Why does Ubuntu use Launchpad instead of GitHub or Bitbucket?

Question: I've been wondering why most Ubuntu projects use Launchpad.net instead of GitHub for the Version Control and bug tracking system. Is there a specific reason as to why Ubuntu uses launchpad (and hence bzr)?
Answer: This list contains the reasons why it did not use back then and why it should not move now

Launchpad used Bazaar which was
developed long back. GitHub did not
exist that time (as Robin said)
Launchpad was launched in 2004 and
GitHub in 2008

GitHub is not open source. GitLab or
Gitorious would be a better choice
in this case. I know Launchpad was
not FOSS initially, but it was
released later

Initially GitHub did not have many
features which Launchpad had, like
teams. GitHub does not have a build system
integrated with it, like PPA

Many projects in Launchpad heavily
make use of the "Merge request" functionality
which has very basic support in GitHub. It
is called "Pull request" but Launchpad has better
features and more detailed than GitHub

GitHub's Bug Tracker is next to useless (this
may have changed by 2021). My pet project for
a bug tracker might be more useful

Launchpad is owned by Canonical and they pay
the developers. They have the complete control
over their product. GitHub also is owned by
GitHub/Microsoft.

GitHub uses Git for tracking releases using
branches and tags. In Launchpad, which uses Bazaar
also has this feature, but Launchpad explicitly
enforces this outside the source control system.
This would be a bit more easier for people who
have to handle versions but don't want to dig
inside the source code.

Just a small note: Github vs. Launchpad and git vs. bzr is sort of religious topic. I want to stay away from this endless discussion. I use which fits the use-case.
Answer: I guess the simple answer is that Launchpad does a lot of stuff that other systems don't (and this was even more true back when Ubuntu started using Launchpad).
Some examples:

A bug tracker that lets you track bugs in multiple contexts (e.g. a bug that affects multiple packages, or affects both a package and its upstream, or the same package in multiple distributions).
A web based translation tool.
A tool to manage the package archive and build binary packages for the various supported architectures.

While code hosting is an important feature of Launchpad, it is not the only one and it wasn't the first feature Ubuntu used.
As for upstream projects related to Ubuntu, there are benefits to using the same system as Ubuntu itself.  Just one example is tracking bugs in both upstream and packaged contexts.
Answer: I actually think it's more like "why do they use bzr, and hence launchpad"? Canonical invested money and people into developing bzr and its precursor baz, long before GitHub existed, and they probably don't want to throw away all of that accumulated expertise and investment now. Indeed, baz was started before git existed.
Also, with Launchpad being controlled by them, they can more easily add features that make sense for them - whereas GitHub is not even open source, and certainly not under their control!
Answer: Zed Shaw covered this topic very well in a recent blog post, Launchpad vs. Github/SysAdmin vs. Coder.

I saw this blog post by lvh asking the simple question, "Why do people hate launchpad so much?" It was something I also wondered until I started tinkering with forking NetBSD pkgsrc and went to research various package managers. When I was going through all the various package managers I finally realized that the difference between Launchpad and Github is actually the difference between System Administrators and Software Developers.

I don't entirely agree with his assessments of Launchpad's features outside of code management. As a developer, I do prefer Github's repo view, but Launchpad's bug tracker is far, far superior to Github's.


Why is water transparent?

Question: Some substances like copper sulfate for example have vivid colors. But why is water transparent? Does it not emit any visual light from the electromagnetic spectrum?
Comment: did you mean "colorless"?
Comment: A portion of the explanation can be found at [this site](http://www.webexhibits.org/causesofcolor/5B.html).
Comment: @NicolauSakerNeto So it is because of the reflection of the light and the interactions between the photons with light. But however, I thought water was transparent. Take tap water for example. Why transparent? I understand why it is blue (because of reflections and adsorptions) but how & why is transparent?
Answer: Water is not, in fact, colourless, but is slightly blue. As you can see below, in the visible range, there is slightly more absorption toward the long wavelengths, so more blue light makes it through than redder light. However, the absorption is very low in the visible range so the blue colour is faint and not apparent unless looking through a significant thickness of water. The reason things like $\ce{Cu^2+}$ solutions appear so vividly blue is because they also absorb red light, but very strongly, so a good deal more blue light than red passes through the solution. (see here)
I'm not sure exactly what you mean by transparent here, but if you mean why isn't water opaque, because water doesn't absorb much visible light (as described above), and doesn't contain any non-uniformities (like particles or the fat globules in milk) that can cause scattering, photons can travel through water in a straight line and most make it through without being absorbed, making water colourless (when looking through a small quantity) and transparent, much as air is.

Source
Comment: That was kind of my point. Transparency generally refers to the ability to pass light without scattering. If you have enough of something that it can prevent light from passing due to absorption, it's said to be opaque. If you have less and some light gets through without scattering, then it's partially transparent. Transparency is a property of a certain system, not an intrinsic properly of a material. Even  metals and such can be said to be partially transparent in thin films.
Comment: As for the transparency, water is not really transparent, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_sea
Comment: @MichaelD.M.Dryden Thank You for clearing this up.

Why is water transparent?


What are best practices for managing terminology changes in legacy software?

Question: In a big redesign, there can be terminology changes and mapping to backend entities that needs to happen. What are the best practices for doing this? Also, for making documentation consistently searchable
Answer: Assuming that you haven't already done so, it would be important to go back to the data and look at the information architecture to take time and document the structure and relationships between entities.
This will form the basis for the 'what is' state of things at the, then you need to do the same for the 'to be' state of the future system and map the relationships and structures that are consistently, while coming up with new terminologies and conventions for things that are different.
The process that you go through with the mapping, when documented, will provide the template for a glossary or dictionary between the 'old' and 'new' terms.
As with most documentation, anything that is 'live' (i.e. easily accessible from a central location with up-to-date information and 'living' (i.e. it is expected to change and evolve) is going to be easiest to maintain and reference.


Birkhoff ergodic theorem and the measure of the bad points

Question: In the Birkhoff ergodic theorem we have a PMPS $(X,B,\mu,T)$ and that for any $f\in L^1(X,\mu)$ $\frac{1}{N}\sum_{n=0}^{N-1}f(T^n x)\to \int f \, d\mu,$ in measure, in $L^1$-norm and $\mu$-a.e.
My question is: what is, given $\epsilon>0,$ the estimation of $\mu\left(x:\left|\frac{1}{N}\sum_{n=0}^{N-1}f(T^n x)-\int f \, d\mu\right|>\epsilon\right)$ when $N\in \mathbb{N}$ is big?
I am looking for a proof or reference that I have not yet found.
Answer: The key words here are "large deviations";  large deviations theory addresses exactly this question.  The answer depends quite a bit on the specific measure and system in question, but roughly speaking one may say the following: if the system displays a sufficient amount of hyperbolic behaviour (for example, an Axiom A system, or a system with the specification property, which is a sort of uniform topological mixing) and if the measure $\mu$ has some sort of Gibbs property relative to a potential function $\phi$, then the measure of the set you describe decays exponentially in $N$, and the rate of exponential decay depends in a precise manner on the topological pressure function.
Let me state a concrete series of theorems to make the above more precise.  Let $(X,T)$ be a transitive Axiom A system, and let $\phi\colon X\to \mathbb{R}$ be Hölder continuous.  Then by a result of Bowen ("Some systems with unique equilibrium states", 1974/5, or if you prefer, "Equilibrium states and the ergodic theory of Axiom A diffeomorphisms"), there is a unique invariant measure $\mu$ that maximises the quantity $h_\mu(T) + \int\phi\,d\mu$.  (This maximum value is the topological pressure $P(\phi)$.)  Moreover, $\mu$ has the following Gibbs property: if $B(x,n,\delta)$ denotes the set of points $y$ such that $d(f^kx,f^ky)\leq \delta$ for all $0\leq k\leq n$, then there is a constant $K(\delta)$ such that
$$
(*) \qquad
\frac 1{K(\delta)} \leq \frac{\mu(B(x,n,\delta))}{e^{-nP(\phi) + S_n\phi(x)}} \leq K(\delta)
$$
for every $(x,n)\in X\times \mathbb{N}$.
Now a 1990 result of Lai-Sang Young on large deviations shows that for a system $(X,T)$ as above and a measure $\mu$ satisfying $(*)$, one has
$$
\lim_{N\to\infty} \frac 1N \log \mu\{x\mid |\frac 1N S_N f(x) - \int f\,d\mu| \geq \epsilon\} = \sup \{ h_\nu(T) + \int \phi \,d\nu - P(\phi) \mid \nu\in \mathcal{M}_T(X), \left|\int f\,d\nu - \int f\,d\mu\right| \geq \epsilon\} < 0.
$$
This behaviour is typical in the uniformly hyperbolic setting.  In the non-uniformly hyperbolic setting, there are also examples where the rate of decay is slower than exponential.  For example, this occurs in the case of the absolutely continuous invariant measure for the Manneville-Pomeau map.
Comment: This is very interesting. I guess that if $f$ belong to an ad-hoc Banach space with norm $||,$ then there must exist a constant $A=A(\phi)>0$ such that $\sup\{h_{\nu}(T)+\int \phi d \nu - P(\phi)| \nu \in M_{T}(X), \left| \int f d\nu - \int f d\mu\right|\geq \epsilon\}=- \frac{A}{p(|f|)} q(\epsilon),$ for $p,q$ monic polynomials.
Comment: At least, there must be an explicit dependence of this constant $<0$ you mention and the regularity of $f.$
Answer: There's no estimate that works in general.  Krengel, "On the speed of convergence in the ergodic theorem", shows that for any ergodic transformation of $[0,1]$ and any sequence $(a_n)$ converging to $0$, no matter how slowly, there is a set $A$ such that
$$\limsup_{N\rightarrow\infty}\frac{1}{a_N}|A_N\chi_A(x)-\mu(A)|=\infty$$
for almost every $x$, where $A_N=\frac{1}{N}\sum_{i<N}f(T^ix)$.  (The same function $\chi_A$ has similarly slow convergence in the $L^p$ norm for all $p\in[1,\infty)$ as well.)
As Vaughn Climenhaga has already pointed out, many additional assumptions have consequences for the rate of convergence.  If you can't work with one of those assumptions, there's a big literature on the oscillations of the ergodic averages, both as "oscillations" and as "upcrossings", and those results suffice for many purposes.
Comment: Thanks. By the way, a stupid comment. It is $A_N f=\frac{1}{N}\sum_{i<N} f(T^{i}x).$
Comment: Question: Can you say something about the oscillation of $\chi_A$? I guess that the set $A$ must have some nice (''bad'') properties.
Comment: @user39115: I don't know Krengel's construction in any detail (and it's not a simple one), but my guess is that the oscillations aren't doing anything very interesting.  A very quick glance suggests that he inserts a something like a single oscillation for each $a_N$ in a thinned subsequence.


Submitting Canada visa application for Holiday in Canada

Question: How possible is this ?  I have an invitation For canada, but can this be possible , going to submit a TRV application without Invitation? i.e I just book a hotel and have enough bank statements balances etc, Say i am going for just a holiday?
I am from Nigeria
Answer: A letter of invitation is not mandatory - if you don't have personal connections in Canada then you can't supply one. What is necessary, in common with visitor visas to pretty much any destination, is being able to convince an immigration officer that you have ties—such as a job, home, financial assets or family—that will take you back to your home country at the end of your visit
and that you have enough money for your stay.
https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/visit-canada/eligibility.html


Universal Business Listing

Question: For SEO purposes, would it make sense to register with Universal Business Listing and buy a package from them?
Or it's just going to be a waste of money?
Answer: It's hard to determine whether or not buying a package from Universal Business Listing will  (significantly) boost your rankings. I very much doubt it. Do your competitors have a listing? Is it normal in your business to have a listing there? Then you can consider it.
Business listings are old school
The thing is: registering for business listings is kind of old school. Back in the early 2000's this would really help. Nowadays Search Engines have advanced so much the importance of a diverse high-quality link profile is very important. If you're depending on this one business listing to get you into the competitive rankings you can forget it. If it's part of a larger strategy you can consider it as an option. In the end it's up to you. I would check out how much traffic this listing could potentially get you.
Please note:
Regarding linkbuilding and SEO: before spending any money on links, I'd first try to deplete all the "free" links. Links you get because you offer great content, a great service or something similar.
Comment: It's actually no old school, yelp.com is a very popular business listing website. Microformats have become standard on many of the popular listing websites, and Google recognizes listings, and uses them to help determine your ranking in Local listings. They are referred to as citations in regards to local SEO. If you can afford to buy them why wouldn't you want your business listed on more websites?
Answer: This was initially going to be a comment to Chris Travers' answer, but it's gotten long enough to justify making it its own answer.
Local search is one thing, but the majority of UBL's advertised directories are low quality link farms.
And despite UBL advertising Dun & Bradstreet as one of the publishers they have an "agreement" with, UBL itself has no listing in D&B, and neither are many of their clients, which is pretty odd since most businesses don't have to do anything (except actually exist financially) to automatically get picked up by credit databases like D&B.
This brings me to the next point, any popular local search service, like Google/Yahoo/Bing, or branded services like Blackberry Maps, etc. sources their data from data aggregators, who in turn do data mining from:

public databases, e.g. business license databases
credit databases
trade directories & yellow pages
other established business directories, e.g. the Better Business Bureau, chamber of commerce, etc.
the databases of  other datamining companies (many of which operate web crawlers)

So most businesses will automatically show up in these local search services as well as popular business listings.
Even if you change your address, you typically just need to follow the normal address change procedures: update your business registration, file a change of address request at the post office, update your billing addresses, and update your address on your website(s) and business collateral.
The only business directories that won't have your correct info will be the ones that nobody uses because their directory is small and incomplete/inaccurate due to requiring each business to manually add themselves.
So instead of paying for a directory listing service, I'd spend that money on advertising or premium listings on popular local search/business directory services. If you're worried about not being listed in a popular directory, do a search for yourself on it. Chances are, if you're a legitimate business, you're gonna be listed there.
If you're not listed in a particular directory, this is something you can easily correct for free. If you're a new business and find yourself missing from many directories, you could expedite your listing by increasing your exposure:

manually add yourself to the top directories
join the BBB or local chamber of commerce
get a company credit card, and use it
participate in trade organizations
send out press releases
establish an online presence (help out those web crawlers by having good semantic markup, e.g. clearly marking the company address with <address> and using the hCard microformat which Google, Facebook, etc. can pick up), and use traditional SEO techniques to get yourself out there.
Comment: Thank you for such a detailed response!
Where should I send out press releases to?
Is it free?
Comment: @vlevsha: Typically, you would develop contacts in the media and send the press releases to them, or otherwise hire a PR firm. However, these days there are paid and free sites where you can submit your press releases to; however, I've never tried them, so I can't vouch for their effectiveness. If I were you, I'd search or ask about this on [OnStartups](http://answers.onstartups.com/questions).
Answer: I would draw your attention to the SEOMoz eye tracking study http://www.seomoz.org/blog/eyetracking-google-serps
to indicate the increasing value on search results of local business listings, not to mention the leads they generate on a growing basis on mobile, social and GPS. In many mobile results, users see nothing other than these business listings, so I do not quite understand the response that business listings are "old school" for ranking results. Local search in fact is one of the hottest growing sectors of SEO.
Also, evidence from many studies will indicate the Search Engines have not advanced as far as one might think in the area of business listings, at least as far as accuracy is involved. Every audit we do, and those of our competitors as well, indicates 20%-40% of any business's listings are wrong, incomplete or missing altogether. So managing your business listing data is really a foundational SEO process that needs attention.
Just to add to what appears to be a misconception - UBL is not a Directory, it syndicates business profiles to all relevant search platforms on your behalf. It does not do that phony link-building tactic of manufactured directory-placement that was a thing of the 90s. The value of UBL's syndication is that sites like Google see the same deep profile data accurately consistent across genuine citation sources and ranks the results accordingly. Compare the traffic from business listings to that from advertising, then compare the cost. You will quickly see why SEOs almost universally use a business listing service.
Answer: I'd say whether or not UBL is worth it depends on whether or not you target local traffic. As I understand it, it's benefit is by design almost exclusively for local SEO and will not likely give you a noticeable boost in national or worldwide SERPs.
Comment: Local traffic is exactly what I target.
Thank you!

Universal Business Listing


Frequency for UHF hot spot in the US

Question: Approximately what frequency should my UHF Pi-Star be set on in the US? Is there a standard?
Answer: Given that it has been established that there is no 'standard', the main criteria for picking a frequency are:

Find a frequency where the mode you are using is permitted
Find a frequency where you will not interfere with an existing user of the band
Make sure you use as little power on your handheld as necessary to get into your hotspot. The hotspot is already probably only using around 10mW or similar, so it is not really the problem.

So the thing you are most worried about is that your handheld is going to be interfering with other users of the band.
I would recommend finding a frequency in the 'digital modes' portion of the band, and see if there are any people already using it. If so, pick another, until you find one where your handheld transmitting on 500mW will not bother anyone.
Remember to turn your handheld power down as low as it will go, while still being able to get into your hotspot.
EDIT: It should be obvious, but in case it isn't ... please avoid the part of any band that is allocated to satellite operation. Satellites are very low signal devices (due to power and size constraints), and so even a very low signal transmission can ruin someone's day if they are trying to communicate with a satellite.
Answer: A web search revealed nothing, so I would suspect that there is no standard UHF frequency for D-STAR hot spots, in Kansas or anywhere else.  The ARRL Band Plan for the 70cm band reveals that 433–435 MHz is for "Auxiliary/repeater links", which seems like the category that hot spots would fall in.  Typical UHF/VHF channel spacing is 20 kHz, and you wouldn't want your signal to bleed into another channel outside the 433–435 sub-band, so I'd pick a frequency somewhere in the range of 433.02–434.98 Mhz, on a multiple of 20 kHz.  (433.02, 433.04, 433.06, ..., 434.94, 433.96, 433.98)  That gives quite a few possibilities.
That advice is for the US.  You didn't ask about Canada, but just to make this a more complete answer I checked the RAC UHF band plan, which says that 433–434.8 MHz is for digital modes, including links, and that the recommended channel spacing there is 25 kHz.
Answer: Be in a legal band allowed by your license.
Follow any band plan that has been published for your area.
Do not use a frequency that interferes with others. I want to emphasize this one. There have been reports of interference between hotspots and satellite links. Just because you don't hear anyone on the frequency this instant does not mean someone does't already use it.
Before I get a large number of comments, "no one owns any frequency", that is true, but it is also true that you don't have to be a self center jerk believing you can interfere with others any time you feel like it. I'd like to think that most Amateur Radio operators are considerate.

Frequency for UHF hot spot in the US


what is ip 10.1.1.130 to which seems monitored by NT Kernel & System process on Windows 7?

Question: I used netstat to see what is happening with network connections, and I see this weird ip address somehow listed together with PID 4 "NT Kernel & System", whatever that might be. Netstat describes it as a "local address" and there is no "foreign address" involved (btw, what are local and foreign addresses anyway?) In the column to the right there is neither "listening" nor "established" record, so no record at all there.
Answer: Local and foreign addresses relate to IP address ranges.  Local address or private is an IP within the specified range for internal netowrking only, its not routable on the open public/foreign internet.  Typically a private/local IP will be used on a home NAT network.  Wikipedia - Private Network
Answer: By "Local," netstat is referring to IP addresses that are bound locally to your system.  By the same token, "Foreign" means IP addresses that are not bound locally to your system.
Your IP address, 10.1.1.130, is also a Private IP address.  On a side-note, RFC 1918 specifies which IP addresses are reserved for Private use (10.1.1.130 is a Private IP address):
  RFC 1918 - Address Allocation for Private Internets
  http://rfc1918.openrfc.org/
10.1.1.130 is probably your local IP address.  Although it is possible to have multiple IP addresses bound locally to one of your system's interfaces, most users only ever get one IPv4 address (and lately they may also get an IPv6 address too as the internet slowly transitions over to IPv6).
"Listening" means that a daemon (or Service) is actively waiting for connections to the identified TCP port.  A good example of a daemon would be Apache HTTPd, which usually listens for new connections on TCP port 80 for HTTP requests (and 443 for HTTPS requests), then services them accordingly (sending web pages or error codes as per the protocol, depending on what was requested).
"Established" means that an active connection is being serviced.


Was the tower of Babel a ziggurat?

Question: I've read a couple commentators who depend fairly heavily in their interpretations of the tower of Babel narrative on the assumption that the tower being built was a ziggurat; but I'm not sure how this predicate is reached. How safe is this assumption? Are there good reasons for thinking that it was a ziggurat?
Answer: Well, the reading of the ToB as a Ziggurat is more or less an example of the duck test: if it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck...
Stepped pyramids were essentially the only really tall built items of the ancient Near East. (Egypt is not in the field of view here.) So, if you are going to talk about a tall thing, a thing reaching towards heaven, that's what you get.
However, this does not give us much interpretational traction. Whether it's a ziggurat or an anachronistic copy of the Sears Tower, it's a tall thing built by people. Why is it any better or worse for the populace to build in the form of a typical stepped temple than any other form? The plain sense of the text is that the offense was in the ambition, not in the geometry.
If, on the other hand, you're in the mood for a naturalistic interpretation, what you have here is a 'just so story' that explains the multiplicity of human languages. "Why do we have to cope with all these languages? Why can't those Hittites just speak good old Sumerian? Well, once upon a time , ..."
Comment: That's not the simplest possible interpretation: that's applying a modern pattern to an ancient story.  The simplest possible interpretation is that the event actually happened as described in the story. If you can show that it follows some pattern of discourse that was in common use in the days of the original author, then we may glean some clues from looking at those patterns, but until then....
Comment: Texts from the ancient world are full of origin and explanation stories. In any case, I weakened the introduction to that idea.
Comment: @iconoclast: I agree with your notion of "the simplest possible interpretation" and disagree with the "naturalistic interpretation" suggested by bmargulies (not that he or she subscribes to this interpretation). While I happen to agree with your simplest interpretation, I suggest God's confusing of the tongues of the tower builders was far from simple; rather, it was a miracle of the first order. The average person can take a lifetime to become literate in a foreign language.  Amazingly, God was fully "literate" in all the languages He created, from the instant He created them. Mind boggling!
Answer: Yes, one can be reasonably certain that the author had in mind a ziggurat.
Whether or not one reads the Tower of Babel story as merely an etiology of the diversity of language, there does seem to be a distinct geographic setting. The wide agreement among scholars is that descriptions of the locale fit southern Mesopotamia.
For one, 11:2 records at the outset of the narrative that the people are moving eastward. As well, the name "Shinar" in verse 2 likely is a linguistic equivalent to "Sumer", another name for the region.  The use of bricks is a further indication, as in Palestine there was plenty of stone, which was preferred for construction. But the southern plains of Mesopotamia did not have such quarries and required either imports of stone or the kilnfired bricks we see in 11:3 for construction.
This is all important for two reasons: 1) the predominate tower-like structures in southern Mesopotamia at the time were ziggurats, and 2) it allows for the possibility that the text function as a sort of polemic against a particular culture. Gordon Wenham writes:

As elsewhere in Gen 1–11, there is in this narrative a strong polemic against the mythic theology of the ancient world. Often this polemic is implicit rather than explicit. Only ancient hearers and modern scholars familiar with Mesopotamian accounts of the flood can appreciate the world of difference between the characterizations of Noah and Utnapishtim or between the LORD and the gods of Mesopotamia who cower before the flood and swarm like flies around the sacrifice. But Gen 11 throws discretion to the winds: the assault on Babylonian pretensions is open and undisguised. The tower of Babylon stands as a monument to man's impotence before his creator, and the multiplicity of human languages is a reminder of divine retribution on human pride.
Wenham, G. J. (1998). Genesis 1–15 (Vol. 1, p. 244). Dallas: Word, Incorporated.

The key phrase is in 11:4 where the tower is to be one "with its head in the heavens." While there are not close parallels in literature to the tower story as there are with the flood narrative, etc... Wenham notes, "The temple of Marduk in Babylon was supposed to have been built by the Annunaki gods with specially prepared bricks. Its name, 'house with the uplifted head,' reflects its claim to have reached the heavens."
Whether the temple of Marduk or some other ziggurat, the Genesis 11 story makes sport of this boast. God has to "come down" in the narrative to even see the tower that is being built up to heaven. A polemic angle to the passage would fit with previous suspicions about the tower's nature.
Unless some other theory comes along that better fits the data, a structure like a ziggurat - with steps indicating its theological purpose in allowing the gods to travel between heaven and earth - seems like the most likely candidate for the tower of Babel.
Answer: Disclaimer: This subject is intrinsically speculative and my answer should be taken with the inherent difficulty of recreating the past in mind.
Short answer: Yes, a ziggurat of sorts, not necessarily as drawn as in the literature. This is my hypothesis.
Ziggurats are stepped temples:

...Temple and temple organisation
  Ziggurats (Sumerian temples) each had an individual name and consisted of a forecourt, with a central pond for purification.[51] The temple itself had a central nave with aisles along either side. Flanking the aisles would be rooms for the priests. At one end would stand the podium and a mudbrick table for animal and vegetable sacrifices. Granaries and storehouses were usually located near the temples. After a time the Sumerians began to place the temples on top of multi-layered square constructions built as a series of rising terraces, giving rise to the Ziggurat style.[52]...

They are sacred architecture, designed to interact with the divine. This site has provides a fascinating and informative exposure to stepped temples around the world and in your own backyard.
For a virtual 3D walk through of a Sumerian ziggurat please check out this excellent animation on Youtube.
Observations and assumptions
I observe that Sumer was the cradle of civilization that seemingly sprang from nowhere some 6000 years ago which coincides with the Genesis account.
If the Sumerians are the descendants of Noah (and according to the scriptural accounts, of course they are) then they knew about sacrificing animals, obeying God, etc. Might the Watchers or Satan or God himself have revealed the proper layout of the temple as a meeting tent, representing heaven and an outer area representing earth. The Jews referred to their temple as heaven and earth.

...In the Sumerian city-states, temple complexes originally were small, elevated one-room structures. In the early dynastic period, temples developed raised terraces and multiple rooms. Toward the end of the Sumerian civilization, ziggurats became the preferred temple structure for Mesopotamian religious centers.6 Temples served as cultural, religious, and political headquarters until approximately 2500 BC, with the rise of military kings known as Lu-gals ("man" + "big")4 after which time the political and military leadership was often housed in separate "palace" complexes...
...Sumerian religion heavily influenced the religious beliefs of later Mesopotamian peoples; elements of it are retained in the mythologies and religions of the Hurrians, Akkadians, Babylonians, Assyrians, and other Middle Eastern culture groups. Scholars of comparative mythology have noticed many parallels between the stories of the ancient Sumerians and those recorded later in the early parts of the Hebrew Bible...

However, I'm of the opinion that the evidence shows that the stepped temples are found throughout the world, consistent with the idea that the builders of an ambitious pyramid building project at Babel were scattered throughout the world some 4000 to 5000 years ago.
Two of the main differences between the Jewish tabernacle and the stepped temple, the which were explicitly forbidden in the Jewish scriptures are:

the use of tools to cut out stones - they should be natural
steps - steps are forbidden:

[Exo 20:24-26 ASV] (24) An altar of earth thou shalt make unto me, and shalt sacrifice thereon thy burnt-offerings, and thy peace-offerings, thy sheep, and thine oxen: in every place where I record my name I will come unto thee and I will bless thee. (25) And if thou make me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it of hewn stones; for if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it. (26) Neither shalt thou go up by steps unto mine altar, that thy nakedness be not uncovered thereon.
[Exod 26:30 KJV] (30) And thou shalt rear up the tabernacle according to the fashion thereof which was shewed thee in the mount.

Other than the hewn stones and the steps these ziggurats were largely like the tabernacle, with the chamber in the middle being the place where you move from the earthly realm into the realm of the gods.
The ziggurat is an example of a stepped pyramid.

In the above the upper layers have been destroyed and would have looked like this:

I observe that stepped pyramids spread through the whole world.

This suggests to me that the stepped pyramid is of religious significance and was considered the right way to build a temple. The reason I say that is that it is not easy to build a stepped pyramid and yet all over the world people have gone to phenomenal lengths to build these structures. These are the scattered temple builders of Sumer!
Inference
So my inference from all this data is that the stepped pyramid is a corruption of the divinely sanctioned design (or vice versa) in that it is in the inverse. Whereas the divinely sanctioned design has God condescending to dwell among his people, the Sumerian design is an effort to ascend to heaven to be equal to God.
As such it serves as the quintessential symbol of man trying to reach God rather than God reaching down to men.
It may be that the number of tiers on the pyramid indicates the number of steps they think it is to the highest heaven. IE: Three tiers would take you to the third heaven while seven would take you to the seventh heaven.
The general idea of these stepped temples was that the chamber at the top (a tent or other structure) which served as a place to have audience with God. The following from Wikipedia suggests that the tents of nomads in Asia were the inspiration, which I personally find tricky to prove, however, from a scriptural perspective all who walk the earth are descended from passengers of Noah's ark. But nomads aren't exactly into building structures. They traveled in huts.

Celestial tradition
  Smith writes that in the process of transforming the hut shape from its original pliable materials into more difficult stone construction, the dome had also become associated with celestial and cosmic significance, as evident from decoration such as stars and celestial chariots on the ceilings of domed tombs. This cosmological thinking was not limited to domed ceilings, being part of a symbolic association between any house, tomb, or sanctuary and the universe as a whole, but it popularized the use of the domical shape.3 Michele Melaragno writes that the nomadic tribes of central Asia are the origin of a symbolic tradition of round domed-tents being associated with the sky and heavens that eventually spread to the Middle East and the Mediterranean.4 Rudolf Wittkower writes that a "cosmic interpretation of the dome remained common well into the eighteenth century."6
Divine ruler
  Herbert Howe writes that throughout the Middle East domes were symbolic of "the tent of the ruler, and especially of the god who dwells in the tent of the heavens." Passages in the Old Testament and intertestamental literature document this, such as Psalms 123:1,[note 1] Isaiah 40:22,[note 2] I Kings 8:30,[note 3] Isaiah 66:1,[note 4] Psalms 19:4,[note 5] and Job 22:14.note 6
Domes and tent-canopies were associated with the heavens in Ancient Persia and the Hellenistic-Roman world. A dome over a square base reflected the geometric symbolism of those shapes. The circle represented perfection, eternity, and the heavens. The square represented the earth. An octagon was intermediate between the two.8 Persian kings used domed tents in their official audiences to symbolize their divinity, and this practice was adopted by Alexander the Great.4
The distinct symbolism of the heavenly or cosmic tent stemming from the royal audience tents of Achaemenid and Indian rulers was adopted by Roman rulers in imitation of Alexander, becoming the imperial baldachin. This probably began with Nero, whose "Golden House" also made the dome an essential feature of palace architecture.9 The allegory of Alexander the Great's domical tent in Roman imperial architecture coincided with the "divinification" of Roman emperors and served as a symbol of this.10 The semi-domed apse became a symbol of Imperial authority under Domitian and depictions of emperors into the Byzantine period used overhead domes or semidomes to identify them.11 Karl Swoboda writes that even by the time of Diocletian, the dome probably symbolized sovereignty over the whole world.11

Summary
I have attempted to make a case that in the Ancient Near East (ANE) there was apparently some knowledge of the worship of God but the structure of the temples became corrupted, using hewn stones and multiple tiers, always a stepped-pyramid as evidenced by the existence of these quixotic structures throughout the world.
From this I argue that the tower of Babel would have been built in the language of this sacred architecture. As you note, this is the balance of scholarly opinion. I just added the force of biblical anthropology to show that the ziggurat is ubiquitous because it is a corruption of the true worship revealed by God.
Update
I notice that both the Kaaba at Mecca and Islamic "mosques" serve ultimately as corrupt versions of the temple. The "domes" serve like the tent of the holiest place:
Comment: This says something about ziggurats, but it is not clear how it really answers the question. It seems more like afterthought and background.
Comment: I added a summary that may help you grasp my answer.
Comment: There are so many problems with this post it does not fit in a comment. (1) It combines the idea that Sumerians are descendants of Noah with some form of historical anthropology; these are not compatible. (2) All three images are redundant, as are most of the observations. There is no argument structure. (3) The claim that Sumerian ziggurats "spread" to Indonesia, Mexico, Bali, and Mayan territory needs references. (4) The "Inference" section is wholly unrelated to the question if "there are good reasons for thinking that it was a ziggurat".
Comment: (5) But also in the above there is a lot of unrelated text (Sumer as the cradle of civilization springing from nowhere [citation needed]; Jews referring to their temple as heaven and earth). So (6) ultimately the only "good reasons for thinking that it was a ziggurat" this answer provides is that ziggurats indeed exist, which is kind of a given.
Comment: @keelan I did not refer to *historical* anthropology but to *biblical* anthropology.

Was the tower of Babel a ziggurat?


Custom edit form associated with edit button on list view

Question: I have created a view from a list which I created.  I now have an edit button link on this view and need to link it to a custom edit form.  How can I do this in SharePoint Designer.  I am using Sharepoint 2010.
Answer: Using JavaScript/jQuery you can do the following:
1) Change the href of your Edit Link. Append a custom query string parameter at the end of the link. Example:
http://server/Lists/MyList/EditForm.aspx?ID=1&OpenCustomEditForm=1

2) In the EditForm.aspx, add a script which checks whether the custom query string parameter is present in the window.location.href.
3) If the parameter is present, hide the fields which are not needed in the Custom Edit Form.
if(window.location.href.indexOf("OpenCustomEditForm=1") != -1){
      //Hide unnecessary fields.
}


Identifying write-in presidential candidates

Question: Let's say I write-in "John Smith" on a ballot, how does the election board know which John Smith I voted for?
Even if I write in a well known politician like let's say Paul Ryan, there must be more than 1 Paul Ryan in the US. Does the election board simply assume it's Paul Ryan the speaker of the house, and not Paul Ryan my college roommate?
Answer: Candidates are Registered
Of the 41 states that allow write-in candidates, 34 (about 80%) of them require the candidate to file as a write-in candidate (source: Ballotpedia).  When you vote, the name you write will be traced to the names of registered write-in candidates. If the name doesn't match, your vote doesn't go anywhere.
Candidates are Not Registered
So what about the 7 states where candidates don't have to pre-file? I couldn't find a source online, so I called the Iowa Secretary of State's office as a case study.
According to their office, write-in candidates are only considered if more than 5% of a certain race in a certain county has a write-in. In other cases, they are basically too small too be counted. They do often have write-in candidates win elections in small races, and in those cases identifying the winner is relatively easy: the population of possible candidates is small and the candidate will have been actively campaigning.
They could not tell me how this is handled in larger races (like Presidential races, gubernatorial, etc.) because it has never happened and is unlikely to ever happen (by their estimate).
Answer: It really depends on which state you are voting. According to the linked ABC News article on Election 2016: What You Need to Know About Write-Ins, states don't have the same policy towards write-in candidates. For example:

Only eight states -– Alabama, Iowa, North Dakota, New Jersey, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Vermont -– tally write-ins without requiring candidates to file paperwork, the NASS says, and even the least restrictive states have some disqualifying criteria.
In Alabama, for example, write-in candidates must be: 1. qualified to hold the office, 2. able to reach a threshold number of votes, 3. "nonfictional," and 4. alive, in order to be officially tallied.

It doesn't matter which Paul Ryan you will write-in because they will never be elected and there has been no president in the US history who was elected by write-in votes.

Regardless, write-in votes, which generally make up less than 1 percent of all the votes cast in a presidential election, probably won't come close to electing a president. (Emphasis added)


Character number limiter on Wygwam field

Question: I've been using MD Character Count on a text field to force users to keep the size of a summary field short and concise. But I want to switch it to a Wygwam field so the method of adding links is the same as the Wygwam body field.
I've looked at Limitee as well but it doesn't do Wygwam fields.
I know I can limit the amount of text on output in the template but I need the author to now when they have hit the limit.
Answer: Old question but just implemented this using the latest WYGWAM (v3.3.3)
Grab the Wordcount plugin and the Notification Plugin for CK Editor, and put them into your /themes/third_party/wygwam/lib/ckeditor/plugins folder.
Create a new WYGWAM editor configuration with the extraPlugins option selected in 'Advanced Settings'. Enter wordcount in there and save/update the configuration.
To configure those settings, you'll need to add the following to your /themes/third_party/wygwam/lib/ckeditor/config.js (inside the `editorConfig' function).
config.wordcount = {

    // Whether or not you want to show the Paragraphs Count
    showParagraphs: true,

    // Whether or not you want to show the Word Count
    showWordCount: true,

    // Whether or not you want to show the Char Count
    showCharCount: true,

    // Whether or not you want to count Spaces as Chars
    countSpacesAsChars: false,

    // Whether or not to include Html chars in the Char Count
    countHTML: false,

    // Maximum allowed Word Count, -1 is default for unlimited
    maxWordCount: -1,

    // Maximum allowed Char Count, -1 is default for unlimited
    maxCharCount: -1
};

Et Voila.
Answer: I've actually created an addon which adds a similar feature to Wygwam. I've uploaded this to https://github.com/ignetic/ee-wygwam-plugins which I hope you find useful.
It has 'doksoft_stat' plugin already placed within the wygwam_plugins theme folder, though you might want to look at the 'wordcount' plugin (simply remove the dot from the folder name to enable it). While these don't limit the number of words/characters, it does the next best thing to display the stats.
Do let me know if this works for you or if you find any issues with it.
All the best...
Comment: Thanks for this and it might be useful, but I really want something to give a specific warning about going over or the option to actually stop it accepting characters over a set number. It also needs to be able to be applied to specified individual fields. It looks like some of this might be possible within the wordcount plugin as there is a lot of commented out code about limits. The renaming of the plugin folder with a preceding dot isn't allowed in OS X so I just deleted the ones not wanted.


Was the Thing trapped in its current form until assimilating another, or could it retake the form of previous assimilations?

Question: In the 1982 film The Thing, was the creature trapped in its current form until it could assimilate another, or could it retake the form of previous assimilations?
Comment: Is this a serious question? Have you *seen* the 1982 film? Spoiler: the og-day ows-gray entacles-tay.
Comment: Haven't seen it in about 20 years, so yes. I asked it in good faith.
Answer: Short answer:  According to the original script for the prequel, the Thing can revert to previous iterations of itself at any time.
This would have been made clear in the ending of the prequel as it was originally scripted, although the ending was changed for budgetary reasons.
In the script, the Thing had been part of the spaceship's cargo, but it broke loose, assimilated most of the crew, and the last remaining crew member chose to crash the ship in the hope of killing the Thing.  It didn't work, of course, and the Thing survived the crash.
The aliens who had built and manned the spaceship were referred to (by the cast and crew) as the "alien pilots".  At the end of the film, as it was originally scripted, one piece of the Thing tried to escape in the spaceship, but was stopped by two of the Norwegian team members.  The spaceship could only be operated by a creature anatomically similar to the alien pilots, so the Thing reverted to its alien pilot form, which looked like this:

During the final battle with the Thing, this alien-pilot-Thing would have partially reverted to other previous iterations of itself, including some of the men from the Norwegian team who had already been killed and assimilated.
You can also see several previous iterations of the Dog-Thing within the last Thing of the movie, Blair-Thing.  Blair's deformed face is at the top of the monster, weird legs,arms, tentacles, and claws are all over the place, and, circled in green in this photo, a Dog-Thing's head is poking out of the middle.  All of these elements are relics of previous iterations of the Thing.

And we might not know for sure that these are aspects of a previous iteration of the Thing, but the tentacles and spikes that the Kennel-Thing produces are certainly not dog-like in any way.

I just came across this article, which includes a quote from the genius behind the special effects in The Thing, Rob Bottin:

Rob Bottin, who designed them (with a little help from Stan Winston) told Cinefantastique: "Since the Thing has been all over the galaxy, it could call upon anything it needed whenever it needed it." Hence the surreal cornucopia of dogs' faces erupting into giant cauliflowers, heads sprouting spider-legs and stomachs splitting into giant mouths that bite people's arms off.
Comment: Still going to improve this answer later.  Not sure how.
Answer: If you consider the short story Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell, on which the film is based, to be canonical, then yes, the creatures can change when threatened (and I assume, at will):

Kinner - or what had been Kinner - lay on the floor; cut half in two
  by the great knife McReady had had. The meteorologist stood against
  the wall, the knife dripping red in his hand. Van Wall was stirring
  vaguely on the floor, moaning, his hand half-consciously rubbing at
  his jaw. Barclay an unutterably savage gleam in his eyes, was
  methodically leaning on the pronged weapon in his hand, jabbing,
  jabbing.
Kinner's arms had developed a queer, scaly fur, and the flesh had
  twisted. The fingers had shortened, the hand rounded, the fingernails
  become three-inch long things of dull red horn, keened to steel-hard
  razor-sharp talons.
McReady raised his head, looked at the knife in his hand and dropped
  it. "Well, whoever did it can speak up now. He was an inhuman murderer
  at that -in that he murdered an inhuman. I swear by all that's holy,
  Kinner was a lifeless corpse on the floor here when we arrived. But
  when it found we were going to jab it with the power - it changed."

This is distinct from description of the alien killed at the end of the story, implying that the alien can at least change into different forms:

Like a blue-rubber ball, a Thing bounced up. One of its four tentaclelike arms looped out like a striking snake. In a seven-tentacled hand a six-inch pencil of winking, shining metal glinted and swung upward to face them. Its line-thin lips twitched back from snake-fangs in a grin of hate, red eyes blazing.


Is this question understandable?

Question: Given the fact that apparently a German, native speaker (according to his/her own words) is consistently criticizing my posts (the last one being Fugen-s in Gefechtsstärke), I'm wondering whether I'm actually that bad in posing questions or whether someone else is, perhaps, overly active? In addition to flagging and asking in chat, I'm asking here.
Comment: @πάνταῥεῖ 12 or even more edits is no criteria if a post is lacking quality in the end, please try to be more polite and patient to obvious new members. Blaming like this here is no help.
Comment: I don't looked into detail but maybe it is a matter of German direct criticism which is a cultural problem of understanding. So please take the positive side from it. However also in English SE sites there are clear and strict voices which you could see as not very polite at all.
Comment: @MdAyquassar Either if it is cultural or personal driven please don't take it too serious and try to calm, with your will to edit and change your question you already showed much respect for the community. Don't give up and move on. ;-)
Comment: A last note: After at least 12 (zwölf!) [edits](https://german.stackexchange.com/posts/43567/revisions) your question seemed to become understandable. Apparently most of your edits there, were triggered from comments asking for clarification. So I still don't see what's bad with criticism and interrogation for references and improvement in comments, about unusual and widely unknown terms heading your question.
Answer: In case you received comments that you feel are inappropriate for this site the appropriate thing to do is to flag them for moderator attention. In general we will not hesitate to delete any rude comments or comments that offend you and take further actions if necessary. Thank you for doing so in the past.
Please understand that we try to be active on the site as often as we can but we moderators are all in the same time zone. Hence a 24/7 service can not be provided. Sometimes there is a delay of a few hours until we can see flags.
Some differnces in personal opinions can lead to lengthy comment threads that won't help anybody and have to be cleaned up later. We do not want such over-long comment threads here.
To calm down a situation it is often better to not respond to any such rude or offensive comment. Also please take care to keep a calm and professional tone by yourself. If in doubt just move on and let others deal with it.
Comment: Hm. Unrelated to this case: "Offend you" or "are offending/offensive"? The first seems *awfully* subjective and so highly relative to differing cultural norms and practices as to be almost dangerously meaningless. Impossible as it is to get this onto an operationalised objective, or at least interpersonal congruent, level I guess some sheldonesque aspis as well as culturally inexperienced might benefit from a more spelled out guidelines (than those currently available).
Comment: @LangLangC: actually it is quite easy as there is no point in keeping content that offends an other user. This is even more so if **it was only a comment**.
Comment: @all: My comment is *not* about the case (which I cannot re-trace). It is about the difference of "flag what offends **you**" (fine rule of thumb) and "we will delete what offends **you**" (problematic rule of thumb). I argue that the latter case might benefit from a more 'canon' rule that is less subjective and more spelled out. Controversy is fine and should be. – I am not easily offended (*I* think, correctly?). I am not consciously offensive to people (*I* think, incorrectly?). – I guess: Better formulated rules beforehand, better feedback after 'incidents' are on my wish list.
Comment: @LangLangC _"and so highly relative to differing cultural norms and practices as to be almost dangerously meaningless."_ I have to agree to some point with that, yes. For my experience especially asian people would feel awkwardly insulted, if someone critiques or even only asks for more clarification. Doing such in an honest and direct way is considered _"rude"_ in their culture. Such things might become a frequent source of misunderstandings. At least I feel myself being a bit of offended since the OP did link my account here, just like putting me at a _pillory_.
Comment: @LangLangC: nothing we can do about different levels of tolerance, really. No rule on earth will change that. For moderating comments it is not an issue because they are very short lived temporary notes only which should be resolved in an edit of the post. Ideally not a single comment should stay but on this site we sort of tolerate them a bit longer because people believe they could learn a lot from such discussions. If however somebody gets offended by any such comment there is absolutely no reason why we should keep it.
Comment: For posts it is a bit different. See here https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/58032/what-are-the-spam-and-rude-or-abusive-offensive-flags-and-how-do-they-wor for guides.
Comment: @Takkat Seems I am unable to entirely convince myself that "anyone who feels offended by sth" gets to decide what is removed (and I guess that is not really the case, actually. That might leave an impression of dancing between leeway and arbitrariness, tolerance and strictness). "Civil discourse" as an a priori remains quite ill-defined. But thanks for pointing to the diff re:"posts". In part I overgeneralised from "comments" to "content" here. – I still have a dream of universally defining what level of tolerance should be acceptable to anyone here, though the desired precision is unrealistic
Comment: @LangLangC: I can see that too - in fact it mostly is rather straightforward but of course this is not always the case. In difficult cases we discuss this in the moderator team, with the community here on Meta, with moderators on other sites, or in very obscure cases we also have ways to discuss matters with the StackExchange community managers.

Is this question understandable?


Generating Population Density Heat Maps using Gigatrees 5

Question: I've started using Gigatrees 5.08 downloaded from http://timforsythe.com/gigatrees.html  as a tool for sharing information on my family tree research.
I'm very impressed and everything works fine (and it's already found some errors I had missed)
I have the location maps working (so I have got the Google API/Mapquest keys working and the sqlite database that holds the location (gigatrees.sqlite) has been populated)
The build log confirms that coordinate lookup is complete and says that it is generating Distribution Map and then Origin maps.
However the overall Heat Map and individual Origin Maps show no markers (or even a map)
I've looked at the working example that the creator (Tim Forsythe) has made available and I can see that the map.html and then the individual maps\Ixx.html files need to contain the necessary data.
e.g.
var myPinData=[
{lat:37.5841,lng:-122.3660,c:1,i:myImage,t: .........
This data is used by the script gigatrees-maps.js to add all the points to the google map
In the map.html files that are generated for me, there is no definition of the map icons or myPinData.
I've also tried simple 1 family, 3 individual sample.ged - this made no difference.
As a test I also copied the icon setup and a few lat/long points into map.html and this then works fine (so no issues with the Google API)
I'm running gigatrees.exe on Windows 10 (64 bit) with administrator rights
Tim appears to have stopped any further development so it's difficult to find any recent discussion (last topic here was at end of 2017) and I may be out of luck.
Has anyone sucessfully used this final version of Gigatress to generate heat maps?
If so, please can you confirm if the lat/long data is generated as part of the map.html file?
Is there any additional setting needed in the user.xml options file?
Answer: Since I posted, the author has added a discussion area on http://timforsythe.com/gigatrees.html where I was able to describe the issue.
Tim Forsythe has very quickly provided an updated version 5.09 that fixes this issue.


Removing all seats except driver's + front passenger's one from Ford Galaxy Mk3 (2006)

Question: Is it possible to completely remove all seats except driver's + front passenger's one from Ford Galaxy Mk3 (production started in 2006) to get a very flat loading floor? I was not able to find this information online - it seems to me you can only put the backrests down to achieve flat loading space, but not to remove the seats completely, which still gives you less space that without seats at all. It was possible in Mk2.
Comment: To fold second raw seats: Just pull the lever once to start folding. Pull second time to fold fully.
Answer: I just found and online resource in Czech (translated to English by Google) about VW Sharan. It says: "Seats are just like the Ford Galaxy and S-MAX can not be removed from the car, but fold into the floor."
Answer: Yes, easy job third row seats, four torx bolts per seat through the slides.  Tape over the holes so the screws don't bottom out  on the structure below. Lots more useable space.


Does the Joker love Harley Quinn?

Question: I have seen Harley Quinn and Joker together so many times in Batman: The Animated Series. Now waiting for Suicide Squad. I want to know a bit more about their relationship in the existing TV shows they appear in. Specifically, does the Joker really love Harley or is he just playing games?
Comment: Is joker capable of loving people? o.O
Comment: Already asked and answered on another SE site: http://scifi.stackexchange.com/q/106984/31394
Comment: This doesn't seem to be much about movies & TV at all. While Harley Quinn had her inceptpion in *The Animated Series* you seem to be asking about the larger comics character alone, for which [scifi.se] might be a better place. Neither are games on-topic here, nor do we know *anything* abour *Suicide Squad* yet. So either concentrate on an existing film invocation of her in your question or flag it for migration to [scifi.se].
Comment: What makes her a comic character instead of a cartoon, tv or movie character? Would the same question on Mickey Mouse or Bugs Bunny or Donald Duck be threatened like this? Considering all three have video games and comics as well?
Comment: @cde *The question*, the question and what it asks makes the difference.
Comment: I tried to rephrase your question to make it more on-topic here, concentrating on the shows whose stories we already *do* know and disregarding any off-topic games.
Answer: Yes. And Yes.
The Joker has been characterized as psychopathic/sociopathic paramour to Harley Quinn in many mediums. Different shows have different takes on the relationship, from actual love to purely psychopathic control. As the Joker is the epitome of an unreliable narrator, nothing he says can be taken at face value. As he says regarding how he became the Joker:

I... I'm not exactly sure what it was. Sometimes I remember it one way, sometimes another... If I'm going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice! Ha ha ha!
-The Killing Joke

He could actually love, or feel romantically inclined towards Harley one second, and the next he couldn't give a flying bat about her. Sometimes he actually fears her. In any case, it's always, always domestically abusive, and he starts the relationship by manipulating her in the flashback of The New Batman Adventures adaptation of Mad Love, but earlier episodes have different views. Batman obviously doesn't think Joker can love anyone, and painfully explains many things to Harley. She doesn't believe it (Battered Spouse Syndrome).

But the Joker is also willing to compromise for what she wants, even as going as far as kidnapping Robin to make a "family" as seen in Batman Beyond.
The Suicide Squad animated movie Assault on Arkham has him showing anger that she's found someone new. But it ends up being an less than honest double play.

Newer material puts a very much darker twist on the relationship than the original cartoon. In the comics, they are no longer together. Violently.
That said, there was the time Harley wanted to kill him, almost did if it wasn't for the fake gun, and Joker just turned around and said he loved her instead of hitting her.

It's also done in the comics. One issue of The Batman Adventures Vol. 2 (In continuity with the Bruce Timm Batman cartoons) has Harley inheriting a fortune, so the Joker does a bunch of things so that he can legally marry her and plans on killing her after for the money, but turns out she set the whole thing up so he would do just that, planning on telling him after getting married so he won't kill her any more. It works. He thinks its Romantic. Batman is not amused.

In short, because of the Joker's psychopathic state, we can never know, and it's always up to the writer of the version you are watching. Joker's feelings towards Harley varies from love to "she's entertaining" to "she's useful".
Comment: "always always" - did you mean "almost always", by any chance?
Comment: @klskl second one wasn't an intentional pun. Though, Batman has battered both Harley and Joker as the situation calls for.
Comment: @cde hehe yeah I figured that, more of a joke on my part :)
Comment: Well I mean if you don't batter them properly they won't fry evenly.
Comment: @mego nope, almost always would mean there are times the relationship isn't domestically abusive. I've added punctuation and emphasis to what I meant.
Answer: No he doesn't. The sucide squad just glamoured their abusive relationship. Joker doesn't love anyone. He is only obsessed with Batman. The Arkham games touch on this. As well as a Death in the Family comics. Frank Miller and Grant Morrison have also shown how Joker is perverse in a semi-homoerotic fixation with Batman. For those who still doesn't understand Harley/ Joker need to read Mad love. Joker and Harley relationship is only to show how abusive and controlling he is. The animated series is to highlight how a phycopath can get advantage of a girl who blames herself when she doesn't please a man.
The suicide squad and any attempt to make Joker/Harley about "he beats her but deep down he loves her" doesn't understand how deep and rich Harley Quinn character truly is. The movie is a bad representation of Harley and Joker relationship. In her true character form she loves him, and he takes advantage of this to escape justice and use her. Harley Quinn is Paul Dini and Bruce Timm creation, the way they have always written her has never shown Joker truly caring about her at all.
Sorry old post, but I felt I needed to answer you. Whomever read this don't get fooled by the movie. Is already bad enough that young people today think violence is awesome and normal, and now to let them think abusive relationships like Harley and Joker are the new cool fashion just destroys the intent of Harley Quinn's character. This is my personal opinion though, but my answer above about the comics you can search on Google.
Comment: What is meant by not fooled by movie, only the movie relationship is more relevant than comics
Comment: No, the movies are an interpretation of the comics. And is the creators of a certain character and their intention of said characters is what is always more relevant than the interpretation by movie studios.

Imagine you make a painting and you have your own vision of what is meant to be, and then someone else uses your work to reimagine and sell their own stuff, changing the intention of your piece of art because the masses would find it more "attractive" but diminishing the intention you gave to your work when you first made it.
Comment: That is what new movies today have done to many franchises, the characters and their worlds may live on but the soul what they were is replaced by consumerism.
Comment: Well there was that one time when joker locked her up Ima. Dungeon where she was surrounded by dozens of other dead Harley Quinns. So I would have to say NO.
Answer: Well in the 2016 movie Suicide Squad, it shows that The Joker cares for Harley. Yes, he was abusive but that is only because he is crazy. He wouldnt leave Harley behind and would do anything to free her.
Comment: Can you add more detail to this answer? *What* exactly in this movie shows that he cares for her?
Comment: Though, the question is rather about the existing TV material and less about the new film.
Answer: Joker can love and I believe he loves Harley. Some guys are very bad at showing emotions but, that doesn't mean they don't love anyone. A lot of people think that since Joker is a psychopath, and anyone who is a psycopath automatically can't love anyone. That is not true. Just because someone is different than how you or me act doesn't mean they can't love. Some people say I am mean that doesn't mean I don't love my boyfriend. Joker does love harley he just doesn't really do emotions. How many times has joker saved Harley?  think about it before you assume.
Answer: Actually, the original writer for the Joker created Harley as his love interest based off of "a friends stormy relationship". Quoting said writer, along with the Harley and Joker's voice actors:

Paul Dini: He loves her as much as he can. He loves her in his way.
Arleen Sorkin: Everyone sees the Joker laugh. Only Harley has ever seen him cry.
Mark Hamill: The Joker learned to have emotion through Harley.

It's been in comics since Harley became his love interest. Yes, I guess you can say "hit it and quit it" was the Joker's original plan. Do you know how most studs like to play today? Use a girl for what's good for them at that time. He admits to himself over and over again in series and comics that he does have feelings for her. He also is very intelligent enough to know she is also a weakness for him. He can't kill her. Something always keeps him from doing so. Yeah, she fell for the lies, she figured that out, yet still stayed. Why? She sees the real him, the single rose. That is an old sign of endearment.
He freed her from fear of repercussions, and made her stronger both physically and yes mentally. As Dr. Qunizel, she had to put up with all kinds of nosense and formalities. She had no control over her life at all. No one cared about the patients of Arkham; only she did. Now, he creates Harley. Fearlessness when it comes to danger. She can take a life without hesitation. Her life or theirs.
The only thing she can't handle is losing the Joker. A love in her eyes, her only true friend. Doesn't everyone go a little emotionally unstable when they go through a breakup? When their lover tries to push them away? Yes, some versions show violence between the two, but only the revamped versions, so they can try and push her into a relationship with Ivy instead.
Answer: In the movie he makes her fall in a vat of whatever because she kept bothering him about going out. He almost leaves but I'm guessing something in his head tells him to save her. Also the Joker risks his life to save her from being apart of the squad and breaks her out of jail. In a confusing scene the artist Common plays a part, in which Joker gives Harley to Common. And when he refuses saying he doesn't want "beef" and "that's your lady Joker" Joker kills him.
Comment: It's not "I don't want beef (meat)."  A slang expression for having a dispute or disagreement with someone is "having a beef."  So, he was saying that he didn't want to cause a disagreement with Joker by taking liberties with his girlfriend, even if Joker was supposedly offering.
Answer: Yes. The Joker does love Harley, the only problem is he doesn't want to.  The Joker knew he was making her fall in love with him and he wanted to use that to his advantage. Overtime, the Joker started to feel something for Harley and he got scared and angry. He didn't think he could be loved and he didn't want to be loved, so he thought that he could use Harley, but in the process he ended up falling for her and he didn't like it. Therefore, he thought that treating her wrongly would make his love for her fade, but it never did. There were multiple occasions where the Joker could have killed Harley and gotten rid of her for good, but he decided against it. The joker does love Harley, and they both have an unbreakable bond, I mean they did both literally drive each other insane. If that's not love, what is?
"Sometimes we hurt only those people to whom we love most..."
-Alok Dwivedi

Does the Joker love Harley Quinn?


Using logging in custom ECL connector

Question: I am writing my custom ECL connector but cannot get it to log my own logging statements using log4net. I placed my App.config file including log4net config next to my ECL DLL, log4net has been added to the GAC, but no luck so far. Anyone got this working or would know a way to troubleshoot?
Comment: I assume you did make sure the app.config was renamed to match the DLL name in the build folder? I am not 100% sure VS does that for you when it is a DLL, not an EXE you are building. You should not need to add assemblies to the GAC, just include them in the folder of the provider.
Comment: Thanks everyone for the help. In the end I got it working by using ILMerge to include log4net (and Newtonsoft JSON) when building the ECL connector DLL. I also renamed my App.config to the DLL name + .config.
Comment: Have you added logging to your "ExternalContentLibrary.xml" as per http://docs.sdl.com/LiveContent/content/en-US/SDL_ECLMediaManager_11/task_0EEAE44E6F8C4B4286F0F0B8E00DA135 (points 1 and 2)?
Comment: Have you checked logging level that you have set for log4net and what statements you are writing? Like if loglevel is error then debug statements will not logged.
Comment: Renaming the config file is required. Using ILMerge is not. If the required assemblies are present in the provider folder, they will get loaded. Newtonsoft can normally be very problematic as it does not follow .NET versioning guidelines, but as the ECL providers are isolated in application domains you will not get a conflict with other versions of newtonsoft used elsewhere.
Comment: Added the details from the comment as an answer.
Answer: App.config must be renamed to match the name of the primary DLL of the Provider - the DLL where you implement IContentLibrary.
Next to this ensure all assemblies required for log4net are included in the folder containing the primary DLL. Alternatively you can use the GAC, but typically this is not required so to simplify deployment I would recommend against it.
Specifically you should not place NewtonSoft.JSON in the GAC as it does not follow .NET versioning standards. Placing Newtonsoft.JSON in the GAC can break completely unrelated applications on your system.
And always consider if you can simply use IHostServices.LogMessage.

Using logging in custom ECL connector


04 Honda shadow spirit 1100 backfires and loses power when accelerating

Question: I have a 2004 Honda shadow spirit 1100. When I open up the throttle to accelerate the bike starts to backfire and loses power. This mostly occurs on the interstate when i'm accelerating from 60 to 70 or up. Not sure if its related but I just had the charging system replaced a few weeks ago.
Answer: I wish I could give you a more exact answer, but I had this issue on a Harley of mine a few years ago. In and out of the shop for 2 years or so because it would lose charge in the battery overnight, where I had to remove the main fuse when I got off just to prevent it from happening (annoying, but better than another couple months in a shop where they can't find a fix). Then I started experiencing a similar problem (to my memory) as to what you describe.
I seem to remember it being an alternator with a bad wire. So if you say you just had the charging system replaced, then maybe there is some truth to my memories about it.


How do I create a similar texture in illustrator?

Question: How do I create the texture of the clouds in Illustrator?
Or is there a set of brushes that could give a similar effect someone can point me to?
Thanks!

(source: virbcdn.com)

(Images from samkalda.com)
Comment: What have you tried? What failed?
Answer: There's no flood of answers because there's no perfect way to make those clouds in Illustrator. Grainy textures are much easier in Photoshop.
One possibility is to create a cloud in Photoshop and import a raster image to Illustrator, or to create a bigger piece and define the shapes and sizes in Illustrator with clipping masks. The result might be acceptable if the resolution of the pasted raster image is good enough for your intended purpose. You lose the lossless scalability of vector images, but you can get a job done.
In  Illustrator grainy textures are often made by painting with a brush which scatters small objects randomly and by inserting an opacity mask, if needed. Here's an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwNInJssbPU
This can cuase a low spec computer to slow down dramatically because the brush can very quickly generate tens of thousands of objects.
Some other vector drawing programs, e.g. Affinity Designer have avoided this by allowing noisy colors, the grain is a part of the color, it's processed in the graphics card engine, not in the application. In your case one could use noisy gradients. Unfortunately Illustrator doesn't have noisy colors which could be used in gradients.
If you can sacrifice lossless scalability, you can also make raster image patterns in Illustrator. There's no need to create them in Photoshop. Here's one method:

A shape is drawn, no stroke, solid grey fill
A copy of shape 1 has a raster effect applied:  Texture > Grain > Stippled, intensity=100%, contrast=50%

NOTE: you must define the raster effect rendering resolution at the beginning when you start a new image. It can be changed afterwards, e.g. by copying and pasting everything to a new Illustrator document which has a different raster image rendering resolution. In this case I selected 150 DPI which provided sufficient grain size.

Another copy of shape 1 has a vertical gradient fill. The color is white, but it's fully opaque at the bottom and fully transparent on the top.
Shape 2 is placed on a copy of shape 3, aligned and defined as the opacity mask
Shape 3 is placed on the result of 4

This is quite complex and not exactly a copy of your example cloud, but it is made in Illustrator.
Answer: Another way to do it is...
Draw some black scatter brushes.
Be sure to group the brushes and select the brushes and the cloud.
Make an Opacity Mask.
Paint with a white brush to soften the edges.
See the image below:


Is there a Windows equivalent of Android app :"Whatsapp who visited me"?

Question: Is there a Windows equivalent of  Android app :"Whatsapp who visited me"? or any other way out to run this android app on my windows 8. phone?
Comment: There maybe an app which does that.. but there is no way to run the Android app on WP unfortunately...
Answer: There seems to be no app with this feature for Windows Phone at the moment, and there's also no way of running Android apps on Windows Phone.
Just to avoid any confusion: this is a joke app and does not really work anyway.

Disclaimer:
  WhatsApp Spy (Spy) has no relationship with WhatsApp Inc,. Important Note: This application does not work... It's only good for joking with friends: P


When are stock trade fees deducted?

Question: When you buy or sell stock with an online broker when are the trading fees (approx. $7 or $10) deducted from your available balance?  Is it when the order is placed? At the end of the month?
Comment: What country and what broker ... it varies.
Comment: As @Dheer says, it varies. I think most brokerages deduct any commissions and fees when the order is *filled* (not placed, an order can be placed and filled months apart), but there are some where a flat monthly fee gives you a certain number of trades, etc.
Answer: Typically the fees are charged when the order is executed.
The only catch I have ever ran into is when an order is partially executed. A good-till-cancel order that gets executed in several blocks over multiple days may get charged a separate commission for each day (but typically not each block).
If this is a simple brokerage account, you could avoid the whole question by using robinhood.com, which charges no commissions or maintenance fees.
Answer: As others have said, it depends on the brokerage firm.
My broker is Scottrade. With Scottrade the commission is assessed and applied the moment the order is filled. If I buy 100 shares of XYZ at $10 a share then Scottrade will immediately deduct $1007.02 out of my account. They add the commission and fees to the buy transaction. On a sale transaction they subtract the commission and fees from the resulting money. So if I sell 100 shares of XYZ at $11 a share I will get 1,092.98 put into my account, which I can use three business days later.
Comment: How exactly do they add/subtract to the transaction? Do they give you less shares or for example trade for higher rate?

When are stock trade fees deducted?


Does information theoretical security definition imply DDH, RSA, QR does not hold?

Question: Assuming we are in the information theoretical setting, whereby there is no bound on the computational power of an adversary. Does this mean that the standard definitions for DDH, RSA or QR do no hold in that setting, because the definitions assume some bounds on the computational power of the adversary?
Comment: Well, given that all of these can be reduced to factoring or DLog, which you can trivially brute-force when given unlimited computational power, all the assumption require the computational bound.
Answer:
Does this mean that the standard definitions for DDH, RSA or QR do no hold in that setting, because the definitions assume some bounds on the computational power of the adversary?

That is correct; a computationally unbounded adversary could trivially solve any of these problems.  For example, to solve the DDH problem ("given, $g, g^x, g^y, g^z$, does $g^{xy} = g^z$?) a computationally unbounded adversary could go through all possible values $x, y, z$ (between $0$ and $p-1$), and check if they match the $g^x, g^y, g^z$ values they were given, and if so, does $g^{xy} = g^z$.  This sort of solution works for all the other problems you mentioned.
Note: there are computationally far easier ways to solve this problem; this is just the generic strategy that works against any computationally bounded problem.
Comment: @curious: I would disagree with that way of putting it.  It does allow the attacker to efficiently solve some problems that (as far as we know) can't be solved efficiently without a QC; however there are plenty of problems (e.g. break AES-256) which appear to be intractable with a QC.
Comment: Is that true for any LWE problems and their variations?
Comment: @curious: it is most certainly true; a computationally unbounded attacker could just try all possible private values, and see which ones worked.  As tylo mentioned below, about the only things that are informationally secure are OTP (and authentication equivalents), secret sharing, half of a commitment scheme, and perhaps one or two other things...
Comment: so in some sense, Quantum computing brings the Adversary more to the information theoretical  setting even LWE is OK in that world.
Answer: Yes, it does.
Any cryptosystem relying on factoring being hard (RSA, Paillier, Rabin, etc.) is immediately broken by an unbounded adversary, because he can just try out all smaller prime factors to factorize a given modulus.
For DDH (or similar methods in finite groups) it's basically the same, he can just try all possible exponents when there are finitely many.
Information theoretic security is not that common. For encryption you have OTP, for secret sharing there are a few (most notably Shamir's), and there are unconditionally hiding or binding commitment schemes (but you can't have both at the same time). On the theoretical level, information theoretic security is closely related to those protocols which would still work even if P = NP.


use Android as real Gamepad (Not keyboard mapping)

Question: I've tested quite a few apps that let you use your Android as a real gamepad, but all of them just map you Android to your keyboard.
I wanted it to be recognized as a really controller, to be able to play multiplayer games locally with friends because i don't have any controller. Is there any way to do this? I don't have controllers for everyone nor do i have the money to by 4 controllers, i'm trying to find an alternative.
Answer: Droidjoy does this that you want, but be aware that since it requires a server application, it can only be used on a PC.


How do I convert .ts files into something useful?

Question: I have a file that ends in .ts, which according to wikipedia is an MPEG2 file. I've never run into a file like this so I want it want the file to be in a more common format/container to use on multiple devices.
Comment: Old question, but in 2016 with 'normal' Ubuntu codecs, common players like VLC and SMPlayer can play `.ts` files as such, and maybe they should be left alone, especially that when trying the most voted solution the result was  not too good... - I feel the need to rename the extension to `mpeg` just [to get a proper video icon](http://askubuntu.com/q/839166/47206) for them.
Comment: @cipricus Post this as an answer and I'll accept it as the new accepted answer.
Comment: This sort of file we are typically getting when recording directly from a no-name "China" sat-TV decoder unto a USB flash-drive. So this question is relevant in West Africa, when trying to take the file away from the decoder to play on some other device.
Comment: `ts` file can be play by VLC media player directly. You also can concat `ts`s to one big `ts` file with `cat *.ts > big.ts`(here you may need to use index file `m3u8` to get the `ts` in ordre if the `ts` name not in order).You also can tranfer them to mp4 with `cat *.ts | ffmpeg  -i pipe: -c:a copy -c:v copy output.mp4`. Refer to [my answer here](https://superuser.com/a/1468041/623314).
Answer: I tend to recommend leaving files in their original state, as any conversion has a chance to introduce loss. The .ts video format is a container format for MPEG, known as "Transport Stream", which is used most frequently by digital broadcasting systems (digital cable, satellite, etc). Many applications are unfamiliar with how to decode it, since it has a very different multiplexing format than the more conventional MPEG container known as "Program Stream", which is what is used on DVDs, and what is produced by many encoder cards. The difference between TS and PS is only how the packet structure is built; the A/V data inside it is the same.
To get better interoperability, I recommend converting the container from TS to PS. Virtually every piece of software that can decode TS can decode PS, so it's almost always better to have PS file. One of the simplest remuxing tools I've found to use is avidemux. Just choose "copy" for the video and audio streams, and choose the "PS" container format for MPEG:

Then just save out the result. This can also be done using ffmpeg. You just need to select the copy codec for each stream type:
ffmpeg -i input.ts -vcodec copy -acodec copy output.mpg

Comment: AFAIKT, converting with that command indeed introduced loss. Keeping the file as is seems the better option as long as there is a player that can play it, and all my players can. Only it lacks a proper icon: and *that* can be solved by renaming the extension to 'mpeg'.
Answer: .TS files are technically just MPEG2 files. You can use pretty much any converter (avidemux, handbrake or even ffmpeg directly).
But the only reason to do so would be filesize. Mpeg2 files play pretty much everywhere.
The only confusing part is the actual file-extension.
You can safely and freely rename them to .mpeg
PS. By turning it into Matroska, you just made is very hard for people on other systems to be able to play the file. I understand picking a free codec, and then choosing the appropiate container, but if you keep it at MPEG2, why change the container to something relatively obscure?
Comment: A .ts file is an MPEG 'transport stream'; it's not at all the same container as a 'program stream' (typically .mpeg). Resolution has nothing to do with it. Transport streams can contain multiple independent groups of video/streams, and have a load of error correction data (making .ts files bigger). They're typically used for broadcast systems where multiple channels are multiplexed and the transmission medium may be unreliable. For PC use where file integrity is (hopefully) assured, you will save space and improve compatibility by converting to a Program Stream.
Comment: This answer is wrong.  There are two different container formats for MPEG: MPEG-PS (program stream) and MPEG-TS (transport stream).  MPEG-PS files can be .mpeg, .mpg, .vob, etc.  MPEG-TS files can be .ts, .mts, or something else.  You cannot simply change the file extension to convert between them.  But you *can* re-mux from one to the other without losing quality, retaining the same encoded video/audio streams from one container format to the other.  BTW, Ralf's suggestion may *appear* to work but only in media players that ignore the file extension and support both formats anyway.
Comment: According to who MKV is "obscure"?
Comment: Thanks for clearing this all up! Renaming it seems to be exactly what I needed to get me video players to recognize the file.
Comment: Kees Cook's answer is the one that I would recommend following.
Answer: From looking at this forums thread I can make it into a matroska file, which I already use.
 ffmpeg -i input.ts -vcodec copy -sameq -acodec copy -f matroska output.ts

I was able to encode this despite this information the seems to indicate that I needed to compile ffmpeg from source. The downside to this is that it doesn't encode the file, so the file is as large as the MPEG2 file. More answers with recommendations for encoding .ts->MPEG4 would help me out.
Comment: Plus there's no reason for the output file to have a ".ts" extension.  "output.mkv" would be more appropriate and less misleading.
Comment: -sameq doesn't do anything when using "copy" as the codec.  Also it usually doesn't mean what people think it means - it doesn't preserve the same "quality" for example, but the same "q" factor.
Answer: Actually .ts files are created by DVB-S/DVB-S2 tuners capable of recording transponder streams and can contain mpg2 AC3 AAC h264 mp3, as well as other data ie Teletext or EPG.
.ts files contain in most cases just AV data but are not limited to that. VLC can play ts files directly and give You some info about some of the streams in it.
Im personally using a sat tuner that records HD channels in .ts files (h264 video and in most cases multiple AAC mp3 mpg2 audio streams). So basically .ts files can contain many different things Its just container format created for sending digital broadcasts over loosy media.
VLC can also convert betwen formats (hevent done this myself)
Comment: Please add details about the conversion process.
Comment: The information about TS formats looks all good, it's just that no info is given about the actual conversion process.
Answer: I usually use HandBrake to convert all kind of video files to iPhone-compatible format. Maybe you can use it to convert the .ts files into MP4. Check this HandBrake PPA to install it.
Answer: The handling of TransportStream files produced by DVB-S recorders depends on the contained video and audio stream. For material in SD quality it is likely that you can use a tool chain consisting of ProjectX and mplex to convert the stream into a standard MPEG container. If the video stream is HD, try MKVMerge to convert it into an MKV file. Both ways are described in detail this blog post.
Answer: The ffmpeg program has been deprecated in favor of avconv.
You can pass the same arguments to avconv to convert from transport stream to program stream mpeg or matroska.
MPEG:
avconv -i input.ts -acodec copy -vcodec copy output.mpg
Matroska:
avconv -i input.ts -acodec copy -vcodec copy output.mkv
Comment: Avconf is a fork of ffmpeg which is still alive and actively developed. Don't believe the FUD that libav.org is spreading. See for yourself: http://ffmpeg.org and http://libav.org
Comment: Out of curiosity, deprecated by whom?


How dangerous are RCS thrusters?

Question: How dangerous are RCS thrusters, in a vacuum, to A. other spacecraft, especially when docking, and B. astronauts in EVA suits? How far away do you have to be to be safe / do RCS thrusters need to be rigorously shut down and safed before an EVA is carried out near them? Does the gas from these very small hypergol engines expand quickly enough to be minimally hazardous if it impinges on something?
Comment: Combustion in a rocket engine is never perfect, which means that an RCS thruster that uses hydrazine or a hydrazine derivative as a monopropellant might deposit some rather nasty chemicals on the target vehicle or EVA crew member, some of which are carcinogenic. The deposition problem can be even worse in the case of biprop RCS thrusters that use (for example) a hydrazine derivative and oxides of nitrogen. Depositing red fuming nitric acid on a vehicle or an EVA crew member is an extremely bad idea.
Comment: @ikrase it's a serious concern. See pdf page 148 of the EVA checklist here https://www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/pdf/492872main_EVA_G_H_20.pdf
Comment: @ikrase there have been a couple incidents with NH3 on the ISS. I think they have just baked out in the sun. https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2015/1106/Leaking-ammonia-and-glove-damage-on-spacewalk-but-astronauts-are-safe
Comment: @David Hammen would this deposited stuff not just evaporate into space in short order?
Comment: @OrganicMarble Looks like it indeed is, though it maybe can be mitigated by "washing" the space suit with a heat lamp?
Comment: Good question, though the answer will depend upon the size of the thrusters, anything from 0.1N to the Shuttle OMS.
Answer:
For Shuttle EVA, the Space Shuttle Flight Rules show that the safe
  distance for a suited crewmember was 27 feet for the main jets, 3 feet
  for the vernier jets, and 3 feet for the APU exhaust. It's rule
  A-15-22 in the document. This rule is probably a simplified
  version of what would actually be managed to;  I remember seeing "Keep
  Out Zones" (KOZ) defined for all kinds of things on the Orbiter.
The buzzword for this is "plume impingement" if you want to google for
  other specific cases.

Extracted from an answer to In space, how far from the nozzle is the exhaust from a space-craft capable of causing damage? to focus on just the RCS. If the crew needed to EVA inside the KOZ, the jets in question would be disabled to keep them from firing.  From the flight rule rationale:

These distances are conservative estimates based on the thermal
  effects of the jets on the EMU, particularly the visor, which is most
  sensitive to thermal extremes. These numbers were generated from
  analytical tests which modeled the heat flux from the respective jets
  and the thermal characteristics of the visor. Crew injury/EMU damage
  may result from hydrazine brought into the cabin after being picked up
  from an operating APU. Flight Rule {A6-151A}, RCS JET DRIVER
  MANAGEMENT [CIL], requires primary RJD's to be powered off while the
  crew is outside the payload bay envelope. The EVA checklist
  "CONTINGENCY DAP/JET CONFIG" directs the crew as to which jets to
  inhibit or power off based on EVA crew location.

This answer describes the shuttle RCS, thrust levels, etc.
An example of the Primary RCS KOZ generated in DOUG.

For shuttle plume impingement on other vehicles see this answer.
Comment: Would shuttle payloads with their own RCS also produce their own keep-out zones while packed in/docked to/being grappled by the orbiter (to guard for the possibility of an uncommanded payload RCS firing)?
Comment: @Sean True answer, I don't know. It was a long time ago that Shuttle grappled or deployed anything with jets on it (Hubble had none).  We did use SPAS and SPARTAN as payloads in generic robotics training and from looking at those procedures, the jets on the payloads were always inhibited until ungrapple and backaway.  The first indication that they had messed up on STS-87 was that the SPARTAN's jets *didn't* fire after release.
Comment: One more question: Pragmatically, how does the actual-danger-zone for the jets flare outward?
Comment: I'm not sure; from the flight rule I expected a 27 foot radius spherical zone, but the ones in the DOUG graphics are cylinders with cones at the base; that may reflect a more realistic interpretation of the "conservative estimate" mentioned in the rule. In practice I would bet they disabled the jet if the crew was expected to get anywhere near it.
Answer: A space ship may need some protection against the heat of its own RCS thrusters.
The Apollo Lunar Module was covered with multiple layers of thermal insulation foil. Close to the RCS thrusters the top layers were made from from nickel and the high temperature alloy inconel.

The thermal blanket consists of multiple-layered (at least 25 layers) of  aluminized sheet (mylar or H-film). Each layer is only
  0.00015 inch thick and is coated on one side with a microinch thickness of aluminum. To make an even more effective insulation, the
  polymide sheets are hand crinkled before blanket fabrication. This
  crinkling provides a path for venting, and minimizes contact
  conductance between the layers. Structures with a high thermal
  conductivity, such as antenna supports and landing gear members, that
  pass through the thermal blanket also have thermal protection.
  Individual blanket layers are overlapped and sealed with a continuous
  strip of H-film tape.
Mylar sheets are used predominantly in those areas where
  temperatures do not exceed 300° F. In areas where higher temperatures
  are sustained, additional layers of H-film are added to the mylar
  sheets. H-film can withstand temperatures up to 1000° F, but, because
  it is a heavier material, it is used only where absolutely necessary.
  Certain areas of the ascent stage are subjected to temperatures as
  high as 1800° F due to CSM and LM RCS plume impingement. These areas
  are thermally controlled by a sandwich material of thin nickel foil
  (0.0005 inch) interleaved with lnconel wire mesh and lnconel sheet.

300 °F is about 150 °C, 1000 °F is 540 °C and 1800 °F is 980 °C.
Block quotes and image from: APOLLO NEWS REFERENCE LUNAR MODULE QUICK REFERENCE DATA.
See this related question.
Comment: This is interesting -- I have never seen a picture of the LM descent stage with dark-colored foil insulation on one side. I knew about the rigid shields of course, but not the heat-resistant foil. Figured that blasting away foil would be more of a problem than melting it.
Comment: @ikrase Some more images with the dark foil: [1](https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/AS11-40-5925.jpg), [2](https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/AS11-40-5924.jpg), [3](https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/AS11-40-5922.jpg), [4](https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/AS11-40-5919.jpg).
Answer: An interesting case occurred during re-entry of the apollo-soyuz CM, where they failed to disable the RCS before opening the snorkel valves to repressurize the cabin. As the outside air rushed in, some RCS exhaust gas also entered the cabin, causing one astronaut to pass out and created breathing difficulties for them for a couple of days afterwards.

How dangerous are RCS thrusters?