising....
Answer: Gallows humor is "humor that treats serious, frightening, or painful subject matter in a light or satirical way."  It has the connotation of someone laughing at their own execution.
Urban Dictionary actually has a good summary:

gallows humor
  Sense of humor that arises from stressful, traumatic or
  life-threatening situations where death seems to be an inevitability.
  Different from black humor in that comments of this sort are made by
  the person/persons affected (i.e. about to die).

It is not always used to mean that the person is facing literal death, but the idea is the same.  They are expressing amusement or using humor in the face of their own inevitable fate.
Comment: Gallows humor is _intentional_ and therefore the laughing is **not** an _unexpected reaction_.
Answer: I think that generally the kind of laughter you're talking about could be called nervous laughter or a nervous chuckle. It looks like "nervous laughter" is an actual term that psychiatrists use to describe the kind of laugh people give when they're put in a stressful situation. There is even an entire article on Wikipedia dedicated specifically to this expression:

Unhealthy or "nervous" laughter comes from the throat. This nervous laughter is not true laughter, but an expression of tension and anxiety. Instead of relaxing a person, nervous laughter tightens them up even further. Much of this nervous laughter is produced in times of high emotional stress, especially during times where an individual is afraid they might harm another person in various ways, such as a person's feelings or even physically.
Answer: hysteria

Psychiatry - a psychological disorder (not now regarded as a single definite condition) whose symptoms include conversion of psychological stress into physical symptoms (somatization), selective amnesia, shallow volatile emotions, and overdramatic or attention-seeking behavior. The term has a controversial history as it was formerly regarded as a disease specific to women. – Google

1a : a psychoneurosis marked by emotional excitability and disturbances of the psychic, sensory, vasomotor, and visceral functions without an organic basis. b : a similar condition in domestic animals. 2 : behavior exhibiting overwhelming or unmanageable fear or emotional excess. – MW

"hysterical laughter", in quotes, has almost half a million results.
Comment: Not to be confused with laughing maniacally, which is what the bad guy does in the movie. Laughing hysterically is what you do when you look at your phone bill.
Answer: According to Oxford Living Dictionary (https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/)
it's
MIRTHLESSNESS.
This noun is formed from an adjective 'mirthless':
(of a smile or laugh)
: lacking real amusement and typically expressing irony.
// 'he gave a short, mirthless laugh.'
Comment: "Mirthless laugh" seems appropriate but "mirthlessness" is far too general.
Comment: https://youtu.be/_YAclFXGGpM?t=105


Honda CR-V 2009

Question: Car ran 40 miles with oil cap off. Pulled off road when oil warning light came on. Engine was steam cleaned & oil replaced. Lower fuel performance now. What is affected?
Answer: Possibly the air filter is clogged with oil - the oil that came out the filler may have been drawn into the intake, so inspect the filter and clean or change as necessary. If oil got past the filter you may also need to clean any sensors between the filter and engine, as these will affect fuel control and, consequently, consumption.

Honda CR-V 2009


What is this bush/plant?

Question: I want to buy more of these but don't know what it is.  It's one of only two plants that grow year round with flowers here in our flower bed in northern CA.  It's pretty hardy and doesn't need much water.  Hope someone can id it.
Thanks, Jim
Answer: Looks like Euryops - there are three common varieties, E. acraeus, E. chrysanthemoides and E. pectinatus. It's impossible to get a clear image of the flowers and leaves in close up from the photo you've posted, even under magnification, so I'm unable to decide which one it is - you can either post another picture in close up, or check out the three different varieties for yourself.
Here's a link to E. pectinatus for comparison purposes https://www.smgrowers.com/products/plants/plantdisplay.asp?plant_id=624

What is this bush/plant?


Is there a way to possibly attach a document(from the library) to an email directly?

Question: Is there a way to possibly attach a document(from the library) to an email directly? Rather than "Email the link"  ? In the case where the person has no access to the library(where the document is located)
Answer: You could go to the document and choose the option to share it with the person you intend to. In this way he will be able to see the file. There is no way to attach it to the email directly. You can either save the document to your local machine and attach or send the link to the user and at the document properties you make sure to share the document with that person as a guest link.
Share a document by sending or posting an anonymous guest link
Answer: SharePoint does not provide any specific action to send email with attachment...the workaround is to embed the document link into the email body and send the email.
please refer this link.
http://community.office365.com/en-us/f/154/t/204397.aspx
Thanks.


Is there a good overview of Christian denominations/churches and their mapping between countries

Question: There seem to be a confusingly large number of Christian churches (Catholic, Lutheran, baptists, evangelicals, Presbyterians). Could someone point me to a good overview that lists the mainstream ones, shows the main doctrinal differences, and also how they map between different countries. For example the German "Evangelische Kirche" seems quite different from the what in the US is called "evangelical".
Comment: I think this question is too broad for this site.  You're asking for a overview that would essentially give you the entire history of the church.  I'm not sure that there's any volume that can give you a thorough understanding of the differences between all the denominations out there, save for a multi-volume set like this: http://www.christianbook.com/history-of-the-christian-church-volumes/philip-schaff/9781565631960/pd/3196X
Comment: Sorry, I wasn't expecting a complete answer here, just a few pointers like the one below.
Answer: You can find a fairly comprehensive history of Christian Denominations and their origins on the Wikipedia article for "Christian denomination."
This chart, written by Wendell Holmes Rone from a distinctly Landmarkist perspective, maps out some of the key denominational differences. (Click to enlarge images)

If don't mind excessive advertising, a more comprehensive chart can be found here: Denominations Beliefs
As far as maps go, here's a fairly current source (2010) that maps distinct denominations within the US and broader categories of Christianity throughout the world based on internet presence.

From Britanica (1995)

Find out more here:
Mapping Religious Cyberscapes
New Technologies and Interdisciplinary Research on Religion
Mapping Christianity
Comment: Welcome to the site.  Very interesting maps.
Comment: Some of these maps indicate Pentecostal and Protestant. What is the difference between these according to the map makers?
Comment: @fredsbend - From the comments on the [Map source](http://www.floatingsheep.org/2010/03/mapping-christianity.html) (unofficial): "Pentecostal and Anglican are part of the Protestant tradition, in terms of theology and history. In terms of theology though, I can appreciate distinguishing them from the Protestant mainstream. The Anglican church has historically had a significant Anglo-Catholic demographic and many Pentecostal churches with their emphasis on emotion and experience, seem to be moving away from the Bible-centered foundation laid by the Protestant Reformation."
Comment: I am quoting https://askanydifference.com here. The difference between the Lutherans and the Baptists is that Lutheranism regarded baptism for Lutherans as a signification of grace and the method involves sprinkling water on the head of the believers (even newborns) whereas Baptists disregarded the ideology of baptism for infants and the custom is generally delivered by full immersion in water as an emblematic of the complete washing off of sins.


Is it too late to plant my avocado plant in soil?

Question: I have had my avocado plant in water for 6 months now on my window sill and it has grown to be about 30cm. However the bottom leaves are hanging and have slight brown spots, the second set of leaves are thinner and slightly curly whilst a third set is currently about to grow out. I assume this is because it is still in water? Will it be able to readjust if I plant it in soil at this point? Be a shame to see it go.
Answer: I don't spend any great deal of effort on these, but one or two have landed where I see them. My impression is that loss of lower leaves could be classed as "perfectly normal", especially under less than ideal lighting conditions. I've seen exactly one that really amounted to much, and that was a professor's "mild eccentricity" growing in a 30 gallon pot in an office with extensive windows and the university paying for the heat...
Anyway, I see no reason not to put it in dirt if you want to keep it.
Answer: Definitely transition it to soil. Your plant is using up the energy reserves in the large seed. If it runs out, and it doesn't get the proper nutrients, it won't be able to support itself, and it will die. Use a pot that has a diameter not over an inch wider in diameter than the root spread. Use a free draining mix, and keep the plant well watered until it puts out new growth.
One common thing people do (wrong) when transitioning from all water to soil is placing the container into a bowl (or similar) of water, to keep the mix saturated. Do not do that, as it starts anaerobic decomposition of the mix, and is a perfect place for phytophthora to kill off the root system. Keep the mix moist, but not soaking wet.
It will be a shock to the plant, and it will have to put out a different form of root hairs into the mix, after which new growth should show and you should begin fertilizing.


What does the world think about the death of Gadafi?

Question: After the death of Gadafi, I didn't hear much more about it -- what does the world think about the death of Gadafi?
Comment: This question is on hold because it is too broad. But it is a good question and should be saved by restricting to the title question (the other aspects could give interesting questions too)
Comment: "The World" is seven billion people, each one with their own unique thoughts. In order to make this question answerable you have to limit it to the thoughts of people you are interested in specifically and who are important enough to have their thoughts published.
Comment: could it be narrowed down to, _"How has the death of Qaddafi affected corporations and governments"_ would that be less broad?
Comment: You could start by asking if the world population (strongly/mildly) approves, disapproves, does not care or does not know. Asking for every thought on the topic is what makes it too broad. Also note that there may be some places far away from Libya where no data is available (a pointer to a general "do not care")
Answer: AlJazeera and PBS have a few articles on it (1 2 3). They seem to be mostly positive on the death of Qaddafi except for one, a few quotes:

"Thank God they have caught this person" a fighter said.
"For the region, today's events prove once more that the rule of an iron fist inevitably comes to an end." - Barack Obama
"However, life for the average Libyan today, in some ways, has become more dangerous and unstable than it was under Qaddafi, according to experts." - PBS Frontline

Conclusion
So it seems that while the death of Qaddafi was welcome, the actual ability of the government ts control the militia groups and other military organizations had gone down. Now the country is ruled by fear of death from the militia groups fighting for power rather than a stable government. One person even saying that they preffered the stability of Qaddafi's rule:

"You could walk down the streets at night under Qaddafi, but it was the peace of the graveyard"
Comment: "Peace of the graveyard" passage in the last quote seems to imply that the speaker prefers current state of the country as opposed to Qaddafi's, no?
Comment: I think I remember that quote about the graveyard.
Comment: It does seem to imply security or stability without justice or vitality, possibly a resigned or fearful population, or suppression of large segments of the population by a fearful government.  The quote sounds lucid but without context it could mean just about anything.
Comment: in the article it says that they preffered rule under Qaddafi
Comment: That sounds like the graveyard at least was outside the home, maybe.  I'm all over the place thinking about it, though I have no illusions my country cared what happened to most of the people.  With so much pressure on countries with desired resources I don't know how any of them survive.


What devices will take advantage of USB 3.0?

Question: All I see are USB 3.0 external hard drives. Are there other devices that will greatly benefit from this higher throughput? Are external hard drives the primary device that's pushing USB 3.0? If so, then I don't think there's much advantage for USB 3.0 for most consumers.
Comment: probably flash drives and other storage/transfer drives will be where usb 3.0 is most prevalent at first, but after a while I would imagine that the people who manufacture usb connectors will simply make everything (i.e. printers & scanners) usb 3.0 out of convenience. IMO.
Comment: You probably won't see an "explosion" of devices until it becomes the standard on new PCs.
Answer: There is this USB 3.0 monitor for example. And I'd guess external GPU would also take advantage of it fairly well.
Comment: please god no more wireless crap ... aren't our airwaves polluted enough already?  i just wish they'd come out with a reasonable standard connector and stick to it.  @moab
Comment: I wish wireless monitors would become a reality for the consumer, no more video cable.
Comment: Its going to get allot worse, Obama just opened up more of the wireless spectrum for use.

"President Barack Obama on Monday June 28, 2010 signed a memorandum to nearly double the amount of federal and commercial spectrum available for smartphones and wireless Internet devices. Mr. Obama's action effectively endorses a plan put forward in March by the Federal Communications Commission to free up 500 megahertz of airwaves as part of a broader strategy for improving the U.S.'s broadband infrastructure"
Answer: I think external GPUs will also be seen in times to come. A variety of portable notebooks now have CPUs capable of running high end graphics applications/games. In order to keep the portability we need good battery life and this means small screens and low power GPUs, however When these become external it will be an opportunity to replace the desktops we currently rely on.
Answer: Recording equipment -- both audio and video -- will benefit from the higher throughput.  The audio world will be especially happy if USB 3 does anything to fix the horrid latency of USB 2.


What could come next in this sequence?

Question:
I found this on Twitter but no speculation until this point.
Comment: [Questions like these](https://puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/pattern+visual) usually come with a bunch of options/choices that we choose the right answer from.
Comment: Has a correct answer been given? If so, please don't forget to $\color{green}{\checkmark \small\text{Accept}}$ it.  If not, some responses to the answerers to help steer them in the right direction would be helpful.
Answer: Could be something like this:

Rationale:

 The short line gets rotated counterclockwise a few degrees each step, and one long line gets joined onto the existing line(s) for each step. At each step, the long line alternates between the "left" and "right" side of the short line. $$$$ The angles between the lines also get tighter with each step, but if they get much tighter it'll collapse into what looks like a single line; presumably not the intended solution.
Comment: But what about the whole thing is increasing by 2n+1 in every step? If we rotate the 1st CC certain degrees, a new line double the distance of the short is added. The 3rd is still CC rotate if the the 2nd but now there's alternation for the new remaining short part that should be added, here it was added on the top long line instead of the bottom one.
Comment: the short line is on the wrong side in the third picture to meet your rationale
Comment: @JasonV, I'm thinking of the short line as the hand of a clock, rotating backwards, with a long line attached to the end of it. If you're standing on the end of the clock hand looking outward, first the long line is on your left, then it's on your right, and here it's on the left again.
Comment: @Leb_Broth, could be, do you get something like a star in that case (with a missing line, I guess)?
Comment: @Guest basically I never had an answer for that! But if you see the general rotating CC and growing in size (the growth is as such: the short line extended in double then deflects). Now the particular, there's an alternation happening for where the short remaining line should be connected
Comment: @JasonV we can test this strategy: "the short part of the body is getting connected to an inward "hat" in every transition but the then the new added part is mirrored from the previous?

What could come next in this sequence?


Articles with professions: "The job of teacher" vs "The job of a teacher"

Question:
The job of teacher, for which patience is required, would not suit me.

Why don't we say "the job of a teacher"? As far as I know with professions we always use the indefinite article
Comment: While not directly an answer to the question asked, the most idiomatic way to say this would, in my opinion, be "**teaching** would not suit me."
Answer: "The job of teacher" has essentially the same meaning as "the occupation of teaching," whereas "the job of a teacher" is (often anyway) the same as "the responsibility or role that is expected of teachers.
Answer: The article in 'the job of a teacher, sailor, doctor, (or whatever) may be sometimes omitted. It is not compulsory, so whoever told you that 'with professions we always use the indefinite article' was mistaken. The job of a teacher is to educate children (article needed; focus is an individual teacher's daily work); the job of teacher is not well paid (article optional; focus is on the occupation).
Comment: Not only can the article sometimes be omitted, but also, sometimes the definite article can be used instead of the indefinite, so the OP's understanding is doubly mistaken.
Answer: There are two slightly different meanings of "job" in those two phrases.
From Merriam-Webster:

1 a : a regular remunerative position
got a part-time job as a waiter
she quit her job
b : a specific duty, role, or function
The heart's job is to circulate blood.

"The job of teacher" is employment with the title "teacher". This means "The job called 'teacher' ". This is definition 1a. It's only about the position.
"The job of a teacher" is what that the person with the title "teacher" does or is expected to do. This is definition 1b. It's about what is expected from the teacher, including beyond the specific duties of the job itself, like meeting societal expectations or moral duties.
In your example sentence, it appears the word "job" only refers to the requirements of the job itself, not the expectations of society, so definition 1a is the correct one, and there's no article.
An example with definition 1b:

The job of a teacher is to improve the minds of their students.

That same sentence without "a" makes no sense.
Answer: As others have mentioned, they are often interchangeable.  In  your example, however, teacher works better. The article is not needed.
There is a small difference between the two that a speaker may intend.
When I say the job of teacher, I am speaking about the profession called teacher.  I might similarly say, the job of janitor or the job of banker.  The text that follows would go on to discuss that profession.  Your example discusses the profession called teacher.
When I say the job of a teacher, I am talking about a person who teaches, not a the profession called teacher.   In your example you are not talking about a person who is a teacher.  You are talking about the profession called teacher.
The sentence, The job of a teacher is to teach, makes perfect sense because we are talking about what a person's job is.
The sentence, The job of teacher is to teach, does not make sense because we are talking about he job itself. You would use it, The job of teacher is often an exciting one.
If your example used a teacher, it would still be clearly understood but it could be made clearer.


iPhone Formatted Strings

Question: I would like to be able to format a string in a label or textfield so that i can change the font color and size of certain keywords. does anyone know how to do this? is it possible to find the actual physical dimensions of a CharcterSet as well?
Answer: Craig Hockenberry from Twitteriffic fame will help you out. Stay away from Three20 if you can. I regret using it sadly, I wish it worked a lot better but I have had far to many issue with it.
The answer is FancyLabels.
http://furbo.org/2008/10/07/fancy-uilabels/
Download link
http://furbo.org/stuff/FancyLabel_1.0.zip
Comment: What is the problems with Three 20? I see a lot people using it, including Facebook iphone app, right?
Answer: Attributed strings (NSAttributedString and CFAttributedStringRef, and their mutable variants) are what is commonly used in OS X. They are available in iOS. However, UIKit really isn't employing them at this time.
CoreGraphics.framework and CoreText.framework will be your friends, if you do not find a suitable 3rd party solution. PDFs or HTML could also be useful in some cases, and displayed easily.
Answer: If you really want to, then render it on your own using CoreText. Simply build an NSMutableString and pass it to a renderer with just a few lines of code. CoreText is actually quite easy to use. The other option will be to use an UIWebView where you render some styled html. I did a deeper discussion of the problem in a related post, you might want to have a look at it.
I don't know Three 20 in detail. But if others recommend it, it might be worth a look. Besides that it may be way too much power for your purpose and hence might cost too much performance.
Answer: Currently, I think the UITextField or UILabel will not allow you to change some text to be a color and the others to be another color. But you can use the Three 20 Style library to accomplish that
Answer: inspiration by: Craig Hockenberry from Twitteriffic
fancy-label really gave me a bump wan i was stack, it had a problem with y origins when i was using Japanese and it make me come out with little different solution.
code might be little dirty ;) but it works use it and let me know of improvments or gave me suggestions how to improve thx.
textViewProject
Answer: Have a look at https://github.com/Cocoanetics/NSAttributedString-Additions-for-HTML
This allows you to easily create NSAttributedString instances from simple HTML for custom-rendering.

iPhone Formatted Strings


Does TWebBrowser updates with IE?

Question: I use TwebBrowser in a D7 app. The question is: When I upgrade my IE this component will use the new IE to render the pages?
Answer: Yes.
TWebBrowserinside of the SHDocVw unit internally creates a IWebBrowser2OLE control.
And this interface uses the the installed Internet Explorer (as described here).
Answer: Yes it does.
When it's created, it requests the system for an instance of the object that is currently configured to implement IWebBrowser2 ({0002DF01-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}) which will point to the version of IE currently installed.
Not that there is a lot of choice: you cannot have several versions of IE installed side-by-side.
it doesn't mean it will behave exactly the same between versions, though.

Does TWebBrowser updates with IE?


DevExpress custom grouping: groups also have columns, groups and independent rows exist simultaneously

Question: I need to display message groups and messages inside a DevExpress grid.
Requirements:

message groups and messages have the same columns
groups have a special column with a '+'/'-' sign which specifies if the group is closed or open
when a group is closed its messages do not appear in the grid
when a group is opened by clicking the '+' sign its messages need to appear in the same grid underneath the group
the grid can have both groups and simple messages

The grid also needs to allow sorting, filtering and paging.
Is there a simple way to achieve this using DevExpress features?
NOTE: I've seen the DevExpress grouping demo, but this is different from my requirements because:

in the demo only the grouping value is displayed whereas in my grid I need to see all the columns of the message group
all rows are grouped (groups and messages can not exist at the same time)

EDIT: I have eventually abandoned this idea as it seemed to much trouble. What I did instead was add a column with a clickable link for groups; when the user clicks the link a popup appears with the children; it was much easier and more intuitive for the user
Answer: DevExpress has a tree.
Each Group can be a root level node and each message a node within its group, or a message could be another root level node (IE not within a group).
All nodes share the same columns. Each group that has messages will have a '+/-'


How do you use Data Crystals to purchase something?

Question: I'm very new to gaming and I've got a lot of data crystals but when I visit a vendor my purchases are automatically deducted from my credits and I see no option to pay with crystals instead.  What do you have to do in order to pay with data crystals?
Answer: You can only spend data crystals at certain vendors.  For instance, this Reddit post contains more detail about vendors on Odessen that accept them:

There are vendors on Oddessan(or however you spell that) that sell
  stuff for them. One vendor in the Underworld section of the command
  bunker sells decorations, pets, and a certain Zakuulian group's armor.
A second vendor in the cantina on that planet, sells companion gifts
  and those crate thingies you turn in to the 4 main contacts. This
  vendor is right by the entrance, leaning up against a jukebox thing.
Comment: Given that the OP hasn't spent *any* yet, it's viable to point out that they can also be used to purchase endgame raiding level gear.
Answer: Different vendors will accept different currency.
Some vendors will only accept money, others will accept Crystals and others will only accept currency that you receive from certain re-occurring events.
Data crystals are most commonly used to purchase gear once you reach level 50, you can find these vendors in the supplies section of the fleet or you can use these as you level to buy new mods, armoring's and enhancements.
So, to answer "how to use data crystals to purchase something":
Simply find a vendor that will accept them as currency and they will automatically be deducted from your inventory.
The currency and amount needed to buy an item is always listed to the right of the item.
Some items will require a combination of different currencies to buy it.
Answer: The main place for characters to spend crystals is on the Fleet, where you go after completing the first planet. In the outermost ring of the Supplies area you will find vendors selling mods at different levels — buy the highest level mods you can use (equal to your level or lower) to slot into Moddable/Custom  gear.  This is the best way to gear up with minimal effort.  You can get moddable gear from drops, a level 8 vendor in that area, the Cartel Market,  or the GTN.
At endgame, there are also some crystal gear vendors in that area on the opposite side.  Such vendors are also found on Odessen as mentioned in the other answer, with other vendors in Section X, the Black Hole, and Oricon.
Comment: Worth mentioning, a lot of these mod vendors are duplicated near the spaceport of whatever planet you're on, selling the mod levels that match that planet.


Did the early church believe in self defence?

Question: Does any of the early church fathers teach that we as Christians are allowed to defend ourselves if our life is in severe danger and if so what church fathers taught this?
Comment: @cj564 Yes, Jesus is all of these things, but the point is that Jesus was the only one who knew this. Everyone else was caught in the paradigm of a kingdom just like the good old days when the Jews were ruled by a Jewish king on a throne in Jerusalem. When they heard *kingdom of heaven* they thought of an earthly kingdom with heaven's backing. A spiritual kingdom was utterly beyond their conception.
Comment: It would be odd if they didn't, given that Jesus himself told his disciples to be ready to protect themselves after his betrayal, and to make having a sword available a higher priority even than proper clothing. (Luke 22:36)
Comment: @MasonWheeler It's not certain that "sword" here denotes a military weapon.  It is possible it is a smaller blade for butchering, filleting, or even shearing.  Verse 38 has Jesus telling at least the twelve that two "swords" is enough.
Comment: @MikeBorden I always read that passage with a bit of a resigned sigh.  The apostles were always a bit dense when it came to the subject of Jesus's impending death.  Here we have him trying to teach an important principle, and they reply by taking it completely literally while missing the entire point.  So Jesus sighs and says "fine, that's OK," knowing that they'll understand what he really means soon enough anyway.
Comment: @MasonWheeler It should be remembered that the apostles, up until this point, had always heard that the Messiah would be physical king, and not a spiritual one. That the kingdom was to be spiritual went *whoosh* over everybody's head.
Comment: @EvilSnack Jesus is a literal king, he is the kings of the kings and lord of lords, he is the king of Heaven, a literal king
Comment: There's also the matter of Jesus having the swords put down ans healing the ear of one of his captors in the very next chapter.
Answer: There is an excellent article by Henry J. Cadbury: The Basis of Early Christian Antimilitarism
In there he does rather thorough analysis of the writings on the early Christians on the concept and necessity of warfare, and he also goes on a small side trip on self-defense, too:

That the early Christians did not construe non-resistance as a purely
negative and passive virtue is also evident from many passages. "'It
is not limited,'" says Lactantius, "'to this-that (a man) should not
inflict injury, but that he should not avenge it when inflicted on
himself.'" Indeed, it is not limited to refraining from revenge but
expresses itself in deeds of active love, repaying in kindness. It
means, Athenagoras explains, for men "instead of speaking ill of those
who have reviled them- to abstain from which is, of itself, an
evidence of no mean forbearance-to bless them and to pray for those
who plot against their lives." The Christian, says Lactantius, "must
diligently take care lest by any fault of his he should at any time
make an enemy."

However, article points out that there were soldiers among Early Christians, so it can't be said they all were pacifists, and preferred flight to fight. But this was part of the doctrine to offer no resistance and numerous writers pointed out that this was the best way to profess their faith and, subsequently, was the most sucessfull way for Christianity to thrive:

"For religion is to be defended, not by putting to death, but by dying;
not by cruelty, but by patient endurance; not by guilt, but by good
faith; for the former belong to evils, but the latter to goods; and it
is necessary for that which is good to have place in religion, and not
that which is evil. For if you wish to defend religion by bloodshed,
and by tortures, and by guilt, it will no longer be defended, but will
be polluted and profaned. For nothing is so much a matter of free will
as religion." - writes Lactantius,

"The adversary (persecution, or the persecutor) had leapt forth to
disturb the camp of Christ with violent terror . . but he perceived
that the soldiers of Christ are now watching, and stand sober and
armed for the battle; that they cannot be conquered, but that they can
die; and that by this very fact they are invincible, that they do not
fear death; that they do not in turn assail their assailants, since it
is not lawful for the innocent even to kill the guilty; but they
readily deliver up both their lives and their blood." - said Cyprian, and Origen seconds:

"Since it was the purpose of God that the nations should receive the
benefits of Christ's teaching, all the devices of men against
Christians have been brought to nought; for the more that kings and
rulers and peoples have persecuted them everywhere the more have they
increased in number and grown in strength."

It needs to be pointed out, though, that early Christians were living largely peacefully, with only occasional periods of persecution, and rarely it was widespread. Nevertheless, it was not common for Christians to resort to martyrdom, so most often what happened was either flight or accepting the requirements of the persecutors, even though most of the Church members were aware they are more than adequately numerous to offer successful armed resistance.
Catholic Church in Canons 2263-2267 on Legitimate Defense reconciles those views with all the other places where Scripture references use of arms and self defense, but those are, obviously, not the real answer to this question.


Is it legal to cover over a slogan on a license plate?

Question: Suppose you had a state slogan on your license plate, and you disliked it. Would it be legal for you to paint over it, or otherwise cover it? (Say, "Ski Utah" or "Water Winter Wonderland," if you objected to advertising, or "Live Free or Die" (New Hampshire) or "Taxation Without Representation" (D.C.), if I disagreed with the political message.) To be clear--you're not covering the license plate number in any way, just the slogan.
Comment: This would probably at least depend on whether the affected license plate was, while affected, on a vehicle that (a) required a license plate, and (b) was on a public road.
Answer: Yes, you may cover it up (I don't recommend painting over it though, as you are then altering the plates). This question was definitively decided by the Supreme Court in Wooley v. Maynard (1977). You can find the case here: http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/430/705.html
This case dealt with an individual who was given several citations for violating the law when he covered up the New Hampshire slogan. He was a devout Jehovah's Witness and the slogan went against his beliefs. In my opinion this case applies to anyone who disagrees with the slogan. Or wish to refrain from saying it.
The Court held:

"The fact that most individuals agree with the thrust of New Hampshire's motto is not the test; most Americans also find the flag salute acceptable. The First Amendment protects the right of individuals to hold a point of view different from the majority and to refuse to foster, in the way New Hampshire commands, an idea they find morally objectionable."
"the State of New Hampshire may not require appellees to display the state motto upon their vehicle license plates"


What are pitfalls for agile development methodologies?

Question: What are pitfalls for agile development methodologies?
Comment: This question is much too broad, and lacks too much context, to be reasonably answered in an FAQ.
Answer: The common criticisms include:

Lack of structure and necessary documentation
Only works with senior-level developers
Incorporates insufficient software design
Requires too much cultural change to adopt
Can lead to more difficult contractual negotiations
Can be very inefficient — if the requirements for one area of code change through various iterations, the same programming may need to be done several times over. Whereas if a plan were there to be followed, a single area of code is expected to be written once.
Impossible to develop realistic estimates of work effort needed to provide a quote, because at the beginning of the project no one knows the entire scope/requirements
Can increase the risk of scope creep due to the lack of detailed requirements documentation
Agile is feature driven, non-functional quality attributes are hard to be placed as user stories
Comment: +2 for listing criticisms, -1 for the fact that I think most are bogus.
Comment: "Impossible to develop realistic estimates of work effort needed to provide a quote, because at the beginning of the project no one knows the entire scope/requirements" - This seems to be the major objection of management.
Comment: @Jim And that's not a pitfall of any other method.
Comment: @tvanfosson - Managment doesn't think so. They like the comfort of a complete project plan before the project starts even if the actual work doesn't end up matching the project plan.
Answer: Using Agile as an excuse to spend insufficient time and effort on planning, requirements definition, and documentation.
Answer: From @George Stocker's quoted list, with my rebuttals...

Lack of structure and necessary documentation

Many agile methods are highly prescriptive of essential practices and have structure, though much of it is informal.
Define necessary.  Much documentation required by plan-driven methods is not used and/or hopelessly out of date.  Agility focuses on producing those deliverables that are actually needed.

Only works with senior-level developers

Works best with developers who can work independently (or in pairs).
A mix of senior/junior developers works just fine.

Incorporates insufficient software design

Incremental design with aggressive refactoring can lead to better design because much of the design is done with better understanding of the application.
A valid criticism might be that agile implementers may be afraid to do any design up front for fear of not being "agile" -- none of the methodologists would recommend entirely skipping up front design.

Requires too much cultural change to adopt

Can be valid, but in my opinion it is worth it

Can lead to more difficult contractual negotiations

Definitely.  This should change as more agile successes are achieved.

Can be very inefficient — if the requirements for one area of code change through various iterations, the same programming may need to be done several times over. Whereas if a plan were there to be followed, a single area of code is expected to be written once.

Only if the plan is rigidly adhered to at the expense of actual desired behavior, otherwise you have the same problem.
If changes do occur, agile methods handle this better than plan-driven methods.

Impossible to develop realistic estimates of work effort needed to provide a quote, because at the beginning of the project no one knows the entire scope/requirements

Most agile methods give you good tools to understand your velocity.
Planning is hard for all methods.  This is not unique to agile methods.
Agile methods, by putting software in the customer's hands early discover the real requirements faster than rigorous, up-front planning because the customer doesn't know what he really wants until he sees it.

Can increase the risk of scope creep due to the lack of detailed requirements documentation

Agile takes a completely different perspective to this.  It focuses on scope/time trade-offs rather than limiting scope to keep fixed time.
Customers get to make choices about the scope/time trade-off in Agile, so they are in complete control of scope.

Agile is feature driven, non-functional quality attributes are hard to be placed as user stories

You can use whatever method you want to track quality attributes, including traditional methods from plan-driven practices if you want.
Comment: I'm not sure why this is 'the answer', since it doesn't answer what the pitfalls of agile development are.
Comment: Agreed - this isn't an answer at all, merely an attempt at rebutting the most popular answer.
Answer: I think the number one pitfall is thinking that "agile methods" means that you can do or not do anything you want.  I would hazard a guess that most people who use agile, really use "ad hoc" rather than implementing those practices that lead to agility.  Agility requires work and discipline, perhaps more so than plan-driven development.
I get a chuckle out of people who say that agile is less efficient because changes can occur and you'll have to do stuff over.  The reality is that changes occur and you have to do stuff over (or end up with an unhappy customer) regardless of method.  Agile methods just accept that this will happen and try to use methods that allow it to happen in the least disruptive way.  To be efficient you still need to be disciplined about what changes you allow, using agile just gives you a better chance to say yes and still get done on time.
Answer: A lot of the answers here are not pitfalls, the are criticisms.  In my mind, "pitfalls" are potential problems to watch out for, not reasons to avoid agile.
Here are some of mine from Extreme Programming:

Personal hygiene, sexual comfort, and intimate social skills suddenly matter more with Pair Programming
It's easy to get so excited about Refactoring that you want to refactor code that doesn't matter, to apply advanced patterns to trivial routines, and to refactor right before deadlines.
The practices support one another in important ways.  If you abandon one, you'll get in to trouble in another.  For example, if you stop doing TDD, your Refactoring will get harder & riskier.
Just because you think you're following the practices doesn't mean you're doing it right.  You really need to have talented people, to understand how XP works, and to do it right.
You may still fail.  Just because you're all agile doesn't guarantee that you'll complete your project, or that it'll be good software that your customers want.
Comment: Considering Agile's emphasis on the customer driving the development if what you deliver isn't what the customer wants I would question whether the customer was involved enough in the project. In projects where there is a "customer advocate" instead, I would investigate why the advocate failed to identify the customer's needs (lack of ability, access, resources, etc).
Answer: Thinking that Agile is an excuse to do "fly be the seat of your pants" development.
Answer: This is very a philosophic question. Here one pitfall: Management that thinks that agile development could excuse 180 degree turn every two weeks.
Another pitfall is that when done wrong, the work load isn't well balanced between team members.
Answer: PHBes who think "agile" means "get things done with fewer people" ;)
Answer: My sense is that the biggest risk of Agile methodologies is its reputation for being "flexible."  That is, you run the risk that developers begin filling in their own definitions for Agile methodologies. If this happens, you'll end up with essentially no methodology at all.
Answer: The biggest pitfall is that people look at the practices and miss one thing:

Inspect and Adapt

If you, as a team, are not constantly evaluating your practices and finding out what works, what doesn't, what needs to be tweaked, and what needs to be adapted, then you'll likely fail.
Answer:
Agile can only be successfull if you have the requirements for atleast one sprint.
Most of the clients will tend to not have proper requirements or they change frequently in middle of the sprint, which leads to re-planning and starting the sprint again.
Agile could be more successfull when the application is in maintenance mode, where the application is already in production and the dev is simply adding more features to the application in each sprint.
Management has one advantage, they get to sneak into the devs/qa daily life at work (in the sprint meetings every day).
It could eat thru budjet pretty fast if proper planning is not in place (most of the time this occurs due to change that needs to adopted).
Since there is less/no documentation, you cannot make one person accountable for a feature that is miscommunicated or misunderstood.
This lack of accountability may lead to more problems of one being deliberatly not performing their part in the team.
Developers might get frustrated with constantly changing requirements and re-work that is involved. (imagine tweaking the same feature in 5 sprints, which could be compleated in one sprint with properly analysed requirements).
Business/Client representative tend to not take the accountability of giving proper requirements.

I have been working with Agile processes for 3 years now. Before that I used to work in CMM Level 5 company where waterfall methodolgies were followed.
Answer: I disagree with all of the common criticisms except "Can lead to more difficult contractual negotiations". It is difficult to get around this if your customer does not want to have anything to do with your dev process.
The other items are only true if your dev process is broken in some other way, like you don't do unit testing or continuous integration or version control.
The main pitfall is trying to do a "sort of agile" approach without every having read the Agile Manifesto or done any study of the doingess of the subject.


VPN client compiled by the VPN server?

Question: Is it normal for a physical VPN service to generate/compile the exe for the VPN client? I don't know that much about VPNs, so this might be normal - but a client uses Sophos VPN, and they're saying they want to email me an exe to install for the VPN client. I've asked if I can download the client directly from Sophos's website (as I have sensitive client information on my machine - and don't want to install random exe's people have emailed to me). They're saying that the VPN server on-premise generates the VPN client executable, and mentioned something about a profile. This seems really odd to me - surely people should be discouraged from installing exes from non-official websites?
Answer: The VPN client likely has settings and certificates specific to this connection and server. Such that, you cannot use it for any other connection.
Compiling these things into the binary means that it is much more difficult for someone to steal or reverse engineer the settings and gain unauthorised access to their VPN. I've seen this before.
So, in short, perfectly normal.
Comment: As for running a client's executable, I would simply run a VM on your machine just for working with them. This creates a natural segmentation of the things relevant to them and the rest of the things on your computer.
Comment: Thanks. I've done the VM thing for another client. But it's a bit of a pain just for this one thing I need to do for this particular client - I very rarely need to access their network. But, it is what it is. Thanks again :)
Comment: "Compiling these things into the binary means that it is much more difficult for someone to steal or reverse engineer the settings and gain unauthorised access to their VPN. I've seen this before." I hope this is not the reason why they do that because it won't work …
Comment: @ysdx no, as I said, they do it to embed the settings.
Answer: I've seen an instance of another VPN solution which does something similar. You can download an installer which includes the VPN configuration (VPN server, server certificate, etc.). The settings are included in an XML file which is easily extracted (using strings) from the installer. In this case, you could definitely extract the settings without running the binary and use them from the official client found on the official website.
In summary, this appears to package the installer with the provisioning configuration for convenience.
Answer: As other answers stated, this is quite normal. There are several reasons to do this:

As already mentioned, it allows the server administrator to include the VPN configuration data as part of the installer, thus giving a one-click experience to less technically savvy users and reducing the burden on IT support.
It ensures that the server and client are running mutually compatible software versions, again reducing the burden on IT support.

For some VPN solutions, you cannot even get the client any other way. You can only get it from the VPN server. This includes some of the big brands such as Cisco or Palo Alto Networks.
It is generally not a good idea to allow devices which are not under your control access to your network, especially since the whole point of a VPN is to gain access to networks that you would normally not have access to. Therefore, lots of VPN clients now include full endpoint security solutions that allow the VPN administrator wide range access to your device in order to ensure that it is compliant with their security requirements.
That is yet another reason for the VPN administrator to ensure that you only use the exact client with the exact configuration they gave you.

as I have sensitive client information on my machine - and don't want to install random exe's people have emailed to me

There is an unfortunate stalemate here: you want your computer to be protected from them, so you don't want to give them any access to it, but they want their network to be protected from your computer, so they need access to it.
There is no easy solution to this. My employer does it by only allowing access to the VPN from company laptops. In order to access customer's VPNs, we have a pool of VMs in our vSphere cluster that sit inside a DMZ. These VMs have only the VPN client for the customer installed plus any tools to perform our maintenance tasks. They do not have access to the company network nor to each other, thus making it safe to give up control to the VPN administrator.
Some customers send us laptops with the VPN client pre-installed that we have use to connect to their network. Some customers don't use those strict endpoint security settings on the VPN client machine, instead they allow only access to one single port of one single IP which is a "jumphost" VM we can remote into which then has all the security settings applied.
But the fundamental problem of you wanting to use your own machine and not give up control and the VPN admin wanting to have control on the machine to ensure the security of the network is unsolvable. Someone has to give up something: either the VPN admin needs to give up control or you need to give up control or you need to give up on using your own machine.

VPN client compiled by the VPN server?


Can I create a Windows 7 recovery disk on a dual boot system?

Question: I want to uninstall Ubuntu from a computer running both Ubuntu and Windows 7. I understand that to do this, I need to delete the Ubuntu partitions on the computer and use a windows recovery disk. Because I don't have a recovery disk, I plan to use the built in program on Windows 7 that lets you create one. Can I create a recovery disk using this program with Ubuntu on the computer, too?
Answer: Of course, you can create a recovery disk. Windows does not care about other operating systems or partitions other than the C (or system) drive when creating recovery disks, performing recovery, etc. It limits it's operations to the system partition, AND sometimes the System Reserved partitions it creates itself during setup. You can create a recovery disk, boot into it and issue the following command on the recovery prompt to wipe out GRUB:
<code>bootrec /fixmbr
</code>
After that, you can safely remove Ubuntu partitions.
Comment: I plan to use the howtogeek tutorial to uninstall Ubuntu. It's similar to yours, but it says that I should uninstall the Ubuntu partitions first, then create a recovery disk and type bootrec /fixmbr on command prompt from the repair disk. Does using howtogeek's instructions also work?
Comment: It's the same thing. Thing is, that if you remove the Ubuntu partitions, then you'll boot into GRUB which stores its menu on the Ubuntu partition. Since the menu would be gone, GRUB won't be able to boot any OS. You could remove the partitions first, given you have already CREATED the recovery disk from Windows. If you are locked out of Windows since you deleted the Ubuntu partition without removing GRUB, then it can be a menace.


Security question: What questions do you ask?

Question: Working on a save quote feature for our new website, one of the security requirements is to ask a secret question and obtain a value from the user.
Does anyone have suggestions on the type of Security questions to ask?
Comment: I really think this question should be posed on security SE. There are lots of people who contend that security questions amount to a backdoor for accounts. If you're designing something from scratch you're probably better off implementing two-factor authentication.
Comment: "Secret Question" to prevent spamming (like CAPTCHA), or secret question to recover a password?
Comment: What is so secure about a quote? Is this to create an account? We need more info.
Comment: @xinthose - Thanks for the upload, although your JSON file is not valid. All the values for "Age Range for all questions" need to be strings but they are not enclosed in quotes.
Comment: So users will sign in with login name, password, and the answer to a question? (My bank does this and I hate it.)
Comment: As an additional security mechanism. Some questions I have included so far:
- 'What is your mothers maiden name?'
- 'What was your pets first name?'
- 'What primary school did you go to?'
- 'What is the last 4 digits of your drivers licence'
Comment: Pull a random question from [Math.SE](http://math.stackexchange.com/), then manually evaluate the answer ;)
Comment: From a globalization point of view, *maiden name* is not a meaningful concept in countries like Spain and Italy where women never change their surname with marriage, and it sounds discriminating against those born to unmarried mothers.
Comment: I bought the questions from [goodsecurityquestions.com](http://goodsecurityquestions.com)
  and uploaded them in JSON [here](https://pastebin.com/g6DKCDRy).
Comment: @Tony Yes, you're right, thank you.  Here is the new [JSON](https://pastebin.com/gw5naFGa).
Comment: This question, as asked, is not a UX question but a [security](https://security.stackexchange.com) question (see what I did there?). The answer is to [not use security questions as an alternate account access vector](https://security.stackexchange.com/q/4024/149193)!
Answer: Why not allow the user to enter their own security question?
The question itself doesn't matter, it's only there to jog the memory of the user. If you let the user type their own question, they would be more likely to remember the answer and you don't have to try and think of a lot of different questions to cover all situations a user might be in (ie. they never had a pet, don't know mother's maiden name etc).
Comment: To be honest, I'm personaly not a fan of the security question model in general. Say my question was "First dog's name", and I'm now staring at the recovery prompt. I'm thinking "when I created this answer 2 years ago, did I type Fido or fido? Does case even matter? When I answered, did I put the first dog I *ever had* or the first one I *consciously remember*? So maybe it's Rover. Or rover. Hmm." Even worse with multi-word answers: "Did I put MyTown School or MyTown Junior & Infants, or was I in a rush and just hammered in MyTown?"
Comment: I tend to find that users aren't terribly security-conscious about these questions, and as a user, coming up with a decent security question can be difficult (and if you're attempting to sign up or get some work done, a bit of a pain - two extra password-related hurdles to jump, lucky me!). So you'll find users throwing together the most simplistic questions they can think of just to get out of the form asap; or just typing in "classic" security questions they've encounted elsewhere (thus tripping over Az Za's problem)
Comment: Thanks for your input Steve. Not a bad idea at all! I would still like to have alternative options available to the user to select predefined questions from a picklist.
Comment: This is better from a security perspective instead of using the typical questions. The user can use a custom question obvious to him/her, but no one else. See the Sarah Palin email break.
Comment: I've found that people are either confused when you ask them to ask then answer their own questions. This then stops them from completing registration. That is the biggest issue. They can also make up bad questions... things that anyone could find out with extremely easy information to find out. But sure it's a way to go. But I think from my first point you will lose users this way.
Comment: The question should be: "think of a question only you can answer - and you still can answer in five years time". I am not certain if I want to aks my users that.
Comment: This is a tempting approach, but it's depressingly common for people to make up questions like "How do you spell 'password'?" etc.
Comment: Letting the users set their own questions can be a HUGE security risk. Users are lazy, they don't want to remember, many of them will just use something like: "What's 1+1?", "What's my name?". You can't expect users to be aware of the security risk. I mean that's why many sites require you to set a complicated password, to prevent lazy users from using "1234"...
Comment: @Kweamod complicated passwords can be worse in a way. How often have you seen people write down their passwords to comply with onerous requirements. It's far better to have a longer, but simpler, pass phrase. Also, and I have no evidence for this, but I imagine most users these days are reasonably security aware and wouldn't set such an easily guessable security question.
Answer: I'm taking this answer directly from goodsecurityquestions.com website, as referenced on the Security StackExchange site.

The term "security questions" is a misnomer. Security questions create a potential hole or breach in security by providing ways for unauthorized users to gain access if the answer can be discovered. Hopefully, security experts will find better ways of retrieving forgotten passwords or verifying identification during login, but until then security questions will likely prevail.
Thus, security questions have both benefits and liabilities. Poor questions create security breaches and confusion and cost money in support calls. Good security questions can be useful in the current environment, but are not common.
However, there really are NO GOOD security questions; only fair or bad questions. "Good" gives the impression that these questions are acceptable and protect the user. The reality is, security questions present an opportunity for breach and even the best security questions are not good enough to screen out all attacks. There is a trade-off; self-service vs. security risks.
Social networking (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, personal blogs, LinkedIn) are creating more of a risk for security questions. People are generously telling all about themselves, their history, likes, favorites, and more. It easier now to find information on people.

But to actually answer your question, that site provides a list that they say are better than others that meet the criteria of:

Good security questions have four common characteristics. The answer to a good security question:

cannot be easily guessed or researched (safe),
doesn't change over time (stable),
is memorable,
is definitive or simple.

And those questions are:

What was your childhood nickname?
In what city did you meet your spouse/significant other?
What is the name of your favorite childhood friend?
What street did you live on in third grade?
What is your oldest sibling's birthday month and year? (e.g., January 1900)
What is the middle name of your oldest child?
What is your oldest sibling's middle name?
What school did you attend for sixth grade?
What was your childhood phone number including area code? (e.g., 000-000-0000)
What is your oldest cousin's first and last name?
What was the name of your first stuffed animal?
In what city or town did your mother and father meet?
Where were you when you had your first kiss?
What is the first name of the boy or girl that you first kissed?
What was the last name of your third grade teacher?
In what city does your nearest sibling live?
What is your oldest brother's birthday month and year? (e.g., January 1900)
What is your maternal grandmother's maiden name?
In what city or town was your first job?
What is the name of the place your wedding reception was held?
What is the name of a college you applied to but didn't attend?
Where were you when you first heard about 9/11?
Comment: Most of these answers can be found pretty easily with a little research.
Comment: Are the questions listed researched/debated upon, or are they merely the author's opinions?
Comment: +1 for this. Security questions often lower the security, because they open up a hole for social hacking.
Answer: Don't just use the standard questions like "mother's maiden name", "first pet's name", etc. They're widely used, and using them means you're forcing users to have the same security answers across different websites. That's a security hole, just like reusing passwords is.
I concur with Steve's recommendation of allowing users to make up their own questions. But if you really want to offer predefined questions:

The answer should not be easy to find: Things like "Mother's maiden name" and "Hometown" are likely to be found with a web search.
The answer should be unambiguous: If the question is "What was the name of your first school", then I may well forget whether the
answer is "St Trinian's School", "Saint Trinian's", "St. Trinian
School" or some other variation.
The answer should be hard to guess: "Favourite colour" is no good because there's a good chance the answer is "blue", and otherwise it's probably just green, red or purple. Even "Name of best friend" has a decent chance of being "David", for example.
Answer: Foreword: I really, really, really think you should go with Steve's answer.
Supposing that you choose to ignore that option, and are going to be asking a predefined list of questions, PLEASE make sure that you choose questions that cannot be easily resolved with a Google search of the person's name and the question.
Prior to Google existing, finding a mother's maiden name could be difficult. Now, it's pretty simple: person's name + white pages + mother's name + google search = mother's maiden name. In order to determine better questions, pick something complicated but easily remembered, that can't be simply searched. Some questions off the top of my head are:

What was the second best birthday present you ever got?
Why is the sky blue?
What is your favorite color and favorite animal?

The purpose behind these questions is to make the question and answer secret. Most of the questions that come predefined will be answerable with a simple Google search. Your job is therefore to make sure that the secret questions used by the user aren't easy for an unauthorized party (with reasonable search prowess) to answer.
Comment: What does "Your job is to make sure that the question's aren't easy to ask." mean.  I think you want something that is easy to ask, easy for the user to answer, and difficult for others to answer.
Comment: To emphasize a the security consideration involved in using a secret question and answer. Particularly, in the event of the secret question being seen by an unauthorized party, it should be difficult for the unauthorized party to determine the answer but trivial for an authorized party. Suppose the secret question is "Why is the sky blue?"... an unauthorized party would have difficulty narrowing down the answer whereas the user would likely have a fairly distinctive answer.
Comment: Thanks for your input emory and Az Za. The secret question/answer is to compliment other questions we ask, including DOB and phone number as well as a token that is generated to their email, which is unique. So for this purpose, we need something that will be easy to remember. A question such as "Why is the sky blue?" will be a bit difficult for the user to answer time & time again as each time their answer is guaranteed to be different. I think I have enough to go on to elicit requirements to our dev's. Thanks for all your input!
Comment: Why is the sky blue - searchable, what is your favorite color and animal - you can usually tell by simply checking out a facebook page.
Answer: Everything that everyone here has said I agree with. Making sure that the questions are not something that someone can easily Google, easy to guess, or unambiguous.
I believe having a create your own question is a good idea because someone can create a question that is not a common security question, however the downfall of this is you are not driving how secure the question is as well as stopping the user from creating something like this...
Question: "frog"
Answer:  "joe"
People may tend to get lazy and create extremely unambiguous questions that no one would ever remember. So I believe it would be important to have both a list of questions and the option to create your own question.
Comment: Thanks Jason! You've made a valid point. The secret question/answer will compliment other criteria. Even if an authorised individual guesses the answer to the secret question, they would still have to correctly input four other sets of criteria.
Comment: Question: "frog" Answer: "joe" is perfectly secure.  At that point it's on the user to figure out how to remember it.  With a self defined question, the user is in control of the level of protection for the account.
Answer: I think a pre-defined list is the way forward, I've solved this problem about security on my current project by asking the user to fill in three security questions. So a combo box (with all pre-difined questions - you can find good ones with a quick web search) and an input field underneath to fill in the answer.
Chances of guessing one are possible, chances of guessing all three highly unlikely.
Answer: Let's add what not to do, and why.  For example the California Franchise Tax Board restricts selection to things like:

What is your favorite color?
What is the name of your favorite cancelled TV show?
What is your favorite board game to play with friends?

The answers to these questions can change over time.  It might be a marginally OK choice for a site where user logs in often, and can see and adjust the answers.  It's a bad choice for a site where the user logs in infrequently.
Also bad are questions asking for parts of other secure documents:

Last four of SSN
Third digit of driver's licence

As a theft of that data from your firm could compromise the user's security on other sites.
You have alternatives, such as:

Having the user upload a photo, which is sent back to the user to verify login (to prevent spoofing)
Having the user enter a phrase that gets repeated back to validate login (again, spoofing).
Having the user enter their own question and answer, perhaps with some complexity requirements.
Various callback and text message systems (with the weakness that someone stealing a mobile phone generally has access to both email and text messages for the person they are scamming).

@Steve nailed the answer above. Can you think of your own question, with an answer that is super obscure?  Probably yes.  For example consider "where did Mary Jane hide my underwear that day in high school?". Be fuzzy in terms of an answer match, as these are human questions with human answers.  Definitely accept any case (e.g. "The principal's Office") and maybe even partial string matches (e.g. "principal office").
Answer: what is my name ?
who is me ?
who is my girlfriend ?
where i live ?
what is my favourite colour ?
Comment: those are predictable question, so not very secure.
Comment: Most of them are also likely to change over time so you would have to remember the correct answer from the point in time when you set it.


Does phonegap app works on xcode 4.0?

Question: I have mac os X 10.6.3, I want to create phonegap application to work on it, so which version of xcode I need to download? I have already mac os x 10.5.8 and xcode 3.1.4, but i can not buid phonegap app into it. And how to install xCode in snow leopard 10.6.3?
Answer: For Snow Leopard 10.6, you can download the version 1.5.0 of Cordova / Phonegap.
Check this link for more information about how to get started with Cordova / Phonegap, version 1.5.0: http://docs.phonegap.com/en/1.5.0/guide_getting-started_ios_index.md.html#Getting%20Started%20with%20iOS
However, I think you'll need XCode 4.

Does phonegap app works on xcode 4.0?


How do I properly wash bugs out of green onion?

Question: How do I remove bugs from the inside and outside of green onions? I don't want to split open the green onion just to remove them, and washing them thoroughly in cold water seems to get the onions soggy.
Answer: I'd cut the root off (so you have a green onion 'straw') and run water through that. This would leave the onion soggy. At this point I would lay out some paper towels at the bottom of a vase and leave the green onions upright for about an hour - switching the paper towels every 20 minutes if they get too damp. After said hour, store in a cool place.
Do note that by cutting the roots of the green onion you considerably shorten their lifespan in storage. However, you can then take the roots and plant them (after soaking the roots in 1/4 water-to-root-height ratio) to get more green onions :)
Answer: Not sure if you mean creepy crawlies or bacteria. If the former and its a real problem, you have to wash thoroughly or just ditch them. If bacterial, I've never heard of this as a real problem.  Prep advice taken from the UK Good Food Guide is 'Wash, then trim off the root as well as any ragged ends at the top. Slice the bulb into rounds. Cut the green tops across (kitchen scissors are good for this) or lengthways with a knife, then lengthways again, according to what shape you'd like'. I would also strip off any hard papery outside layers.


Does removing a Uplay game from your Steam account also remove it from Uplay?

Question: I want to remove Assassin's Creed: Unity from my Steam account. Would this also remove it also from my Uplay account?
Comment: Instead of removing the game from steam, why don't you hid the game. This means you still own the game but wont have to see it in your games list.
Answer: I do not think so. UPlay and Steam are two entirely different platforms and you can launch a gamefrom UPlay, without using Steam.
Additionally I do not see a reason why you would want to remove a game from steam, if you bought it on steam.
Answer: No, it won't remove the game from Uplay but whenever you launch the game from Uplay it tries to check Steam first to prevent this sort of thing, which is the reason why you can't run games with Uplay with solely one client, both of them have to be running. (which is one of the things I hate most about Uplay)


Conductor of monomial forms with trivial nebentypus

Question: Is it true that the conductor of a holomoprhic or a Maass cusp form with trivial nebentypus corresponding to a two-dimensional dihedral representation (over $\mathbb{Q}$ )is non-square-free?
Comment: The conductor could be 1, right? Isn't that squarefree? Are you talking about 2-dimensional representations? Of an arbitrary number field?
Comment: A Dirichlet character is monomial and can have prime conductor. I think your question is too terse/ambiguous currently.
Comment: There's a weight 1 cuspidal modular form of level 23, whose associated Galois representation is induced from an unramified character of Q(sqrt(-23)). OK so I really give in now ;-)
Comment:   Sorry. I was too careless in phrasing the question. There are certainly many dihedral forms of prime conductors. I forgot to add the condition that I believe should give the desired conclusion. I have modified the question.
Comment: Is this a p-adic or a complex representation? I am envisaging the 2-adic Tate module of X_0(32), which is "dihedral" for some values of dihedral, and has "conductor 1" for some values of conductor. But apart from what, read what Emerton said about the Steinberg: it's the only smooth irred rep of GL_2(Q_p) of conductor p and with unramified central character, and it can't show up for global reasons, so if you have trivial det you can't have p dividing the conductor eactly once in a dihedral setting.
Answer: Thinking about Idoneal's question to Emerton about what is being used about the Steinberg, it's not just standard facts about the Steinberg one needs via this approach, but also local-global compatibility. The standard facts about the Steinberg are also easily proved if one uses local Langlands (i.e. works on the Galois side). This made me realise that in fact one can pull off the entire argument on the Galois side! Let's assume you're talking about complex 2-dimensional representations of the Galois group. Emerton has already observed that they must be ramified at some prime $p$, so it suffices to prove that $p^2$ divides the conductor. But now say
$\rho:Gal(\overline{\mathbf{Q}}_p/\mathbf{Q}_p)\to GL_2(\mathbf{C})$
has trivial determinant and conductor $p$. One instantly gets a contradiction: the inertial invariants can't be 0-dimensional because already this would mean the conductor is at least $p^2$, and they can't be 1-dimensional because if $i\in I_p$ has one eigenvalue 1 then the other eigenvalue must be 1 too, and $\rho(i)$ is diagonalisable and hence trivial, so the inertial invariants must be 2-dimensional but now the conductor must be 1. This answers the question completely without recourse to the smooth representation theory side of things and is surely the easiest approach to the question.
Comment: In some sense I'm not sure that the representation theory facts shed any more light on the situation---they're just a translation of the Galois comments above to the automorphic side. For example, the statement that the Steinberg is (up to unram twist) the only smooth admiss rep of GL_2(Q_p) with unramified central char and conductor p is just a trivial consequence of the local Langlands conjectures and a calculation on the Galois side very analogous to the above (but with Weil-Deligne groups instead of Galois groups, so you're allowed a monodromy operator). Read any intro to LL for GL_n/Q_p!
Comment: Yes, the Galois side is a slightly more familiar territory for me and this proof is quite clear. Thanks. I shall appreciate very much, nevertheless, if you (or anyone) can suggest some references for the representation theory facts used in the earlier arguments. I looked up Bump's text book but that seems not to be adequate.
Answer: Just to augment Kevin's series of comments: I think that the conductor of the induction of some
character $\chi$ over a quadratic field to $\mathbb Q$ would normally equal $D N(C)^2$, where $D$ is the discriminant of the quadratic field, $C$ is the condutor of the character (an ideal in
the quadratic field) and $N$ is the norm from the quadratic field to $\mathbb Q$.  E.g.
in Kevin's $23$ example, one inducing a character of conductor 1 from $\mathbb Q(\sqrt{-23})$,
so the conductor is $23$.  [Added in response to an edit in the question: This form has nebentypus equal to the Legendre symbol mod 23.]
In the Maass case one should be able to do something similar, by e.g. choosing
a prime $p \equiv 1 mod 4$ such that $\mathbb Q(\sqrt{p})$ has non-trivial class group,
and then inducing a non-trivial character of conductor 1.  [Added in response to an edit in the question: Such examples will have nebentypus equal to the Legendre symbol mod p, I think.]
[Added in response to an edit in the question:]   Based on the formula above for the conductor, I think that to have square free conductor one will need to induce a character with trivial conductor, i.e. coming from the (strict) class group.  I think that such an induction will always have non-trivial nebentypus, though.   (The key point being that
if $H/{\mathbb Q}$ is the stict Hilbert class field of the real quadratic field,
then this is a generalized dihedral extension.)
Another argument, pointed out me by a colleague, is that if the conductor is square fee
and the nebentypus is trivial, then all the local factors of the automorphic representation at primes in the conductor are Steinberg, which is not possible for the induction of a character.
[One more remark:]  It seems to me that if we replace $\mathbb Q$ by some well-chosen
number field $F$, then it will be possible to find an unramified quadratic extension $E$ of $F$ such that $E$ in turn admits a degree $4$ extension $K$, everywhere unramified,
so that $K$ over $F$ (a degree 8 extension) is Galois with the quaternion group
as Galois group (as opposed to a dihedral group).  I think if we then take the
corresponding order 4 ideal class character of $E$ and induce it to $F$,
we get a monomial representation of $F$ with trivial determinant whose conductor
is equal to one (and in particular, is square-free).
In other words, one is a little bit "lucky" in the $\mathbb Q$-case that Hilbert class
fields of real quadratic fields are dihedral over $\mathbb Q$.
Comment: I think this answers my question although I don't understand it fully due to my ignorance about Steinberg representations. Can someone point out a reference for the fact being used about Steinberg representation?
As I understand, the crucial fact is the uniqueness of Steinberg representation that Buzzard has mentioned in his last comment.