Communicator.exe takes 96% CPU

Question: My Communicator.exe is taking up 96% CPU.  I have to run this program for work to chat with my coworkers... what could be causing it to use such a high CPU percent?
Answer: From here
Communicator.exe is located in a subfolder of "C:\Program Files". The file size on Windows XP is 4,167,376 bytes.
There is an icon for this program on the taskbar next to the clock. The program has a visible window. The application can be uninstalled in the Control Panel. It is digitally signed. Program starts when Windows starts
see Registry key: HKEY_USERS.DEFAULT\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run, HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run).
It is not a Windows core file. The application listens for or sends data on open ports to LAN or Internet. Communicator.exe is able to record inputs. Therefore the technical security rating is 6% dangerous, however also read the users reviews.
Important: Some malware camouflage themselves as Communicator.exe, particularly if they are located in c:\windows or c:\windows\system32 folder
Check it those one is good one or bad
Answer: I find that it's usually not Communicator.exe which is primarily responsible, it's some collusion it has with Outlook.  I experienced the same problem you had, but due to continuing troubles with Outlook, I finally abandoned it and switched primarily over to OWA Outlook Web Access.  Amazingly around the same time, Communicator also got better.
Answer: First try a repair.  If that doesn't work try to do a re-install.  Hopefully that will fix the problem.

Communicator.exe takes 96% CPU


Set up a new hard drive for Playstation 3?

Question: I have a new PS3 hard drive.  I put  the 4.80 software on a USB flash drive then in my ps3 but it won't read it. Is there any way I can formatted my hard drive for my PS3?
Answer: You can install the System Software on the HDD by using the Safe Mode. To access the Safe Mode, follow this steps:

Turn off the console (make sure that the indicator light is red).
Press and hold the power button for 10 seconds, until the console turn itself off.
Release the power button.
Press and hold the power button until you hear two short beeps, then release the button.
Connect your controller via USB and press the PS button.

You should be able to see this screen:

Select the option called "Restore PS3 System" (number 5), and you will be asked to insert an USB with the System Software:
NOTE: If "Restore PS3 System" does not work, select "System Update" and try again.

You can get this file and instructions on Sony's Website.
Once you have inserted the USB drive, press Start and Select at the same time.
If everything went OK, you should see the following:

Now just wait for the process to complete, this will take between 5 to 20 minutes.
At the end, you should see the welcome screen for the PS3.
Answer: You're going to have to format the hard drive to a FAT32 on the PC first before you can use it on the PS3.
Comment: The PS3 formats the hard drive if is not recognized by the console, asking for the most recent software. Thurs, doing a FAT32 format on the PC is a waste of time.


Why using AES in ECB (Electronic Code Book) mode a bad idea?

Question: Why using AES in ECB (Electronic Code Book) mode a bad idea? is CTR mode better? Given only these two can be used for parallelization.
Comment: On the other hand, that makes your post's title completely different from your post's body. $\;$
Comment: There are other parallelizable modes as well. Such as XTS and OCB. But to recommend a mode we need to understand your requirements.
Answer: ECB is bad because identical plaintext blocks result in identical ciphertext blocks. Encrypted data is therefore not pseudo-random.
This is how Tux looks like after ECB encryption:

CTR mode doesn't have this problem. Data encrypted with CTR mode is pseudo-random and doesn't show any pattern. So CTR is much better.
CBC and CFB can also decrypt parallel, but not encrypt.


Amendment disallowing more amendments

Question: What would happen if a constitutional amendment were passed that forbade the passing of any more amendments? Would it be able to achieve that, or would something get in the way? I realize this  would be practically impossible to pass, in addition to being a terrible idea. This is purely hypothetical.
Answer: Dale M's answer is not supported at all by history, or any mode of constitutional interpretation. I also don't find it likely. I'd say that if a duly ratified amendment said as much, that would be the law. It is certainly correct that the court could try to narrow the meaning. It's also possible to simply not follow the Constitution (as we do with state immunity and the 11th amendment). But to assume that would be done here is just speculating blindly. Of course, this question doesn't warrant much more attention than blind speculation, so my comment is not a very offensive accusation.
As a few counter points, we have radically change the form of our government many times within the current constitution.  Reconstruction, The New Deal and so on, all represented huge changes. Most importantly, the 17th amendment can easily be viewed as more radical than the question's proposed amendment.  It completely flipped the political system upside down, orienting power in the people and the federal government, and treating the states as some weird intermediary: but we now see it as a relatively boring enactment.
Certainly we could come to see the formal abolishment of the amendment process similarly, especially if it were (which it would need to be) accompanied with a new found comfort with non-textual interpretation to effectively "amend" through interpretation, i.e. If the textualists lost badly this amendment would seem like a relatively natural way of announcing their demise.  Remember that Scalia's whole point, is that strict originalism (not saying he was actually so strict himself) would democratize by forcing change through the amendment process.  If we rejected that notion (as deceptive, for example) we could (as in its not completely ridiculous to imagine) announce that rejection with the proposed amendment.
Answer: In this purely hypothetical scenario, such an amendment would effectively "lock" the constitution into a static document forever.
It's hard to excerpt specific highlights from from Article 5 because the whole thing is a single, run-on sentence.  BUT, @Dale's answer is fundamentally incorrect.
Here is the text:

Article V:
  The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.

There are several observations that should be noted here:

A constitutional amendment is "...valid to all Intents and Purposes, as part of this Constitution".  In other words, it becomes a part of the constitution itself.  The Supreme Court cannot rule unconstitutional something that is in the constitution. Indeed, if such an amendment were to pass, the only thing that could modify or repeal it is another constitutional amendment -- which cannot happen because a further amendment would then be unconstitutional on its face.
The executive and judicial branches of the government are conspicuously absent from the amendment process.  Ratification of amendments is exclusively a legislative action -- that means two thirds of both houses of Congress and 3/4ths of the state legislatures.  The only power of judicial review the Supreme Court could have would be procedural in nature (i.e. was the process in Article V followed correctly?), and the President would not be able to veto it.
The only subject that is off-limits in the amendment process is equal suffrage in the Senate.  I won't elaborate on this because it's not relevant to the question.  I only mention it because this would be one of those procedural things SCOTUS could weigh in on if such an amendment were passed.

The Constitution vests pretty much absolute power with the states and the people. Strictly from a constitutional perspective, the people it serves are free to completely destroy it or undermine it as much as they want, as long as the proper procedure for doing so is followed.  It offers no protections whatsoever for the event that the American people collectively lose their minds.
Comment: "The Supreme Court cannot rule unconstitutional something that is in the constitution." - Not honestly, but see Governor v. Nevada State Legislature, 71 P.3d 1269 (2003), where the Nevada Supreme Court ordered the legislature to *ignore* a recent amendment to the state constitution requiring a 2/3 majority to pass new taxes, just so it would be more likely that they'd raise taxes and thus better fund education.  The US Supreme Court, given the much more extreme scenario of a prohibition on amendments, might decide that we just can't prohibit amendments.
Answer: Well, we could then start looking for a way to unfreeze Hell.
Theoretically, a constitutional amendment can make the constitution say anything, however, such an amendment would probably be unconstitutional even if it was passed in accordance with the constitution.
It is certainly the case that the SCOTUS would probably find that, notwithstanding there is a mechanism for such a change, it is actually beyond the power of Congress to make such a change. It is possible that a Constitutional Convention that proposed such a change would on the face of it be less problematic than a Congress initiated one but I still think that SCOTUS would strike it down as acting beyond its power.
That is because there are certain things within the Constitution that are so fundamental to its existence and operation that they cannot be removed. Other things that would probably fail in this way are any amendment to abolish the POTUS, the SCOTUS or the Congress.
As an analogy, the English courts have held that Parliament has supreme sovereign authority in the United Kingdom. They can literally do anything without fetters of precedent, constitutionality or human rights. Except for two things. They cannot abolish the institution of Parliament and they cannot bind the supremacy of future Parliaments to undo what they do.
Comment: A new government could replace the Constitution on the new government's own terms as happened in 1789. The Articles of Confederation required unanimous state agreement to modify; the Constitution after 9 states ratified it June 21 1788 went "live" March 4 1789.  Congress passed legislation before North Carolina and Rhode Island ratified the Constitution.
Comment: @user662852 and that could happen again - but it wouldn't be "the" Constitution - it would be a replacement, not an amendment.

Amendment disallowing more amendments


Why does the volume not decrease when I move away from the AudioSource?

Question: I created a simple scene with an audio source and a player that can move. The main camera is a child object of the player. I set the audio source volume rolloff to "logarithmic rolloff". As far as I understand, this means that the sound should become weak very fast when the main camera moves away from the audio source. But this does not happen: as I move the player (with the camera) away from the audio source, the volume remains the same. I see, in the rolloff graph of the audio source, a line denoted by "Listener", which moves to the right as the camera moves away from the source. But still, the volume remains the same. Why?
Comment: Have you tried moving the player absurdly far from the audio source, to ensure that the effect is not simply scaled incorrectly?
Answer: Be sure that you have set Spatial Blend to "3D". The slider is two entries above the 3D Sound Settings collapsible section (in my version of Unity). You can also enter a value from 0 to 1, with 1 for full 3D. The slider position defaults to 0 for 2D, which will override any 3D settings you configure in the lower section.


Differences between 凉 and 冷,冻 and 冰

Question: I was wondering whether anyone could tell me if these words are completely interchangable all situations. If not, how am I to discern which to use?
Answer: 凉 (liáng) s.v. cool, chilly. 不想吃凉米饭. (liàng) v. make cool. 天气凉了. Opposite: 温
冷 (lěng) s.v. cold; 天气很冷. Opposite: 热
冻 (dòng) v. freeze; feel frosen. 湖泊冻成冰. Opposite: 融
冰 (bīng) n. ice. v. put on ice; feel cold. 湖泊冻成冰. Opposite: 汽
Answer: 凉 means cold(冷), but not that cold. For example:
"我们快吃吧,食物快凉了" - Let's eat, the food is getting cold.
"今天的天气真凉快" - The weather today is good.
冷 means cold.
"我好冷啊" - I'm feeling cold.
"天气真冷" - The weather is cold.
"一杯冷水" - A cup of cold water.
冻 means cold/freeze too, but freezing cold or something frozen.
"冻死我啦" - So freezing cold.
"冻疮" - Frostbite
"冻肉" - Frozen meat.
"果冻" - Pudding.
冰 means ice, very cold or icy cold.
"冰块" - Ice cube.
"冰点" - Freezing point (of a substance).
"冰箱" - Refrigerator/freezer.
If you want me to arrange those words according to the temperature, I'd say 凉 -> 冷 -> 冻/冰.
I hope this helps you. If you have any questions, just comment below.
Comment: ... so what's the difference between 冻 and 冰?
Comment: @Stan Sorry, I didn't read the question probably. Answer edited.
Answer: 凉 is often objective,well 冷 is often subjective,we usually use "冷" to express our feelings,but it can be objective sometimes,like"冷水".But "冷" is more severe than "凉","冷" often means it's too cold that you can't stand it,well "凉" means it's cold but it's OK.For example,in summer it's very hot,we say we want things that are "凉",not 冷,to cool us down.
冻 is a adj,it means frozen.Well 冰 is used as a noun more often which means ice.冰 can be a adj too,but it means "similar to ice in shape" or just cold(very close to 冷),not frozen. Examples:冰糖 means a kind of solid sugar which is very similar to ice in shape.冰水 means ice water,no huge difference to 冷水.
Comment: Welcome to Chinese.SE! And ... anyway it's better to consult a dictionary before answering such a question, because even we native speakers are usually unable to remember all the usages of a word or a character. A systematic answer (with proper formatting!) will be more helpful :)
Answer: 凉 adj cold
冷 adj cold
冻 verb freeze
冰 noun  Ice
From these 4 characters, we can also make the following phrases,
冻冰 verb freeze 河冻冰了。 river gets frozen.
冷冻 adj.frozen; 冷冻食品,frozen food
     Verb freeze  我把虾冷冻了。,I freeze the shrimp.
冰冷 adj freezing e.g.冰冷的面庞. Freezing face
冰凉 adj icy cold  e.g.冰凉的水. Icy cold water
凉and冷 are both adj, very similar when it's describing temperature. But, 凉 is a little bit less cold than 冷。 we can say winter is 冷, late autumn is 凉。for the most of cases, they can be substituted.
Hope the bellow example will help you sense the difference of these 4.
天凉(冷)了,冷(凉)水冻成冰。
It's getting cold, cold water freezes into ice.
冰遇冷(凉)水就会化冻。
When ice meets cold water, it will defreeze.

Differences between 凉 and 冷，冻 and 冰


Deploy a single feature using SharePoint Management Shell with SharePoint 2013

Question: I have been working in a development environment and deploying my custom web part features from Visual Studio directly by just hitting F5.  I now need a way to deploy features separately to a test environment and would like to know the best way to go about this.  I know there is an "Install-SPFeature" command but it seems to require a feature.xml file.  In my Visual Studio project I have a .feature file and a .template.xml file but no plain feature.xml file.  How do I generate this feature.xml file to use the Install-SPFeature command or is there an even better way to deploy single features to a site?
Answer: You need the .wsp file that contains the features. You can create with Visual Studio by right clicking the Project and hit on Publish option.
First af all, open a SharePoint Management Shell. You have to add the Solution to SharePoint with this command:
Add-SPSolution -LiteralPath $SolutionPath

Then, install the solution:
$Url = "http://urltoinstall"
$SolutionToInstall = Get-SPSolution -Identity "yourSolutionName.wsp"
Install-SPSolution -Identity $SolutionToInstall -WebApplication $Url -GACDeployment -Force

Remove the -WebApplication parameter if you want deploy globally.
Finally install the feature you want with this command
$FeatureName = "YourFeatureName"
Install-SPFeature $FeatureName -Force
$FeatureActivate = Get-SPFeature $FeatureName
Enable-SPFeature -Identity $FeatureName -Url $Url -Force

Hope this solves your question
Comment: So I have to first install the entire solution with all of my features before I can install a single feature?  I'm trying to find a solution that allows 2 people to be working on different features at the same time and not run into overwriting issues.  This method would only work if everyone working on the project makes sure they have the latest version every time they deploy a feature, wouldn't it?
Comment: The answer is yes. At least I don't know other way to manage what you need. But I don't understand when you say "This method would only work if everyone working on the project makes sure they have the latest version every time they deploy a feature" If you'd find a way to deploy only the feature you would have to get the latest version of the feature to test it in your stage environment.
Comment: Bummer.  My thinking was that if you're wanting to deploy a feature then you're the one working on it and therefore have the latest version.  Thanks though.


Story or Book that features the Tree of life from the Garden of Eden

Question: All I remember off the top of my head was the tree would alter the elderly people into a new form of protector. When we were exiled we were cut off from the tree and were forced to grow old and die instead
Answer: This is Protector by Larry Niven.  Humans (originally a species called 'Pak') originated from a planet near the galactic core.  Pak are born stupid as 'Breeders', but then as they grow older they instinctively eat the root of the "Tree of Life" which transforms them into super-intelligent, super-strong 'Protectors'.  Protectors, as the name implies, protect the Breeders.
Humanity is descended from Pak who colonized Earth, only to find that Tree of Life wouldn't grow here, and modern humans evolved from Breeders.
I believe a Protector wouldn't die as long as they continued to eat Tree of Life root, so they were immortal (and very hard to kill on purpose).
Comment: It's a symbiotic virus that grows in Tree-of-life root induces the change to Protector form. Versions that grow in terrestrial root-crops and an airborne variant make their appearance eventually in the Known Space setting, and it's strongly hinted that the tree-of-life virus was used to develop the later-commonly-used longevity drug boosterspice.
Comment: A Protector isn't immortal, just incredibly long-lived; there's a line I recall in Protector (I think) about a Protector dying of old age. They made very careful notes describing everything, because it was so incredibly unusual.
Comment: Protectors are very hard to kill _even when they want to die_ as witness Teela-Protector in *Ringworld Engineers*.  It's also implied that human Protectors are more badass than the original Pak Protectors, since humans have evolved to be smarter and more survivable than the original Pak Breeders.
Comment: @davidw I recall that simply starving themselves to death was the suicide-means-of-choice for the Pak. Didn't Teela basically fight to lose?  It's been a long time since I read that.
Comment: Yes, she fought to lose, but she _had_ to fight; she couldn't just accept her death.  (There wasn't enough time for her to starve to death.)  Oh, BTW I'm pretty sure it's "Tree-of-Life _root_" that they eat.
Answer: Are you thinking of Larry Niven's Ringworld series?
There is an alien race called the Pak who were the ancestors of humans. They were the species Homo Habilis that evolved into modern humans.
When they get old they eat a plant called Tree-of-life that causes them to transform into a powerful and intelligent form called a Protector. Humans are also transformed by eating the plant but the form into which they are transformed is different from a Pak Protector, presumably due to the evolutionary changes humans underwent from the Pak/Homo Habilis.
Answer: It's a more tenuous link than the existing references to Niven's Ringworld series, but this also matches with James Rollins's Amazonia where Nathan Rand, heir to the Rand Corporation, enters into the Amazon in search of a miracle cure which has sprung up somewhere in the Amazon Rainforest in South America, especially important because a deadly plague is occurring in the world outside. The ultimate revelation is that there is a tree that is considered to be the source of all life, whose sap does indeed have tremendous curative properties, but also transformative ones, turning members of the tribe (and, as it turns out, Nathan's lost father) into its protectors, unable to live without access to that sap.
Comment: While Protector, by Larry Niven seems more obvious, this gets my +1 for being the sort of book I might have read a long time ago and distantly recollect rather than one I'd 100% instantly recognise in a description.
Comment: @Ruadhan2300 It's not a bad book, albeit a bit formulaic. It came up as a comment answer to https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/166912/book-about-a-set-of-sons-and-maybe-a-daughter-on-a-quest-to-find-the-treasure


Is there a quick way to get all statements, check images etc. from a checking account/credit card account?

Question: Suppose someone has had a checking account or a credit card with a bank for many years and has opted out of paper statements. Suppose they wanted to have a record of all statements either in pdf format or paper format. They could download statements into a computer one at a time. Is there a quicker way?
Comment: That would depend 100% on the bank.
Answer: Walk into a branch of your bank and ask for the documents that you need. I did this when I needed to show statements and transactions in court. There was a printing fee for large page counts. What is available, how much it costs, and how long it takes will vary by bank.
If you are unfamiliar enough with your bank's web site or programming API that you ask people who don't know your bank how to do this, it will be quicker to ask the bank to prepare the documents than to learn to do it yourself.
Answer: As someone who has experience with programming, I would say that it's 100% depending on whether the bank has any publicly available API.
If you'll tell us which bank you have in mind, it'll be easier to give a more definitive answer.


Travel and Shacharit

Question: I'm flying westward in the morning. I don't think I'll have enough time to pray shacharit before I take off, and don't wish to do so en route. I should land with enough time to pray shacharit before zman kriat shma: is there any problem with my doing so? What would other issues of tefillah be in this case?
Comment: Why do you think it might be a problem?
Comment: I have no clue.
Comment: Do you think the zman will pass in the east but when you land in the west won't have passed, or do you just not have time in the east because of logistics?
Comment: Both. It turned out that I completely missed the zman because I was under the impression that my flight was two hours earlier than it was. I certainly had no time to daven, at least with tallit and tefillin beforehand though.
Answer: Happens to me all the time. Two main issues I see

Once the time to pray arrives, you cannot eat before you pray (see e.g., here and here), which is one incentive to pray on the plane
Planes are often delayed, or you can get stuck on the runway waiting to get off, therefore it is not a good idea to wait until the last minute to pray at the destination airport

If you cannot pray with talit and tfilin on the plane, one not-ideal possibility is to pray without on the plane, and put talit/tfilin later, either after arriving or at mincha.

Travel and Shacharit


Finding max flow in a undirected graph

Question: According to this we can do so by replacing every edge in the undirected graph with two edges backwards and forwards with the same capacity. But I'm having a hard time seeing how this prevents something like $f((u,v))=c$ and $f((v,u))=c$ (where c is the capacity in the original undirected edge) but then that means the original graph has flow $2c$. Could someone prove or explain why the capacity restrictions are still satisfied?
Answer: What you describe can happen in a feasible flow. However the net flow across the (undirected) edge $\{u,v\}$ would be $0$. Also, you say that the original graph has flow $2c$, this is false since the amount of flow from a vertex $s$ to a vertex $t$ in a graph is not the sum of the flows across all the edges, but rather the amount of flow leaving $s$ or, equivalently, entering in $t$.

Finding max flow in a undirected graph


3 wire subpanel to a new 3 wire subpanel

Question: I want to add a 100 amp RV service panel to my existing, detached garage, 3 wire subpanel. I understand that my current setup is grandfathered in and code is now 4 wire but I won't be able to add this very easily to the main panel. I also understand the risk of a 3 wire subpanel and that an open neutral will put 120V to grounded metal surfaces. I've read through this site and other sites and believe my diagram shows how this would have been wired prior to the 2008 wiring codes. Still, I'd still like the experts to add their inputs. So my questions are, is this the safest way to approach this without adding a 4th wire, and do I need a separate grounding rod at the new subpanel when I already have a grounding rod at the garage subpanel which is about 30 feet away? PS, Part of this diagram was taken from this site, but I wanted to add my own setup to make sure there weren't any additional issues. Thanks and your inputs are greatly appreciated.
Comment: Personally I would follow code as the safest. Also if an inspector comes out you will **have** to have followed code for anything you touched. The codes exist for a reason so to knowingly go past one of them is putting yourself at risk
Answer: Absolutely not.  You cannot run 3-wire to your sub-sub-panel.
You will need to run 4-wire from the grandfathered subpanel to the new sub-sub-panel.  You will need land the neutral and ground feeders on neutral and ground buses in the existing subpanel.  You will need to separate ground and neutral buses on the new panel.
Tell you a story.  A company did a remodel on an old 2-story building.  They needed wheelchair accommodations in upstairs hallways and bathrooms. "Why?" they said, "will wheelchair users drag their wheelchairs up the stairs?" (in fact, they do).  Three years later, they built another building right next to it, with a 2nd floor walk-between.
The other shoe will eventually drop, you will want to upsize the existing feeder.  At that point you will go 4-wire, and since the new extension is 4-wire, you are Code complete.
Save money other ways
The current subpanel has the same breaker size as the intended feed to the sub-subpanel. As such, the $40 subpanel breaker feeding the sub-sub is redundant.  Get rid of it.  If the subpanel has feed-thru lugs, you can just tap them.  Otherwise you can get a lug "breaker" that fits in two breaker spaces but is just lugs.
The sub-sub does not need a main breaker.
AA-8000 Aluminum wire is your friend in feeders (not least, the lugs you'll be attaching to are aluminum, why create a dissimilar metals issue when you're paid not to).  You should use 1-1-1-3 Al instead of 3-3-3-5 Cu, so your cable cost will be $100 instead of $250.
3-wire aluminum cable in these sizes is likely AA-1350 alloy, which was outlawed except for service drops/laterals which are outdoors.
I already bought the cable. --->> At these large sizes, most of the cable's value is mineral value.  Strip the insulation off and take it to the metal recycler.
Comment: You make a good point Harper. I do appreciate the input. Maybe best to just spend the time to bring it up to code.
Comment: @JayNovak in that case I should have elaborated.  Grounds can be retrofit, so it is possible to run just a ground wire (on a different route, even) without tearing up the 3-wire cable.
Comment: Thanks Harper. I was thinking about going that route anyways. I thought I could pull out what was already there between the garage and the house with a snake and the wire that is already in place looks to already be 1-1-1 Aluminum and then just pull it all back with the ground wire attached. My box in the garage doesn't have a separate ground/Neutral bar but at this point for $50 I might as well upgrade that too. I guess I just didn't want to tackle trying to fish that ground wire from the house to the garage. At least this way I can do what I want without worry.
Comment: @JayNovak Hold on. It's conduit? If it's metal conduit all the way (and not just a cable guard at the start/end), metal conduit itself is a legal grounding path if contiguous.  And not rusted out.
Comment: No it isn't. The house and garage are connected through a big underground PVC pipe. No lines or metal pipe between the two.


Why can't bicyclic structures undergo E2 elimination?

Question: Bicyclic structures like norbornane don't undergo E2 eliminations, but why is this the case? I understand that it can't do E1 as it can't form a stable carbocation (the bridgehead carbons that is) but I don't see the issue for E2. Can you explain?
Comment: for E2 mechanism to work, the pair of leaving groups (commonly hydrogen and halogen) must be in antiperiplanar conformation (i.e. when loonking along axis of the carbon-carbon bond that would be double after elimination, they must be at 12 and 6 o'clock). In small bicyclic systems assuming such conformation is problematic. Also, formation of 2-nornbornil cation is well documented and E1 elimination for 2-nornbornyl species is known. Also, it is prohibited to form double forms at bridgehead, as the resulting system has too much angular strain.
Comment: Elimination reactions (including E2) are not forbidden on bicyclic molecules, they are just forbidden at the bridgehead (due to geometry issues that prevent effective orbital interactions).
Comment: I am aware of this - apologies that I didn't make it clear. I just don't understand why these carbons can't undergo E2 eliminations.
Comment: Firstly, you have to specific the position of elimination. Like Ben Norris said, double bond can not be formed on bridge head in strained bicyclic structure simply because the geometry does not allow a planer double bond. For E1, cation can be generated but double bond can not be formed, it end up a SN1 reaction. For the concerted E2, it simply can never happen because the product can not be formed.
Answer: Elimination via a E2 mechanism cannot take place at the bridgehead carbon of a bicyclic compound due to the lack of the required trans geometry between the leaving group at the bridgehead carbon and any of the six β-hydrogens.
On the other hand, as you have correctly observed, a E1 mechanism has to be ruled out as well due to the strain at the bridgehead carbocation. In fact bicyclic structures prevent the tertiary bridgehead carbon becoming planar, which implies that is very high in energy because the nonplanar structure forces the cation to be an empty "sp3 orbital" instead of an empty "p orbital". This observation was made for the first time by Bredt, therefore is generally known as "Bredt's rule".


Export Twitter data from Backupify

Question: I signed up for Backupify and added Twitter to it. I now want to export all my status updates and, although the site says that it's possible to export the data, I can't find that functionality anywhere.
Answer: There's some step-by-step instructions here;
http://www.backupify.com/personal/tour

Click manage next to the service you would like to setup.
Authorise account
View archives and export

Hope this helps.
Comment: I can't see any link to export the data. At the bottom of that page you sent, there's this "Wait 24 to 48 hours and your initial backup will be ready for download.". That might explain it. Will update on the progress.

Export Twitter data from Backupify


Deterministic Random access machine and polynomial time

Question: How do we prove $M$ that is a deterministic random access machine that decides a problem $A$ for an input $i$, and $u_M(i)$ is the set of addresses of those registers that occur at least once with $s$ steps and a configuration of $C_0,\dots,C_s$ where each configuration is of the form $C_i=(k_i,R_i)$, were $k_i$ is the program counter and a mapping $R_i$ runs in polynomial time if it runs in logarithmic space.
Comment: Standard textbook exercise. What have you done so far?
Comment: What I have done so far is that the maximal configuration for a problem that is is decidable in $log(x)$ space is $2^{o(used(x))}$ since each space can either be used or unused and this is the total number of configuration possible. Just want to  know if I am on the right track and besides @G.Bach what is the point of posting a question you already know
Comment: The point is that you showed no effort besides posting the question, and this website is not here to solve exercises for people. I couldn't know whether you had done anything, there are quite a lot of people who come here and expect solutions to problems they have not even tried to solve. That is one of the reasons why this network expects people to also post what they tried when they post a question.
Answer: Hint: If the program runs in logarithmic space then there are only polynomially many possible configurations.


Does anyone know of any datasets which have audio and accents?

Question: I'm trying to do an accent detection project.
Comment: I can guess, but you should probably expand the question to make it possible to answer.
Comment: For what language? What do mean with "accents": dialects, or the accents of second language speakers? Please specify!
Answer: Do you want specific accentwise data or recording of people chatting in a normal scenario would do as well?
Here are some resources, hope you find them to be heplful,
There's the CMU audio database and the speech accent archive
Apart from this, you could use youtube videos and transcripts, or speeches in different accents and their transcripts, sports commentary would be a good source as well.
Another good source is vlogs, they are natural and varied when it comes to accent.


Measuring 0805 Capacitor values under 1nF

Question: Other than investing in an expensive tweezer type meter for SMD components, what would be a good method for the layman to find the capacitance of an 0805 ceramic capacitor whose value is below 1nF? My Fluke meter can only measure to 1nF...
Comment: If you insist on accuracy, buy a Agilent U1733C LCR meter. It is not cheap, but it will take the guess work out of de-bugging problems. It cost about $450 USD to $500 USD, depending on vendor and any 'bargains' they may have. Example: My Fluke 87-5 goes for $420 USD, but I found it on sale with a temperature probe for $386 USD. Only the best LCR meters can read down to tens of pf, or have 10pf resolution.
Comment: If all you have is a Fluke (no oscilloscope, etc.) then the only other semi-practical DIY technique would be to solder (unfortunately) the capacitor into an op-amp based astable multivibrator.  That would create an oscillation frequency inversely proportional to the the capacitor value (I would test the circuit out with some known value test capacitors to make sure it works, and that the formula calculations are correct as well as correct for stray capacitance at the 100pF and below range.  Otherwise you're stuck with buying tweezers.  With a scope you could do a direct RC time constant check.
Comment: You should use an op-amp buffer to the scope probe to reduce loading effects that would affect accuracy.  Practically speaking you have a 1:1000 range in values, and once it gets down into the picofarad range you really want to calibrate the circuit by substituting known values.  This assumes your Fluke has  a decent frequency counter range.  You can cross-check by putting in a known value and comparing the frequencies.
Comment: Put in a square wave, perhaps the scope's probe-calibration signal. Create a low-pass-filter with 10uS timeconstant, likely a lot slower than the cal-waveform. For 100pF, use 100Kohm. Remember the scope-probe has 13-15pF.
Comment: @analogsystemsrf Siemens isn't a unit of time, mate, nor is Kelvin a prefix.
Answer: You could buy one of those cheap Chinese LCR meters. About $6-10 including shipping and they'll measure down to 30pF or so.
Here's a 47pF 50V 0805 capacitor measured with hand-held jumper leads:

I would check it with my LCR bridge if it was important but you can't beat the price/performance of these things. The design has evolved from a US published front end and hobbyist copy using an AVR and the published equations.
--sp
Answer:
The quick and cheap and easy solution. This Bside ESR02 Pro seems to have gotten me the correct capacitance and the replacement parts are accurate! This read 320pF off a 0805 capacitor! Success!


How to calculate spot size of a laser focused through a microscope objective?

Question: I am trying to figure out how to approximate the spot size of a laser beam that is focused using a microscope objective where the size of the laser beam is smaller than the diameter of the objective.  I have tried googling and reading various other questions online but still haven't been able to cobble a coherent plan together.  From this excellent response I've been able to cobble together an understanding that the working distance and the focal length of a lens are different.  But I'm still at sea as to how I convert the information I'm given about an objective, e.g. magnification, NA and focal length to spot size.  Would it be sufficient to simply treat an objective as a simple optic with the focal length given by the manufacturer and then use something like this spot size calculator to figure out the focused size?  If not, would someone mind walking me through the steps to approximate (doesn't need to be exact, back of an envelope is great) spot size for a $5 \;\text{mm}$ well-collimated beam that is focused using this objective?
Answer: The spot size calculator is just what you need. Assuming your laser has a TEM$00$ Gaussian beam (the most common and desirable beam cross section), the math behind it is very simple. $w = 4\lambda f/\pi D$.
The calculator gives the spot diameter assuming your optics are perfect. A lens as expensive as the one you picked should be pretty good. You might investigate cheaper alternatives. You only need one wavelength. Is that lens optimized over the visible wavelengths? You don't need to worry about off axis aberrations. Spherical aberration is your primary concern.
See Cross-sectional area of a Gaussian beam of particles for more about the nature of Gaussian beams. There is a discussion of lasers.
Also see Best collimation at focal point of lens?.
Answer: "From Fundamentals of Photonics" by Saleh and Teich

We have an (ideal) lens of focal length $f$ and we are sending in a Gaussian beam with waist $W_0$ (Rayleigh range $z_0$) which is focused distance $z$ in front of the lens. The lens refocuses the beam distance $z'$ from the lens with waist size $W_0'$.
The textbook derives the following:
\begin{align}
W_0' =& M W_0\\
(z'-f) =& M^2(z-f)\\
M =& \frac{M_r}{(1+r^2)^{\frac{1}{2}}}\\
M_r =& \left|\frac{f}{z-f}\right|\\
r =& \frac{z_0}{z-f}
\end{align}
These expressions are not very illuminating in my opinion but we can consider two limiting cases. The first is that $z-f \gg z_0$ which says that the focus of the beam is like a point source and the equipotential lines of the gaussian beam can be treated as rays. In this case $r\ll 1$ so $M=M_r$ and this is in fact the usual ray-optics result for magnification.
The other limit, which is perhaps of more interest to you, is the opposite case in which the lens is in the Rayleigh range of the incident beam and the Rayleigh range is longer than the focal length, that is, $z_0 \gg f, z$. This is what we might call a "collimated" Gaussian beam because for the entire important space having to do with the lens the Gaussian beam keeps essentially the same radius. In this case, $r\gg 1$ so that
$$
M \rightarrow \frac{f}{z_0}
$$
Ignoring negative signs which leads to the well known and useful formula:
\begin{align}
W_0' =& \frac{\lambda f}{\pi W_0}\\
z' =& f
\end{align}
That is if you have a collimated beam of waist $W_0$ impinging on a lens with focal length $f$ you can easily calculate the resultant waist using the formula just above.
Regarding some of your other questions, if your beam is collimated then the formula I've given will work if you use only the given focal length for the lens (note that the spot size depends on the size of the beam you send in). The focus will appear distance $f$ away from the front focal plane of the lens.

Note that the front focal plane is not necessarily located at the frontmost surface of the objective. This explains the difference between focal length and working distance.

The magnification of the objective is a pretty useless parameter when thinking about the objective as a standalone optic. The magnification is defined as follows. Suppose you use the objective to collimate the light from a sample. Then you place a tube lens downstream of the objective to refocus the light and create an image. This image will have a magnification given by the ratio of the focal lengths of the objective and the tube lens. This means the magnification varies depending on the tube lens focal length.. so what tube lens focal length should you use? Different suppliers use different conventional tube lengths in their microscopes thus determining magnification when certain objectives are used. See https://www.thorlabs.com/newgrouppage9.cfm?objectgroup_id=10764. Apparently, 200 mm is a common focal length. So if your objective has a focal length of $f=4mm$ it would be described as a $50x$ objective. You could of course change the magnification by changing the tube lens. For this reason (as someone who builds imaging systems from scratch more often than using commercial microscopes) I feel the magnification is a pretty silly parameter for objectives.

Finally Numerical Aperature. NA will not help you with this problem. NA is a subtle specification for an objective in my opinion. If you have an object distance $d$ away from an objective which has a radius $R$ you might guess that the NA is given by $NA \approx \sin\left(\arctan\left(\frac{r}{d}\right)\right)$. But then the NA would depend on the distance between the object and the lens and you could make it arbitrarily close to unity (maximal in free space) by moving the object closer and closer. Do you get better resolution in this way by increasing the NA? No! This is not how NA is specified at all for optics. Rather, you should think of NA not as the maximal collection angle for an objective but rather the maximal non-aberrated collection angle. You can always decrease the NA of an optic by placing an aperture stop. When the NA of an objective is specified this means that if the objective is used as specified (meaning with proper working distance, for example) then if you use the NA corresponding to the specced NA then aberrations will be negligible, the objective will be diffraction limited. You can reduce the NA by hand and worsen your resolution. If you can increase the NA (some objectives may have an aperture stop built into them to avoid this) you will not get an increase in resolution because you will introduce aberrations into the system due to the introduction of the ray with very large angles that are hard to pass through the imaging system without aberration.


How do I set up a webcam to take one picture each minute for 24 hours (time-lapse)?

Question: I'm not entirely sure if this is the right place to ask this question, but I don't know of a better place. I need to set up a webcam to take a photo every minute for 24 hours, so that it can be compiled into a video that plays them at something like 20fps. However I don't know of software to do this - is there? I'm running GNU/Linux (ubuntu 10.10).
Comment: This is called "time-lapse", btw, which may help you in your search
Answer: There is plenty of software to do this in Ubuntu 10.10. I have not personally tried any of them so cannot vouch for which is best.
One useful link looks to be
 - popey.com - My Ubuntu Webcam setup this is fairly command line oriented but Popey does give all the steps to make a video of the resulting images
Other possible packages looking in my software list on Ubuntu 10.10 (you will likely need to enable the Universe repository to get all of them)

webcam
webcamd
cheese
kmotion

If you get stuck with Ubuntu specific issues you can always try the Ubuntu StackExchange site at askubuntu.com
Answer: Echoing JoséNunoFerreira I would recommend gphoto2.  I'm not in front of a Linux box to test it right now, but according to a linux.com tutorial the following command should work:
gphoto2 --capture-image --interval=60 --frames=1440

The interval figure is in seconds, and 60 x 24 = 1440 so it should take one photo every minute for twenty-four hours.
Answer: Try gphoto2. It is available on the ubuntu repositories, and is a command line utility. it's very powerful, and allows you to use "regular" digital cameras, also.
Other choices would be VideoCapture module for python (assuming you know python).
Answer: For a USB webcam, you could use fswebcam.
It is available in the Ubuntu 'universe' repository. fswebcam is a simple, lightweight, command line program, for capturing images from a webcam. A simple command to capture an image and save it as a JPEG:
fswebcam test.jpg

By default this will attempt to get an image from the /dev/video0 device. If you have multiple devices attached, you can specify which one. There are more options to specify the resolution, or whether to include a title, or timestamp etc.
To make a timelapse, you can use fswebcam with the 'loop' option, this will take a photo every specified number of seconds. Or you could add a script to cron, eg to run every minute.
An example bash script to save a photo every minute.:
#!/bin/bash
DATE=$(date +"%Y-%m-%d_%H%M")
fswebcam r 1280x720 -S 15 ---jpeg 95 --title "My webcam" -q -l 60 $DATE.jpg


Exchange and Coperate Account in android

Question: What does Exchange and co-operate account means. I have being seeing it in my setings and do not really know how to use it. Also, how do  set up a working email like the microsoft outlook account in my android device. Thanks
Comment: Are you sure it says "co-operate"? Might it in fact say "corporate"?
Comment: What version of Outlook are you using?
Answer: Exchange refers to the Microsoft Exchange Server Email/Calendaring system also known as Exchange ActiveSync. Corporate usually is a generic term for business email and also usually referring to Exchange ActiveSync, but also can refer to IMAP or POP3 email access.
As far as setting up your work email on your Android phone, it depends on which way your work is using Outlook. Most likely you can open the "Mail" or "Email" (not Gmail) app and go through the steps of adding your work email. You will need to know either the Exchange server address or the POP3 or IMAP incoming server address and the SMTP outbound server address. In addition to server addresses you will need to know what ports the servers communicate on.
Once you have the server information, open the Email app and do the following:

At the first screen enter your username and password, then click "Next".

At the next screen select the appropriate type of email syncing for your account (Exchange, IMAP, or POP3).

Enter your Exchange server information or POP3 or IMAP server information and click "Next"
If you were setting up Exchange, select t he frequency you want your mail to sync. If you are setting up IMAP/POP3 enter your SMTP server information and click "Next".
Exchange setup should now be complete and IMAP/POP3 setup should now have syncing frequency options and then be complete.


Rail cost from Weeze to Düsseldorf

Question: Does anyone know the cost of a single train ticket from Weeze to Düsseldorf, and is it cheaper/possible to get an open return?
Comment: I don't know the actual price, but are regional trains, you can buy the tickets before your departure (no seat reservation)
Comment: FTR bahn.de in general (Or download their app), and it will tell you if it is a "transport association" ticket.
Comment: However in most cases it won't show any prices and doesn't say which of the [many many](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_deutscher_Tarif-_und_Verkehrsverb%C3%BCnde) transport associations sets the price.
Answer: According to the website of the local transport association VRR a single trip costs 16,50€ (just enter the trip into the search mask and click the "E" button to see the price). You can buy the ticket at the station. There is no open return ticket (but if you want to travel on the same day, or more often there are cheaper options, see that website).
If you arrive by plane, please note that Weeze Airport is around 20 minutes by bus from the Weeze train station and at some times it may be better to use the Kevelaer station. Enter Weetze Terminal 1 into the search mask to see those connections. The price is the same.
Answer: To answer the second part of the question ("is it cheaper/possible to get an open return?"), the answer is no. In Germany, it is very uncommon that open returns are cheaper. Even buying a non-open return ticket will only lead to lower cost in very few cases.
Note that as neo wrote, you will probably take the bus first, and as the bus and the train are organized in the local transport association VRR, you can buy one ticket for both parts of your journey, which will typically be cheaper.
If you are travelling with 2 people, you should be able to buy a 4-trip ticket that can be used by two people for two trips (as 2x2=4). Please please verify this information with the bus driver, as I cannot find anything about that on the web right now. The cost should currently be 58.60 Euro
There is also the possibility to buy a day-long ticket for all local public transportation in the state NRW for 41 Euro (Schöner Tag Ticket), but the bus driver will probably not sell this. This is good for 5 people, though and includes the bus from Weeze (unless it is operated by a bus company that does not operate within the VRR transport association).
Alternatively, you can buy VRR local transportation association day tickets for 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 persons at the prices of 26, 30.50, 35, 39.5, or 44 Euros, respectively (again, type "E"). The bus driver should be able to sell these.
Comment: DB regular fare tickets ("Normalpreis") are essentially open return (you can travel back within 30 days). I wouldn't say those are uncommon. However those aren't cheaper than buying two one-way tickets.
Comment: @neo True - I'm not sure if people (especially British ones) would call them like that, though, as they tend to come significantly cheaper than two one-ways elsewhere (again, especially in Britain, where 50-80% off the return trip when buying an open return is not uncommon). I've adapted the answer.

Rail cost from Weeze to Düsseldorf


Stem typography width

Question: How can I change in Illustrator the stem width of the "2" to have similar to "0"?
Comment: Possible duplicate of [How to modify path width in Illustrator?](https://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/25468/how-to-modify-path-width-in-illustrator)
Answer: If your shapes happen to be text objects and you want to keep them as text objects, your only option is to make yourself or find a font that has the wanted 0 and 2. Making it yourself needs a font editor. There's no function in Illustrator that makes fonts slimmer in the way you hoped. See NOTE1 at the end.
Then some guessing:
Your zero is obviously isn't text. It's a modified version. It's outlined and pieces of the original 0 are sliced off. See (1) in the following screenshot:

I stacked 2 and 0. My 2 is your 2, but traced and with no fill.
If you want a same looking 2 as your 0, you must outline the 2, too, if it still is text and subtract exessive pieces off. Letter as text objects are closed paths, they are not curved single lines even in this case.
I made the opposite. I drew two rounded rectangles (2) and combined them to compound path (= Illustrator's way to make a hole). After removing the stroke and inserting pink fill (3) I got a new zero which matches well with your 2.
Your 2 happens to be simple enough to be drawn with the pen as a single curved line. Stroke ends are rectangular. I tried it, too:

NOTE1: Fonts are computer software. Making own versions of a font can be illegal. The copyright owners give strict rules how their fonts can be used. Paying the price generally gives only a right to use the font as is. Free fonts can be modified only if it's allowed in the license.

Stem typography width


How did Blizzard implement replay like in Warcraft 3 with not consistent data(attack damage)?

Question: Units in wc3 has range of attack damage and it isn't consistent most of the time e.g critical hit and so on. Yet, they managed to make a replay that could even reconstruct bugs scene. I am just curious how they do it. It could be useful for fighting games or perhaps to easily submit evidence of recurring bugs. The best part is it's not even a big of a file and even could be used on a customize games. Come back to the title, how did they do it?
Comment: I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because how a game implemented a certain feature is best answered by the developers, otherwise it's just speculation.
Comment: Please see this related question about implementing your own: http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/6080/how-to-design-a-replay-system
Answer: They would include that damage (or the data needed to get to the damage value like the RNG state) in the replay information. Each attack is only a numerical value of the damage value, the id of the attacker and the id of the victim. That is 3 values with a limitation on number of units those IDs could be a single byte each.
Crucial information is often RNG seeds, player input and (most importantly) fully deterministic implementation. Anything not deterministic would otherwise need to be included in the replay stream. A perfect implementation would use the "replay" engine for actual real-time play. Where input is nothing but the RNG seed and player input as it comes in.
For scrubbing efficiency and a failsafe you can include full board snapshots, these would contain the location of all units and their health, position of the buildings and unit building progress, etc.
Answer: I found few documents, that describe the replay file, so from those you can figure out what kind of model they are using for commands etc.
They have to use some kind of command pattern. That means, that each command issued is capsuled in instance of command (or ICommand ). Thus, if everything in the game happens with those commands, you could just push them to the engine and see previous actions replayed ( ofcourse, initial position of everything has to be the same ).
This method is quite like the one that Half life uses for HLTV, it's simple, compact and efficient way to accomplish the streaming, replaying and undoing actions.
I found these documents, that you might be interested:

Fan made page about WC3 replay format
Replay format description
Replay actions description
Another format description


What are the standard border checks when traveling between Warsaw and Berlin by various types of transportation?

Question: I know that there is always a passport check when traveling by air. Is that the same case when traveling by train, bus, and car?
Comment: I'm especially interested in hearing from someone who has recently made this border crossing.
Answer: Poland is now in the Schengen border-free zone so there should not be any border check at all.
As noted in the comments, you will still need a valid ID to fly, but that is generally true even on domestic flights in Europe. It is purely for the sake of air security. That said, it is always best to have your passport when flying within Schengen as it is the most reliable form of identification in terms of being accepted as such.
As for travel by train or car, there should be no checkpoint (although some Schengen members have begun reinstating some checkpoints, Denmark for example). I've traveled between Prague and Berlin by train and there was no border check.
Comment: You will still require some form of valid ID to fly but that's it.
Comment: +1 Just to make another small detail explicit: The ID check is conducted by ground handling personnel, not by the police. You shouldn't have to interact with law enforcement or see your name checked against official databases like you would in a border check.
Comment: This is a valid answer. Just to clarify: during land-crossing the border you may be stopped by border  guard for control which does not differ much from the random control by police. This has never happened to me, though - chances are low.
Comment: I've heard recently of a border control in the bus crossing the border between Germany and Czech, but the bus was from Holland. Well, you know what they were looking for...
Answer: I travelled from Berlin to Poland (Krakow) by train.  I had to provide ID when purchasing the ticket (it was for a Eurail pass), but nothing after that.  At the border station (Szczecin), however, I had to switch trains - and there were a few transport police doing spot checks on people.  I don't really know why or what they were looking for, but they stopped the Brazilian girl I was travelling with, and not myself - so it seemed fairly random.
Personally if I'm travelling in a country which isn't my own, I always carry my passport.
You can read my blog post on the journey if you want a bit more detail.
Answer: I traveled from Berlin to Warsaw by bus with Ecolines in july 2012.
The bus departures around at 22:00 and it arrives to Warsaw at 6:00 (and it goes on to Lithuania or Kaliningrad).
At around 23:30 we were crossing the German-Polish border. There was nothing. I could see there are still offices or customs point. But no one there.
Answer: There's nothing special when crossing border between Poland and Germany. In facts, it may be even hard to notice if you are only a passenger. Nothing special happens on the border.
However, the police controls are intensified near the border. The police can hold you anywhere and control your documents, so you must have your passport (or personal ID, if your'e the EU citizen) with you always when you leave home. But near the border, the controls are more often, and often look like they are made on purpose (the police is expecting someone suspected to travel with given bus - you must give your personal data when buying ticket).
Once I've got 2 police controls for the same bus, middle in the night! All passengers were woken and had to give passports / ID-cards. However, it's hard to give any rule, you can travel 10 times and be never controlled. The bus driver has reacted as if it was nothing special.
Please note, it's not a border control. It's exactly the same as the routine police control when you go to the nearest shop to buy sandwitches.
Comment: And...do you really have to show your passport to the police to go buy food from a shop?
Comment: I think you mean "passport" and not "passsword"?
Comment: @MichaelHampton if they stop you, of course you must show it.
Comment: Yes, if you are stopped by police. But the way that you wrote it, it sounds as if it is _normal_ to have to show your passport to buy a sandwich! Do they have police in every shop, or is it random shops on different days?
Comment: @MichaelHampton no, I've written, when you go for the sandwitch. Inside you're usually safe ;) Actually, I haven't noticed it in Germany, but in Poland, before afternoon, the police often stop random people, they have probably a kind of number of people to control on daily basis...
Comment: OK, that makes much more sense :)
Answer: The police checks have been mentioned. It is also possible that Customs do check, but they are not interested per se in you as a person, but more what goods you bring along. Custom checks are still "legal" and possible within the Schengen area.
Comment: The distinction usually comes up with respect to Switzerland and its implementation of the Schengen agreement. All other Schengen countries were also part of the common market long before Schengen so that controls were already exceedingly rare. The main things customs could be looking for are illegal drugs, weapons and the like as you can import virtually anything for your own use (as opposed to commercial purposes) without duties or declaration.
Comment: Yeah, by thinking of it, that makes sense; which means I revealed which intra-Schengen border I mostly cross…


How to update OTA?

Question: Am using samsung galaxy y phone. I rooted it and installed Jelly Blast ROM in it. Also i changed the kernel . Now the problem is i can't be able to able to update my OTA even though a current update is available. My ROM is JELLYBLAST V3 and version is 3.0.0. Please help me hot to update it correctly.
Answer: Over-the-air (OTA) updates from your carrier or manufacturer cannot be directly applied on a device that has a custom ROM installed.  This is due to many possible incompatibilities between the stock firmware and whatever code base the custom ROM is using.  Therefore, most (if not all) custom ROMs intentionally disable any OTA checks that usually come standard with stock firmwares.
That said, some custom ROMs (e.g. CyanogenMod ROM) have developed their own OTA services. These are usually pull (i.e. phone checks for available update periodically) as opposed to push (manufacturer sends a message to phone to go out and download an update,) but generally work fairly well.  You should contact your ROM's developers to see if such a feature is available for you.
Alternatively, you can try to return your phone to its stock firmware, and then you'll be able to accept the carrier/manufacturer OTA update.
Comment: ..Thanks a lot.Could you please tell me whether i can update my ROM manually ? Tell me some sites where i can get such updates ?

How to update OTA?


How to use remote Ivy artefacts in Maven jobs with different binary repository managers?

Question: Consider the following situation:
<code>Alice -----              { Firewall }  Bob
|                                       |
Artifactory / Ivy repos  -  ---   --- Nexus / Maven Repos
</code>
That is, Alice uses Ant and Ivy to publish her artefacts in an Artifactory in Ivy repos, while Bob sits behind a firewall and builds Maven artefacts storing them in Maven repos in Nexus.
How can Alice provide her artefacts to Bob? (while both do not have to make large changes to their setup)
So far, I have considered the following options and decided to ask you before trying them out:
(1) Bob manages credentials to access Alice' artefacts in his build system and uses a Maven plugin for Ivy (which means configuration work for all relevant projects)
(2) Alice uses an Ant/Maven task to generate POMs for publishing/deployment step and offers an additional Maven repo, because Artifactory can support it different repo formats. This for Bob's most convenience though Alice needs to do configuration work of all relevant projects and there might be also other Bobs in future using other binary repository managers.
(3) Bob configures Nexus to be a proxy for Alice' Ivy repo (which is AFAIK was not possible as of 2014).
What would you do?
Answer: I'd go with (2). Since Bob has a more rigid setup (requires Maven metadata), and Alice can provide that (using more flexible Ant), that sounds like the easiest way to go.


Will I be able to get my second boarding pass without having to go through security again?

Question: As a birthday gift, my friend who works for Alaska Airlines is  buying my ticket from the US west coast to the US east coast, and all I had to do was buy my ticket from the East coast to Italy. I'll be switching from Alaska to a Delta flight in Boston. Since my tickets were bought seperately, will I have to re-enter security in order to get my Delta boarding pass? If not, where can I get my new boarding pass in the airport?
Comment: wouldn't be surprised if Delta offers online checkin, allowing you to print your boarding pass at home before you set out. Same with Alaskan. Not sure about rechecking your luggage, maybe you can get it cross checked, I know it's pretty normal in other countries.
Comment: @jwenting What is pretty normal? That luggage is automatically re-checked for a second flight with a separate ticket on another airline without involving the passenger?
Comment: As you are on a multi-ticket itinerary, you will have to re-check any hold luggage anyway, so getting your ticket is probably a small extra matter...?
Comment: @Neusser I've had that happen more than once, yes. Usually within an alliance, tbh.
Comment: Does Delta fly to Italy from Boston? Is this a new route? Or the codeshare on Alitalia?
Answer: In the US you can get boarding passes for all domestic flights either:

The classic way - at the airline check-in counter
at any of the self service kiosks once you enter the airport
get it printed when you online check-in on the airline website
on your phone in the airline's mobile app

So feel free to choose any option that suits your travel needs. BUT what would be a headache for you is your checked in luggage. I am 99% certain that your checked in luggage will not be transferred from the AA plane to the Delta plane. Instead you might have to collect your luggage from the baggage claim area and drop it off on the next airline's collection counter. If this does not seem to be a hassle for you then you are good to go, otherwise it's worth a try to call AA customer service and ask them about this particular scenario.
Now let's come to the more interesting part. If you are traveling just with a personal item + a hand carry you can USUALLY move on to the transit area once you arrive and wait for the next plane near the designated gate. BUT you would need to have the next boarding pass with you i.e. either check-in online and print it or use the airline app.
Comment: Keep in mind the OP is talking about Alaska Airlines as AA, not American Airlines which traditionally gets referred to as AA.  Delta and Alaskan have some code share and partnerships (though this is waning since DL now hubs out of Seattle), so the Alaska gate agent may check bags through.
Comment: Delta and Alaska  use adjacent terminals at Boston, so the OP can likely stay inside the secure area when changing flights, so no need to show the boarding pass until they get to the Delta gate.  And they could likely do the entire check in for the DL flight at the gate counter or the Delta service counter inside the sterile area (assuming only carry on or checked through bags).
Comment: @Tom you may be right. I based my answer on https://pro.delta.com/content/agency/mx/en/news/policy-update-archive/2016/january-2016/delta-confirms-through-check-baggage-policy--.html
Comment: @Tom Delta doesn't fly to Italy from Boston, so I would imagine this is the Alitalia flight to Rome (under a DL codeshare) operating out of terminal E. Last time I was at BOS the terminal C to E connector was not finished yet, but that was a while ago now.
Comment: @Calchas - I likewise haven't been there recently, but the airports website seems to indicate the two terminals are now connected inside the sterile area.


Google Sites File Attachment Date and Time

Question: I live in the Central Time Zone.  When I attach a file in my Google Site, it shows Pacific Time for the Attachment Time.  Is there anyway to have it show Central Time?
Answer: This is not a per-site setting, but a user setting (as a user of Sites). Follow these instructions to change your time-zone preference:

Go to http://sites.google.com (where you see the list of your sites)
Click on the settings (cog) button and choose 'User settings'.
The User settings page has a dropdown for choosing your time-zone. Change it to 'Central'.

From this point forward, all times within Google Sites should be presented in Central Time. Of course, other people might decide to look at your Site using a different time-zone, but that's, of course, their choice.


Plural of "fleece" when referring to fleece jacket

Question: Is the word fleece when referring to a fleece jacket also the plural form, or is that fleeces?
Answer: If you write fleece to mean "a jacket or other garment made from a soft warm fabric with a texture similar to sheep's wool," then the plural is fleeces; if you are asking the plural of fleece jacket, that is fleece jackets.
As fleece is also used when talking of a jacket made of fleece (whatever it is sheep's wool, or the soft warm fabric similar to sheep's wool), there is no need to say fleece jacket.
Answer: The plural of "fleece jacket" is "fleece jackets".
In English, unlike some other languages, when we make a noun plural we do not modify any associated adjectives. For example, "one hot day", "two hot days", NOT "two hots days".
If you were using "fleece" as a noun, then the plural would be "fleeces". "We used the fleeces from two sheep to make jackets. This was enough for three fleece jackets."


Is the Ask.com toolbar installed with Java considered spyware?

Question: I was wondering if the Ask.com toolbar is spyware. I play a game called Minecraft and it requires Java. The Java installer also installed the Ask.com toolbar. I want to play one of my favorite games but my step dad says this toolbar collects and transmits personal information such as bank account info, etc. What do I do in this situation?
Comment: For all intents and purposes, while I would label the Ask Toolbar as no less than adware, I wouldn't go as far as to say it's spyware and harvesting your information (Oracle is a fairly reputable company, although that is still no excuse for this toolbar bundling IMHO).  That being said, you can always uninstall it after the fact should you have concerns (esp. if you never end up using it).  The toolbar *is* optional and you *can* skip it during the installation.
Comment: @cybernard When you download the JRE from Oracle, during the install process, it asks you to install the "ask.com" toolbar. You can decline this step and still install the JRE or uninstall it after the install completes.
Comment: It should be pointed out that the ask toolbar waits 10 minutes before installing, meaning that it acts EXTREMELY like a virus and you have to remember to uninstall it.
Comment: Are we talking about "ask.com"?  What does ask have to do with Minecraft? Minecraft may need java, but what does that have to do with using ask?(assuming we are talking about "ask.com".)  I don't believe ask (.com) would risk user out-cry by searching your hard drive.  However, "ask" is completely unrelated to java or Minecraft. Please clarify does ask refer to "ask.com".
Comment: @ScottChamberlain  Oh I forgot about that.  I always automatically uncheck that so I never get it.
Comment: Unfortunately, due to Stack Exchange's [Terms of Service](https://stackexchange.com/legal) you must be at least 13 years old to ask or answer questions on this site. I will need to have your account deleted since you are under the age of 13, but if you would like, you can ask your dad to create an account and have him post questions for you. If you or your dad have any questions about this policy, please email email@example.com.
Comment: Related: http://superuser.com/questions/549028/how-can-i-prevent-ask-com-toolbar-from-being-installed-every-time-java-is-update
Answer: Just uninstall the ask toolbar from Control panel -> Programs -> Uninstall a Program
It will leave java installed so you can still play minecraft.
There are many kinds of bad software, and Ask Toolbar, while stupid, is not trying to steal your bank account info. It is a good idea to avoid installing software you don't need. Its a lot easier to keep a nice clean system free of the software that really IS trying to break into your bank account.
Comment: " is not trying to steal your bank account info" - You never know, these days... Would be a nice attack vector, given the number of installs gained through being shipped with Java by default...
Answer: Yes uninstall ask toolbar from uninstall a program, and when downloading a program read the complete installation instructions and uncheck programs not wanted. Pay attention. There may be more unwanted programs installed at the same time.
Answer: While AskToolbar is not a spyware it hijacks your browser's default homepage and search engines. Also many report that its removal is difficult (simply trying to uninstall it from Control Panel did not work for some people).
When Installing Java, make sure to clear the check box next to Install AskToolbar so that it doesn't install it.
There is a petition here to demand removal of AskToolbar from Java. Sign it here and pass it around:
http://change.org/petitions/oracle-corporation-stop-bundling-ask-toolbar-with-the-java-installer
Comment: Great work on the Petition! Now the Java control panel allows disabling 3rd party software installation prompts. (Under Advanced settings).
Answer: Looking online for a generally accepted standard on the behaviors of spyware is difficult.  An example of one is the "AntiSpyware Coalition" but their last "newsroom" update was in 2008.
Spyware generally attempts to install itself without your consent, and resists attempts to legitimately remove it.
The Java installer provides a check box allowing you to opt-out of Ask.com toolbar installation, and also, the uninstaller does cleanly remove the software (though I don't know if it resets default settings to the way they were before install).  So  by leaving the box checked and clicking Next in the installer you allowed the install.
I am not sure if the Ask.com toolbar collects personal information.  It's possible that it does - I believe toolbars can collect things in relation to the browser, such as URLs you type, browsing history, etc. though you would have to study the provided APIs by Internet Explorer in regard to third-party browser extensions to be sure.  Please note I do not know for a fact that the Ask.com toolbar does this.  The Ask.com EULA that you agree to by clicking on may permit it, and you should read it (I haven't).
You just have to pay attention to the installer dialogs instead of blindly clicking through it.
Anyway, as others have mentioned, you can just remove it from Start -> Control Panel -> Programs and Features and it is gone.


Why are all policemen rhinos?

Question: All the policemen and prison guards in Sing seem to be rhinoceroses. The only exception I noticed are the pilots of police helicopters that are pigs. As far as I can tell other professional and social groups consist of animals of different species, so why the exception for the police force? Is it a reference to some American stereotype?
Comment: My guess is because rhinos are seen as tough, fierce creatures that should be respected. They're also very large and intimidating when used as characters. As prison guards and policemen, you want that these types of features.
Comment: Kung fu Panda reference?   I've never heard of rhino's being used as a stereotype.   "He's a rhino" isn't something people would say though I suppose it could mean strong and a little dumb, but it's not used.   Rino is used to describe a republican who sometimes votes with the left.
Comment: @DustinDavis That makes sense, the problem is that, as I mentioned in my question, I didn't notice any other monospecies group. Taking this into account I would rather expect the police force to consists of animals of many different tough and fierce species, yet it seems that for some reason they chose to make an exception and used rhinos only.
Answer: Probably budget reasons.
The film had a 75 million dollar budget, 15% of which went to acquiring the rights to songs used. For comparison, Coco cost 175 million; Finding Dory cost 200 million; Moana, Frozen and Zootopia cost 150 million; and Tangled cost $260 million.
If you're operating on a smaller budget, it makes sense to reuse character designs and their corresponding models and textures wherever it doesn't impact the story. The police force is secondary to the main plot, and are already somewhat of a uniform group, so they're a logical group of characters to save money on. My guess is that the helicopter pilots are pigs because it was easier to model and animate a pig piloting a helicopter than it would have been to make a rhino do it.

Why are all policemen rhinos?


How to restore or add the System variable - Windows 10

Question: I've installed Ruby and in the User Variables, I can see that Path = C:\Ruby22-x64\bin
However, when I run ruby in the cmd, it says 'ruby' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.
I've accidentally deleted the Path in System Variables and I think that's why it's not working.
Could anyone guide me on how to restore or add the Path in the System Variable?
Thank you in advance!
Comment: this has been answered in http://superuser.com/questions/973153/standard-value-of-path-variable-windows-10
Answer: The default value is:
<code>%SystemRoot%\system32;%SystemRoot%;%SystemRoot%\System32\Wbem;%SYSTEMROOT%\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\
</code>


Does putting an article I wrote on university site conflict with IEEE publishing rights?

Question: I have published a few months ago a paper for an IEEE Conference, the paper got published and it is indexed in the IEEEXplore. I have received an email from a research coordinator at the university that I am currently working on, asking for the online printed version of it. In the affiliation of the article was written the name of this institution, but I wonder if they are going to put in to be available online for free at the university webpage. In that case, that would not cause a problem with the publishing rights of IEEE?
Answer: Whether your institution plans to put it online is a question you have to ask them.
Whether they are allowed to put it online depends on the policies of the journal where it was published. You will need to read the copyright  transfer agreement that you accepted when the paper was published.
Comment: This is not necessarily accurate, if your institution has a certain type of open access policy.  See my answer for more details.
Answer: IEEE policy explicitly allows the author, their institution, or other pre-print repository such as arXiv to distribute the final preprint version of any document, but not the version from IEEE Xplore.  Scientifically, there is no reason to differentiate between the two, so as long as you send the final preprint version, it accomplishes the task of spreading information and there is no conflict with IEEE policy.
Answer: Many universities now have an open-access policy that reserves a prior non-exclusive license to distribute any research done at their institution.  It is likely that your university has such a policy, and that is the reason for the request.  You should check with your university (or look at this list).
If such a policy is involved, the natural legal question is then

What happens if an author at such a university then signs an agreement transferring copyright to the publisher?

This has been considered in great detail by Eric Priest in a study published in the Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property, Vol. 10, p. 377, 2012.  This seems to be the most authoritative work available on the matter.  His conclusion is that the non-exclusive license granted by Harvard-style open access policies will remain in effect in such cases, at least under US law.  This is based on a careful analysis of section 205(e) of the US Copyright Act, which reads:

(e) Priority Between Conflicting Transfer of Ownership and Nonexclusive License.— A nonexclusive license, whether recorded or not, prevails over a conflicting transfer of copyright ownership if the license is evidenced by a written instrument signed by the owner of the rights licensed or such owner's duly authorized agent, and if—
  (1) the license was taken before execution of the transfer; or
  (2) the license was taken in good faith before recordation of the transfer and without notice of it.
Comment: @ff524 The title of the question is a bit different from the question itself, but both ask for legality of an article being on the university website. And this answer surely treats the case when the university has an OA policy. So it is quite directly an answer to the question. Or do I miss something?
Comment: This doesn't seem to address the question that was asked. The OP doesn't indicate that the university holds any copyright interest in the work at all.
Comment: @ff524 Fair enough; I have edited the answer.  I can name 200 universities that make these requests because they have an OA policy.  Can you name one that makes such requests and does not have an OA policy?

I think that most of the people arriving here will be from institutions with such a policy, and I strongly suspect that includes the OP.  In that case, they have a prior license, whether the OP knows it or not.
Comment: My university has no OA policy. I routinely get requests for copies of my publications, similar to what the OP describes. Most often, the person requesting it wants to look up some details about it for a report to funders (industry and/or government). I also get requests to post my publications in various institutional repositories (again, mostly to show to funders).
Comment: @tohecz the question asks whether posting on university site conflicts with IEEE policies. While this answer is broadly relevant to the implications of posting a paper on a university site, it is only tangentially relevant to the question about IEEE policy (which actually does not conflict with institutional OA policy).


Extracting data from a TWRP backup

Question: How can I extract individual files from a backup created with TWRP? I've come across this answer, which is about extracting an APK from the system partition. However, I want to extract files from /data, which gets split across several files in the backup.
Answer: cat data.ext4.win??? | tar xvfi -
What this does is concatenate each file matching the pattern data.ext4.win??? and then pipe the concatenated files to tar for extraction. the - as the filename tells tar to extract from stdin. The i option ignores zero blocks which will be in between each archive file concatenated.
In this example I used the ext4 formatted data partition. Change data.ext4 to match the partition you are extracting.
Disclaimer: This has not been tested in a windows environment.

For a less hacky solution found here
for f in data.ext4.win???; do tar xvf "$f"; done
This is a bit simpler without relying on the ignore zeros option of tar to operate properly

Edited to reflect davidgo's comment.
31-Jan-2020 Edited to reflect Code Bling's comments.
17-Feb-2021 Edited to reflect alecxs's comments.
Comment: Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been [moved to chat](https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/129757/discussion-on-answer-by-johnathon-havens-extracting-data-from-a-twrp-backup).
Answer: The files created by TWRP with a *.win or *.win??? extension are tar archives. If a partition gets split across multiple files, each is a tar archive in its own right.
There is a slight difference, depending on the TWRP version used to create the backup. The watershed seems to be 3.2.* or before.
If the backup was created with an older version:
The files are in standard TAR format which any Unix-like OS should understand. Simply rename each file, giving it a .tar extension, and open it in your favorite archive tool (Engrampa on Ubuntu MATE has worked well for this).
If the backup was created with a recent version:
The file format uses custom TAR extensions, which the standard tar tools cannot process, see https://github.com/TeamWin/Team-Win-Recovery-Project/issues/1472. You need to extract the file with TWRP's own flavor of tar:

If the backup is no longer on the device, copy the required file back. (Should work on any device with TWRP, regardless of where the backup was created.)
Boot into TWRP.
adb shell into the device.
cd to a folder where you want to store your extracted files (I recommend creating a temporary one, extracting files there and then copying them to their intended destination – gives you some security against accidentally overwriting parts of your filesystem).
Extract those files with TWRP's custom tar build:

tar -tvf data.ext4.win000 will list all files in that particular backup archive (use grep to search for something particular).
tar -xvf data.ext4.win000 path/to/file will extract the specified file. In my case, TAR removed the leading / from file names and placed the extracted file in the current folder, with the path appended.

Another option would be to build TWRP's custom tar tool on a system of your choice, then do the extraction on that system.
Comment: On Ubuntu opening them with double click errors: format not supported but I can extract them with `tar -xvf` And on Windows I can't extract them with 7-Zip unfortunately.
Comment: tar: Ignoring unknown extended header keyword 'TWRP.security.e4crypt'
the command line client is successful in extracting files, but spams the above warning.
Comment: I don't know what's changed in the last few years, but extracting a specified file to a relative path isn't working for me using the custom tar that is in twrp-3.6.2_9-0-hima.img from inside an adb shell. Without the leading slash on the specified file's path, I get an error that the specified file is "not in archive". *With* the leading slash, it extracts the file to the absolute path. Using the -C argument also makes no difference.
I've provided more complete examples here: https://github.com/TeamWin/Team-Win-Recovery-Project/issues/1472#issuecomment-1221440111
Answer: Try BinWalk, it's a fast, easy to use tool for analyzing, reverse engineering, and extracting firmware images. and for more information take a look at this Quick-Start-Guide.
Answer: Just extract it with winrar to a folder on desktop and that's it

Extracting data from a TWRP backup


O2 code and cat efficiency code

Question: On my 2005 dodge ram Daytona I have two codes, P0133 and P0420.  Can a low cat efficiency be due to a slow responding o2 sensor?
Comment: Has the O2 sensor ever been replaced? Has any exhaust work been done to the car recently?
Comment: No but I'm going to replace it this weekend.   No exhaust work has been done.
Answer: Yes, the P0420 catalytic efficiency can be caused by a bad O2 sensor.
But a P0133 refers to the front O2 sensor so things are a little more complicated than when people refer to a bad rear O2 sensor.
Your front O2 sensor is probably bad (P0133) and your cat and/or your rear O2 sensor may be bad (P0420).
One cheap test for the cat is using a laser infrared thermometer to measure the before cat and after cat temps.  Point it at the pipe right before the inlet to the cat and then the pipe right after the cat.  I don't know exactly what your numbers should be, but you should see a difference on the order of 100 degrees fahrenheit.
If you do see a temp change, your rear O2 sensor is probably bad.  If there is no temp change, there is a chance the rear O2 may be bad, but maybe not.
N.B. for others: cat refers to the catalytic converter; front means before cat; rear means after cat
Also check out this related question.
Answer: Yes. The rear sensor is used to calculate the difference in exhaust gas quality before and after the cat. In the simplest terms the ECM compares the voltages of the front and rear O2 sensors and if they're too similar, you get the P0420 code. Now, because the front sensor is giving faulty data to the ECM (P0133), the formula the ECM uses to calculate cat efficiency will yield inaccurate results. In this case, because the front O2 sensor sends garbage and the rear may be sending accurate data, it looks like the cat isn't working properly.
It's basically a case of the front O2 sensor lying to the ECM and causing (potentially) phantom errors further along.
The usual fix for a P0133 is to replace the sensor and inspect the wiring.
Comment: OK thanks for the info.   Front o2 sensor will be replaced this weekend and we'll see what happens.

O2 code and cat efficiency code


Icinga (nagios) ignoring forced checks

Question: I have a strange problem: Icinga (nagios) doesn't run check_nt which I've set up on a debian box.
What I do is that I schedule a forced check of both NSClient_version and PING. If I look in the log file, I can see that both commands are scheduled to run:
[1372774536] EXTERNAL COMMAND: SCHEDULE_FORCED_SVC_CHECK;sqlnota03.dbb.dk;NSClient_version;1372781738
[1372774536] EXTERNAL COMMAND: SCHEDULE_FORCED_SVC_CHECK;sqlnota03.dbb.dk;PING;1372781738

After having switched on debugging, I get this:
[1372774536.502948] [016.2] [pid=3840] Found another service check event for service 'NSClient_version' on host 'sqlnota03.dbb.dk' @ Tue Jul  2 17:47:21 2013
[1372774536.502973] [016.2] [pid=3840] Keeping original service check event (ignoring the new one).

I've gone over the configuration many times and couldn't find any errors and Icinga reports that the configuration is ok when running icinga -v <icinga.cfg>.
Is there anyone who can spot what I am doing wrong?
The configuration is:
define host {
    use        windows-server
    host_name  <the host>
    address    192.168.1.61
    hostgroups mssql, termsrv, windows, nsclient_version
}

define service {
    use generic-service
    hostgroup_name nsclient_version
    service_description NSClient_version
    servicegroups nsclient_version
    check_command check_nt!CLIENTVERSION
}

# 'check_nt' command definition
define command {
    command_name    check_nt
    command_line    check_nt command_line /usr/lib/nagios/plugins/check_nt -p12489 -s <snip> -H '$HOSTADDRESS$' -v '$ARG1$' '$ARG2' '$ARG3'
}

It seems that there is a service check stuck somewhere in the system that keeps Icinga from running a new one?!?
I've replaced the check_nt command that should be run with a small script that just touches a local file in /tmp to see if it is being run at all. This isn't the case.
Edit
I used the old nagios web interface to schedule a new check and (finally) got this:
Processing: 'SERVICE ALERT: sqlnota03.db

b.dk;NSClient_version;$SERVICESTATE$;$SERVICESTATETYPE$;$SERVICEATTEMPT$;The com
mand defined for service NSClient_version does not exist
Now I'm unsure what the message means - that the executable check_nt can't be found or something else...?
Comment: Did you try turning on debugging in the NSClient to see if it sheds any light?
Comment: No need to. The command is never executed. I also tried to fire up Wireshark and verified this - there is no communication at all. Running ``check_nt`` by hand works.
Answer: I found the error.
It was a combination of two things:

Icinga-web didn't schedule the checks properly. For some reason it just ignored the check command (I'll look into that later).
Once I got a check scheduled, it was clear that the path to command_line parameter was wrong.

So I changed this:
command_line    check_nt command_line /usr/lib/nagios/plugins/check_nt -p12489 -s <snip> -H '$HOSTADDRESS$' -v '$ARG1$' '$ARG2' '$ARG3'

To this:
command_line /usr/lib/nagios/plugins/check_nt -p12489 -s <snip> -H '$HOSTADDRESS$' -v '$ARG1$' '$ARG2' '$ARG3'

I am surprised how much time it took to make Icinga run an actual check so I could diagnose the error.
Comment: Checking if commands are executed is targetted in various wiki articles. Also how to manually run those checks. https://wiki.icinga.org/display/testing/Icinga+Plugin+Testing

Icinga (nagios) ignoring forced checks


How to find out the backdoor on your computer with network monitor?

Question: As a personal user, how can we detect the path of the backdoor or virus and remove it with network monitor?
Answer: Wow. That's a vague question. What operating system? What do you mean "with network monitor?" I'm going to assume your question is this:
How can I tell if something has installed a backdoor on one of my systems over the network?
There's two main tools you'll use: First, nmap to scan the system and see if it's listening on any ports it shouldn't be. Second, ethereal/wireshark/tcpdump to look at the network traffic leaving the system and see if there's anything strange in there.
Answer: You basically can't.
If it's a decent backdoor, it's not detectable at all from within the system and the only way to even suspect there's a backdoor installed is by doing as Schof wrote and monitor the network traffic from outside...
...and that will most likely not give away much more than suspicion as it's likely to use outbound HTTP or HTTPS anyway. The system then obviously has to be wiped, or rather, it should have been wiped the second you suspected there's something wrong with it. There's no real business case in trying to hunt down and identify a backdoor unless that's what the general business plan is or this is some kind of high-security facility where identifying some kind of culprit is of importance. And if it is, you call in the experts ^^
Now, a stupid backdoor however might be detected by your favorite anti-malware application.