Can we regrow chopped purple poui tree

Question: A new gardener chopped down our 1 year old purple poui (Tabebuia impetiginosa) tree!! He clearly didn't have a clue about what he was doing...we asked him to trim the branches and cut the top as the tree had grown higher than our 1 story house.  Instead he topped the tree at 5 feet from the ground and removed all the lower branches. Will it regrow or should we just finish chopping it down and remove it?
Comment: Can you please clarify what you mean by 'purple pour tree'  -  do you have the botanical name or another well known common name for the tree?
Comment: Sorry, I meant purple "poui"....spell check issue :(
Answer: I don't know if it will grow again as it's not an evergreen.  But perhaps you can save it if this only happened a few days ago.
https://www.thespruce.com/how-to-make-a-cleft-graft-3269523

I can also imagine trying to use a cleft graft on whole tree stumps, to make use of the root system or to save the tree. If you have to lose a mature (though perhaps not enormous) tree that you have an affection for, a cleft graft is one way to sort-of resurrect it.
You could take suitable twigs off a healthy part of the crown, cut the tree down, and then join the twigs to the stump via a cleft graft. You would then have literally replaced the tree with itself: a practical or sentimental alternative to replacing it.
Comment: Thanks, but there are no twigs...this was a very young tree, barely 1 and a half years old and it was stripped bare of branches and then chopped down.  Guess we'll just have to wait and see if it springs again.
Comment: You can't find another tree locally to take a branch from?
Comment: We've been getting a lot of rain here in the Caribbean and I'm happy to say that the tree is sprouting!! Will watch and see how well it does.

Can we regrow chopped purple poui tree


Does the e-mail send from an id to the same id requires encryption and other security checks?

Question: I have noticed that Gmail is not encrypting the mails send from an id to the same id (When From address and To/Cc address are same).
Is encryption really required in the above scenario?
Necessity of other security protocols check?
Background : I could not find the encryption details in the tag security:   Standard encryption (TLS) and below checks are not done while checking the original message.

Sender Policy Framework (SPF)
DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM)
Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance (DMARC)
Comment: Gmail does **not** encrypt emails!  They do use encrypted transport when connecting to federated email servers.
Answer: It depends. If you address a snail mail letter to yourself (i.e. same sender and recipient) and put it into a public letterbox than its probably better to close the envelope (i.e. protect the letter). If you instead live alone and leave the letter to you on your own kitchen table, then protection is likely not needed.
If you send a mail to yourself using the GMail web interface then there is likely no "normal" mail transport (i.e. SMTP) involved at all. This means anything like SPF, DKIM, DMARC and SMTP encryption play are irrelevant and you will not find any traces of it. Even if you directly connect with authenticated SMTP to Google's mail server to deliver the mail, SPF, DKIM and DMARC are not relevant. These are only relevant when delivery origins from some external mail infrastructure outside of Google.


Restore SP2010 (non claim) to SP 2013

Question: I did a database backup from SP 2010 and restored it to SP 2013 Mount-SPContentDatabase followed by site upgrade. Everything looks good except the users did not get converted in claims based. (I can not change my source web application to claim based). users in the groups aren't able to see and perform task and most of these groups have various contribute access. What are my options? SO CRITICAL.
Answer: You need to run Convert-SPWebApplication -Identity http://webAppUrl -From Legacy -To Claims -RetainPermissions:$true.
You will want to do that each time you mount a content database to the claims-enabled web Application.
Convert-SPWebApplication
Comment: I got it to work using farm account . Thanks Trevor
Comment: Thanks Trevor. Let me give it a try
Comment: I ran the command against the site's web app and mysite as well. nothing happened. When i click on a name it stills shows domain\username in the url . The other 2013 regular site (not from backup/restore) shows up as /Person.aspx?accountname=i:0#.w|colgate\dtden01
Comment: I can re-run it with -Force parameter and what happens. I wonder if I have to do this for both the site collection web app and mysite web app

Restore SP2010 (non claim) to SP 2013


Description of physical labor

Question: I'm Looking for a phrase that means putting your back or muscle into a task, like rowing.
Is there another word for "it", as in "put your back into it"---is there another way to say it, such as "leaning into..."
Answer: Back-breaking work is often used to describe physical labouring jobs and sometimes other events.
Answer: "Put your back into it" is an idiom, so you wouldn't phrase it otherwise, and it does not necessarily have to be applied to physical labor. If you don't want to use that phrase, you need to come up with another idiom or just use a description of what's happening. So you might say that "the Oxford crew clutched their oars and pulled with all their strength, but they couldn't match the sheer muscle power of the Cambridge oarsmen."
Answer: In the UK people say Give it some wellie. It wouldn't be used in a formal situation.

To increase fuel or power to an engine, as to a car by depressing the accelerator (gas pedal).
To apply great physical effort to (something)
Answer: Another idiom used to mean putting more effort into something is the admonition to put some elbow grease into it. This phrase is primarily used in connection with manual labor and would not fit as well with an activity like rowing.

Elbow grease is an idiom for working hard at manual labour, as in "You need to use some elbow grease." It is a humorous reflection of the fact that some tasks can only be achieved by hard effort and human energy, contrasting with the idea that there should be some special oil, tool or chemical product to make the job easier.

More on the history of the phrase can be found here on ELU:
Where did "elbow grease" come from?
Answer: You might be looking for "to bend one's back".
E.g.: The bowlers need to bend their backs to exact bounce from this wicket.

Description of physical labor


Solana SPL-22 token fee not claimable

Question: I made a Solana spl-2022 memecoin on Dexlab with a 4.9% fee for marketing. Some transactions are made and a withheld amount is visible on the blockchain (solscan). When I look at Dexlab's claim fee tab it shows "no claimable fees". On Phantom when I click my token there is no such option. Also Solflare doesn't even show my token even it's 2 weeks old and has launched days ago. Everytime my wallet that has the withdraw authority. I searched the internet, but almost nothing about spl-22. ChatGPT has also no answer. How do I claim the fee? TA/CA 73NvJWT7RbunzNjXyPHLigGTPUkKWequykjVUc2u3ewJ
Answer: Using the spl-token CLI, you can simply run:
$ spl-token withdraw-withheld-tokens \
 --withdraw-withheld-authority <KEYPAIR_FOR_ATVQAW91oDJCrLQAMvyGzhYzrTrkZidiyW7PcLUGbuB9>
 73NvJWT7RbunzNjXyPHLigGTPUkKWequykjVUc2u3ewJ <DESTINATION_ACCOUNT>

This will withdraw from the mint, but you can specify any account with the CLI as well.
More information on using the CLI with transfer fees at https://spl.solana.com/token-2022/extensions#transfer-fees

Solana SPL-22 token fee not claimable


Proof of uniqueness of value function for MDPs with undiscounted rewards

Question: How does one prove the uniqueness of the value function obtained from value iteration in the case of bounded and undiscounted rewards? I know that this can be proven for the discounted case pretty easily using the Banach fixed point theorem.
Answer: In the case where the reward is undiscounted, there is no guarantee of convergence as the iteration procedure is not a strict contraction.
Unfortunately I can't find the math mode on the ai stackexchange so my answer can't be very precise.
But an easy example is the following: Take a 'running' reward R of 0 to make things simpler, and a MDP with two states a and b. Take a transition matrix with 0's on the diagonal and 1 off diagonal. You will see that the algorithm will always flip the values of V(a) and V(b), and hence no convergence.


How do I play RuneScape with minimal lagging?

Question: RuneScape is a Java-based MMORPG that on Ubuntu can only be accessed (or at least to my knowledge) via going to http://www.runescape.com/game.ws in a Java-supporting web browser (such as Firefox or Opera) with the required plugins. The problem is that in my experience RuneScape is very laggy when opened up in Firefox on 32 bit Ubuntu 15.04 (with 3.8 GB RAM with an Intel processor). I was just wondering if there was a way to improve the performance of RuneScape, on this platform (like accessing it in a different browser, for instance). I have previously tried using Wine to install the game client (which is designed for Microsoft Windows OSs) but it does not appear to work for me anymore, even though on previous versions of Ubuntu (I think it was 12.04) perhaps with previous game clients this method worked.
Comment: Their file download links are broken.
Comment: Namely https://copy.com/s/y88FzDr8iSgS/Public/RSU/opengl-browser-fix/java-wrapper.zip and https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/11631899/opensource/Perl/java-wrapper/java-wrapper.tar.gz (found on the description of the YouTube tutorial) are both broken.
Comment: https://launchpad.net/~hikariknight/+archive/ubuntu/unix-runescape-client PPA has *unix-runescape-client* packages for all supported versions of Ubuntu.
Comment: How do I add the PPA using `sudo add-apt-repository`?
Answer: You can play RuneScape locally without Wine using the RuneScape Unix Client (RSU Client). Installation instructions for all currently supported versions of Ubuntu:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:hikariknight/unix-runescape-client
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install unix-runescape-client

You can use different java versions by editing the "preferredjava" setting inside ~/.config/runescape/share/settings.conf
along with several other settings.
Your frame rate in game very much comes down to the hardware installed on your system. You can have limitations due to this. Some of the most important components on your computer for higher fps are your graphics card, total RAM and your CPU. The older or less powerful they are, the more likely you are to suffer from a poor frame rate.1 You can free up maybe half a gigabyte of RAM by installing a lightweight desktop environment that you can optionally select to login to instead of Unity.
1View and improve your frame rate in RuneScape by Mod_Rambo at Jagex
Comment: Well I suppose I managed to install the client correctly, following your instructions. But I can't notice any real improvements, speed-wise. It's still lagging significantly.


Why isn't OpenID working for my blog?

Question: I've got it sending an "X-XRDS-Location" header pointing to my Yadis document, and I've also included link entries in the head portion of the HTML. For some reason, however, I still can't use "pkulak.com" to log in anywhere. Thanks for any help!
Answer: When I tried entering "pkulak.com" into the test OpenID RP at http://nerdbank.org/rp.exp/login.aspx, I got a 404 error.  You can try it out yourself and then look at the http://nerdbank.org/rp.exp/tracepage.aspx URL to see the logs of what the RP ran into while trying to "discover" your OpenID.
Since a browser has no problem avoiding this 404, I suspect your web server is configured to reject HTTP requests that lack certain HTTP headers that are common to browsers.  For example, some RPs don't send a user-agent HTTP header and some web servers reject requests that lack this header.  I suggest you start your investigation there.

Why isn't OpenID working for my blog?


Run a Qt app in a different language?

Question: I'm working on a Qt application that used to be a KDE application.  In the old days, I just had to use some syntax like:
KDELANG=de ./my_app

That ran my_app in German, and only my_app.  It might not have been KDELANG, but it was some environment variable like that.
I've spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to coax this answer out of Google, and I give up.  There must be some way to run a Qt (4.5 if that matters) application in some other language without switching over my entire locale to get there.
Comment: how do you know it's not working?  Does your app definitely work in German already?  Setting the environment KDELANG=de only works if:
1. the app has German content, and
2. the app uses the KDELANG envvar to set the locale
Answer: I tried it with the KDE game Kolf and
(export LANG=de_DE.UTF-8; kolf)
(export LANG=en_US.UTF-8; kolf)

did the trick for me to switch it into German or English.
I verified it with the QT application qtparted
(export LANG=de_DE.UTF-8; qtparted)

also comes up in German on my English desktop. Obviously I had to install the German language files to get the translated app working.
Comment: You can just do: LANG=de_DE.UTF-8 qtparted

That will limit the effects to a single application.
Comment: @Matthew The () which create a subshell have the same effect, as the export will only be visible inside the subshell.
Answer: Just like any other Linux application, Qt applications follow a rather convoluted way how the application message locale is selected: environment variable LANGUAGE is given preference over LC_ALL, LC_ALL over LC_MESSAGES, LC_MESSAGES over LANG (details).
So any one of the following commands works to change the application's locale for messages, as returned by QLocale::system().name():
LANGUAGE=de ./my_app
LANGUAGE=   LC_ALL=de ./my_app
LANGUAGE=   LC_ALL=   LC_MESSAGES=de ./my_app
LANGUAGE=   LC_ALL=   LC_MESSAGES=   LANG=de   ./my_app

Notes:

I tested this with Qt 5.12 under Lubuntu 19.10 (means, using the LXQt desktop).

It is entirely up to the Qt application how to adapt to the application locale as returned by QLocale::system(). It may not evaluate QLocale::system() at all, or fail to find its translation files etc..

You can also give the above commands in the form env LANGUAGE=de ./application. The env command has some more options to control which environment its child process will see.

The locale values specified in the environment variables (here de) do not have to correspond to any locale that is installed system-wide and listed in locale -a.

When specifying only a language (like de), Qt will automatically expand it with a default country and return that in QLocale::system().name(), for example de_DE.

When specifying a wrong value (such as xy), Qt will return the default C locale from QLocale::system().name().
Answer: OK, it's a long story, but it turns out the translations are, in fact, busted, and that's the whole underlying problem here.  The obvious thing I tried first works fine.  Since this isn't KDE, I just used plain:
LANG=de ./my_app

Now that I've fixed the bug in the debugging code (oh, the irony) I can plainly see that the translation files (which do exist) aren't getting loaded.  Ah.  Alrighty then.  Carry on.  Nothing to see here.
Answer: If you are using plasma desktop, install language package from under System Setting -> locale
and run app as follow : KDE_LANG=fr ./appName
fr represents french, you can choose language of your interest.

Run a Qt app in a different language?


3.8 GPA in Major, 2 F's in non-major classes

Question: I am an international student at a US university with a major in Physics. I am applying for PhD in astrophysics/gravitational physics fields. Until my sophomore year I was a Computer Science major with a Physics minor, but starting my junior year, I changed my major to Physics. During my sophomore year, I was suffering through home-sickness/depression and failed two of my Computer Science classes. (Later I did a computational project and won a prize at a hackathon). But I have A's in all my Physics classes (including the upper level courses), and did a summer internship at a reputed institute in Germany. I am a senior with a 3.8 GPA in Physics and 3.5 overall GPA. I am not aiming for any top universities, but mostly to lower ranked schools with good Physics programs (that are within my GPA and GRE scores). Should I still consider applying to grad schools or change my career plans? How does this affect my application?
Answer: I recommend applying and seeing what happens.  I also encourage you to apply to a couple of stretch schools, you may be pleasantly surprised. Don't limit your options at this point, you seem very pragmatic and realistic, but perhaps a little hard on yourself.
Your explanation of your circumstances and grades is straightforward and responsible.  At some point you may be asked about those few low grades and you are ready to explain.
I suspect the only issue for you might be getting an assistantship or some support, those are very competitive.  But if you need aid, ask for it and see what happens.
It is too early for you to change your career direction, I wager that most/many people applying to graduate school have at least one grade on their transcript that they wish they didn't.  I had one, it bothered me, but no one else.  I got into my dream program at a top school and had a great academic career.
If you don't apply, you are guaranteed not to get in.
Good luck with your studies and your career.


Nearest Zip Code Search using asp.net

Question: I want to inplement functionallity that will search zip codes, if user enter any zip code than all the zip codes close to entered zip code will be shown. Please let us know if there is any free api for it like Google API or any other solutions.
Answer: First, grab a free zip code database like this one.  This will allow you to convert from an entered zip code to a latitude and longitude.  As long as you make latitude and longitude database keys also, you can now look up all the nearby latitudes and longitudes (by moving up and down in the sorted values) and get all ZIP codes within a desired distance.
Here is an example of how to calculate latitude and longitude distances.
Answer: I haven't explored it much, but the USPS offers a number of API's and databases. You might want to check out their Address Information API. If anyone has an accurate database, it's probably the USPS.
https://www.usps.com/business/webtools.htm
They have some web tools that allow you to manually look up zip codes for a city, so there might be similar functionality you can use.
Answer: I work in the address verification field, where we have some experience doing this) where "ZIP codes" and "geocoding" are buzz-words. For further location accuracy, you will want to consider verifying a complete address and adding the ZIP+4 code. This will provide more relevant results to your user.
Generally, free services won't provide that kind of value, but there are some affordable options that are officially licensed, or certified, by the USPS, to distribute that data. One such service is LiveAddress (a service I've worked on myself). The ZIP+4 code is more accurate than a generic ZIP code, so you'll get more accurate geolocated results.

Nearest Zip Code Search using asp.net


Replace analog pot with digital - volume control

Question: I'm trying to replace an analog pot with a digital one for the volume control in a guitar amp. I have a digital pot - MCP4141 put instead of the analog one. However, checking on the oscilloscope seems like "zero level" is in the middle of the signal, so everything below this level gets cut off. How could I "move up" whole wave above the ground level? Does have to be a resistor put between "B" and ground? Or something else?
Answer: None of the 'pot' pins can be allowed to go (much) beyond the power supply voltages.
If you have a digital pot with 0/5V supply you need to keep the voltages within that range. Since you are dealing with audio signals, they are AC, and you could bias the input at 2.5V with a couple of resistors and your coupling capacitor, so that the analog input (and output) sit at +2.5V (thump on start-up). Or use +/-2.5V supplies. And make sure you never get too much input amplitude or you could destroy the chip.
It's often not that easy to replace a pot with a digital pot in an existing circuit- you end up redesigning.
There are some digital pots (eg. AD7376) that will work with relatively high and bipolar supply voltages, while retaining digital inputs referenced to ground but they tend to be relatively expensive. Depending on the function, you might also do much better with a log taper digital pot in an audio application.
Comment: So you cannot actually "move" whole signal above that zero level?
Comment: As I wrote above, a voltage divider (two equal value resistors) between +5/0 on the input with a coupling capacitor will do that.. input must be less than +/-2.5V peak. Side effects- thump on power-on and noise from the 5V supply.
Comment: Thanks for that. However, I don't know how, but I have plugged in the jack cable from the laptop to the amp, used online signal generator to send the signal of the freq. that I know of. Checked the wave on the jack before amp input - ideal sine wave. Then I have checked the signal at the very end - speaker output, and same thing... Is that even possible to get exactly same wave, whereas in theory the digital pot doesn't operate below "zero"?
Comment: it has to do with grounding and what is common with what. The protection diodes will cause a self-biasing of the coupling capacitor similar to the resistors I spoke of, but there will be distortion briefly under some conditions (increasing signal amplitude). The 1uF charges to something in between 0 and 5V depending on signal, and the pot element will discharge the cap, so you will get some distortion regularly. Maybe that doesn't matter too much with a guitar amp.
Answer: You can see from the absolute maximum ratings that the pot terminals are unipolar, so it doesn't look like it will support negative input voltages.  Adding a series resistor won't help because the input voltage is going negative regardless.  You would probably need to find a bipolar pot.  I think this might be a candidate: https://www.maximintegrated.com/en/products/analog/data-converters/digital-potentiometers/DS1808.html
This might also be useful:
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/solid-state/87408-digital-potentiometer-bipolar-signal-question.html
Answer: according to the device data sheet, the potential to any input pin A or B will be between VSS to VDD i.e 0 to 5V, so you need to level shift the voltage applied to A input and DC couple the signal at wiper output to use the full voltage range
Refer to solution for using the level shifter answer


Is doing research alone and publishing solo frowned upon by colleagues and superiors in engineering sciences?

Question: Research has become more and more complex and difficult to be successfully conducted by a single person. However, there are fields (such as some branches of engineering) in which a researcher can conduct pretty high standard research without wasting anybody's time or resources (for example, using opensource software on his/her own laptop over a couple of months during the weekends). Nevertheless, single author papers are very rare. How is this possible? I am asking because I believe I have produced a pretty interesting manuscript with no sort of help from anyone, but I am afraid it will be frowned upon by my past close collaborators and the PI of the project I am currently working on if I try to publish it.
Comment: It would be an extremely strange culture of a discipline where people are discouraged from publishing good results they have just because of having done the work alone. I'm not from engineering so I can't say for sure it's not the case where you are, but the premise smells very fishy to me. I'm guessing the answer to your title question is a pretty clear cut "no", although if you are in some corrupt or dysfunctional place there might be some truth to your assessment.
Comment: In most cases, the cost of software for which there is an opensource alternative is not going to make a huge difference in the cost of engineering research.
Answer: I think there is no universal answer. There are fields of pure mathematics where single author papers are quite frequent (the majority?) while there are other areas of the sciences (e.g., the biomedical field) that are so broad that nobody has the requisite knowledge and time to do everything themselves.
So it depends on the field you're in. But beyond that, every field has single-author papers, and a single paper isn't going to make others put you in a box: it is, after all, just a single paper. People will turn out to be surprised if you have been in a field (any field!) for ten years, written 30 papers, and 25 of those are single-authored. For a single paper, there really is no rule to go by: If you have a good idea that you've entirely developed yourself, go write it up and get it published!
Answer: This answer should be qualified. Do you have a contract of any kind at the place you are working? Does your work agreement have anything to say about publishing research? You should look carefully at that before submitting any paper.
The questions that get asked regarding publication are things like: Is it new, at least in some aspect? Is it interesting? Is it generally in the subject line of the journal? And is it the work of the person submitting it for publication?
If you have run with an idea that the group was working on, that might get you some dark looks. But, if it's your own idea and you have done the work on your own, then it should be just fine to publish it on your own.
Presuming you respect and trust the people you work with, it is possible you would benefit from discussing it with somebody senior.


Sony RX100 M2 purple flare

Question:
This is a shot of the flare. The size can vary depending on the angle away from the sun. Also the darkness varies depending on exposure, slightly more exposure = darker purple
Comment: First thing: are you using a filter?
Answer:
Shots away from the sun are fine, it's only when shooting towards the sun at a slight angle away from it. Is there any way to solve the problem?

Sounds like it's just regular old lens flare. A lens hood is the usual solution, but since the RX100 is a compact camera with no attachment point for a hood, you could improvise some sort of tube, or just hold your hand up near the lens on the sunny side. If your shot actually includes the sun, then there's not a lot you can do to prevent the flare except to reframe the shot or edit the flare out later.
Here's one example of creative use of lens flare on a RX100 from flickr:
Comment: @Mick Your example is a more garden variety of flare than the one in this answer.
Comment: Thanks Caleb, in this instance it's not the usual flare as you have described, and shown, although it is the same colour. It is a separate halo. I will be posting a photo later in the day
Answer: Yes, the RX100 suffers from a purple lens flare issue. But then, nearly any camera/lens combination, shooting into a light source, will exhibit flare. You can try shading the lens with your hand, or SteffanB on dpreview recommends opening up the aperture to eliminate the flare: (see this post).
Answer: Yeah, I have an RX 100 II, and the purple/blue spot has bit me a couple of times. It's an internal reflection flare that seems to affect the lens in any moderate / strong backlighting situation. It has nothing to do with off-axis light sources, so a lens hood will not help.
Sadly, there really isn't a fix except a different camera. Just be aware that the spot may loom in any backlit scene.

Sony RX100 M2 purple flare


Any ideas for soloing on guitar?

Question: So far I have known 3 pentatonic shapes, I don't just run it up and down when soloing but I don't think it's a good solo. I've heard about harmony, target notes, chords, one pentatonic per chord but I don't think I get the grasp of it. Can someone tell me how to achieve harmony and what target notes to aim for? Would it be something as if the chord C is played over I mainly focus on C,E,Gs?
Answer: A great exercise is to examine closely many good tunes, and their harmonies.
Check what notes are played on beat one of each bar.
Check the pattern of the rhythm of notes making up the tune.
Check what 'foreign' notes are used - and where they come in a bar.
Check how several notes might get played one way on one chord, and in a similar way on a different chord.
Check how some songs use a 'conversation' where a short tune is replied to by another.
Check what notes are often used on unstressed parts of the bar.
Check how, on certain songs, a completely 'wrong' note just works so well.
Then, use those ideas in your soloing!
Answer: (TL;DR: harmony and phrasing)
Harmony
You ask "How to achieve harmony?" There's nothing to achieve, some kind of harmonic feeling or "context" always exists. The question is, what to you do to the harmony with your solo, so I transform your question to: "How to achieve an understanding of what I'm doing to the harmony."
Any note can be played over any chord, and together with any other notes, and it will always do something harmonically. The (1) rhythmic placement within a bar, (2) length of the notes, and (3) strength (dynamics, volume, power) of the notes affect how strongly your note does what it does. Any note that you play on a strong beat, e.g. on the "one" when your beat goes one-two-thre-four-... , will have a greater impact than ones you play between beats or the "and" of one-and-two-and-three-and-four-and-... If you play a short note between the beats, it will be a so-called "passing tone", and its harmonic impact is much weaker. So I'm saying that ANYTHING you play strongly on a strong beat, is effectively a chord-tone, regardless of what were supposed to be chords tones by the arranger or someone who played the backing chords.
Even with single-note solo lines over a drum beat or metronome click, you're creating a harmonic idea. You're implying a harmony, drawing a harmonic picture in the listener's mind. You're outlining or shaping things.
The different things you can do with your chord tones, i.e. notes which are played in a way that they affect the harmony strongly, are the following:

Either you agree and strengthen the harmony created by the backing chords by playing chord tones. For example, on a C major (C-E-G), you play a C, E or G. (remember, on a harmonically strong beat! passing tones aren't considered here)
or you augment or add something to it by playing notes that are not part of the backing chords, for example on a C major (C-E-G) you play a B note, which will turn the chord into a Cmaj7 (C-E-G-B).
or you might disagree with the harmony (or the harmonic movement) and by playing a note that feels like it's fighting against the other notes, for example on a C major chord, a G# note feels like a slight disagreement. But if you leave out the G from the C-E-G backing chord, it becomes a C+5 chord! To be honest, it's very hard to come up with an example that could be explained over a single static chord. On a static C major backing chord, any single note makes something that I think is nice or at least interesting.

IMO, over a single static chord, any single note pretty much "works" and makes sense. Even the G# over C major isn't bad, it's actually quite interesting. But as time goes on, you start getting problems, when there's a chord progression. Remember, whatever notes you play, outline some chords. Play single notes on a metronome click. Keep playing... as you keep playing, you keep outlining chords ... is it the same chord you've been outlining all the time, or has it changed? Have you outlined chord 1 now and then a different chord? If you don't outline the same chord all the time, you're outlining a series of different chords, and so you're actually outlining a chord progression! What kind of a progression did you outline? If you don't have any idea, then you're drawing random stuff in the listener's mind. The big picture is not in your control, if you don't even know what story it is you're telling.
Or even worse ... if you're playing over a backing track, are you outlining things that support the chord progression, or are you trying to tell a different story on top of it? A random, out-of-control, story perhaps? It needs to be in your control.
The biggest mistake, IMO, in guitar solos, is not having a clue about how the harmony progression ("story") works, and outlining a different, incompatible or even completely random story on top of it. Car analogy. Harmony is a big thing like a car, it goes somewhere, and there can only be one driver. If you're not the driver with total control - you need to know how your actions are turning the wheel. If you play random stuff, you're trying to turn the steering wheel randomly. There are basically three ways to avoid this:

(1) Learn how harmony is driven. Learn to play chord progressions to songs by ear, and learn what the role of each note is in the chord progression, particularly the root and the third. Learn to create your own alternative chord progressions to song melodies. Make your own backing tracks or use a looper. Learn to be the driver!
(2) If you can't understand how harmony is driven, learn a few safe neutral things to play that don't touch the steering wheel. Play things that make it look like you're doing something. One very commonly used neutral thing is the pentatonic scale, which can be played over many chord progressions without making any substantial harmonic impact. If the song is in the key of A minor or C major, the notes A - C - D - E - G can usually be played even randomly, without fighting the backing progression too much. Again remember, only caring about notes played strongly on harmonically strong beats. As weak short passing tones you can play things more freely.
(3) One-by-one, learn licks and tricks that aren't generally neutral and safe, but that can be played in certain situations you can identify. For example if the backing track has a C7 chord (notes C-E-G-Bb), you can arpeggiate for example a Gm6 (G-Bb-D-E), Gm7 (G-Bb-D-F), Bb (Bb-D-F) or Edim7 (E-G-Bb-Db) chord over it. If the song is in C major, soloing those make a very strong harmonic impact, but now since you know that there's a C7 dominant seventh chord, the harmonic effect is already there and you can amplify it. Once the C7 chord has ended, quickly switch back to playing safe notes only.

Maybe I should stress this: using the right diatonic scale will not save you from driving the harmony all over the place randomly. For example the C major scale has the building blocks of a whole world of harmonic changes, you can have tonic, subdominant, dominant, ... I, ii, iii, IV, V, vi, viio ... Do not outline random chords! Not even if you think you're doing it "in the key".
Phrasing
<code>Say something
Say something
Say something different, and then
Say something
</code>
There's a simple A-A-B-A pattern that works on many levels. Solo phrases, song parts, etc. There's any number of similar patterns, but use a pattern, any pattern as long as you use it and don't chaotically switch. Play those lines with your instrument. Develop the phrases.
Here are a few "idea seeds" for creating phrases:

Use a phrase with one note.
Use a phrase with two notes.
Use a phrase with three notes.
Use a phrase with four notes.
Use a phrase that starts on a backing chord tone.
Use a phrase that approaches a backing chord tone from below, e.g. for C major, play G-D-E
Use a phrase that approaches a backing chord tone from above, e.g. for C major, play D-F-E
Use a phrase that "sandwitches" a chord tone, for example for a C major, play D-B-D-B-C, or for F major, B-G-B-G-A

Develop your phrase. Transform it a little bit when you play it the next time. Here are some things to try:

Change the pitch of one note of the phrase on the next round.
Change the length of one note of the phrase
Change the timing of one note of the phrase
Move the timing of the whole phrase to the "ands" between beats (i.e. make it syncopated)
Move the pitch of the whole phrase along the scale (e.g. E-D-C --> F-E-D --> E-D-C --> D-C-B)
Move all notes except one (e.g. E-D-C --> F-E-D --> E-D-C --> D-C-B)
Take a short sentence you like and "speak" it with your instrument.
Take the pitches of a phrase you stole from your favorite guitar solo, but change the timing
Take the timing of a phrase you stole from your favorite guitar solo, but change the pitches
Take the timing of a phrase you stole from the guitar solo hate the most, but change the pitches
Etc.

So play phrases and develop them! Good luck and have fun.
Answer: That would be a perfectly good start.   And it was the approach taken to a whole lot of good, melodic jazz from the Golden Age before everyone got obsessed with 'chord=scale'.
Look at how the original melody fits with the chord notes.   Try to make up an alternative melody rather than just playing scales.   It's time for a reaction against Jamey Aebersold and the Berklee method!
Answer: Some ideas:

rhythmic variations of the patterns
add changing notes (e.g. triplets)
passing tones
chromatic approaches to the pentatonic scales
Answer: Running up and down a scale shape is not music.  Forget these shapes and learn an actual song.  Learn a solo from a guitarist you like and pick some licks from it to change up and use as part of your own language.  Depending on the style you can either learn by ear or get the TABS, transcriptions.  Learn some Zep, Yes, Van Halen, Wes, Pat Martino, Hendrix, etc.  This is how you learn to solo, not by learning a "shape" and running up and down.

Any ideas for soloing on guitar?


How does the death order work in "Final Destination 3"?

Question: So McKinley causes Wendy's death. But according to the order McKinley should have died first. And then Wendy. But Wendy intervened in McKinley's death. That's why McKinley is alive. Otherwise he would be dead. Then how does the clue works?
Comment: yeah. I know that. but I am unable to understand why this discrepancy has creeped into this movie?
Comment: In short - everybody dies in FD series .
Comment: I'm confused. Are you talking about [Ian McKinley](https://final-destination-movie.fandom.com/wiki/Ian_McKinley) and [Wendy Christensen](https://final-destination-movie.fandom.com/wiki/Wendy_Christensen)? Because I don't remember McKinley causing Wendy's death. He tried to kill her, but he was unsuccessful. And iirc the fate of Wendy is unknown. Even if we consider she dies, her death is not caused by McKinley as he's already dead by that time.
Answer: In the original Final Destination, the whole latter part of the story is based around the concept "if you save the next person to die, death moves on then comes back later."
I don't know names because it has been years since I have watched it, but more than likely, since McKinley should have died but was saved, death moved on to the next victim (Wendy here apparently). Death will then come back to the person it missed in some other order (whether it be immediately next or after it has made a full round is debated between the first and second movie).
Out of universe though, it was probably just the writers sitting around wondering how to get the surprise and WOW factor out of the movie. Best way is to kill someone off unexpectedly.
Comment: That's probably just it. She was trying to figure out how and when she was going to die, not really noting there was a particular order or method to the deaths. When she tries to find a way that "Ian" is going to kill her, she ends up just causing a panic that essentially killed him instead of her, causing a bit of irony in the story line. All in all, any conclusions they came up with in the story were guesses and the photos were there to be interpreted by the viewer as well as the characters in the film. It created a good little  "how does that tie in" game for any moderate fan of the series.
Comment: Ok, I am missing something in your question then. I went back and watched the death scenes for each respective person you listed and can't find anything indicating that Mckinley caused Wendy's death. She may have thought he did because of the way the pictures turned out, but in the reality of the show, he is as susceptible as everyone else to death. As far as "Clues" to people's deaths, the meanings are very obscure and can be interpreted many ways, or just mean each photo taken was a person meant to die. In short, the photos aren't definite ways to tell people's death, just something for fans
Comment: Well I am saying that Death follows its plans. Then McKinley is already dead. How can he cause Wendy's Death? And If this is the case, THen does this mean that the photos that Wendy clicks at the amusement park are just clues and not definite indications?
Comment: Well, You see when Wendy says that in her Photo she is wearing the McKinley T-Shirt... She is actually coming to a conclusion by herself that maybe Ian will cause her death?!
Comment: yup exactly. this doubt had come to me when I saw the film for the second time. thanks for the answer!
Answer: I'm guessing the McKinley shirt she was wearing meant that her death would be caused by what killed Ian, the McKinley sign. But, Ian slowed her down and got in deaths path so Ian ended up getting killed by the sign instead of Wendy.


How do I mount a network filesystem on boot?

Question: I have a server I connect to using ssh in pantheon-files, how do I make the network file system remain mounted after reboot?
Comment: try a custom bash script that mounts the server then make it execute every time system starts
Comment: I guess that would be the best way and maybe only way.
Answer: The easy way to mount a filesystem during boot is to list it in /etc/fstab. However, SSHFS is a FUSE filesystem, so mounting it from a system configuration file is tricky: you wouldn't have permission to access it under your account.
While it's possible to get this done, it's easier to do the mounting from your account.
You can use cron to schedule a task at boot time to mount that filesystem. Run the command crontab -e to edit the list of scheduled tasks for your account, and add a line:
@reboot sshfs remotehost.example.com:/remote/path /path/to/mount/point

Note that the sshfs mount command won't have access to any interactive environment, so it won't be able to ask you for a password or for a key passphrase. If you need that, you'll need to arrange to run the command when you log in, not when the system starts.
If the network connection isn't available at boot time, you may want to do the mounting when the network becomes available. To do that, add a file to the if-up.d directory called john-mount-sshfs and containing the following code (replace john by your username, and replace the host name and paths):
#!/bin/sh
su -c john <<'EOF'
if ping -c 1 remotehost.example.com >/dev/null 2>/dev/null; then
  sshfs remotehost.example.com:/remote/path /path/to/mount/point
fi
EOF

If you need to supply credentials to the sshfs command, then autosshfs is likely to be more convenient. It mounts the directory on first access, so you can supply the credentials at that time.
Comment: What you've prescribed here _would_ work, with a lot of caveats about where to semi-securely store the credentials. Then, and now, I think using the login keyring to store the remote credentials along with the drive-mounting and starting-a-program-on-login capabilities of the graphical desktop environment would probably suffice for the OPs purposes.
Comment: Then again, what you've prescribed will _still work_ in ten years, and who knows what will come after `gio mount` in the meantime. `;)`
Answer: Depending on your workflow, you may be able to get by with just a sidebar bookmark:

connect to the remote system the first time with Files
click-and-drag the mounted network volume from "Network" up to "Bookmarks"
then, next time you log in, click on that bookmark to reconnect the remote volume.

The downside is it won't be accessible from other applications (e.g., LibreOffice) until after you open Files for the first time and click the bookmark.

If the remote volume must be mounted at login, an alternative is to create an autostart desktop entry that uses gvfs-mount (for Freya) or gio mount in newer elementary OS releases. Hypothetically, this method could work for other kinds of volumes, too, provided your user has appropriate permissions to mount them.
Since you refer to connecting to the SSH server with Pantheon Files, I assume you mean "mount on login" rather than "mount on boot" (which implies that the network filesystem would be mounted independent of the graphical desktop).
If you're OK with mounting on login, either:

connect to the server with the Files app the first time and allow it to store the password in your login keyring
—or— use ssh-copy-id to copy your SSH public key to the remote system such that you can ssh thehostname without having to give a password

if you don't have a ~/.ssh/id_SOMETHING.pub already, use ssh-keygen to create one; be sure to specify a password for the private key (which the desktop environment should offer to store for you the first time you use it)

Then add gvfs-mount sftp://username@hostname/path/to/dir (in newer releases, gio mount) to your autostart config. You can either do this with System Settings → Applications → Startup, or else create a Desktop Entry file in ~/.config/autostart under your user account.

Here is the created file:
# ~/.config/autostart/custom-command0.desktop
# You can rename this file and/or edit 'Name' below to make it more descriptive
[Desktop Entry]
Name[en_US]=Custom Command
Comment[en_US]=gvfs-mount sftp://username@hostname/path
Exec=gvfs-mount sftp://username@hostname/path
Icon=application-default-icon
X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=true
Type=Application

If you create an appropriate ~/.ssh/config entry for hostname, you can specify the username, key file, or any other necessary SSH options, without needing to hard-code those into the autostart desktop entry.
Hypothetically, you could place the .desktop file in /etc/xdg/autostart instead (as root) and have it run on login for all users. You'd have to figure out how to solve the problem of specifying the remote username, though, if it differs from the local one. I don't think Desktop Entry files understand environment variables.
Editorial
Re-mounting a network volume when you log in seems like something that Files itself should support, but the only issue I'm aware of where this was brought up was closed as WONTFIX. I guess that's OK, because this is a pain on all three major operating systems, Windows being the possible exception, since the "Map Network Drive" dialog has a "Reconnect at sign-in" checkbox that works most of the time.
One serious downside of using gvfs-mount / gio mount is the weird filesystem path where network volumes get mounted. On Ubuntu-derived systems, it's something like:
/run/user/YOURUID/gvfs/proto:host=hostname,user=username/path

You could make symlinks in ~/net or something, but that's a pain to maintain if you connect to a lot of different hosts.
Then there's the fact that non-GTK apps don't always understand GVFS/GIO mounts or show them as removable devices, forcing you to browse to that weird path. Drag-and-drop from the file manager to these apps often doesn't work. There's probably no clear fix for that.
As an aside, I think this is something OS X got right, and maybe NeXTSTEP before it: all mounted volumes including network volumes are under /Volumes, with simple names. But I just don't see how that could work in a multi-user environment on Linux.
Comment: I've verified that this works in elementary OS 6.1 Jólnir (using `gio mount` instead of `gvfs-mount`), so this answer should be good for modern elementary desktops, too.


Framework headers from PCH file not found when built as a subproject

Question: I have the following project setup:
1) A main iOS project ('super project')... nothing special here, the project was built on top of one of the default iOS templates from Xcode.
2) A second project ('subproject'), which was created on top of the Static Library template. I added this project to the super project, and created references to it from the superproject in the 'Target Dependencies' and 'Link Binary with Libraries' build phases.
Inside the subproject, I have a C function declaration which looks like this:
ABAddressBookRef myABAddressBookCreateWithOptions(CFDictionaryRef options, CFErrorRef * error);

It's meant as a replacement/proxy of the similarily named function from the AddressBook framework and uses a type (ABAddressBookRef) from that framework. The declaration is stored in a header file, and the implementation exists in the corresponding .m file. To make this type available, I added the framework header to the .pch file of my subproject:
#ifdef __OBJC__
        #import <AddressBook/AddressBook.h>
        #import <Foundation/Foundation.h>
#endif

The following problem occurs:
If I build the superproject (release or debug config), the build fails with this error message:
.../ManagedCFunctions.h:24:1: Unknown type name 'ABAddressBookRef'

Things I've done to fix the issue, or at least get an idea of what's going on:

Building the subproject separately works (but a subsequent superproject build fails regardless)
Uncommenting the declaration gets rid of the error, but naturally raises an "Implicit Declaration of Function" warning at the calling location
Adding the import to the superproject's .pch file does not help
Adding the import to the header file of the function directly works, but is not an option in my scenario (parts of the code are autogenerated, and it would be hard to find out which file needs which frameworks)

I suspect that maybe the header file is not processed in Objective-C, but rather C mode, so the imports are ignored due to the #ifdef __OBJC__ macro around the import, but removing it hasn't helped either. I also tried to add #import <Foundation/Foundation.h> to the function's header file to 'suggest' Objective-C mode, and it actually enabled correct syntax highlighting in the file, but hasn't helped for building.
Any suggestions as to why the symbol is found in the .m, but not in the .h file? Or any workaround that does not require adding the import to a specific header file, but globally?
Answer: Today I found a isuue after I in project -> Info -> Configurations add a configuration file, then I run my project, it goes wrong in my pch file.
It shows that xxx.h not found, I search a lot of solutions, but I can not get the right answer. So I remember that step.
I deleted the configuration file, and my project become normal.
I hope this will be helpful for this kind issue.


Range of MIPS j instruction

Question: I understand that for MIPS-32, the first 4 bits of the address to jump to are taken from the first 4 bits of the address of j instruction, which means that we have a boundary of 2^28 bits around the address of the j instruction that we can jump to. Online it says this boundary is 256MB but 2^28 bits is 32MB and not 256MB. Can anyone explain why it is 256MB?
Answer: Addressing in most CPU cores I know works on a per-byte basis. You don't address individual bits.
The MIPS requires it's instructions to be 4-byte (word) aligned - i.e. the two LSBs are always zero. That way, they're not encoded in the instructions.
@sherrelbc's answer explains it quite thoroughly, although I like the semantics of "word-aligned" more, than "word-addressed".
The link @valcroft gave also has the answer mid-page:

Pseudo-Direct Addressing
Direct addressing means specifying a complete 32 bit address in the instruction itself. However, since MIPS instructions are 32 bits, we can't do that. In theory, you only need 30 bits to specify the address of an instruction in memory. However, MIPS uses 6 bits for the opcode, so there's still not enough bits to do true direct addressing.
  Instead, we can do pseudo-direct addressing. This occurs in j instructions.

| Opcode  |              Target              |
|---------|----------------------------------|
|  B31-26 |               B25-0              |
| oooo oo | tt tttt tttt tttt tttt tttt tttt |

26 bits are used for the target. This is how the address for pseudo-direct addressing is computed.

PC <- PC31-28::IR25-0::00

Take the top 4 bits of the PC, concatenate that with the 26 bits that make up the target, and concatenate that with 00. This produces a 32 bit address. This is the new address of the PC.

So, 26 bits left shifted by two gives a relative address boundary of \$2^{28}.\$
\$2^{28} bytes\$ is \$256 MiB\$, or \$256*1024^2\$.
Comment: The MIPS architecture addresses instructions by the word.
Comment: @sherrellbc Yes, you're right, I'll fix the answer.
Answer: Actually, the first 6 bits of the instruction are the opcode. These bits are used by the control module in the datapath to determine what control signals to assert to facilitate execution of the instruction.

The opcode is conitained in bits 31 to 26, shown feeding into the Control module. As you can see from the picture above, the lower 26 bits from the instruction are shifted left twice and concatenated with the upper 4 bits already contained in the Program Counter (PC). This is a direct result of MIPS being word addressed (32 bits = 4 bytes = 1 MIPS word) rather than byte addressed, so the double left shift allows us to address 2^28, or 268,435,456 (256 MiB), instruction words within the range of the 4 most significant bits of the PC. If the opcode is such that a jump is to be executed then the top-right mux selects this new concatenated PC value and the next instruction to be fetched will be at the new address.
Actually, the PC is already incremented by 4, or one instruction, before being concatenated.
Comment: I thought MIPS was byte-addressable? Although instructions are word-aligned.
Comment: Also, I disagree with this: "the double left shift allows us to address 2^28, or 268,435,456 (256 MiB), instruction words offset from the current one." If our j instruction is at 0xFFFFFFFF, then whatever we jump to must have an address starting with "F". Clearly it isn't possible to jump 2^28 words after 0xFFFFFFFF under the above constraint. However we can jump to any address within the 256 MB space that contains all addresses starting with "F".
Comment: @Vizuna, data memory is byte addressable; I was referring to the instruction memory addressing. And yes, you are correct in what you have said. Although, you still have a range of 256MiB instructions in either case. Also, pointing out that we cannot jump past 0xFFFFFFFF is obvious. The PC cannot address instruction memory beyond this point. In fact, such addresses do not exist in MIPS anyway.

Range of MIPS j instruction


Convexity adjustment for a forward swap rate

Question: I recently heard that for a forward swap rate (for example, the fixed rate of a swap that will start in one year and end in five years), I need to do a convexity adjustment in order to get the right number. Is it true, and if so why?
Comment: The question in this form is incomplete. The swap rate alone does not need any convexity adjustment. You have to specify how this rate is paid.
Answer: First of all it is not clear what exactly you mean by right number, you definitely do not adjust forward swap rate.
You probably mean adjusting euro dollar futures contract rates so that you can later use these values to fit the swap/forward libor curve.
Reason for adjustment is simple. If you are short ED futures and rates go higher futures price drops and you make money. Clearing house of exchange reimburses you excess margin and you can reinvest them at higher rate. If rates go lower you have to put extra cash into your margin account, you can borrow this money at lower rate.
Assuming some distribution and forward rate model(and here things vary from simple vasicek model to extremely complicated example Peterbarg) one can compute how much this advantage is in dollars and convert it to basis points.
Pure intuition tells that longer is the expiry higher is the adjustment also higher is the vol higher is the adjustment.
So the end result is that being short gives you advantage and market participants are aware of it and penalize short side by that amount.
Comment: The convexity adjustment needed for futures comes from the margining applied to the (undiscounted) future price. In contrast, swaps are collateralized by discounted value, such that a future-like convexity adjustment does not apply. However, if a forward swap rate is paid in an unnatural way (like in a CMS), a convexity adjustment applies.
Answer: Given an index $t \mapsto S(t)$ (this may be a forward swap rate) and some value process $t \mapsto A(t)$ (this may be a swap annuity) we assume that $S/A$ is a traded product (which is true if $S$ is the forward swap rate and A is the corresponding (!) swap annuity. Then the future payoff $S(T) \cdot A(T)$ can be values as $S(t) \cdot A(t)$ (since $S$ is a martingale under the measure $Q^A$).
Now, if we consider the payoff $S(T) \cdot P(T)$ (say for example if $P$ is the zero coupon bond with maturity $T$) then the value can be expressed as $S'(t) \cdot P(t)$ where $S'(t)$ is the so called convexity adjusted rate, that is $S'(t) = E(S(T) \cdot \frac{P(T)/P(t)}{A(T)/A(t)})$ (with expectation under $Q^A$). The convexity adjustment is a correlation term coming from the correlation of the index to the change of the payment.
That said: If you need a convexity adjustment depends on how the index is paid.
Answer: Most likely the question is about CMS rate convexity adjustment. i.e. today value of a swap rate that fixes at some future time T.
Mathematically, the adjustment arises from different measures (annuity versus forward measure).
This is a good reference http://www.math.nyu.edu/~alberts/spring07/Lecture4.pdf
As a rule of thumb, the size of the adjustment depends on

CMS maturity
Level of vol
skew

For the latter the classical reference is http://www.gorillasci.com/documents/convexity.pdf
Comment: http://www.gorillasci.com/documents/convexity.pdf is no longer available. Your other reference is quite good and bold in presentation.
Comment: it's "Convexity conundrums: Pricing CMS swaps, caps, and floors" paper by P.Hagan
Answer: Yes, an adjustment has to be made and the reason is that a forward curve now will evolve and not be the same as the future spot curve. For example, a one year forward today is not equal to your spot rate a year hence. So spot curve discount factors have to be adjusted or directly replaced through the forward DFs.
Convexity adjustments are already supposed to be made during the forward libor curve construction.
Comment: A forward starting swap needs adjustment, yes, but in discounting terms rather than convexity. IRSs are linear AFAIK; if expected Libors rose 1bp, that would raise the par fixed rate 1bp. I'm assuming no optionality in the swap.
Comment: Sorry, I was very vague and it was probably misleading. Convexity adjustments still have to be made but its more during the libor forward curve built-out (off the euro$ futures). Thanks for pointing that out. Will edit my answer.
Answer: For a vanilla forward-start swap, I would agree with imachabeli; convexity is an adjustment for the non-linearity of the quoted fixed rate dependence on the floating note. If expected Libors rise 1bp, the fixed leg can be increased 1bp to compensate.
Convexity adjustments are made as standard to interest rate futures (i.e. 3m); with the next futures date (Jun13) 2 months away, the front contract convexity adjustment is less than .1bp, so it makes no real difference. By contrast at 5y (Jun18), the 21st contract convexity is around 15bp.
It is possible the question is about swap futures, which deal over the futures dates, and which are therefore forward starting. As these are also futures, and deliver margin payments, there is a convexity adjustment to be made as per 3m futures.
Comment: good point made at the end, indeed the question may actually be about swap futures.
Comment: OK. If this is about swap futures, then he should be more precise...


Is GNOME used in Ubuntu?

Question: I am a first-time Linux user and I started learning about Linux recently. I understand GNOME is a GUI used in most Linux systems. Does Ubuntu use GNOME or any similar desktop GUI?
Answer: By default, Ubuntu uses Unity. GNOME is optional and can be installed using:
<code>sudo apt-get install ubuntu-gnome-desktop
</code>
Then on LightDM (the login manager), select GNOME.
Comment: I suggest installing `ubuntu-gnome-desktop` instead of  `gnome`

Is GNOME used in Ubuntu?


Large Enterprise - Salesforce.com Team Formation Advice

Question: Does anyone here from a large enterprise with hundreds/thousands of Salesforce.com users? How is your team currently structured? Do you leverage onshore/offshore model? What type of breakdown do you have in terms of administrators, analysts, architects, developers etc?
Since Salesforce.com is a SaaS solution and since it also empowers business users to act in administrator capacity with point-and-click tools, I am just wondering what is the right team size from the IT perspective?
UPDATE: Some clarifications - (A) lots of customizations (B) lots of integrations (C) lots of Apex/VF coding is part of requirement.
Answer: I don't have thousands. I do have over 200 spread between three divisions (and cities).
It's important to consider what you want to use your instance for. Do you need to have an onsite administrator? Will you be doing ongoing customization or apex?
Do you just need some import support? You might be able to get away with using Salesforce Success Plans + and take advantage of their Admin functions.
Or you may want a full team. The recommendation is 1 full time admin for every 100/150 users. If you're doing lots of customization consider having someone with some apex development skills.
For any organization that will be doing major customization of their instance I recommend two items. First, a Business Analyst. Someone who can take a research and figure out your requirements and needs. This is important because they can provide the details of your projects to any internal staff or your any consultant/outsource company you choose.
The second is someone who can do project management to plan and prioritize what is really important for your organization
Answer: I second the Wizardly One on making sure that you have a good BA.  That being said, I know that Salesforce markets the heck out of not being software, but it sounds like you are going to be doing a lot of software development.   If you already know that you are definitely doing that then make sure that you have a solid team of professional software developers. Don't go cheap.  The last thing you want is for someone with no DB design experience to end up designing the entire enterprise DB (i.e., the Salesforce Object model) for your large scale systems.
I'd hire someone who has experience running designing, developing, and deploying SF projects, someone who understands team development concepts, someone with enterprise application development experience.  You don't want someone who only has SF experience.  They are going to need to be sharp in DB design, HTML/CSS/JavaScript, other languages and technologies (Java, Oracle, etc) for the integration.  If you can get at least one really solid SF developer you can have that person help you more with hiring and training others who are less experienced.
Lastly, to echo one of Leon's points, if you are doing large scale team development it is very important to have controls in place.  It is very easy and tempting to make changes willy nilly in production, but that doesn't always scale well when there are multiple large scale projects going on and/or multiple large scale custom enterprise apps in use.  Here are some good references that someone leading your team development should be able to analyze (pros and cons of each) and implement:

Team Development: Possible, Probable, and Painless:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfXMY-ZFXXY&t=5m34s
Development Lifecycle Guide:
http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/dev_lifecycle/
Answer: On the topic of governance for large orgs, here's a recorded Dreamforce session with VMWare, Genentech, and USG describing their change management/release management processes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dnHRPyeT-c
Answer: A lot comes down to the governance you want to put in place to support your Salesforce implementation, which is in turn driven a lot by the size and complexity.
When there is a single population (even if widely spread) often a small team of SFDC admins who live in the business (rather than IT) can do the bulk of the work - changing picklist values, adding new fields, even creating new objects / business processes.  Where things are more complex - eg you have an opportunity record which is used very differently by different parts of the business, you need to put in place more strict controls and processes.  Say a new field of "Market Sector" is added to an object by your Singapore operation - is there a similar field in use in AMER Mid-market?  By your project services sales team?  Some central management of what goes in where, who owns it etc becomes necessary...
Totally agree with Salesforce Wizard though - start with a BA and as far as possible drive any development to declarative, point and click rather than Apex / VF.
Answer: We are running a mid-size org with about 600 active users spread out over at least 5 departments, with Customer Portal access for external employees as well.  We are a 3 man team, with 1 Business Analyst, 1 Admin and 1 Developer.  Internally we're not part of the IT team but belong to the business tools development unit.  I have no idea what onshore/offshore eans, but I guess we're not using it.
As to the size of the team, it has worked well for the last 6 years we've been using Salesforce.  A biggger team would perhaps scale better in terms of getting the solutions out faster than we do now, along with more and better governance.


MS Access copy/paste of table fails with message about clipboard size

Question: I have an mdb file that has some large tables in it (greater than 65000 rows). I used to not have any problems duplicated the table by copying and pasting but just recently I started getting a message about the size of the clipboard not being able to hold more than 65000 lines.  What's weird is the operation works on another computer with the same version of Access (32bit 2010) and the same table and doesn't report this error message. It just started reporting this message on the "problematic" computer recently, and nothing has changes as far as I know except for Windows automatic updates. Any help appreciated.
Comment: Maybe your computer has less free memory than the other one.
Answer: What's wrong its trying to copy such amount of data (straight from a table, mind you) to the Clipboard. But since this is Access we're talking it wouldn't shock me that's suggested over Exporting the data safely into a format like .CSV or Even better .SQL
Is funny that you mentioned the system architecture because on first sight I would check that as possible cause.
I would highly suggest changing the approach into something more around this lines: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Introduction-to-importing-and-exporting-data-08422593-42dd-4e73-bdf1-4c21fc3aa1b0


Making sure the data is backed up on the hard drive

Question: How do I make sure the data on my PS3 is backed up on the external hard drive. Furthermore, does the hard drive have to have a certain amount of space available on the drive in order for it to take the backup?
Answer: So first off the drive you are backing up to, in good practice anyway, should have the free space of which is used on your PS3. If you used 200 GB on your PS3 try to make sure you have 200 GB free on your back up disk. This backup disk also needs to be formatted to FAT-32 for this to work, this can be done very simply on a computer, plug it in, right-click and format and you will get the option to put it in FAT-32. After the backup is run on the disk you can plug it into your computer and browse through the files on it, I upgraded my PS3 drive before and like you wanted to be sure my files were there before I transferred it. You won't be able to do much of anything with the files on your computer though just as a warning.
Answer: I'll admit that I haven't used the backup utility for some time but you should have enough space on the hdd to mirror your current drive.  In most cases 500 GB is enough(unless you upgraded to a terabyte or something) and the USB drive must be formatted in Fat 32.  The backup usually shows up in the PS3 directory as files on a normal PC.
The backup itself can only be restored to the exact same PS3 that it came from so if your machine dies it becomes useless...


What is the "Applicable country" field on the Icelandair check-in form?

Question: As I entered my US Visa information in my booking with Icelandair, there is a field asking for "Applicable Country". I'm Indonesian but received my US visa from Germany, so do I enter Indonesia or Germany in this field?
Comment: It's not really clear to me what they mean, but since they already ask for the Place of issue, I think they mean the country the visa is for (the United States, in this case), though the fact that the whole section seams to be about US Visas in the first place is quite confusing.
Comment: @IhsanHaikal It's very puzzling. I would suggest phoning Icelandair to ask what they want in this field. If you do this, please post an answer to your question to help other people in the future.
Comment: @MJeffryes finally I got the answer from Icelandair after direct chat. They said I should put USA as the section is about USA visa
Comment: Is this the full form? Is there anything below Applicable Country?
Comment: @MJeffryes nothing, just like that
Answer: After chatting with Icelandair representative, applicable country in this field means that to which country you have the visa to, in this case is USA, therefore I should put USA.
Comment: Man, that is one horrible UX
Comment: I think it's more applicable (pun intended) in visas like Schengen visa, where the issuing county and the country you're visiting (that which visa will apply) can be different. Still, pretty ambiguous.
Comment: @さりげない告白Except that it's not a _generic_ visa page: it's already saying "...Visa … issued by a U.S. Embassy or Consulate", so the only possible response would be USA, unless US dependencies (e.g., Guam) would be treated separately.
Comment: It is under the section of adding a visa, so the word applicable is applicable to 'visa' so it makes sense that it is the country the visa is for.
Comment: If that's the answer (I'm actually criticising the website here not you) then it doesn't make sense at all because it says to fill it only if you have a US visa...wouldn't the only ever option for this field be US?


Don't get approval email if the previous step was approved via email

Question: I have a strange issue. I have test order approval process, which has two steps. I have email notification on each step with an option to approve this step via email with key word "yes" or reject with key word "no". This is my approval process :

My issue that on the second step I don't receive approval email if the first step was approved with reply "yes" on email. But this step is approved with my reply! So reply to approval email works, but next email is't sent. If the first step is approved with a button, email for the second step is sent. Any ideas?
Answer: First check needs to be done at the Approval entry criteria, i.e.,
<code>Status = InApproval
Order RecordType = Test
</code>
Hope in the first step the status is not being updated as Approved(or other than InApproval) which will restrict the record to enter this approval process again.
Secondly, the screen where we mention the criteria for each step(in this scenario, you need to check this section in first step):

We need to make sure that go to next step is selected other than approve record/reject record. So once a record passes through the first step, record when fulfils the Entry criteria at approval process would check for the FIRST STEP and if not fulfills(it wont coz it went through that step) should go through the next step as selected in the screenshot.
Comment: sorry but i think you didn't get me right. My approval process works really fine except that case when the first step is approved with reply 'yes' on approval email. In this cade the first step is approved and the second step is coming. But I don't get an approval email for the second step. Otherwise if i approve the first step with a button(not with reply on email), everything works correct and i get an email for the second step.


How are foreign key indexes helpful?

Question: How are foreign key indexes helpful?  What is the criteria for keeping a foreign key index?
Comment: You might want to read this:
http://tkyte.blogspot.com/2009/10/httpasktomoraclecomtkyteunindex.html
Answer: This will be non-specific to oracle, but in general foreign key indexes are most useful because they speed up JOINs.
If you have a foreign key field, it is extremely likely you will use it as a JOIN key as well - that's the whole point of an FK, to make a direct association between one field in tablea to another field in tableb.
Having this field indexed will speed up any queries that use that field in either the WHERE filter or in the JOIN criteria.
Answer: In addition to JOINs another benefit of indexing Foreign Key columns is that it can speed up enforcement of the Foreign Key constraint for some DML operations.
If you delete a row from an Orders table then the RDBMS would need to ensure that this would not leave an orphaned row in OrderDetails. Obviously this is easier if it can be verified with the use of an index.
Answer: In general you should index all foreign keys because they help reduce locking during updates or deletes on the parent table. This is especially true if you are still running Oracle 10.x, with 11.x this has become a bit better.
In a nutshell, if you are missing an index on the foreign key and do an UPDATE to the PK of the parent table or DELETE rows in the parent table, Oracle will need to do a full table scan on the child table in order to ensure that the PK is not used there.
From the Concepts manual:

If foreign keys are not indexed, then the child table will probably be locked more frequently, deadlocks will occur, and concurrency will be decreased. For this reason foreign keys should almost always be indexed. The only exception is when the matching unique or primary key is never updated or deleted.

Of course the index will not only prevent that lock it will also speed up that check as Martin Smith has already said.
As a final note, the following quote from Tom Kyte might be helpful:

So, when do you not need to index a foreign key? The answer is, in general, when the following conditions are met:

You do not delete from the parent table.
You do not update the parent table's unique/primary key value (watch for unintended updates to the primary key by tools!).
You do not join from the parent to the child (like DEPT to EMP).
Answer: The criteria should be same as for any other index i.e. performance and concurrency considerations. If the index is not highly selective, for example, you should consider dropping it.

How are foreign key indexes helpful?


How to contribute patches to Magento 1?

Question: What are the requirements for a patch to get accepted and included into magento 1 and what is the best way to provide it.
Answer: I think this is the correct url. But there is also How do I report Magento bugs and submit bugfixes so that they are likely to be closed? here in Magento Stack Exchange. I think the question is old and the URL i added here is the way to report issues.
Answer: This quesetion is somewhat old and may be outdated :)
In my opinion it's a waste of time to post issues to Magentos (M1) issue tracker. Either it's posted and nothing happens, or they tell "it should be solves in version x.y.z", or they refer to there internal JIRA issue tracker.
So my recommendation to you (:P) is using a well maintained fork that accepts approved bugfixes and improvements - like Magento-LTS does. If you find an issue, just open a ticket there and you can bet it will be included in time.
Even if it didn't answer your question, I hope you could smile a bit about it :)

How to contribute patches to Magento 1?


What does the plus (+) ornament mean?

Question: I am learning a baroque piece on the recorder. Some notes have an unusual ornamentation symbol. How is a note with a plus sign over it played? It was suggested to play it as a mordent. Is that correct?
Answer: Not contradicting @DrSvanHay's source, which actually only arguments, that a trill may be marked as +: This is just indicating any kind of embellishment, I'm not sure, whether due to sloppiness of the composer or copyist, but I frequently find it also in fast movements on very short notes, where a trill will never fit in.
As example see here in a Boismortier print from 1737:
Note also, that in baroque much more was left to the performer and absence of such a sign does in no way inhibt it. The word mordent is also not really that stable in its meaning over the course of the centuries, but it may well be the appropriate one in your piece.
Summarized: either you simply choose an appropriate embellishment depending on the context(what other types of embellishments are present), or you may invest effort to find out, what experts say in that respect or how modern editors rendered the piece in different editions.
Answer: HENKE, Stephanie Morgan. A Study of the Early 18th-century French Baroque Musical Style: An Oboist's Performance Practice Guide to Jacques-Martin Hotteterre Le Romain's Troisième Suitte de Pièces À Deux Dessus, Pour Les Flûtes Traversières, Flûtes À Bec, Hautbois, Et Muzette, Op. 8. 2012. ph.d. thesis. University of Georgia.
says:
(bold type by me)

The Tremblement
  The general French Baroque term for trill is tremblement. The tremblement is a rapid oscillation between the main
  note and its upper diatonic neighbor. It was most often indicated by a
  stenographic sign (+) which may appear above or just before the note
  to be trilled. Michel Pignolet de Montéclair wrote in his Principes de
  musique that the trill is "indicated in foreign countries and in music
  printed in France by a small t. Apparently, negligence in curving the
  base of the t resulted in the small + or x

where the "t" story is a quote from
ANTHONY, James R. French baroque music from Beaujoyeulx to Rameau. Hal Leonard Corporation, 1997.
Answer: well I really can't top what's been said, but if I can say anything at all I will say when I first came across this ornament a number of years ago and did a similar search on google I was told that it means a suggestion for any kind of ornament whether be a trill or a mordent etc....
I've also found other material stating that Boismortier used various symbols (including the +) to refer to trill only, but more specifically indicating if it was supposed to be a fast trill or a slow trill, or end on the written note the trilled note above it...
I usually play it as a mordent or sometimes some other fancy footwook other than a trill.
Comment: Hi obwan. Welcome to SE Music Practice and Theory. Ideally, answers should include references to their sources. For example, here is some guidance [on answering questions](https://music.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-answer).
Answer: Yes, they have advised you well.
It is mainly the nominated notes upper diatonic neighbour trilled, but any artfully applied appoggiatura , bite or mordent, enclosing turn or trilled concept will never be scorned if it works artistically.
I bet your playing the delightful duets collected and arranged by Michel Sanvoizan and Guy Robert for guitar and Block flutes at an educated guess.
Some beautiful duets in those books. I always wanted to employ them as accompaniments to a small Punch booth like Puppet troupe doing Commedia del Arte inspired set piece dramas etc. improvised over and even Shakespeare.
It would have flown in Europe but in Australia, where I am stuck, no dice;
so preoccupied with the appearances and illusion of coolness they miss it and themselves entirely. I rue the day we as children were forced to see out our days here. The country is another gaggle of criminal leaders telling lies, and serving Mammon while neglecting their real subjects. Anything worth being proud of is long gone.

What does the plus (+) ornament mean?


Trying to deduce $\mathbf{F} = m \mathbf{a}$. Where is my mistake?

Question: We know that we can write the energy of a particle as a function of position $\mathbf{x}$ like this:
$$E(\mathbf{x}) = \frac{\mathbf{p}^2(\mathbf{x})}{2m} + V(\mathbf{x})$$
Where $\mathbf{p}$ is the momentum and $V(\mathbf{x})$ is the potential energy. ($m$ stands form mass and $E$ for energy).
And we know that $E(\mathbf{x})$ must be a constant function, and so, $\frac{\mathbb{d}E}{\mathbb{d}\mathbf{x}} = 0$.
For simplicity, let's assume that we are in a one dimensional movement and so we can treat the vector $\mathbf{x}$ as a scalar $x$. Differentiating both sides with respect to $x$:
$$0 = \frac{1}{2m}2p(x)p'(x) - \mathbf{F}(x)$$
Here i used the fact that for some vector field $\mathbf{F}$ we have that $\mathbf{F} = - \nabla V$, where $V$ is the potential energy. And so we get to:
$$\mathbf{F}(x) = \frac{1}{2m} 2m\mathbf{v}(x)m\mathbf{a}(x)$$
Which turns out to be
$$\mathbf{F}(x) = m\mathbf{v}(x)\mathbf{a}(x)$$
Which is obviously not equal to the classic formula. Where is my mistake? Is the treatment correct at all? Thanks in advance.
Comment: You're differentiating with respect to $x$ to get $F$ but with respect to $t$ to get $v^\prime=a$...
Comment: $p'(x)\neq ma(x)$
Comment: Why is $p$ a function of $x$?
Comment: Care to explain the downvote?
Answer: Simple: $\vec{p}^{\prime}(\vec{x})$ is not $m\vec{a}$.  In particular, $\vec{p}^{\prime}$ is the space derivative of $\vec{p}$, but $m\vec{a}=m\partial_t\vec{v}=\partial_t(m\vec{v})=\partial_t\vec{p}$.
You can correct your argument by noting that $\partial_t\vec{x}=\vec{v}$ and applying chain rule.
Answer: It should be noted that the Hamiltonian (what you called $E(\textbf{x})$) is not constant in space, but is only constant along the path your particle takes. The real requirement, then, is that $E$ is constant in time, ie $\dot{E}=0$. If you are to follow through taking time derivatives, you would get
$$\dot{E}=\frac{1}{m}\textbf{p}\cdot\dot{\textbf{p}}+\textbf{v}\cdot\boldsymbol{\nabla}U=0.$$
Thus, if we have that $\dot{\textbf{p}}=-\boldsymbol{\nabla}U\equiv F$, then the equations of motion $\dot{E}=0$ are satisfied.
I hope this helps!
Comment: I think this answer is remarkable because it doesn't answer my question, however it clarifies the concepts which for me is a fundamental idea.
Answer: Hint:
$$
\frac{d}{dx}\left(\frac {p^2}{2m}\right) \\
=\frac{p}{m}\frac{d}{dx}p \\
=\frac{p}{m}\frac{dp}{dt} \frac{dt}{dx}
$$


Onion garlic and covid

Question: Had covid 3 yrs ago and haven't been able to hand the smell or the taste. I need substitutes for recipes… I know there is a spice called asafetida that can be use and taste like onion and garlic but before I spend $13 on a jar I wanted to see if anyone else has tried it and been successful . Thank you.
Comment: Howdy!  Welcome to SA!  Because of typos, it's not entirely clear what you're asking.  Is it that you cannot taste onion and garlic anymore, or that they are too strong and you can't tolerate them?
Comment: https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/2596/substitute-for-onions-and-garlic
Comment: 13 bucks!!! The regular supermarket stuff is bulked out a long way to make handling easier, but it's less than $2.
Answer: It's quite possible that you will need to re-train your sense of taste and smell and discover what you do or don't like again.
If onions are too strong for you right now, you might want to try green onions (spring onions or scallions) and slowly increase until you find a good level.
If you can no longer taste alliums, then I would recommend trying to find other completely different chemical compounds to try to find alternatives to make your good flavorful, rather than using asafetida / hing.
If you really want to try it, look to see if there are any specialty spice shops in your area and give them a call.  If they sell it, they might be willing to sell you a smaller amount.  (But bring a glass jar, it will stink through even heavy plastic bags)
Answer: First of all, sorry to hear about your problem, a loss of a sense, or at least an impairment of a sense is unfortunate, and I hope it eventually goes back to how it was. It looks like most people with post-covid Parosmia usually regain at least part of their sense of smell eventually, so there's hope!
If something tastes like onions and garlic it's very possible that it's going to be unpalatable, but only at a certain threshold. I would approach this with a series of experiments to determine how much of what type triggers a bad taste. I'd also test other strong flavors like ginger so you build a picture of what is unpleasant to you, and how much you can add before it becomes unpalatable.
Once you know what you want to avoid you can then make recipes which contain ingredients you like, or which contain amounts you can tolerate of what you don't.

Onion garlic and covid


Why was this closed? Question seems answerable, with a bit of clarification from OP

Question: Why was this question closed without even allowing the OP much time to clarify their question? Seems a bit harsh, as the question is fairly specific although it does need some extra details.
Comment: +1 I agree, seems a bit harsh compared to standard practice on sites like Programmers.SE.
Comment: Programmers is designed to be more broad and allow for more subjective questions to be asked. This site is not.
Answer: SO (and it's child sites) are based around the concept of "Quality Question gets a Quality Answer". All new users are pointed to the following post on "How to Ask".
While not every question needs to meet the "perfect" criteria, it is reasonable to expect askers to at least provide the minimum about of information to remove ambiguity, provide context, and ensure they at least try to make it worthy of being answered.
John closed the question for pretty succinct reasons:

It's difficult to tell what is being asked here. This question is ambiguous, vague, incomplete, overly broad, or rhetorical and cannot be reasonably answered in its current form.
Comment: Three of the latest ten questions asked on webmasters have been closed by the same moderator as subjective/argumentative - perhaps he has higher standards than most SO/SE moderators.  But if he's going to be closing questions it would be good practice if he dropped a comment on the question explaining the reasons for the closure other than the boilerplate SE text.
Comment: @Mike I agree that the question was lacking in detail, but the user wasn't given much chance to correct it. The community could have clarified and then rewritten the question, rather than just closing it.
Comment: @amelvin @Mike - both fair comments, but I agree that giving an inch allows the mile, so as long as it's fair, it's ok to be firm. (Ok, I stop with the cliches now).
Comment: That question was closed for being too broad. The OP can easily edit their question and asked to have it reopened at any time. It's how things work and has been done before. Leaving it open before they made their modifications would have invited overly broad answers which is obviously contradictory to the goals of this website.
Comment: @amelvin, the boilerplate text perfectly described why the question was closed. Leaving an additional comment was unnecessary.
Comment: @John Fair enough in that instance.
Answer: I am all for giving feedback to good questions that are slightly off-topic.
However, in that particular case, I think the OP didn't put even a modicum of effort into their question. It's not like we closed a question that was a brilliant 500-word essay explaining a problem in amazing detail.
So as John noted in a comment here, the boilerplate close reason should suffice when the question is a short, low-effort one. Part of the contract here is that askers should meet answers halfway. Heck, even a quarter of the way.. just put in some effort to ask good, clear questions -- how can anyone in good conscience expect effort in the answers if they have shown little to no effort in ask their question?


Should I use different types of normalization on the same dataset when preprocessing for machine learning

Question: I am working to preprocess a dataset where half of it is already normalized between 0 and 1. I was planning on using z-score to normalize the rest of the dataset but I was wondering if that was a bad idea. Should I use a different normalization function that keeps it between 0 and 1? Or perhaps use a z-score on the data that is normalized between 0 and 1. I know that using different normalizations is do able but I am looking for the optimal way of doing things. Also, the data set has some binary features it that makes a difference.
Note: I have already one-hot encoded the categorical features.
Edit: the problem is based off the the KDD Cup 1999 dataset for analyzing normal connection verse malicious connections (link to the data set here). The features are different, if you observe the dataset some of the features are "rates" so they are "normalized" between 0 and 1. Other features such as the number of failed connections are not normalized in any way. I was thinking of normalizing the number of failed connections using their z-score but I was unclear if that was a good idea based off the fact that some of the data seem to already be "normalized" since it is a rate. Let me know if you have further questions.
Comment: What problem are you trying to solve & how does scaling the data solve it? Are the original normalization constants lost? Does the second half of the data correspond to the same features as the first half, or does it represent something else -- different features, for instance? Note that z-scores aren't bounded between 0 and 1, so it's uncleear how this solves the scaling problem.
Comment: I just updated the questions so hopefully that helps
Answer: Speaking specifically to the case of the KDD99 data, I've found that the features that vary over many orders of magnitude (I remember one or three go between 0 and $10^8$ or similar, for instance) are best log-transformed and then z-scored.
After the log-transformation, z-scores will give a nice scale that is amenable to gradient-based training as you'd find in a neural network. I found that without the log-transformed the data, SGD is not able to make progress, probably because the loss surface is poorly conditioned.
Comment: Okay thank you! Should I run the z-score on the values that range between 0 and 1? Such as the "dst_host_serror_rate" column which is already a rate between 0 and 1, but should I so a z-score so it matches my other values?
Comment: Try it and see. The reason that scaling matters is to improve the performance of the gradient-based training, so if you find a method that makes the training proceed more quickly, you've succeeded.


git: display current merge config value

Question: Is there a way to display the current merge config option in git without manually specifying the current branch I am in. I am wanting to do something like this:
$ git cur-merge-val
branch.current.merge = /refs/heads/current

where git cur-merge-val could be some long, complicated series of git commands to which I can make an alias for -- so long as what I personally type on the command line doesn't require typing the current branch I'm in (because that seems redundant since that information should be programmatically accesible somehow).
Answer: Create the following script (e.g., call it cur-merge-val.sh and make it executable):
current=`git status -s -b | head -1 | cut -d' ' -f2`
git config branch.$current.merge

Then, just add the following to your .gitconfig file:

[alias]
          cur-merge-val = /path/to/cur-merge-val.sh
Answer: I found a solution which:

avoids porcelain commands in favor of plumbing commands
shows also the current remote config value and all possible merge config values if there are multiple of them.
avoids having to make another executable file

see https://stackoverflow.com/a/1593487/10608 for a reference of why I get current branch name the way I do.
[alias]
    cur-merge-val = !branch_name="$(git symbolic-ref HEAD)" && branch_name=${branch_name##refs/heads/} && git config --get-all branch.$branch_name.remote; git config --get-all branch.$branch_name.merge

git: display current merge config value


Intersection of field extensions of torsion points of non-isogenous elliptic curves

Question: Let $E$ and $E'$ be non-isogenous elliptic curves over a field $k$ (characteristic 0) such that $Gal(k(E[p^{\infty}])/k)=Gal(k(E'[p^{\infty}])/k) = SL_2(\mathbb{Z}_p)$ with $p \geq 5$ (where $E[p^{\infty}]$ is the set of $p^n$ torsion points of $E$ for all $n$). Then is it true that $k(E[p^{\infty}])\cap k(E'[p^{\infty}]) = k$, or can someone provide a counterexample?
Comment: You can't have $k$ algebraically closed because your condition on the Galois groups won't hold. Your statement has a chance to hold for function fields.
Comment: What assumptions are you making on $k$?  This question is vacuous in both of the cases that I would consider natural (global fields and local fields).
Comment: Sorry - $k$ has characteristic 0. For example $k$ contains the roots of unity or is a countable algebraically closed field.
Comment: Thanks Felipe - I meant $k$ is finitely generated over an algebraically closed field
Answer: Since both fields $K(E_{l^\infty})$ and $K(E'_{l^\infty})$ contain the $l$-adic cyclotomic extension of $K$, your expectation cannot hold.
However, this is almost the only obstruction.
In Propriétés galoisiennes des points d'ordre fini des courbes elliptiques,
Invent. Math. 15, 259--331 (1972), J-P. Serre
proved the following Theorem (Theorem 6$''$, p. 325).

Let $K$ be a number field, let $K^{\rm cycl}$ be the (cyclotomic) extension of $K$
  generated by all roots of unity. Let $E$ and $E'$ be two elliptic curves
  such that, over $\bar K$,
(i)  $E$ and $E'$ have no complex multiplication;
(ii)  $E$ and $E'$ are not isogeneous.
Then, the extensions $K(E_\infty)$ and $K(E^\prime_\infty)$
  of $K^{\rm cycl}$ are almost disjoint:
  $K(E_\infty)\cap K(E'_\infty)$ is finite over  $K^{\rm cycl}$.

(By Faltings, hypothesis (ii) is equivalent to the one given by Serre.)
Comment: Just a remark: the fact that the Galois group is $\text{SL}_2(\mathbb{Z}_p)$ implies that the $p$-adic cyclotomic character on $G_k$ is trivial, and thus must contain the $p$-adic cyclotoic extension.
Comment: I don't quite understand the first line, because there was no assumption on $K$, so $K$ could equal $K(\zeta_{l^{\infty}})$ (not if  $K$ is a number field, of course). It also seems a little strange to phrase the statement of Serre's theorem in the way you do - by far the hardest part of that statement is Faltings contribution (the Tate conjecture). However, you seemed to have mastered the dark art of divining exactly what the OP wanted to know, rather than what they actually asked!
Comment: *and thus $k$ must contain* (if someone can edit that in, it would be appreciated)
Comment: Apologies - I forgot to put non-CM curves as a hypothesis in my question (but it's probably not good to change this now?) and $p \geq 5$ was just a guess to keep the question more concise, but the theorem of Serre which ACL quoted is exactly what I wanted so thank you all!
Comment: To Michael: I changed hypothesis (ii) of Serre to the one I gave here, just because it is more natural, and Serre explicitly mentioned that point. (He had been able to prove it for non-integral $j$-invariants.)

To Eric: You're absolutely right! I overlooked that point.
Comment: @ACL, Yes, I understand why you wrote it that way, and it was a useful formulation, my objection was was more a stylistic remark: putting Faltings in parenthesis obscures the actual content.
Comment: Note that Serre had already proved the isogeny theorem for elliptic curves when one of the $j$-invariant is not an integer (in which case the Tate curve gives an "easy" proof...).
Comment: I think the OP's assumption that the Galois group is `$SL_2(\mathbb{Z}_p)$` should force $E$ not to have CM.
Answer: By the way, I think that under your hypotheses, your question is really about group theory, not about algebraic geometry.  Namely:  the action of Galois on E[p^infty] x E'[p^infty] gives you a homomorphism
G_K -> SL_2(Z_p) x SL_2(Z_p).
Call the image H.  By your hypothesis, H projects surjectively onto both copies of SL_2(Z_p).  You also know that H is not contained in any conjugate of the diagonal (if it were, E[p^infty] and E'[p^infty] would be isomorphic Galois representations and I'm presuming you're in a situation where Faltings rules that out -- you'd better be, if you want an affirmative answer to your question.)
Now what you have to prove is that a subgroup of SL_2(Z_p) x SL_2(Z_p) which projects surjectively onto each direct summand and which is not conjugate to a subgroup of the diagonal must be finite-index in SL_2(Z_p) x SL_2(Z_p).  This is true for SL_2(F_p) by Hall's lemma and I think you can induct from there (but didn't think about it carefully.)
Comment: Indeed: such arguments are at the heart of the proof of Serre's  Theorem quoted above.