Who will hold the next God titles?

Question: I have read earlier that Lord Hanuman will be the next Brahma, Demon king Bali will be next Indra. So mostly the God names that we know are kind of titles or designation which belong to different people at different times. So, are there any other people that we know will hold a God title in future, like who will be next Lord Vishnu or Lord Shiva.
Comment: This is complex. Shaivites say Shiva is not position while Vaishnavites say Vishnu is not position while Advaitins say both are equal and not positions.
Comment: @The Destroyer, Agree with you, but my question is not specific to Lord Shiva and Lord Vishnu. I wanted to know are there any texts predictions or hints which indicate about any Gods/Demigods
Answer: https://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/vp/vp076.htm

The son of Chháyá, who was called also a Manu, was denominated Sávarńi 6, from being of the same caste (Savarńa) as his elder brother, the Manu Vaivaswata. He presides over the ensuing or eighth Manwantara; the particulars of which, and the following, I will now relate. In the period in which Sávarńi shall be the Manu, the classes of the gods will be Sutapas, Amitábhas, and Mukhyas; twenty-one of each. The seven Rishis will be Díptimat, Gálava, Ráma, Kripa, Drauńi; my son Vyása will be the sixth, and the seventh will be Rishyasringa 7. The Indra will be Bali, the sinless son of Virochana, who through the favour of Vishńu is actually sovereign of part of Pátála. The royal progeny of Sávarńi will be Virajas, Arvarívas, Nirmoha, and others.

Díptimat, Gálava, Ráma, Kripa, Drauńi and Vyasa will be the next Saptarishis in Savarni Manvantara and Bali, the son of Virochana and the grandson of Prahlada will be the next Indra. Savarni Manu is the next Manu.
https://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/vp/vp077.htm
Parashara also tells in Vishnu Purana of the next Vyasa

In the next Dwápara, Drauńi (the son of Drońa) will be the Vyása, when my son, the Muni Krishńa Dwaipáyana, who is the actual Vyása, shall cease to be (in that character.

The ninth Manu will be Daksha-sávarńi 8. The Páras, Maríchigarbhas, and Sudharmas will be the three classes of divinities, each consisting of twelve; their powerful chief will be the Indra Adbhuta. Savana, Dyutimat, Bhavya, Vasu, Medhatithi, Jyotishmán, and Satya will be the seven Rishis. Dhritaketu, Driptiketu, Panchahasta, Mahámáyá, Prithuśrava, and others, will be the sons of the Manu.
In the tenth Manwantara the Manu will be Brahmá-sávarńi: the gods will be the Sudhámas, Viruddhas, and Śatasankhyas: the Indra will be the mighty Śánti: the Rishis will be Havishmán, Sukriti, Satya, Apámmúrtti, Nábhága, Apratimaujas, and Satyaketu: and the ten sons of the Manu will be Sukshetra, Uttarnaujas, Harisheńa, and others.
In the eleventh Manwantara the Manu will be Dharma-sávarńi: the principal classes of gods will be the Vihangamas, Kámagamas, and Nirmánaratis, each thirty in number 9; of whom Vrisha will be the Indra: the Rishis will be Niśchara, Agnitejas, Vapushmán, Vishńu, Áruni, Havishmán, and Anagha: the kings of the earth, and sons of the Manu, will be Savarga, Sarvadharma, Deváníka, and others.
In the twelfth Manvantara the son of Rudra, Sávarńi, will be the Manu: Ritudhámá will be the Indra: and the Haritas, Lohitas, Sumanasas, and Sukarmas will be the classes of gods, each comprising fifteen. Tapaswí, Sutapas, Tapomúrtti, Taporati, Tapodhriti, Tapodyuti, and Tapodhana will be the Rishis: and Devaván, Upadeva, Devaśresht́a, and others, will be the Manu's sons, and mighty monarchs on the earth.
In the thirteenth Manwantara the Manu will be Rauchya 10: the classes of gods, thirty-three in each, will be the Sudhámans, Sudharmans, and Sukarmans; their Indra will be Divaspati: the Rishis will be Nirmoha, Tatwadersín, Nishprakampa, Nirutsuka, Dhritimat, Avyaya, and Sutapas: and Chitrasena, Vichitra, and others, will be the kings.
In the fourteenth Manvantara, Bhautya will be the Manu 11; Suchi, the Indra: the five classes of gods will be the Chákshushas, the Pavitras, Kanisht́has, Bhrájiras, and Vávriddhas: the seven Rishis will be Agnibáhu, Śuchi, Śukra, Magadhá, Gridhra, Yukta, and Ajita: and the sons of the Manu will be Uru, Gabhíra, Bradhna, and others, who will be kings, and will rule over the earth.

It lists the positions of the gods from the 8th manvantara upto the 14th manvantara. In a kalpa, there are 14 mnvantaras

Who will hold the next God titles?


Is Psycho really the very first film to show a flushing toilet?

Question: A lot of people always claim this about the film, but I haven't found anything to 100% confirm it yet. Anyone know for sure?
Comment: Well there are three citations on the wikipedia page for Psycho after the paragraph stating it to be fact. What causes you to disbelieve them?
Answer: According to the Trivia section of Going Wild (1930), Psycho was not the first.  However, shortly after 1930 The Hays Code was enacted that prohibited or restricted many things in movies due to the perceived "immorality of Hollywood", including:

Pointed profanity—by either title or lip—this includes the words
God, Lord, Jesus, Christ (unless they be used reverently in
connection with proper religious ceremonies), Hell, S.O.B., damn,
Gawd, and every other profane and vulgar expression however it may
be spelled;
Any licentious or suggestive nudity—in fact or in
silhouette; and any lecherous or licentious notice thereof by other
characters in the picture;
The illegal traffic in drugs;
Any inference of sex perversion;
White slavery;
Miscegenation (sex relationships between the white and black races);
Sex hygiene and venereal diseases;
Scenes of actual childbirth—in fact or in silhouette;
Children's sex organs;
Ridicule of the clergy;
Willful offense to any nation, race or creed;

and BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that special care be exercised in the manner in which the following subjects are treated, to the end that vulgarity and suggestiveness may be eliminated and that good taste may be emphasized:

The use of the Flag;

International Relations (avoid picturizing in an unfavorable light another country's religion, history, institutions, prominent people and citizenry);

Arson;

The use of firearms;

Theft, robbery, safe-cracking, and dynamiting of trains, mines, buildings, et cetera (having in mind the effect which a too-detailed description of these may have upon the moron);

Brutality and possible gruesomeness;

Technique of committing murder by whatever method;

Methods of smuggling;

Third-Degree methods;

Actual hangings or electrocutions as legal punishment for crime;

Sympathy for criminals;

Attitude toward public characters and institutions;

Sedition;

Apparent cruelty to children and animals;

Branding of people or animals;

The sale of women, or of a woman selling her virtue;

Rape or attempted rape;

First-night scenes;

Man and woman in bed together;

Deliberate seduction of girls;

The institution of marriage;

Surgical operations;

The use of drugs;

Titles or scenes having to do with law enforcement or law-enforcing officers;

Excessive or lustful kissing, particularly when one character or the other is a "heavy".

This is most likely what led to bathrooms being deemed "inappropriate" and so were not shown in movies.  However, again from the above-linked Wiki:

At the forefront of contesting the Code was director Otto Preminger,
whose films violated the Code repeatedly in the 1950s. His 1953 film
The Moon Is Blue, about a young woman who tries to play two suitors
off against each other by claiming that she plans to keep her
virginity until marriage, was released without a certificate of
approval. He later made The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), which
portrayed the prohibited subject of drug abuse, and Anatomy of a
Murder (1959), which dealt with murder and rape. Like Some Like It
Hot, Preminger's films were direct assaults on the authority of the
Production Code, and their success hastened its abandonment. In the
early 1960s, films began to deal with adult subjects and sexual
matters that had not been seen in Hollywood films since the early
1930s.
By the late 1950s, increasingly explicit films began to appear, such
as Anatomy of a Murder (1959), Suddenly, Last Summer (1959), Psycho
(1960), and The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (1961). The MPAA
reluctantly granted the seal of approval for these films, although not
until certain cuts were made. Owing to its themes, Billy Wilder's Some
Like It Hot (1959) was not granted a certificate of approval, but it
still became a box office smash, and, as a result, it further weakened
the authority of the Code.


Search all tables for a specific substring

Question: Short of SQL-dumping my entire database to text and searching that, is there a way to search for a specific substring in all tables of a MySQL database if you are not sure which table/record/field that substring actually occurs?
Answer: Dumping to a text file and searching will be the quickest & least complicated means.
The alternative is that you have to use Dynamic SQL (MySQL's Prepared Statements) because you can't iterate over a list of tables to query against in standard SQL.  Additionally, not all columns will be VARCHAR/string based - so these need to be filtered out before attempting LIKE %your_substring%/etc.
Answer: Some ideas:
You could use some external full-text search capability, such as http://www.sphinxsearch.com/
Search your binary logs.  If you use statement-based logging, that should be pretty straightforward.
It would be nasty and dirty to just search the data files themselves, but that would probably work for the most part.  YMMV to an extreme degree!
You could probably come up with algorithm that identifies all the text columns in all the tables, and then, as OMG points out, write some queries for those columns.
I would probably search the binary logs (assuming you have them, of course).  When I am researching some database weirdness, I search our logs for some substring that is likely to be unique to the circumstances, then I can zero in on the exact statements in question.


How to sync my bookmarks with Chromium from a USB flash drive?

Question: Just downloaded Ubuntu 11.10 and I have all my Chrome bookmarks saved on my USB flash drive. How do I sync them with Chromium?
Answer: If you exported them as an HTML file from Chrome, you can import the file in Chromium by pressing Shift + Ctrl + O, then under "Organize", click on "Import bookmarks from HTML file".


When is a procedure turn not required?

Question: If you are not being radar vectored to the FAF or on a "no PT" transition, are there any other circumstances where a procedure turn that is depicted on an approach chart is not required?
Answer: First, I don't believe you need to be vectored to the FAF, just the final approach course, in order to forego a published procedure turn.
Also, you could be cleared "straight-in" when ATC gives you the clearance for the approach.  It may seem subtle, but it makes a difference. Here is the definition in the pilot-controller glossary:

"STRAIGHT-IN APPROACH IFR. An instrument approach wherein final approach is begun without first having executed a procedure turn, not necessarily completed with a straight-in landing or made to straight-in landing minimums."

Also, don't take it literally.  If you approach at a 45 degree angle to the final approach course and are cleared "straight-in", you still approach at a 45 degree angle; there's just no procedure turn.
Using the below approach as an example here the difference would be, "Cleared 0M3 RNAV RWY 2" (Must do the PT) vs. "Cleared straight-in 0M3 RNAV RWY 2" (Shall not do the PT).

Another indicator I know of is notation on the MSA ring that declares a range of radials of approach as "No PT" such as this one.  Note that the MSA and radius on both halves is the same, so the only reason it is split is to declare no PT on the southwest approaching side.

When is a procedure turn not required?


What does the efficacy of a vaccine mean, i.e. what does it model?

Question: I am aware that the efficacy of a vaccine is calculated with $${\displaystyle VE={\frac {ARU-ARV}{ARU}}\times 100\%,} \text{with}\\
\text{VE=Vaccine efficacy}\\
\text {ARU= Attack rate of unvaccinated people}\\
\text {ARV= Attack rate of vaccinated people}$$
but besides echoing the definition of efficacy, I cannot explain even to myself what does it model. Initially I thought that the efficacy is the probability of you not getting the disease in question. However a close look at the formula reveals that efficacy cannot be a mathematical probability, since it can be a negative value: to my understanding during the pandemic negative efficacies have sometimes been reported regarding proposed vaccines. So what does efficacy model at an individual level, and what, if any, connection efficacy has to probabilities and probability theory?
Comment: @DonThousand The formula is $VE = \frac{ARU-ARV}{ARU} \times 100\%$, where $ARU$ is the attack rate of unvaccinated people and $ARV$ the attack rate of vaccinated people.  So if vaccinated people had a higher attack rate than unvaccinated, $VE$ would be negative.
Comment: @Don Thousand To my understanding the ARV can be in practise higher than ARU, causing the numerator to be negative. If efficacy were to model probabilities, shouldn't this be taken into account?
Comment: Check out my explanation here: [What does vaccine efficacy mean?](https://biology.stackexchange.com/a/97797/63723)  An excerpt: "Technically, vaccine efficacy is the proportionate reduction in disease occurrence conferred by the vaccine during the clinical trial. Think of **vaccine efficacy** as a measure of the *increase in protection* conferred by the vaccine during the clinical trial—not as an indication of how frequently the vaccine works (either across time, or among the vaccinated population)."
Comment: Theoretically, statistical significance aside, a positive vaccine efficacy (say, 5%) means that the vaccine did confer production to the clinical-trial participants.
Comment: Isn't it just measuring the *decrease* in probability of catching the disease if vaccinated?  If the probability of catching the vaccine goes down on getting vaccinated, that's a positive VE, whereas if the probability stays flat, that's a zero VE, and if the probability increases on getting vaccinated, that's a negative VE.
Answer: Suppose you have two near-identical populations of $N$ people. The only difference is that one of those populations gets vaccinated and the other population does not. Also suppose that $n_U$ people from the unvaccinated population get the disease while $n_V$ people from the vaccinated population get the disease. Then
$$
n_U=ARU \cdot N\\
n_V=ARV \cdot N
$$
and so
$$
n_V=\frac{ARV}{ARU} n_U=(1-VE) \cdot n_U \, .
$$
That is, you would expect that only $(1-VE) \cdot n_U$ people from the vaccinated population would get the disease, meaning that on average the vaccine reduces the number of people from the vaccinated population who got the disease by $VE \cdot n_U$.
Equivalently, suppose you either get vaccinated or don't. In either case, you then go about your life for a while in such a way that the probability of you getting the disease would have been $p$ had you not been vaccinated. Imagine a large collection of $N$ alternate universes where you got vaccinated, and $N$ where you didn't, and construct populations like the above out of these universes.
You expect to get the disease in $n_U=N \cdot p$ of the unvaccinated universes, by assumption. So, as above, you'd expect to get the disease in $(1-VE) \cdot N \cdot p$ vaccinated universes, meaning that the probability of vaccinated-you getting the disease is $(1-VE) \cdot p$.
In other words, getting vaccinated reduces the absolute probability that you get the disease by $VE \cdot p$: roughly speaking, the probability of you not getting the disease as the result of being vaccinated is $VE \cdot p$. More carefully, this is the probability that you don't get the disease as a result of being vaccinated, minus the probability that you do get the disease when you otherwise wouldn't have as a result of being vaccinated.
In particular, if the "vaccine" somehow makes you more susceptible to the disease, then $VE$ will be negative.
Comment: @EpsilonAway: I added a bunch more detail. Hope this helps (and isn't too painfully boring!)
Comment: Could you walk me through why the probability of me not getting the disease is $VE\cdot p$? Perhaps mathematics has nulled my mind, but I find it easier to follow this sort of story symbolically, where all information is presented explicitly.


Allow user to choose header style

Question: I am working on developing a simple WP theme that our office will use as a starting point for any future projects that come in. My question is this: How would I go about adding functionality that would allow for the user to select from several different pre-built header styles using the native WP Customizer panel? I have seen similar functionality in several popular themes (Linstar, BeTheme, etc.) in their Theme Options panel, and I know that they have created multiple header.php files (header-1.php, header-2.php, etc.), but I was wondering if and how this might be accomplished using the WP Customizer panel. Any help is appreciated.
Answer: Do you want this to be an option per page? Or side wide.
If first, look into this: https://www.advancedcustomfields.com/
If second, look into this: https://blog.templatetoaster.com/wordpress-settings-api-creating-theme-options/

Allow user to choose header style


Significance of Linga svarupa compared to Moorthi svarupa of Lord Shiva

Question: What is the significance of Linga svarupa compared to Moorthi svarupa of Lord Shiva
Why we see so many lingas all around the world
What is the significance of the linga svarupa or shape
Answer: In Shiva Purana Bhagawan Shiva said to Lord Brahma and Lord Vishnu the following.:

madātmakamidaṃ nityaṃ mama sānnidhyakāraṇam |
mahatpūjyamidaṃ nityamabhedālliṃgasiṃginoḥ || 43 || yatrapratiṣṭhitaṃ yena madīyaṃ liṃgamīdṛśam |
tatra pratiṣṭhitaḥ sohamapratiṣṭhopi vatsakau || 44 || matsāmyamekaliṃgasya sthāpane phalamīritam |
dvitīye sthāpite liṃge madaikyaṃ phalameva hi || 45 || liṃgaṃ prādhānyataḥ sthāpyaṃ tathāberaṃ tu gauṇakam |
liṃgābhāvena tatkṣetraṃ saberamapi sarvataḥ || 46 || (Sri Shiva Maha Puranam 1:9:43-46).

[Translations].:

The phallic symbol and the symbolised Śiva are non-different. Hence this phallic emblem is identical with me. It brings devotees quite near to me. It is worthy of worship therefore. O dear sons, if phallic emblem of this sort in installed I can be considered installed, though my idol is not installed. The result of installing the phallic emblem is the attainment of similarity with me. If a second phallic emblem is installed, the result is union with me. The installation of the phallic emblem is primary and that of embodied idol is secondary. A temple with the embodied idol of Śiva is unfructuous if it has no phallic image.

I hope this clarifies your queries.
Answer: Why is Shiva worshipped as a Lingam?
The answer is that the Saivites use the linga form to signify nameless and formless aspects (Niskala) of the deity.

Sages said:- 8. Everywhere the deities are worshipped only in their
image. How is that Siva is worshipped both in the image and the linga?
Suta said:- 9. O sages, this question is holy and wondrous. Here the
speaker is Siva Himself and not any ordinary person. 10. I shall tell
you what Siva Himself had said and what I heard from my own preceptor.
Siva alone is Niskala (nameless and formless) since He is identical
with supreme Brahman. 11. He is also Sakala as He has an embodied
form. He is both Sakala and Niskala. It is his Niskala aspect that the
Linga is appropriate. 12-13. In the Sakala aspect the worship of His
embodied form is appropriate. Since He has the Sakala and Niskala
aspects He is worshipped both in the linga and in the embodied form by
the people and is called the highest Brahman.

Shiva Purana, Vidyesvarasamhita, Chapter 5
Where does the linga form come from?

The day on which I manifested myself in the form of a column of fire
is the Ardra star in the month of Marga-sirsa (November-December), O
children.
He who sees me on the day of Ardra star in the month of Margasirsa in
the company of Uma and worships my Linga emblem or embodied image is
dearer to me than even Guha (Kartikeya)
On that auspicious day (Sivaratri) the vision alone accords ample
results. If he worships too, the result cannot be adequately
described.
Since I manifested myself in the form of Linga emblem in the field of
battle, this place will be known as Lingasthana.
O sons, this column without root or top will henceforth be diminutive
in size for the sake of the vision and worship of the world.
The Linga emblem confers enjoyment. It is the only means of worldly
enjoyment and salvation. Viewed, touched or meditated upon, it wards
off all future births of the living beings.
Since the Linga emblem rose high resembling a mountain of fire, this
shall be famous as Ruddy (Aruna) mountain. Many holy centres will
spring up here. A residence or death in this holy place ensures
liberation.

Siva Purana, Vidyesvarasamhita, chapter 9.15-22
What is the philosophical meaning of the Linga?
Shiva Linga according to Shiva Purana represents an infinite tower of light and is used to represent nishkala (formless) Shiva. Linga means mark. Shiva Linga simply means a symbol of Shiva. The Yoni associated with the Shiva Linga is simply the source. Just as Vedantins have Brahman - Shakti, Sankhya has Purusha - Prakriti, Shaivism has Linga - Yoni.
Ardhanarisvara

O highly blessed ones, at your entreaty I shall mention it to you
after bowing to Uma and Siva.
She is the mother of the universe. She is named Bhaga. She is the
three-fold pedestal of the deity in the form of a Linga.
Linga is the lord himself. O excellent brahmins, the creation of the
universe is by both of them. Siva in the form of a Linga is the
splendour stationed above darkness.
In view of the union of the Linga and pedestal he became
Ardhanarisvara (Lord with the form of a woman in one-half). At the
outset he created his son Brahma the four-faced Lord.

Linga Purana II.99.6-8
The Linga is equivalent to Brahman of Vedanta. The word linga is traced to two Sanskrit roots, li meaning to dissolve and gam which means to go, to be manifested or created. The Sivanubhava Sutra 3.3 defines Linga as follows:

That in which all mobiles and immobiles enter, i.e., get dissolved,
and that from which the universe is created is Linga.

Sivanubhava Sutra 3.3

…The Linga is spiritual knowledge and is stationed in the hearts of
Yogins.

Kurma Purana II.11.94b-95a
I have posted below some additional shlokas from Linga Purana that will hopefully be helpful in understanding Shaiva thought on linga.

Linga is so called because, O gods, everything gets dissolved in it.

Linga Purana I.19.16

The Linga is pure, auspicious and imperishable. It is exceedingly
blissful in nature. The Niskala form, that is, the form devoid of
attributes is all-pervasive. It is always stationed in the heart of
yogins.

Linga Purana I.75.18

O brahmins, they say that the Linga is of two types viz., - the
external and the internal. O excellent sages, the gross one is the
external. O brahmins, the subtle one is the internal. [So are the
devotees.]

Linga Purana I.75.19

The gross devotees are those engaged in the worship of gross lingas
and interested in holy rites and sacrifices. The gross idol is just
for awakening knowledge of the gross devotees.

Linga Purana I.75.20

The spiritual Linga is not perceptible to the deluded person who
conceives things only externally and not otherwise. The gross linga
made of clay, wood, etc., is perceptible only to non-yogins as the
subtle and eternal linga is perceptible to the Jnanin.

Linga Purana I.75.21-22
Niskala and Sakala Siva are not two

Other knowers of reality say that the object, on consideration, is
non-existent. [1] Therefore, everything, the Niskala and the Sakala is
of the nature of Siva.

Linga Purana I.75.23
[1] arthah – goal, viz. the release from the bondage of activities. Because, actually, as there is no bondage, there is no release. Cf. Pancadasi.
Various types of Lingas
There are also mukha linga or Lingas with faces. Then there are vigraha Lingas where the full form of Siva is inscribed on the Linga. The faceless Lingas are called Sthanu Linga or Linga columns which form is traced to legendary material about Shiva given in certain Puranas like Linga Purana (ch 17), the Kurma Purana (I.26.68-99) etc where Shiva appeared as a column of fire.


How to change the spacing between shapes in a pattern brush in Illustrator

Question: I'm trying to create a hair braid pattern on a circle and somehow can't seem to change the spacing between the shapes in the brush. I want to close the gaps. I'm working in Ai CS6.
Comment: Picture tells a thousand words here.
Answer: Your question is a bit cryptic (you should make it better even if this answers your question). But here is by guess of what your asking:
Your trying to do a semless pattern brush but your experiencing that the pattern does not repeat properly. That is because the pattern is taken from the bounding box of your graphics.

Image 1: there is small but noticable gap where the patterns meet
While you would like to have no gap

Image 2: There is no visible gap where patterns meet.
You do this by placing a no stroke no fill rectangle behind your graphic before you make it into a pattern.

Image 3: Make a non stroking non filling box behind to bound what gets drawn out of the pattern.


Lucene.Net and Nhibernate.Search: how to manage complex searches?

Question: We have a SQL Server database with a million-ish records that are indexed by Lucene.net through Nhibernate.Search. When we built the index for our classes, we tried to be extensive since the cost for indexing/retrieval was really small. The goal was to offer full-text searching to users on a webpage with pagination.
Since SQL Server complains when too many parameters are sent to it (2100 parameters by default) and since we didn't want to change that parameter everytime we hit the limit (which can happen easily, some terms in our document are very common but must be searchable) we decided to handle everything from sorting to paging in Lucene. It worked like a charm.
However, recently, feature-creep is causing us some problem because new queries need to access not only fields that aren't indexed but also fields that shouldn't be accessed or can't be accessed: computed fields, recommendation lists, etc...
Since we have put all our paging and sorting in Lucene.Net and since SQL Server is picky regarding its parameters, how can we manage to have our cake and eat it too?
I'm looking into doing the sql query computation first, reducing the elements to their doc id and then feeding Lucene a gigantic OR query with all possible ids to let it choose correctly what's possible, but i worry about the query size
pseudo code
listIds = Nhibernate.Criteria.ReduceToIds.List(of MyObject)
queryIds = String.join(" ID:", l)
return NHibernate.Search(queryIds)

Apparently, it is possible to have Lucene Filters working by allowing only certain documents ID to be part of the query, so it should be possible, but i don't really see a way to do it in Nhibernate.search
Do you have any idea how i should handle the problem? Is it possible to filter the query by asking SQL the list of ids? Is it overkill? Any other solution out there?
Answer: Usually you have problems when Lucene.Net returns more than 2100 results, as NHibernate.Search will build a big SELECT * FROM T WHERE ID IN (@p0,@p1 ...)
So, if your lucene query doesn't return more than 2100 results, you should be fine.


Why does Judea Pearl call his causal graphs Markovian?

Question: In his texts on causality, Judea Pearl always refers to the simplest graphs he uses, i.e. the acyclic graphs with independent confounders, as Markovian. I don't see why these graphs contain anything like a Markov-property.
Answer: He is referring to the Parental Markov Condition (see theorems 1.2.7 and 1.4.1 of Causality). Given a graph $G$, we say a distribution $P$ is Markov relative to $G$ if every variable is independent of all its non descendants conditional on its parents. An acyclic causal model $M$ with jointly independent error terms induce a probability distribution over the observed variables which is Markovian relative to $G(M)$.
Answer: These graphs do satisfy the Markov property - once you condition on the parent node, from which the causal arrow comes, the variable is independent of earlier ancestors that causally affect that parent (unless there is a separate arrow directly from the ancestor node to the present node).


Linear power supply using LM338

Question: I'm trying to design a linear power supply to provide 32V and up to 10 amps from a 50V source. Is this the correct way of using multiple LM338 regulators to achieve this?
Comment: In theory yes If you have water cooling for two high power CPU's dumping 180W . The correct way is to search for > 320W Buck regulator
Comment: A very, very good idea is to add 0.1 ohms to each regulator's output, then add an op amp to set the adj level. See the LM338 data sheet. Letting them fight directly is a great way to get high-frequency noise in the system.
Comment: I'd suggest figure 44 from the datasheet http://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/lm338.pdf but that op-amp dies at 36V
Answer: Problem 1
The LM338 has an input-output voltage differential of 40V, and you've got those great big caps in the feedback path.  That will cause the output to start low and ramp up slowly (8-10 volts/second) -- so unless that 50V supply ramps up slower than that, you have problems.  You can alleviate this with zeners across the in/out pins, though.
Problem 2
The LM338 has 50 to 100\$\mu\$A of current coming out of its adjustment pin.  That means that the output voltage, as you've designed it, is between 36V and 41V.  You need to reduce the values of all the resistors so the standing current in the adjust resistors better swamps the current from the adjust pin.
Problem 3
They're not going to share current nicely.  One will try to carry the whole load until it fries, and then the other will try until it fries.  Generally you want to design one power supply; when things get this power-hungry, you want to use a controller chip (like the LM723, if you insist on being old school) and pass transistors.
Problem 4
They're going to get hot.  You're dropping 18V at 5A -- that's 90 watts per device.  The junction-to-case thermal resistance is 0.7 degrees/W, so you would need to keep the case at 62 degrees C to keep the junction temperature to 125 degrees C.  That's going to limit the ambient temperature you can operate in, and even assuming a 25 degree C room temperature (which, trust me, is unrealistic), you'll need a big heat sink.
Comment: Those are the facts.  Here's the opinion: use a switching supply.  If you don't have the chops to design one (and a 320W switching supply *is* a challenge), consider finding a module (Vicor is a name to trust, but there are others) and just using it.  If electrical noise is a concern, then there are ways to quiet down a switching supply that don't involve burning up almost 60% of your input power across pass transistors.
Comment: I'm not adverse to using a SMPS. I tried using Texas Instruments WEBENCH Power Designer for a starting point but couldn't quite tick all the boxes and I'm not confident in making a SMPS suitable for an audio amplifier (TPA3250 based) in terms of noise. Vicor look really nice but far too expensive for my DIY level project. My starting point is a toroidal transformer with 35V output so any ideas/starting points are welcome.
Comment: Since it's DIY, have you checked the surplus outlets?  You may luck out and find a DC to DC module, but it's more likely that you'll find an AC to DC power supply with a voltage that's close, or one that can be adjusted; you'd probably have to follow that with additional filtering.  *Really* old-school would be to use a choke-input filter off of your rectifier without regulation, but that'd only deliver about 30V.
Comment: I did have another go with the Texas Instruments WEBENCH design tool and it came up with this - [WEBENCH design](https://webench.ti.com/appinfo/webench/scripts/SDP.cgi?ID=FEA960F7285095DC). It would be supplied by the rectified and smoothed output of my transformer. I'm just not sure how suitable it would be for supplying an audio amplifier?
Comment: It's not letting me in.  I suggest you make a screenshot of the design, and ask **in a separate question** whether it'll work.  It may be wise to say what it's for (I assume it's for a stereo amp, but still).

Linear power supply using LM338


Confused by a proof in Strichartz' book on Fourier Transforms

Question: Hi I'm confused by a proof on page 53 in Strichartz book on Fourier Transforms. Specifically, in the first equation on page 53, why is it valid to interchange the action of the distribution with the integral? I know that distributions are linear, but integrals are in general infinite sums. I have tried looking earlier in the book to find a justification for this, but I could not find anything. I would really appreciate some help with understanding this.
Answer: welcome to SE.
In the above, the author is not justifying his calculation. In fact, he says `formally.' Here is one sketch of proof:
Let $O_\phi = \{y : supp(\phi_y) \subset \Omega\}$. We can take $\psi^\delta = \eta_\delta * \psi$, where $\eta_\delta$ is a mollifier.
In particular, we have that $\psi^\delta * \phi \rightarrow \psi * \phi$ uniformly as $\delta \rightarrow 0$, and $\int_{O_\phi} |\psi^\delta - \psi| < \delta$. By continuity of $T$, the former bound gives $T(\psi^{\delta} * \phi) \rightarrow T(\psi * \phi)$. These two facts yield
\begin{align*}
 \left|T(\psi*\phi) - \int_{O_\phi} \psi(y) T(\phi_y) dy\right| &\leq |T(\psi*\phi)-T(\psi^\delta*\phi)| + \left|\int_{O_\phi}(\psi(y)-\psi^{\delta}(y))T(\phi_y) dy\right| \\
 &\leq \epsilon + \sup|T(\phi_y)|\int_{O_\phi} |\psi(y)-\psi^{\delta}(y)|dy
 \end{align*}
Hence, we prove the claim for $\psi \in C^\infty$. Since $\phi \in C^\infty$ (and so $\phi_y \in C^\infty$), we can approximate the integral by Riemann sums. It follows that
    \begin{align*}
 \int_{O_\phi} \psi(x)T(\phi_y) dx &\leq \sum_{i=1}^m \Delta_i \psi(x_i)T(\phi_y) + \epsilon \\
 &= T\left(\sum_{i=1}^n \Delta_i \psi(x_i)\phi(x_i-y)\right) + \epsilon
 \end{align*}
    where we approximated with lower Riemann sums. We can also approximate with upper Riemann sums to get the reverse inequality and find that in the limit the two expressions must be equal.
Comment: Thanks for the answer, but I have a couple of questions. Is the uniform convergence of $\psi^\delta \ast \phi \to \psi \ast \phi$ sufficient here? The topology on the Schwartz space require that it converges in every single norm in the countable family, and the uniform norm is only one of these. Also, it is possible that the integral is taken over all of $\mathbb{R}^n$ since Schwartz functions are not always compactly supported. I was under the impression that Riemann sums do not work for infinite domains of integration.
Comment: Another thing: I am only familiar with convergence of sequences in Schwartz space. Does the proof work if I take an arbitrary sequence $\delta_n \to 0$ rather than a continuous $\delta \to 0$?


How do I input a current balance in a cell from a running balance that will be updated frequently?

Question: I know I'm not accurately explaining that but here's a sample spreadsheet of what I mean:
Answer: Here are two options.
Note that it is advisable to treat the opening balance as a transaction in the "Credits/Deposits" column
Assumption - "Total" is Column G
Option #1:
Enter these formulas in the nominated cells

=F2 - enter in Cell G2.
=G2-E3+F3 - enter in Cell G3. Then copy cell down as many rows as necessary

Option#2:

Enter this formula in cell G2

=ArrayFormula(if(len(B2:B),(SUMIF(ROW(F2:F),"<="&ROW(F2:F),F2:F)-SUMIF(ROW(E2:E),"<="&ROW(E2:E),E2:E)),))
This will automatically update the Total as transactions are added.


Is there a reason why Zoom didn't just kill Barry outright?

Question: In "The Flash" Season 2 Episode 6, Zoom hits Barry 700 times and then parades him around Central City. When Zoom killed everyone at Jitters, he simply broke their necks. Why would Zoom waste time and energy pulverizing Barry when he could have just broken his neck?
Comment: I've not seen the show but surely you've answered this yourself: _"Zoom hits Barry 700 times and then **parades him around Central City.**"_ Seems like Zoom was showing everyone who's boss.
Answer: If you are only now watching the show, this might be a spoiler. But it explains why he doesn't kill him.

 Zoom's motivation is not to kill Barry, but to steal his Speed Force in order to add it to his own. He is addicted to getting more and more Speed Force.
Comment: @Clockwork I can't remember exactly, but I think Barry has to willingly give it up to him. Basically he had to subjugate Barry to the point where he is willing to surrender.
Comment: Shouldn't he be able to take over the amount of speed force Flash is tapping into if he simply killed Flash though? Although my only knowledge about that comes from an animated movie, so I might be wrong.
Answer: Note: this is more a comment on Jack B Nimble's answer, but I write it as an answer due to spoilers.
As said in the other answer, not only

 Zoom wants to steal the speed of spedsters from other universes, to be the fastest spedsters of the multi-verse

but he also needs Barry and team Flash to

 restore his body damaged by a problematic early version of the Velocity serum.

In the show, Jay Garrick

 is actually Zoom infiltrating team Flash to get the team's help to create the Velocity serum. He is losing his powers (life too?) and is finally saved by the Velocity 9 created by Caitlin.


How to deal with missing stock returns?

Question: If I want to calculate the Covariance between two stocks but there are missing days in both, how can I deal with missing data? I want to use Pairwise deletion and only use the days of which both observations are seen. I have been reading up on pairwise deletion and I have seen that the data must be missing at random. If the missing days where every Monday for example, would this be missing a random?
Answer: If the days are missing is a systematic way but you have reason to believe that the mechanism for missingness would not affect your inferences... then yes, your data are MAR and you can proceed. However, that belief tha the missingness mechanism is immaterial is often tough to defend: even a relation to liquidity would undermine a claim of MAR.
Regarding your example about Mondays... The Monday Effect is the purported effect that stocks which declined Friday are more likely to rise on Monday. The effect is often attributed to short sellers not risking being short over a weekend since more news comes out on weekends and good news would cause losses. If you (or your critics) believe there is a Monday Effect, then data missing on Mondays would not be MAR.
Comment: The stambuagh reference at the end of this paper used to be the seminal paper on how to deal with your problem. But this paper is more recent so could be an improvement to Stambaugh ? I didn't read it.  https://arxiv.org/pdf/0710.5837.pdf
Comment: Nice paper by Bobby; great work as usual from him. Not sure that applies here though since this isn't monotone missingness. The Stambaugh method could work if we have an MAR situation. Would help if we knew more about the missingness mechanism.
Comment: No idea if it applies to his case. I just remember Stambaugh being seminal so I googled for it and that one came up instead. Since Stambaugh is a reference in it, he can still google and find that one.  Maybe one of them applies ?

How to deal with missing stock returns?


Can you please explain the significance of "problems" at the end of the sentence?

Question: I wrote a mail asking for some job to be done at the earliest. I was replied with "I'll do it this afternoon, problems." I don't understand the meaning of that extra "problems" at the end. The person was British.
Comment: Crappy unchecked predictive text, ***probably***. It's certainly not some "special usage" that non-native speakers need to concern themselves with, even if this was the right site to be asking.
Comment: I'm going to guess that there's a missing 'no' before 'problems'.
Comment: He forgot to put a ? mark after 'problems'.
Answer: How early in the morning did you send the e-mail? Perhaps the person who replied would have started it straight away, and guessed that they would have finished it that morning if they had, but they can't start on it until the afternoon, because they have problems to deal with, and they must deal with those problems first.
Comment: ELU (as with other SE sites) is not intended for speculative answers, second-guessing what ill-constructed texts are intended to mean.
Comment: With a newly formed grammar over the last few years, that interpretation would make this an elided form of *[because] problems.* And why would that be somewhat acceptable at this point? Because English.


Monitoring other's activities

Question: As an admin is there a way to see what other people have been doing on their accounts on the same civicrm database?
Comment: A little more specificity about what you're looking to find would be helpful, but in general, unless you enable logging in Civi (which can greatly increase the size and affect the performance of your db, FYI), you can usually only see _that_ a particular user modified a record, not what they specifically did.
Answer: Most actions are saved as an Activity in CiviCRM. You can get all Activities through the Advanced Search:

Menu: Search > Advanced Search
For the search field Display Results As select Activities

Using all the other search criteria you can filter the kinds of activities you are interested in (e.g. Activities of a specific user).
Does this help? Or what kind of things are you looking for?

Monitoring other's activities


Predict decay chain of a radioactive element

Question: I know there are tables of decay chain of radioactive elements. Is there a way to predict the whole chain from the first radioactive element?
Answer: Use the Evaluated Nuclear Structure Data File; search "by decay" and put the nuclide you'd like to start with in "parent."  This will also tell you half-lives and Q-values.
A few nuclides have multiple decay modes; for instance radon-221 usually beta-decays to francium-221, but alpha-decays to polonium-217 about 22% of the time.  You may find other "forks in the road" depending on where you start.
You ask in a comment about U-235.  You can go a little simpler by looking at the chart of nuclides, which lists decay modes:

U-235: α
Th-231: β
Pa-231: α
Ac-227: β 99% (neglect α 1%)
Th-227: α
Ra-223: α
Ra-219: α
Po-215: α
Pb-211: β
Bi-211: α 99.3% (neglect β 0.7%)
Tl-207: β

That takes you to lead-207, which is stable (and makes up 22% of natural lead).
Comment: Modern nuclear models are able to predict the energy levels for different nuclides, and that tells you which decays are energetically allowed.  In general nuclei with "too many" neutrons will $\beta^-$-decay, nuclei with "too few" neutrons will $\beta^+$-decay, and nuclei that are "too heavy" will $\alpha$-decay.  However the details are nontrivial, especially in the no-mans-land of unstable nuclei between lead and thorium.
Comment: hey thanks for the reply

I understand there are table we can look up with the decay chains, but have we been able to model and predict sequence?
Comment: thanks for the reply, but are we able to predict the chain of decay say starting from the U-253 to Fe?


How do I display how many ore are in a single vein?

Question: I'm wanting (for minecraft 1.12.2 or 18w01a) to have a way, that whenever I mine an ore I get a msg that appears in chat that tells me how many of that ore are in that vein (an alternate thing that would be okay with me would be to make the ores glow), tho I wish to use no mods nor hacks, and this is for a single-player world, can someone help me?
Comment: @Fabian Commands are not hacks, hacks is like "Aristois" (a hacked client), and functions are not mods, mods are like "Tekkit" (a mod pack), and I don't rly know where to begin, and have tried a search, but nothing seems to help.
Comment: In such a case recursion is your friend, but doing that with commands.. ouch. Try to have a look at functions instead.
Comment: I also have quite a lot to do recently and in the next months, but I wanted to try it afterwards anyway.
Comment: 1. Have you tried anything on your own? 2. Is it really worth it to do that? It is a medium sized project for something that doesn't seem too useful. 3. Do you count commands as "hacks"?
Comment: Since your goal is pretty specific, there isn't a pre-made solution available. So what you have to research is how to use Minecraft commands and then you try to create your own solution.
Comment: @dly and, I don't even know where to begin, If I could be given an idea of what commands would most-likely be used for such, and maybe a little of how to use them, I may be able to answer my own question.
Comment: @Fabian look at above comment/\
Comment: @dly Recursion is not necessary for this. And since recursion can easily create headaches, I wouldn't recommend it for a beginner. Loops are perfectly fine here.
Comment: @DeJeL Just google "Minecraft commands tutorial". For example Slicedlime has one: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4ZS2guXqa_g1NI8t0djmrRtOaZ6brg46
Comment: @Fabian I've done many commands in the past, such as massive repetition in making a custom recipe crafting table with only commands, no mods. I just need an example of how to start this, and I can go from there.
Comment: Ok, that's possible.
Comment: Did you ever do something with this?
Comment: @FabianRöling no, until recently I had reasons whereas I could not play MC... However, the meathod you proposed below, If you know a few of the commands to use, that would be most helpfull, cause that kind of stuff is not something I've done much of before (if any).
Answer: Since you only want ideas, I'll present a possible concept:
Detecting when a block is mined can be done with scoreboards that use statistics like stat.mineBlock.minecraft.coal_ore.
If you're in 1.13, you could in theory use raycasting to find out which block the player currently mines by permanently checking which blocks he looks at. That would give perfect results, but also create a lot of lag.
Instead, I would just assume that you are standing close to the mined block and therefore restrict it to only a few camera angle areas. Be careful that rx, rxm, ry and rym in 1.12 and x_rotation and y_rotation in 1.13 work very differently.
Now that you have the block, you should put an armour stand in it. Then you summon one armour stand above, one below, four on the sides. Then you kill off all of them that are in stone, air or just not in the same ore. And you kill off all that are inside another armour stand. Of course you somehow have to differentiate them for that, you could for example use a custom (simplified) ID system for that.
Then you also have to detect when you are done. For that, you should make every armour stand increase a shared score (for example on you) by six before creating the armour stands around. Then you either decrease the score by one for every killed armour stand (for example with /execute store success) or you compare the result for this summoning round with the one from the last, whatever works best.
If you kill the same amount of armour stands in a round that you summoned, you can stop. The total number of armour stands left now is the number of ores. And they are in the position of the blocks.
You can for example give out the number with a score tag in the JSON of a /tellraw command.
To make the blocks glow, you could use invisible shulkers, but that would have the disadvantage that you can't mine the blocks then. If you want to get really fancy, you can still do it, but offset the shulkers by a very small amount away from the player (eight combinations of xyz +/-).
Alternatively, you can summon a glowing marker armour stand with a block on its face, but then the block will be smaller.
I have also thought about minecarts with blocks in them and a huge offset, but sadly Glowing doesn't work with them.
And of course you have to kill the shulker or armour stand when its block is mined.


Why cookies dont expire after closing browser?

Question: In books and tutorials related with Web-programming written that cookies expire when user close browser. So I cant understand why after closing browser(Opera) I can see the list of my cookies in "Parameters" window. And how sites (for example Facebook) identifier users after closing browser (session cookies must expire according to books and tutorials)?
Answer: Cookies are of two different types:

session cookies, held in memory, and which expire once the browser exits
persistent cookies, which have a time-to-live, are persisted on disk, and are sent by the browser until their time-to-live has elapsed.

Read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_cookie
Comment: what does closing the browser means? These days the browser is always open, you can close a browser tab, or a browser window, that still doesn't expire the cookie
Answer: There are two major kinds of cookies. Session and Persistent cookies.
Session cookies are usually removed when you close the browser. Session cookies are usually used for keeping track of login information, shopping carts etc.
Persistent cookies are also called tracking cookies. They are often used by advertisers to track what ads you have already watched. It is also used for some web pages to remember information about you, such as automatic login and auto-filling forms with commonly used details (such as your login name). Persistent cookies are removed when max age or expiration date have been reached.
More information regarding different cookie types can be found on Wikipedia - HTTP cookie.
Answer: Yes, session cookies expire at the end of the session - but this is not the only type of cookie. A cookie can have an expiration date set giving it a longer lifetime - a "persistent" cookie.
Answer: In some cases, it may appear that cookies are not expiring after closing the browser because, in fact, not all browser instances are closed.
There are a number of situations in which a browser session may be still running in the background, after it appears to have been closed.
A browser crash in IE, could leave a hidden session open. In Google Chrome, some extensions use "hidden pages" that persist after closing the browser. On Mac, inexperienced users may think they have closed the browser by clicking X, but they neglect to click Safari > Quit Safar or Command-Q.
This is especially concerning when using cookies for login purposes. This has become an issue for us with Sharepoint 2013 and ADFS. Hope this helps!
Answer: To complete the answer:
Sites identify users after closing the browser by using either

persistent cookies
flash cookies (LSOs)
ETags (http 1.1)
Answer: I hear you Brother. Sad but the cold reality is ... Closing a browser does not mean closing a browser.
Closing a browser here means killing the process behind that browser brand along with ALL INSTANCES.
For that to happen, one of the following things must take place:
1) You either reboot down your computer
2) or you or your users long Press on the browser's icon on the system tray and then select QUIT OR CLOSE ALL WINDOWS options (depending on whether you're on a mac or on windows)
Practically speaking, I know this is not what you wanted to see and find out as the crux of the matter but it is what it is.
Even if there is no visible instances of the browser, the big boy is still in the memory and unless you FORCE QUIT that process, your cookie is still in the session.
This should not have been designed this way.
Closing all instances should have been enough.
Answer: Every cookie have an expiry time ,if you have not set a particular value , it will accept the default value .A cookie will expire only after this expiry time , no matter whether you are closing browser or not . You can kill a cookie by setting negative value to as expiry time
In php you have a good tutorial here
http://php.net/manual/en/function.setcookie.php
Answer: Its because the cookies are set with expiry time. It will not expire until the specified time whether the browser closed or not.
Answer: It might be because of your browser settings if you're using Chrome or Firefox, so if you've configured your browser to "Continue where you left off" at startup, it won't delete those session cookies, this is the same in Firefox as well.

I actually took this answer from this question (which I couldn't find by google search, because it's specific to PHP, but I accidentally found it on google images!)


What biblical figure was present during the dinosaurs?

Question: The text of Genesis indicates that Adam appeared on earth after the creation of the entire animal kingdom (Gen 1:24-26). Is there any evidence in the text of Genesis to indicate that some gap of time had existed between the prehistoric dinosaurs and the appearance of man on earth, or does the text of Genesis indicate that man coexisted with them (Gen 1:24-26)?  If man coexisted with them, then what biblical figure would the text indicate was present during the existence of the dinosaurs?
Answer: Some argue that Job 40:15:24 mentions Behemoth and Leviathan and that these are dinosaurs, however radiometric dating indicates that most or all dinosaurs died out millions of years before Job.
On the other hand, Technically Crocodiles are Dinosaurs so the answer is "all of them."
It is also possible that the Leviathan is a Plesiosaur and this dinosaur is not extinct, but highly endangered and this is responsible for things like accounts of the Loch Ness Monster, Lake Champlain monster and whatever this Japanese fishing trawler hauled up.
Comment: While all biblical figures indeed would have been contemporaneous with crocodiles, very few likely ever saw one. The only characters who would have lived anywhere near crocodiles would be those who spent time near the Nile in Egypt, like Moses. Even then they crocodiles would have somewhat exotic. (Pardon my pedantry :) )
Comment: Crocodiles are not technically dinosaurs (like dinosaurs they're archosaurs, but they're a sister group to dinosaurs), on the other hand birds *are* technically dinosaurs.  The thing the Japanese fishing trawler pulled up was [definitely a basking shark](http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2008/07/11/dead-sea-monsters/), and no one credible believes in the Loch Ness Monster.  It's embarrassing to the site that this answer is so highly upvoted.
Answer: The Idea in Brief
There was an indefinite gap of time between Gen 1:1 and Gen 1:2, in which the prehistoric dinosaurs existed. The picture of salvation in the Christian New Testament suggests that the seven days of creation were seven days of restoration, when the earth was "born again." Therefore the seven days of creation in Genesis describe the restoration of the earth, since the heavens and the earth had already been created in a single moment (Gen 1:1).
Discussion
The Apostle Paul makes the following comment in regard to the salvation of believers.

1 Corinthians 4:6 (NASB)
6 For God, who said, "Light shall shine out of darkness," is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.

Paul is drawing from the Genesis account in the Hebrew Bible, when the Word of God caused light to shine out of the darkness -

Genesis 1:2-3 (NASB)
2 The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. 3 Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light.

Paul is making the parallel between the illumination of the believer and the light that appeared upon the earth. Both were in darkness before this light appeared. For example, we see that the earth was "formless and void" in this darkness.

Genesis 1:2 (MT)
2 ... וְהָאָרֶץ הָיְתָה תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ
<code> 2 And the earth was formless and void...
</code>

The word for formless (תֹּהוּ) occurs 20 times in the Hebrew Scriptures to describe the wilderness of the desert (wasteland) or vanity. The word for void (בֹּהוּ) occurs three times, and mean emptiness. Both words occur together once more in the Hebrew Bible in the following.

Jeremiah 4:22-23 (NASB)
22 "For My people are foolish,
  They know Me not;
  They are stupid children
  And have no understanding.
  They are shrewd to do evil,
  But to do good they do not know."
23 I looked on the earth, and behold,
  it was formless and void;
  And to the heavens, and they had no light.

Jeremiah is not describing the creation account from Genesis, but the land of Judah when the Babylonians will cause complete devastation. The imagery stems not only from the physical devastation, but also that the people are in darkness (that is, they have no understanding - and therefore are not illuminated).
In other words, the description of the earth in Gen 1:2 is not only an earth devastated, but an earth with no illumination, until the Word of God causes the light to appear. As noted above, the Apostle Paul had used the same imagery to describe the salvation of the believer, who is "born again."
The imagery of "born again" involves water and Spirit, which were also present in Gen 1:2. That is, Jesus described the new birth as follows.

John 3:4-6 (NASB)
4 Nicodemus *said to Him, "How can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born, can he?" 5 Jesus answered, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. 6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.

The water, which Jesus called life (John 4:14), is administered by the Spirit in order to cause the new birth of the believer. In the Genesis account, the water and the Spirit were present when the light appeared, and thereby the seven day restoration occurred.

Genesis 1:2-3 (NASB)
2 The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. 3 Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light.

Finally, the Apostle Peter compares the "flood" of Genesis 1:2-3 with the flood of Noah in Genesis Chapters 6-9.

2 Peter 3:5-7 (NASB)
5 For when they maintain this, it escapes their notice that by the word of God the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and by water [Genesis 1:2-3], 6 through which the world at that time was destroyed, being flooded with water [Genesis 6-9]. 7 But by His word the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.

Peter does not say that the earth was created, but that the heavens were already in existence (Gen 1:1) when the earth was formed out of water (Gen 1:2-3). In other words, the heavens and the earth had already been created in Genesis 1:1 in a single moment, and later the earth was formed out of water, to which Peter is alluding. The comparison to the flood of Noah and then to the ultimate destruction of the earth by fire leaves the reader to believe that the "formless and void" in Gen 1:2-3 was some judgment, because Peter is making negative comparisons in the context in the verses above. The reader therefore may infer that this judgment had required that the earth in Gen 1:2-3 be restored or "born again" by the Word of God.
For example, in the following verses, Peter makes the allusion that the eight persons who survived the flood of Noah were saved by water and Spirit. The Word of God was proclaimed to this end. So we see the time of judgment involving water and Spirit (salvation).

1 Peter 3:18-21 (NASB)
18 For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit; 19 in which also He went and made proclamation to the spirits now in prison, 20 who once were disobedient, when the patience of God kept waiting in the days of Noah, during the construction of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through the water. 21 Corresponding to that, baptism now saves you—not the removal of dirt from the flesh, but an appeal to God for a good conscience—through the resurrection of Jesus Christ,

The Spirit of God saved the eight persons through the water -- the "baptism" which corresponds to our salvation. Again, the imagery here is the Word of God ("proclamation"), which provides salvation by means of water and Spirit.
Finally, the Book of Hebrews alludes to the final destruction of the earth at some point in the future.

Hebrews 12:25-27 (NASB)
25 See to it that you do not refuse Him who is speaking. For if those did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, much less will we escape who turn away from Him who warns from heaven. 26 And His voice shook the earth then, but now He has promised, saying, "Yet once more I will shake not only the earth, but also the heaven." 27 This expression, "Yet once more," denotes the removing of those things which can be shaken, as of created things, so that those things which cannot be shaken may remain.

The author is talking about a time when the heavens and earth will be "shaken" one more time, which is defined as the "removal of those things which can be shaken" -- that is, at some point in the future, as the Apostle Peter had already mentioned, the earth and heavens will be destroyed by fire. In other words, the author of Hebrews was NOT alluding to the flood of Noah, because at that time the only creatures removed from the earth were those "who had breath in their nostrils" according to Genesis 7:22 (and thus sea creatures survived through the flood of Noah not to mention those people and animals in the ark). In this respect, there was no complete "removal of those things that can be shaken" during the flood of Noah. The author of Hebrews was instead alluding to Gen 1:2-3, when the earth became formless and void. If dinosaurs existed on the earth at this time, then they and any other creature on earth were removed (destroyed), because the heavens and the earth were shaken not by fire, but by water. Thus, the original shaking of the heavens mentioned in Hebrews 12:26 (which occurred between Gen 1:1 and Gen 1:2) would point to the need not to restore the sun and stars per se, but to their LIGHT in the expanse of the universe (Genesis 1:14-19). In other words, this state of darkness and chaos was not the intent of the Lord at creation.

Isaiah 45:18 (NASB)
18 For thus says the Lord, who created the heavens (He is the God who formed the earth and made it, He established it and did not create it a waste place, but formed it to be inhabited), "I am the Lord, and there is none else...."

This verse indicates that the Lord did not create the earth to be "תֹּהוּ" (wilderness), but to be inhabited by living creatures. Something happened between Gen 1:1 and Gen 1:2, because the earth and heavens were shaken (everything removed with the result that the earth was formless and void in complete darkness).
Conclusion
At the time of creation, which was glorious, the Lord intended the earth to be inhabited. When the earth was created, there was much celebration among the angelic hosts, which Job described as follows.

Job 38:6-8 (NASB)
6 "On what were its bases sunk?
  Or who laid its cornerstone,
7 When the morning stars sang together
  And all the sons of God shouted for joy?
8 "Or who enclosed the sea with doors
  When, bursting forth, it went out from the womb;

But something happened between Gen 1:1 and Gen 1:2, which caused "the removal of those things which can be shaken." Light was obliterated from the heavens, and the earth was left in a state of complete desolation.
Thus, with the imagery of the flood of Noah and the ultimate destruction of the earth by fire (and other New Testament allusions to salvation that point to Genesis), the Bible reader may come to the conclusion that there was a gap of prehistory between Gen 1:1 and Gen 1:2, which resulted in the chaotic state of the heavens and earth. It was in this gap that the dinosaurs had existed. At some indeterminate point of time, the Word of God, which caused the light to come out of darkness, brought about the new birth of the earth through water and Spirit, which are the same means by which the believer today is "born again."
Comment: Actually, the creation account in Genesis 1:1 - 2:4 appears to have been added after the original writing of Genesis during the time of the Babylonian Exile. (Gordon J. Wenham; Story As Torah and other scholars) It appears to be a polemic response to the Enuma Elish, the Babylonian creation text in which creation occurs in 6 days - just like the genesis account. Creation texts from Egypt, The Enuma Elish and other creation stories share a common feature: Creation from water. A chaotic proto-universe from which the land, heavens, stars, etc are created.
Comment: @JamesShewey - the account of Genesis (1:1-2:4) appears in Exodus 20:11 and Exodus 31:17.
Comment: Also, because of the above, it was probably believed that these were 6 or 7 literal creation days (depending on the creation text.)
Answer: Everyone from Adam to Noah would have seen the ancient dinosaurs that are no longer with us. We know that Job was before Noah due to pangea being mentioned (not by name of course) as well as Behemoths/Leviathans. Some say pangea is a myth while others say the flood broke it up. Neither is true. In the days of Peleg, 200 years AFTER the flood, was the earth divided. There's your pangea & there is the division. In Texas as well as a few other places, there have been prints found of man/dinosaur together. Some say dinosaurs were long before Adam but the problem with that is, death did not exist until after Eve took of the fruit, then gave it to Adam. Leaves were the first to fall, then a sheep was the first to die. Also, while the ancestors of dinosaurs are gone, we still have dinosaurs today. the reptilian species as well as the birds. Plus--some won't believe this without seeing for themselves--creatures such as the Loch Ness monster or Champ (another one). In Canada there are two of these monsters, Cassie, a saltwater beast near Victoria. Ogopogo in the Okanagan Lake. I have seen Ogo three times in two days, the last time I was right in the water with him. So yes they are real. No dinosaurs are not extinct, merely changed, adapted to live in these conditions that their ancestors would not be able to survive in. Birds also are considered to be a type of dinosaur. We still have birds today.
Comment: These footprints were actually sauropods. Their foorprints can look very similar to humans. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paluxy_River#Paluxy_Trackways


What should the OP do if the question is partly answered in comments and partly as an answer ?

Question: If there is an answer to your question that originally isn't acceptable but later becomes very acceptable after discussion through comments should you ask the person to edit the original answer before accepting?
Comment: @AnnaLear I have seen issues with that... Some users revert those types of changes when it is very radical.
Comment: You can also just go ahead and edit the answer to add the relevant information yourself.
Comment: @AnnaLear: probably not with a reputation of 58 though...
Comment: @BradChristie A suggested edit with an appropriate edit summary can't hurt. If it gets reverted, could ask the OP.
Comment: @AnnaLear Dont rejected edits negatively affect the user in some/any way ?
Comment: @AshRj If too many are rejected in a short amount of time, the user who suggested them is banned from suggesting more edits for 7 days. It's not really a reason not to propose good edits just because someone somewhere might misunderstand them.
Answer: Certainly!
It's always best to have all the relevant information included in the answer. Comments are easy to miss and hard to follow (especially in a longer "thread"). One of the things that's great about Stack Overflow is that people can find answers to their question without having to sift through a bunch of irrelevant stuff, and bringing useful information out of comments and into answers helps with that.
You can either ask the user to edit the information into the answer, or you can propose an edit yourself. Once you have 2000 reputation, you'll be able to just edit without approval, but until then, you can submit a suggested edit. I recommend leaving a clear edit summary to explain that you're including additional information from comments so that reviewers don't think you're some crazy person radically changing the answer. Which they still might, but if that happened, asking the OP to edit would be my next step.
If you simply can't get the edits to go through and the OP isn't responding, Brad Christie brings up a good option - post an answer of your own with all the relevant information. I would credit the person who helped you the most in that case in that answer as well, just to be polite and respectful of their time.
Answer: There are a few solutions that I see:
First, would be to ask the user would posted the answer to edit their answer to include the relevant details from the comments, once that is done then you can accept the answer.
Second, if the user does not edit the answer, then you can attempt to perform the edit yourself.
Third, if you don't have enough rep to edit without going through the review queue and your revision does not get accepted, then you can use all of the information from the comments to post a final solution to your problem. Then at least your question will have been answered.
Answer: If the user's original answer wasn't the solution but they did (through comments and discussion) bring you to the conclusion

I would politely ask them to modify their answer to accommodate
Or propose an edit with the concluded answer (and up-vote them as a sign of gratitude).

If they don't modify their answer though, it's probably safe to create a new answer and post what got you through the problem and accept it. This will close out the question affirmatively and define the solution for future reference.
Comment: How is this different from bluefeet's answer ?
Comment: @AshRj: it doesn't; we posted at almost the same time.


Can someone who got GPA 3.7 apply for high ranked university with assistanship?

Question: I'm undergraduate civil engineering, and I'm planning for master degree.
My GPA is 3.7, and I didn't do GRE yet. However, I have strong research interest and I have some publications.
Do you believe that I can be enrolled in high ranked universities such as MIT, Berkeley, Stanford?
Comment: At Illinois, you would need at least a 7.5/4.0 GPA, fourteen journal articles, six patents, and membership in the National Academy of Engineering to even be considered for admission. But I hear standards at MIT are a bit lower; you should be fine.
Answer: Your GPA is sufficiently high that it will not prevent you from applying or being accepted to pretty well any US university - but once your GPA is above a 3.5 it tends to just be marked as "good enough". A research group that would base a decision solely on a GPA of 3.7 vs 3.9 vs 4.0 would have a disturbingly irrational fetish for GPA that it would be a mark against the research group more than it would be against you!
It appears this sentiment is shared by Dr Mor Harchol-Balter of Carnegie Mellon University, where she writes (my emphasis added):

3.1 Transcript – grades and classes
When applying to a Ph.D. program in CS, you'd like your grades in CS and Math and Engineering classes
to be about 3.5 out of 4.0, as a rough guideline. It does not help
you, in my opinion, to be closer to 4.0 as opposed to 3.5. It's a much
better idea to spend your time on research than on optimizing your
GPA. At CMU the mean GPA of students admitted is over 3.8 (even though
we don't use grades as a criterion), however students have also been
admitted with GPAs below 3.3, since research is what matters, not
grades. A GPA of 4.0 alone with no research experience will not get
you into any top CS program. Keep in mind that GPAs are evaluated in
the context of the undergraduate program. A 3.4 GPA from a topranked
CS undergraduate program like CMU counts the same as a 3.8 or 3.9 GPA
from a less well-known CS undergraduate program.

As @Potato notes, this strong preference away from GPA and towards research may only apply to some fields where undergraduates are capable of participating in research. This may also not be true of Universities without such a very strong focus on performing research. In short: YMMV.
At the graduate level there are multiple factors considered, discussed in various and tremendous depth throughout other topics on this site (and highly recommended to be searched through!). But with that said, your GPA is more than high enough that you may now safely worry about all the other criteria that will be considered: reference letters, statement of purpose, any existing relationships directly or indirectly with professors at the institution, experience in research (or that shows potential for research), GRE score being "high enough" (just like your GPA!), TOEFL for international applicants (again, "good enough") etc.
Comment: Thanks for your motivating. Because some professors in my university defeat me to apply for MIT, Berkley, and Stanford.
Comment: @MohamadNajib I would only add that you should not ONLY apply to colleges who are well known for taking only a tiny % of candidates - a 2-10% chance of admittance is not 0%, but it sure isn't a guarantee either! But if you don't apply then certainly your chance is 0%. Just don't think that the US only has 3 great Universities - it's a very big place!
Comment: Do you have any data on this? Your assertion that every GPA above 3.5 is equivalent seems inaccurate to me. Most people know I who attend elite STEM PhD programs had near-perfect GPAs as undergraduates.
Comment: I mean, it seems obvious to me that having a 3.5 is worse for your admissions chances than having a 4.0. The real question is, how much worse?
Comment: @Potato I'm not asserting that all high GPAs are equivalent - just that there is an extremely strong diminishing return at work. There are many reasons - GPAs aren't fully comparable across institutions or even programs, course difficulty varies, semester load/work, etc - and I'm not aware of any graduate program that sorts by GPA or has GPA as a tie-breaker. I've heard lots of statements that say it isn't, though - from every program that has anything to say on the topic. From another angle: it's hard to imagine a case of "Oh, we would admit this candidate...if only that had an extra 0.2 GPA"
Comment: @Potato So I don't think higher GPA would hurt anyone, nor that if you had a free choice as a student you should pick 3.5 instead of 3.9 - just that any difference in admission statistics would require raw data sets and full statistical analysis to reveal.
Comment: @Potato Actually I happened upon a citation for my statements here, and updated my answer accordingly. Hopefully that casts things in a more logical/sensible light!
Comment: @BrianDHall Interesting. That seems to be CS-specific, however. I would be very surprised if you could find a math (or civil engineering, etc) professor that said the same thing, simply because very few undergraduates are capable of doing meaningful (math, CE) research, so the other signals are more important.
Comment: @Potato That seems very reasonable to me and an excellent caveat, which I'll note in the answer for future finders of this page..
Comment: @BrianDHall Now that you mention it, I do remember various CS people saying similar things about the relative unimportance of GPA. It seems to be a cultural difference.
Comment: @Potato Very few undergraduates are capable of doing meaningful CS research, either. But enough are that strong CS departments can use research experience as a meaningful admissions signal. My experience is completely consistent with Mor Harchol-Balter's (maybe not surprisingly, since we were in the same PhD cohort in the same department).
Comment: Apropos `Dr Mor Harchol-Balter of Carnegie Mellon University, where he writes` ... I think you mean `where she writes`... @BrianDHall
Comment: But how to explain that most students in some PhD programs @ Harvard have almost perfect GPA?


Proof that an archimedean absolute value on $\mathbb Q$ is equivalent to $|\ |_\infty$

Question: I have included a bolded comment in a step in the part of Gouvea's proof of Ostrowski's theorem where he shows that an archimedean absolute value on $\mathbb Q$ is equivalent to $|\ |_\infty$ (the regular absolute value). I will write my question about the comment below. Here is the relevant excerpt of the proof:

Suppose, first, that $|\ |$ is archimedean. We want to show, in this case, that it is equivalent to the $\infty-$adic absolute value. Since $|\ |$ is archimedean, $\exists n\in\mathbb Z: |n|>1$. Then $|-n| = |n| > 1$, so suppose WLOG that $n \geq 0$. In fact, we know that $n \geq 2$. Let $n_0$ be the least such positive integer $n$. Then since $n_0 > 1$ and $|n_0| > 1$, we can pick $\alpha\in\mathbb R$ such that
    $$
 |n_0| = n_0^\alpha.
 $$
    We claim that $\forall x\in \mathbb Q$, $|x| = |x|_\infty^\alpha$. Note that this already holds for $x = 0$ (and $x = 1$), and that if it holds for positive integers, then it holds for positive rational numbers, and then it holds for negative rational numbers, so it holds for all of $\mathbb Q$. Thus, it is sufficient to demonstrate this equality for positive integers. We will achieve this by showing that for every positive integer $n$, $|n| = n^\alpha$.
We know that the equality holds for $n = n_0$. Now take an arbitrary positive integer $n$, and write it "in base $n_0$," i.e., in the form
    $$
 n = a_0 + a_1n_0 + a_2n_0^2 + \cdots + a_kn_0^k,
 $$
    with $k\geq 0$, $0\leq a_i < n_0$, and $a_k\neq 0$. Now taking absolute values, we get
    \begin{align*}
 |n| & = |a_0 + a_1n_0 + a_2 n_0^2 + \cdots + a_kn_0^k| \\
 & \leq |a_0| + |a_1| |n_0| + |a_2| |n_0|^2 + \cdots + |a_k| |n_0|^k \\
 & = |a_0| + |a_1| n_0^\alpha + |a_2| n_0^{2\alpha} + \cdots + |a_k| n_0^{k\alpha}.
 \end{align*}
    Since we chose $n_0$ to be the smallest positive integer whose absolute value was greater than $1$, we know that $|a_i| \leq 1$, so that we get
    \begin{align*}
 |n| & \leq |a_0| + |a_1| n_0^\alpha + |a_2| n_0^{2\alpha} + \cdots + |a_k| n_0^{k\alpha} \\
 & \leq 1 + n_0^\alpha + n_0^{2\alpha} + \cdots + n_0^{k\alpha} \\
 & = n_0^{k\alpha}(1 + n_0^{-\alpha} + n_0^{-2\alpha} + \cdots + n_0^{-k\alpha} ) \\
 & = n_0^{k\alpha} \sum_{i=0}^k n_0^{-i\alpha} \\
 & \leq n_0^{k\alpha} \sum_{i=0}^\infty n_0^{-i\alpha} \textbf{  (why is this not strict?)} \\
 & = n_0^{k\alpha} \frac{1}{1 - n_0^{-\alpha}} = n_0^{k\alpha} \frac{n_0^\alpha}{n_0^\alpha - 1}.
 \end{align*}
    Since $n_0^\alpha > 1$, we have that $C:= n_0^\alpha/(n_0^\alpha - 1) > 0$, and
    $$
 |n| \leq C n_0^{k\alpha} \leq Cn^\alpha.
 $$
    To see why we were able to tack on $Cn^\alpha$, just look at the expansion of $n$ "in base $n_0$" to see that $n_0^k \leq n$. The above formula applies for every positive integer $n$, and thus letting $n$ and $m$ be any positive integers, we can apply the formula to $n^m$,
    \begin{align*}
 |n^m| & \leq C n^{m\alpha} \\
 |n| & \leq \sqrt[m]{C} n^\alpha .
 \end{align*}
    If we leave $n$ fixed and let $m$ become arbitrarily large, then since $C>0$ is fixed, we see that $\sqrt[m]{C}$ becomes arbitrarily close to $1$, and thus the above inequality implies that $|n| \leq n^\alpha$.

In the second part of this proof, Gouvea goes on to show that $|n| \geq n^\alpha$, and then he is able to conclude that $|n| = n^\alpha$. Thus, it is essential that in the excerpt above, we find that $|n| \leq n^\alpha$. However, since the terms of the sum $\sum_{i=0}^\infty n_0^{-i\alpha}$ are each nonnegative, I think it must be that $\sum_{i=0}^k n_0^{-i\alpha} < \sum_{i=0}^\infty n_0^{-i\alpha}$, and thus
$$
n_0^{k\alpha} \sum_{i=0}^k n_0^{-i\alpha} < n_0^{k\alpha} \sum_{i=0}^\infty n_0^{-i\alpha},
$$
contradicting the step in Gouvea's proof. Is my logic or my reading of his proof wrong?
Answer: I just realized that since I can say $C > 1$, the proof still works even with a strict inequality: we end up with
\begin{align*}
 |n^m| & < C n^{m\alpha} \\
 |n| & < \sqrt[m]{C} n^\alpha .
 \end{align*}
    If we leave $n$ fixed and let $m$ become arbitrarily large, then since $C>1$ is fixed, we see that $\sqrt[m]{C}$ becomes arbitrarily close to $1$ from above, and thus the above inequality implies that $|n| \leq n^\alpha$.
Comment: For 8 years this post was lying here, unnoticed by everyone, waiting for me to read exactly the same book and stumble upon exactly the same question. That's the reason why i like such forums
Comment: @serpens glad to help!


How is damage calculated when infringing a copyright?

Question: How is damage calculated when infringing a copyright? I am seriously wondering how it's calculated. Let's say someone post an image he found on Google without attribution on facebook or reddit, then how would the damage be calculated? I am thinking the case would be rejected, because those images that don't have any watermark, and can be found on Google is unlikely to generate a lot of money. Moreover, it might increase traffic to the individual's blog or website if he has one, so I am curious, because if significant money could be obtained, everyone on social media would get sued by some law firm.
Comment: There is also the possibility of statutory damages which can be significantly higher than actual damages, and the fact that the copyright holder can demand that you stop infringing.
Comment: In which country?
Comment: I don't see how a watermark would matter. Watermarks are usually from Stock Photo providers to discourage you from willy-nilly copying, and to encourage you to get the 'official' version (for a fee). I'm pretty sure that in most cases copying the watermarked version is also an infringement.
Answer: united-states
Under 17 USC 504 a successful plaintiff is entitled to either:

(1) the copyright owner's actual damages and any additional profits of the infringer, as provided by subsection (b); or
(2) statutory damages, as provided by subsection (c).

but not both.
Actual damages and profits are further specified:

The copyright owner is entitled to recover the actual damages suffered by him or her as a result of the infringement, and any profits of the infringer that are attributable to the infringement and are not taken into account in computing the actual damages. In establishing the infringer's profits, the copyright owner is required to present proof only of the infringer's gross revenue, and the infringer is required to prove his or her deductible expenses and the elements of profit attributable to factors other than the copyrighted work.

Statuary damages consist of a sum between $750 and $30,000 for each work infringed "as the court considers just". If the infringement is "willful" the upper limit is $150,000. If the infringement is "innocent" the lower limit is $200.
However under 17 USC 412 statutory damages and legal fees are not available unless the work was registered before the infringement started, or within 3 months of the work's first publication. If the registration was later, then only actual damages and profits (plus costs) are available as money damages.
Under  17 UDC 502 the plaintiff can get an injunction against further infringements.
Under  17 UDC 503 the plaintiff can have unauthorized copies or phonorecords (recordings) and devices for making such unauthorized copies or phonorecords (plates, type, masters, etc) seized and later destroyed or in some cases handed over to the plaintiff.
Under  17 UDC 505 the court may, if it sees fit, award to either party "full costs" plus "reasonable attorney fees" but for the plaintiff any fee award is limited by 17 USC 412 as mentioned above. "Reasonable attorney fees" are often significantly less than the actual law firm charges.
Conclusion
A successful plaintiff in a US copyright infringement action may get:

An injunction against the defendant;
seizure and destruction of infringign articles;
actual damages plus infringer's profits, or statutory damages; and
full costs and reasonable attorney's fees.

Such a suit will only be profitable if provable actual damages or profits are sizable, or sizable statutory damages are likely.
Comment: If no profit is made, the claimant can get statutory damage? How come no lawsuit seems to have been filed against an individual posting on social media? All the court cases I saw involved a big firm.
Comment: @Sayaman
17 USC 504 (c) (1) reads: "*the copyright owner may elect, at any time before final judgment is rendered, to recover, instead of actual damages and profits, an award of statutory damages*" so it is the plaintiff's choice, presumably made after discovery shows what the profits are likely to be. profits go with actual damages; statutory damages replace both. Social media posts usually would involve no profits and little if any actual damages, and a court might be inclined to ward only small sums as statutory damages, and so would often be losers even if won.
Answer: australia
The remedies available for copyright infringement are:

an injunction,
either damages or an account of profits.

That is, the owner is entitled to either recoup the money they lost or get the benefit that the infringement made whichever's the owner chooses.
Unlike the united-states there are no statutory damages, however, also unlike the US, costs generally follow the event so if the defendant loses, they have to pay the plaintiffs scheduled legal costs (typically 60-70% of the actual costs). The typical costs of an injunction are around $20,000, a full trial can be considerably more.
The court may also award additional damages depending on the circumstances.
Answer: united-states
In the US, the DMCA is the usual way that copyright is enforced on social media. It offers the following options: takedown of the offending content, up to $2,500 per infringement or $25,000 in statutory damages for small offences, tripled for repeat offenders, and up to $1,000,000 and ten years in prison for large offences.
Small offences are typically those made by people who share on social media, while large offences would be those who use the content to make money off of the copyright holder's works.
Keep in mind that, while this sounds like a lot of money on the table, there's a few things that stop rampant lawsuits.
First, lawyers are expensive, such that very minor offences might actually cost more to prosecute than the money that would be coming back.
Second, most people sharing on social media wouldn't even be able to pay such a large sum of money, so the actual value would be far less than the maximum, but the lawyers still have to be paid.
Third, court cases take time, possibly months or years from the original case being filed, so it's not necessarily worth the time investment to go after every possible case.
Fourth, lawyers don't generally hold the copyright themselves, so they can't do anything without the copyright holder's instruction. The copyright holder is the one that gets paid, so it wouldn't work for lawyers to just sue and then pocket the money.
The DMCA takedown option makes it trivial to give someone an "injunction" without actually going through the court system. It takes mere moments, tends to deter most such activity, and can be automated or processed by a third-party company whose job it is to perform such monitoring and takedowns.


Pricing Precision

Question: I need to change Magento's core pricing precision from ($price, 4) to ($price, 8). However, I still need it to display as ($price, 2). I sell a product that we tier in 50, 250, 500, 1000, 2000, 5000, 10000, 20000, and 50000 and my pricing needs those fractions of cents to display properly. I have read all over the web and can't figure it out. Changed Zend, Changed the core files in Magento...still no luck. Any help would be appreciated!
Comment: Non-answer: Magento stores prices in 4-digit precision throughout the core database tables, nevermind code. Changing that would be incredibly invasive.
Answer: You need to edit the Currency.php file at app\code\core\Mage\Directory\Model.
I changed pricing precision from 2 to 8.

public function format($price, $options = array(), $includeContainer = true, $addBrackets = false)
  {
return $this->formatPrecision($price, 8, $options, $includeContainer, $addBrackets);
}
Comment: I did that, and it is still only using 4 decimals in its math. I also made sure I updated the tables to 12, 8 just in case. It is still rounding math to the 4th decimal.
Comment: May be Third Party extension overwrite this file. Use this module conflictor for checking confliction.

https://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/modules-conflict-detector.html

Pricing Precision


Ibn Ezra/Rashbam Biography

Question: Does any one know of any good biographies of Rashbam and/or Ibn Ezra?
Comment: This question is [being discussed on Meta](//judaism.meta.stackexchange.com/q/5175/170).
Answer: The closest thing to a full Biography I could find.
Biography of Rashbam
Biography of Ibn Ezra
Answer: Rashbam

R. Samuel ben Meir (Rashbam) was Rashi's grandson (his father, Meir, was Rashi's son in-law) and the older brother of Rabbenu Tam. He was born ca. 1080 and died ca. 1160. He spent his whole life in France, and studied Torah with his father and other scholars, especially his grandfather Rashi, in whose house in Troyes he grew up. He studied Torah and Talmud with Rashi and occasionally took issue with Rashi's interpretations of the Torah. After Rashi's death in 1105 he returned to his father's home in Ramerupt. He was extremely humble and pious, though insistent about his views when convinced that he was right. He interprets the Torah according to its plain meaning, often taking issue with interpretations in the Talmud and in Rashi's commentary. Rashbam apparently wrote a commentary on the entire Bible; however, only the majority of his commentary on the Torah is extant. Rashbam also wrote a commentary on the Talmud and composed halakhic rulings, only some of which have been printed. In two places his commentary on the Talmud was printed instead of Rashi's: on most of Bava Batra and on the tenth chapter of Pesachim (Rashbam's commentary on the Talmud was far more verbose than Rashi's). He was one of the first tosafists.

Additional information can be found in:

Encyclopedia Judaica
Jewish Encyclopedia
This book, available for preview on Amazon (Hebrew)
http://thetorah.com/rashbam-short-bio/
And Wikipedia, of course.

Ibn Ezra

R. Abraham ben Meir ibn Ezra was born in Islamic Spain, in Tudela (1089), and he died circa 1164 (apparently in London). A versatile scholar, his influence was felt widely both during his lifetime and after his death. He was a poet, grammarian, Biblical commentator, philosopher, translator, astronomer and physician. He spent the first fifty years of his life in Spain and North Africa, and the rest of his life, from 1140 onwards, he wandered throughout Europe, mainly in Italy, but also in France, England, and other places. He was apparently in close contact with R. Judah ha-Levi, whom he mentions frequently in his commentaries. He was evidently on good terms with Rabbenu Tam as well. Most of his known works were written in his second period. He was a very sharp critic of his opponents. His biblical commentary explains the text according to its plain meaning. This commentary is famous for its concise style and its linguistic orientation. It includes the views of leading scholars who were contemporaries of the author, though ibn Ezra frequently disputes them. He also polemicized against various heretics. His commentary on the Bible was first printed in Naples in 1488.

Additional information can be found in:

Encyclopedia Judaica
Jewish Encyclopedia
This book, available for preview on Amazon
Chabad
And Wikipedia, of course.

Above biographies are (c) Bar Ilan Responsa

Ibn Ezra/Rashbam Biography


Why do some programs return when being called from the terminal while others just return only with the inclusion of an '&'

Question: Programs like Skype and Tixati can just be called from the terminal without adding an & at the end of their call. Why is this not the case with Firefox. I am just curious as to what programs I need to add the & option to.
Comment: I doubt there's a way to know which programs need `&`, except trial and error
Comment: In addition `firefox` works well, `&` is to run commands in background
Answer: This depends entirely on how the software was written, often also depending on the intent with it.
Most bash (= shell, terminal) utilities are meant to be used "synchronously", with these the execution is meant to produce a result; which might be required for the following commands in a script or manual procedure - if the utility (program, software) detaches and leaves you at the prompt immediately you will not know when or if the result is available.
Skype is not normally used as a command line "utility" but rather a tool to handle communication (phone or whatever). And then it is quite handy if it does not block the terminal, if launched from there.
Detaching from the terminal:
https://superuser.com/questions/178587/how-do-i-detach-a-process-from-terminal-entirely
Answer: All programs can be called without &. The & is completely optional. All it does is send the process to the background so you can continue using your terminal.
Without it, if you launch a process from the terminal, you will need to wait until that process finishes (or is closed) before being able to continue using your terminal. Therefore, one often runs programs as command & to send them to the background and keep working in the same terminal.
For more on the various shell operators like & and what they do, see here.
Comment: @SharanDuggirala adding a `&` (or Ctrl+Z and `bg`) or detaching, using `at`, `nohup`, or `disown`, all have the same superficial effect: they return your terminal to you by running the program in the background. Each approach has different benefits but none are required and all send the process to the background.
Comment: Yeah but like the previous answer said, the program does not need to be sent to the background if it is detached from the terminal.
Comment: But thanks anyways, I was looking for the operators to use in a terminal
Answer: It is very simple for a program to put itself in the background. The code used to do so could be as simple as this:
if (fork() > 0) _exit(0);

But doing so by default would introduce a few disadvantages. For example you could no longer wrap the program in a script which does something upon the program terminating. And writing output to the terminal from a background process could end up looking quite messy, terminal output from background processes can be disabled but then the background process will be frozen once it tries to produce output.
In my experience Skype and Firefox do not put themselves in the background. They do something different though.
When you start one of these programs they will check if there is already a running instance of the program. If there is a running instance the new instance will send a message to the running instance with the parameter you just gave it, and then quit.
The effect of that is that the already running instance does something, and you get your prompt back.
Comment: +1. Also, you can usually tell these programs not to look for other instances of themselves, e.g. with `skype --secondary` or `firefox --new-instance`. If you do that, without using `&`, they should always block the terminal until you quit them.


freebsd installs blender without cycles

Question: FreeBSD installs blender without cycles; but I assume cycles is just an addon.  Does anybody know the way to get it on there?  Thanks.
Answer: The default configuration for blender on FreeBSD does not include cycles. If you install using pkg install graphics/blender then it will not be enabled.
To enable cycles you will need to compile blender yourself (assuming you have ports installed).
cd /usr/ports/graphics/blender
make config
(enable cycles in the menu)
make install clean

Note that building blender might require other ports that you may not have installed yet (like devel/llvm34 if you also enable CYCLESOSL), these can be installed using pkg install instead of compiling them yourself.
After the make config step you can use make build-depends-list to see what is needed to build and check if you have them installed.
Cycles was disabled by default as there is sometimes an assert from boost that causes the build to fail. I find this only happens when generating the man page which can be removed from the Makefile.
Answer: Blender 2.77a and earlier version build without problem but it doesn't run if Cycles engine is enabled which make not so much usable on FreeBSD.

freebsd installs blender without cycles


Am I able to create table using EM Express Oracle 12c

Question: Please if someone can let me know if I could create table using Oracle 12c EM Express or also known as dbconsole? In 11g there user will go to schema -> db objects -> tables, but I don't see schema in 12C .
Answer: You can not do that in EM Express.
Oracle Database 12c: EM Database Express
I'm trying to perform a task I used to do in DB Control.  Where is it in EM Express?

Although EM Express provides support for basic administrative tasks,
  it is not a direct replacement for DB Control.  As explained in the
  Architecture section, EM Express is built inside the database server
  and cannot perform actions outside the database.  Also, EM Express is
  focused primarily on providing performance management and monitoring
  functionality, and is not meant to be an all-around database
  administration tool.
Comment: Nice explanation of EM Express , for +1
Comment: @Badass Papp, thank you so much. I thought so, although  it appears it was able to do in 11g, but I am not sure. I have 12c on my machine and I used sqlplus instead.  Thank you so much again.