Is a project without defined completion criteria really a project?

Question: A general direction has been set, a team of people assembled, they know what their first deliverables are, and they are off and running. They don't know what the end deliverable will look like, nor do they have a set of satisfaction criteria. Neither they nor their customers can say how long the work will last, and drip-feed development could go on for ever. They describe themselves as a project team, but are they really? And is their manager a project manager? Prince2 would suggest not, and I suspect that PMBOK would agree, but it is not an uncommon situation. If this is not a project, what is it?
Comment: It's a group of people eating someone's money
Answer: It depends on how orthodox you are going to be about project. If you take either Prince2 or PMBOK or Wikipedia definition it doesn't make a project.
However personally I'm far from being conservative on definitions and so are many people people out there, so I'd say it is a project.
Actually, many R&D endeavors works like that. Also, in many agile project, you don't have clear completion criteria or it is changing very often, like every couple of weeks -- it just depends how you look at the subject.
What more, if you asked people they would answer they are a project team. The client is probably describing this venture as a project. The vendor probably refers to it as a project as well, so who are we to disagree?
Besides, we don't get points, or get paid, for being conservatively aligned with definitions, whatever they are, but for making clients satisfied. So as long as everyone is happy, I see no issues with breaking rules of one or another specific project management methodology.
Comment: That last paragraph really makes a lot of sense.  If everyone is happy and things are successful, why rock the boat :)
Answer: If the team is working on an ongoing project or series of related projects, it's quite possible that this particular team is part of a program or part of product development.
Wikipedia describes a Program Manager as a person who manages multiple projects and who communicates with one or more project managers in order to meet a specific strategic goal.

According to Project Management Institute (PMI), The Standard for Program Management, 2nd Ed., "A Program is a group of related projects managed in a coordinated manner to obtain benefits and control NOT available from managing them individually. Programs may include elements of related work outside of the scope of the discreet projects in the program... Some projects within a program can deliver useful incremental benefits to the organization before the program itself has completed."

A Product Manager is someone who manages the development of products for an organization.  In my organization, this role would best describe what I do, as I am handling cross-functional goals, including development, marketing, sales, customer service, and human resources.  Below is the definition of a product manager from Wikipedia:

A product manager investigates, selects, and develops products for an organization, performing the activities of product management.
  A product manager considers numerous factors such as intended demographic, the products offered by the competition, and how well the product fits with the company's business model. Generally, a product manager manages one or more tangible products. However, the term may be used to describe a person who manages intangible products, such as music, information, and services.

Wikipedia also goes on to say that a product manager may also perform the duties of a program manager and/or a project manager as well as playing a leading role in supervising and setting goals for program and project managers.
In your scenario, your team and manager may cross the lines between being categorized as a product team, program team, or project team, depending on where you are in the process.
I may be breaking the fourth wall by adding this, but I also want to point out that Questions About Product and Program Management Are On-Topic Here.
Comment: I think that all of the answers have value, but in the particular case that I'm asking about, this is the answer that most closely fits the scenario. It's certainly not a research project, as there are customers, and I don't think they are an exploratory committee. They are indeed developing a software product, and while they know some of the short term deliverables, they just don't know where that product will end up, in terms of features, functionality, or customer benefits. In fact, one customer is helping them to develop the direction as an ongoing, two-way commitment between the parties.
Answer: It appears you have a Development Team in search of a Project.  Their leaser would be a Development Leader.  Unfortunately, too much development is done in this manner.  However, it appears they do have a direction.  Whether, their development approach is appropriate for the ultimate (apparently unknown) goal remains to be seen.
Not knowing exactly what the end deliverable will look like may be appropriate.  Not knowing the scope of the project is not.  What is the vision of the project?  Are they building a bread box or a skyscraper?  I would not want to be their customer, and it can be frustrating to develop in such a situation.
Once they have a project with a vision, scope, and satisfaction criteria, they will become a Project Team and their leader a Project Leader.
Answer: According to A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge 7th Edition, a project be "a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result" and that the "temporary nature of projects indicates a beginning and an end to the project work".
If you have a definition of what the first deliverable is, then you may have a project that can be defined and managed to allow the team to work toward that deliverable.
There are a number of project management principles around engaging with stakeholders, navigating complexity, managing risk and optimizing risk responses, and enabling change to achieve the desired future state that could be applied to help the team identify the criteria for success of each deliverable and, eventually, the overall goals.
The PMBOK 7th Edition also defines the concept of program and portfolio. A program is a related set of projects and/or subsidiary programs that are managed together to get benefits. A portfolio is a group of projects, programs, and subsidiary portfolios managed to support strategic objectives. If you have multiple deliverables that are being worked toward, then you may be able to define and manage a program or a portfolio as well.
Answer: Personally I would call this a Research (project). But even for a research project, you must have some sort of goal, a problem you want to solve. Is there some stage/level you want to reach before you call it even a small success in its own right (no matter how long it might go on afterwards).
If you can identify a first step quite clearly, then you have it, it is a project.
Another way to look at it is to ask who calls the shots, who pays for it. Is there any criteria for pulling the plug? If there is a defined stage by which some form of result must have appeared or funds dry up and the project team must be dissolved, then there you go again, you have a set of criteria.
I understand that those criteria may not be hard and objective, but I don't know of many endeavours (including personal ones) that don't have some sort of tangible even subjective milestones to reach, for either self satisfaction, or as a decision point to go on to the next step, can the whole thing, or try a different direction.
Answer: projects could be categorized generally in 4 domain based on goals and the way of execution.

So, the answer is yes. there are some projects that their goal are not clear. On the other hand, there are some vision about direction and every body agrees about what should be done for the project. there are also some example for "making a movie" type of project:

However, goals ambiguity increase complexity and the project manager should address the relevant complexity and risks. The project manager's role for this kinds of projects is to help the team craft a viable solution, whilst encouraging innovation and retaining a degree of flexibility within agreed milestones.
in this way, some projects management frameworks are developed to control these kinds of projects.
Comment: It would be better to write the content in the images as text in the answer.
Comment: I've read this several times and I'm not clear what you are asking or how to answer (I think that's the upper right quadrant, lost in the fog).  please clarify
Answer: There are five immutable principles of all projects: 1. Done is defined; 2. A way to get to done is known; 3. Resources to get to done are known and available; 4. Obstacles getting to done are known and mitigated; and 5. A way to measure progress getting to done is known and used.
However, #1 does not have to be known for the final final product that could be years down the road. Agile is based on that. So, too, in what many mistakenly call traditional waterfall. Progressive planning does exist, which includes defining done for whatever the next phase might be. But if you don't have #1 defined at least to some interim finish, then how can you do numbers two through five? A project, for it to be a project, needs to have some definition of done to some defined point in time but does not have to be the final final done done finished finished product.
Answer: If the "team" is not working against a defined list of features with acceptance criteria inside of a specified time horizon, they aren't a project team, they are an exploratory committee working on a "spike" (to borrow a term from XP).  While completely acceptable, "spikes" are exercises undertaken by a project team when they need more information to better understand the product they are developing and any underlying technical challenges so that they can provide better estimates and risk evaluations.
Someone, somewhere is paying the freight for this effort - they might have some expectation of ROI.  How do you define ROI if you have no means of measuring outcomes like what you're building or if it was successful?  Agile/lean/iterative/incremental processes are best suited in situations where the end goal is understood but not necessarily how to get there:  Risk is managed by continually inspecting and adapting within short time horizons - without goals, this quickly becomes a morass.


Russian Predicatives

Question: I have finally gotten through all the grammar, but I am confused with certain words. For example, I learned about должен, можно, and нужно. But, words like видно and замечательно are confusing me. Like, what does "Я видно" and "Он замечательно" mean, and why is it "Мне нужно", but not "Я нужно".
Answer: There are many impersonal constructions in Russian that take Dative. Here you can check some of the impersonal sentences with Dative. Those constructions can be literally translated as It is needed to me (мне нужно), it is wanted to me (мне хочется) or it is liked to me (мне нравится). In English, you have a subject 'I' and verbs that are in active voice. In Russian, it works differently: 'I' is rather passive, so things happen to "I", instead of 'I' being an active subject.
Мне видно - It is visible to me. "Я видно" is incorrect.
Он живёт / чувствует себя замечательно - he is fine (alternatively, you can say, у него всё замечательно)
Hope this helps.
Answer: "Я видно" is in itself meaningless.
"Я, видно,.." is okay and roughly neans "looks like I'm..." - no actual looking is involved.
Замечательно can work both ways. "Он замечательно прыгает" - he jumps magnificently. "Ему замечательно повезло" - "he got really lucky". Note how you can't say "he really lucky".
"Мне нужно сделать" but "Я должен сделать" - I guess it's just how it is.
Answer: Unlike English, Russian can have adverbs as predicatives. I agree with @alamar about "Я видно" и "Он замечательно", but as for "Мне нужно" I can explain it.
"Нужно" means "needed", and it is a whole clause by itself meaning "[it is] needed", both "it" and "is" are omitted in Russian. "Мне" is "for me", so "Мне нужно" is translated word-for-word "for me it is needed", which actually mean "I need", that is how this phrase is working in Russian.
Answer: In Russian, "I need..." is literally expressed as "to me is needed..." = мне нужно and "I like..." is literally expressed as "to me is liked..." = мне нравится. This is why, for instance, "I need the car" = Мне нужна машина with машина in the nominative case. Although in English the word car is the object, so you may think it belongs in the accusative case in Russian, the Russian construction is saying "To me is needed a car" or, a bit less awkwardly, "To me a car is needed." Either way, car is not the object of the sentence but the subject, hence nominative. Similarly, "I like geometry" is мне нравится геометрия, with geometry in the nominative case since the Russian construction is "To me is liked geometry" or "To me geometry us liked."
Using a more direct construction can have a different meaning than you may intend. For example, "he is cold" is expressed as ему холодно = "to him it is cold." If you instead use the adjective холодный to say someone is cold (он холодный человек or он холоден, using a short form adjective in the second version) then that means the person is cold as an emotional state.
Answer: Some theory
Impersonal sentences have a so-called logical subject. You can interpret this as that the actor undergoes some kind of action or is forced one way or another to perform the action. The suggestion is that the active free will of the actor  is absent: rather, the person undergoing the action has no choice.
Some situations[1]:

The actor is forced to perform an action:

Всё-таки Сергею придётся рассказать всю правду. (Sergey needs to tell the whole truth)

The actor doesn't know or cannot decide whether the performance of the action is necessary or possible:

Кому из нас ехать? (Who of us should drive?)
  Мне ли тебе рассказывать, как раньше жилось?! (Do I need to tell you, how we lived before?!)

The actor doesn't feel like performing the action:

Сходи в магазин, если тебе не лень. (Go to the store, if you it's not to hard for you. [litt. "if you are not too lazy"])

The actor is not capable of performing the action, because something or somebody is absent:

Нам некогда здесь торчать. (We don't have time to hang around here)

The actor is in some kind of emotional or physical state:

Мне холодно! (I am cold!)
  Мне весело на вечеринке. (I'm having fun at the party.)

The actor is (not) in the mood for something:

Татьяне не спалось, не читалось. (Tatyana couldn't sleep nor read.)

The actor is undergoing some psychological activity that is not controlled by her:

Всем казалось, что ты разумнее. (Everybody thought that you were more reasonable.)

The actor is in a physical state that is hardly controllable:

Ему икается. (He has the hiccups.)

Practical matters
So now you know a little about impersonal sentences. Think of them as some action that is happening to a person, rather than the person actively performing the action himself. This is just a peculiarity of the language that you need to grasp, but from personal experience I know it'll become second nature eventually (просто тебе нужно время ;-)
You ask why you can't say я нужно instead of мне нужно. Well, that's because нужен (нужна, -о, -ы) changes according to the grammatical subject of the sentence. And since we've just seen that the logical subject of the sentence takes the dative, we must conclude that (unless you are a дерево and want to say something like я нужно человечеству because you produce oxygen) this is not a correct sentence.
Compare the following sentences and see how the logical subject is different from the grammatical subject:

Мне нужен ты! (I need you!)
  Ему нужна девушка (He needs a girlfriend)
  Нам нужно работать (We need to work)
  Им нужны деньги (They need money)

[1] Examples are taken from Honselaar & Podgaevskaja (2007), "Учебная грамматика русского языка", Pegasus, Amsterdam.

Russian Predicatives


Uploaded file not shown in custom content type / Image not attached to content type

Question: In Drupal 7, I am trying to upload an image that belongs to a custom type.
I click the Browse button, choose the file and upload. Until there, all seems to work well.

However, when I click next, instead of the add alt, title and text, I get only a screen that says Destination *, and with a Previous and Next buttons, as shown below. The save button is never displayed, and the image is not shown.

However, the image is there if I check the files through the admin, moreover, all goes well If I add the image through the file/add, it is just in the custom type that I get the error.
I am logged in as an administrator and I have all the permissions checked in Media and File Entity
My files folder permissions are 755, and the javascript console shows:
'Attr.nodeValue' is deprecated. Please use 'value' instead. in jquery.js
Resource interpreted as Script but transferred with MIME type text/html: "about:blank" in
browser?render=media-popup&types[]=image&activePlugins=&enabledPlugins=&schemes[]=public&schemes[]=…:92 (anonymous function)
Thanks in advance for your help.
Update, this doesn't work with Image widget nor Media Browser widget. Same site works in PROD, I suppose it is something with the file system settings?
Answer: These fixed it:
-I changed the content type to image instead of media browser.
-Reviewed the permissions for file and this particular content type.
-Changed the field display of the content type


What is a good workflow for importing and cropping EPS images?

Question: I would like to be able to import an EPS file in to LaTeX while using some 3rd party image viewer/editor to quickly find crop coordinates. What are some good free tools for this? GIMP (the GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a free program that works on all major platforms, but it is not a vector graphics editor; will it work? It appears that you can choose any resolution with GIMP when you import. Additionally, since an EPS file is a vector graphics file, are there native units that LaTeX will recognize?
Comment: This might be helpful: https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/22065/101988
Answer: Method A: Dealing directly with PostScript
Since you're dealing with PostScript images, one option might be to use GhostView; I've done so successfully in the past. As an example, consider tiger.eps.

Open tiger.eps using GhostView.
Show the bounding box if you wish to see the extent of the existing whitespace:

Position the cursor on to identify the left, bottom, right and top coordinates. In my example, these are l b r t = 15 175 564 743.
Open tiger.eps and find the lines starting with %%BoundingBox in the "preamble":

%!PS-Adobe-2.0 EPSF-1.2
%%BoundingBox: 1 2 611 792

Update this to incorporate the new bounding box:

%!PS-Adobe-2.0 EPSF-1.2
%%BoundingBox: 15 175 564 743

There may also be a %%HiResBoundingBox entry, which you can update accordingly.
Refresh the view in GhostView which now shows the cropped bounding box:

Include as usual via \includegraphics, since the bounding box has been permanently updated. If you don't want to update the EPS permanently, you can also use
\includegraphics[...,bb=15 175 564 743, clip=true...]{tiger}

in your document.

Method B: Cropping via PDF

Use the command-line conversion

epstopdf tiger.eps

which produces tiger.pdf.
Use pdfcrop

pdfcrop tiger.pdf

which produces tiger-crop.pdf.
Convert back to EPS using

pdftops -eps tiger-crop.pdf tiger.eps

to overwrite tiger.eps with a now-cropped version:

New bounding box resembles

%%BoundingBox: 0 0 548 576

which is marginally different to the manual way described in Method A (which yielded a width of 564 - 15 = 549; height of 743 - 175 = 568).
Comment: Both methods are very nice, especially B, which could be easily added to a script and will probably work for most purposes -- thanks!
Comment: @bbarker: Yes, **Method A** follows your suggestion (using a vector-graphics *viewer*) closely. The use of `tiger` was just to add mooooaaaarrr roooaaaarrr!
Comment: Great, it works perfectly well. Also, another alternative is to use ps2eps, as suggested here: http://agember.com/blog/40
Comment: Why converting `tiger-crop.pdf` back to eps? Why not include the pdf file with latex?
Comment: @MaxNoe: The original usage was for EPS. Inclusion under modern engines may be converted automatically.
Comment: How about something for Mac OS?
Comment: @User: [`pdfcrop`](http://ctan.org/pkg/pdfcrop) should be available under Mac as well.
Answer: You can use epspdftk, the gui interface to Siep Kroonenberg's epspdf.texlua script. It exists both for Windows and Linux and does everything (converting and cropping the resulting .pdf) in one step. I'll take the example of one of my old graphic files, produced with pstricks and   pst-eps, that had a (very) badly computed bounding box.
The procedure is very simple: launch epspdftk and check Compute tight bounding box, then click on Open to choose the file to be converted:

Once chosen, you may ask to view the .eps file:

Then click on Convert and save…. A second later, you can look at the resulting .pdf in your favourite pdf viewer:

The  .texlua script can also be launched from the command line, if you want to do batch conversion.
Comment: Great suggestion, I'll try that next time I need to crop an EPS file :)
Answer: I'm just adding this as a supplement to Werner's answer "B", which uses his method in a bash script that will process all eps files in specified directory:
#!/bin/bash

D=$1

# Process all EPS file in passed directory
for filename in $D/*.eps; do

    # Get path and filename without extension
    base=${filename%.*}

    # Convert EPS to PDF
    epstopdf "$base"".eps"

    # Crop PDF
    pdfcrop "$base"".pdf"

    # Convert PDF back to EPS
    pdftops -eps "$base""-crop.pdf" "$base"".eps"
done

# Remove the intermediate "crop" pdfs
rm $D/*-crop.pdf

Answer: Firstly, the GIMP does appear to be an adequate and convenient tool for the job. EPS files seem to include a default resolution, which is what the GIMP displays when you open an EPS file, so don't change it:

Next, you can easily use your cursor to find one of two defining coordinates. In this example we do the top-left coordinate. You can see the approximate region of where the cursor is by the small box that is north-west of the figure. The coordinates are shown in the lower-left hand corner of the canvas window. Be sure to choose coordinates that TeX can work with (I don't think the default, px -- pixels, is supported in TeX; What are the possible dimensions / sizes / units LaTeX understands?). In our example we use millimeters (mm):

Now we can import it into a document. Again we will just test this coordinate for now:
\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[english]{babel}
\usepackage{blindtext}

\title{An EPS trimming workflow}
\author{Brandon Barker}
\date{\today}

\usepackage{caption}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{subcaption}
\usepackage{float}

\begin{document}

% Let's draw a box around the figure so we
% can see where the figure's whitespace ends.
\setlength\fboxsep{0pt}
\setlength\fboxrule{1.5pt}

\begin{figure}[h]
\centering
% give some space for fbox:                    % l       b   r   t
\fbox{\includegraphics[width=0.9\textwidth, trim=104.4mm 0mm 0mm 17.3mm, clip=true]
      {YeastExpFluxCompare}}
\caption{\blindtext}
\label{fig:FluxExpCmp}
\end{figure}

Please refer to Table~\ref{fig:FluxExpCmp}.

\end{document}

This results in the following output, showing that we have correctly made a close crop around the left and top edges of the figure.
Comment: The problem with this approach is that Gimp is a pixel-based image editor, thus your image will lose its vectorized quality (ie: if you zoom, you will see pixels instead of nicely drawn lines). An alternative in a similar vein is to use Inkscape, which is a vector-based image editor, but it has some troubles sometimes with EPS files (see the Inkscape forums, lots of people complain about Inkscape tampering their EPS on loading), but when it works it's great since Inkscape can also automatically tightly crop the image based on the content.
Comment: @bbarker: Opening in Gimp is the same as making a screenshot. All text, all lines, shapes will be lost and replaced by stupid pixels. (Bad quality, large filesize, difficult to edit,...) I recommend to read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_graphics
Answer: The OP did not say whether the finished PDF document was intended for printing to paper, or for distribution in digital form.
If the purpose is printing to paper, then a vector image is not necessary, because the end user cannot zoom the image. In fact, a vector image may be undesirable, because vector images may contain ambiguous drawing instructions, which may be interpreted differently by different printers. If the printing is in commercial quantity, then vector images may be prohibited.
For paper, the best solution is usually to rasterize the EPS. GIMP can do the job, as can a few other programs. Ignore the "native" resolution of the EPS. Instead, think in terms of the physical printed size of the image (measured in inches) and the resolution (dots per inch). Unless your work is fine art, usually 300dpi suffices for color or grayscale images, 600dpi for black and white line art.
So, if your color image should be 4"W x 3"H, request 300dpi resolution when importing the EPS to GIMP. The rasterized image will be 1200 x 900 pixels. However, that is uncropped.
When you import, the dpi is specified, and the size is calculated. You can effectively change the size by changing the dpi at import. Then, use the Image Scale menu to change the dpi to 300, allowing the dimensions to follow.
Be sure to specify the resolution when you use \includegraphics.


Iain M. Banks' "Against a Dark Background'

Question: I read this a long time ago and thought that it had the saddest line I'd ever read at the end, referring to the star being so far from galactic fringes that it had no chance of ever achieving MFTL travel.
However I have just acquired a new copy and cannot find that reference - did I imagine it?
Comment: MFTL? Maine Fair Trade Lobster?
Comment: @user14111: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=MFTL
Comment: Mucho - FTL :-)
Comment: @Valorum Yeah, that makes sense, in this context. OTOH, in a *Doctor Who* context, how would you read "What's that MFTL up to this time?"
Answer: Page 176 in the ebook version, about three quarters of the way through, rather than at the end.

Like Golter; like poor, poor Golter.
It had found itself alone and it had spread itself as far as it could and produced so much, but it was still next to nothing.
They had grown up-had they only known it-in one room of an empty house. When they began to understand it was a house, they had thought there must be others nearby; they had thought perhaps they were in the suburbs, or even a well-hidden part of the city, but though they had colonised those other rooms, they had looked out from their furthest windows and tallest skylights and found-to their horror, and a horror only their own increased understanding made them fully able to appreciate-that they were truly alone.
They could see the nebulae, beautiful and distant and beckoning, and could tell that those faraway galaxies were composed of suns, other stars like Thrial, and even guess that some of those suns too might have planets round them… but they looked in vain for stars anywhere near their own.
The sky was full of darkness. There were planets and moons and the tiny feathery whorls of the dim nebulae, and they had themselves filled it with junk and traffic and emblems of a thousand different languages, but they could not create the skies of a planet within a galaxy, and they could not ever hope, within any frame of likelihood they could envisage existing, to travel to anywhere beyond their own system, or the everywhere-meaningless gulf of space surrounding their isolated and freakish star.
For a distance that was never less than a million light years in any direction around it, Thrial-for all its flamboyant dispersion of vivifying power and its richly fertile crop of children planets-was an orphan.
Comment: Valorum, Thank you very much for that - I was beginning to doubt myself. It will be the first time I have reread it in at least 10 years and now that I can look forward to it without thinking I'm senile I shall enjoy it all the more. Again, many thanks.


when a miner solves the problem in less than one timestamp then what does it do with its extra capacity?

Question: If a miner solves the problem in less than one second then how does it use the extra capacity.
Answer: The resolution of the timestamp in a Bitcoin block header is one second.  However, if a miner should find a valid proof-of-work and create a valid block, they do not have to wait one second before starting work on a new block.  It is perfectly legal for two successive blocks to have identical timestamps.  In fact, it is legal for the succeeding block to have a timestamp that is earlier than that of the preceding block by up to 7200 seconds.  See Why is two hours the maximum acceptable offset for Bitcoin blocks?
So a miner can immediately start work on a new block, and this is normally what they actually would do.  Hence there is no "excess capacity" at all.
Answer: It is very hard to find the correct answer but verifying the answer is instant and you need that answer to begin to mine the next block, so as soon as a miner receives one answer that he can verify is valid he will take that information and use it to try to find the next answer without loosing time and because every other miner will do the same.
Answer: It will use it to solve the next problem.


How to include the URLs Magento search results in sitemap.xml or generate a new sitemap.xml for this?

Question: I wonder how I can do to generate a new sitemap.xml on Magento whit only the search results, like Wordpress does, generating more urls to send to Google and increasing the ranking search results for users?
Comment: That's wrong. This article is pretty good and explain exactly my question: http://www.goinflow.com/duplicate-content-ecommerce-seo/
Answer: Oh.... Google hate duplcate content as much as they hate bad links so you can't do that -  http://searchengineland.com/google-warning-against-letting-your-search-results-get-indexed-10709 - you'll get your site an almighty whack if you do - in fact you need to make sure the robots meta tag on your duplicate content which includes filters and search pages is set to "noindex" to cure this problem!
Comment: I agree, but I think this may change according to the SEO strategy of the company. In my case, I decided to release the access of Robots.txt to these pages but Optimized meta title and meta description of each.


What is difference between daily life photography and street photography?

Question:
This photo taken by me in Al-Hussain street in Cairo , Egypt
Comment: Can you give more context? Why is it important to explicitly distinguish between these two photographic labels?
Answer: The word "life" in daily life photography indicates that there should be some kind of life activity going on in the picture, usually this means people doing daily, routine things, such as waiting in the car for the signal to turn green, reading a book on a park bench, etc or as in your example, people walking about and shopping in a market street.
Street photography on the other hand, can include daily life where streets are the setting, but it can also include just street photos without any "life" action going on that is visible. This can be useful for focusing on interesting building (or other) architecture alongside the street. See this for more information about street photography:
What is difference between Street Photography and Travel Photography?
Answer: Sometimes "street photos" are also "daily life photos."
Sometimes "daily life photos" are also "street photos."
There is often overlap between the two in which a "street photo" includes humans going about their normal routine doing "daily life" activities.
But either type of photo does not have to include the other.
It is possible to take "daily life" type photos in areas away from "streets." This could be inside a home, inside another type of building, in a wilderness area, on a farm, etc.
It is possible to take "street photos" of scenes that are static and not occupied by humans going about their daily lives. A photo of an empty street at night, for example. Or a "street photo" of an historical event in which the participants are behaving in a way differently than they would in their normal daily routine.


Can a 10 speed rear derailleur be modified for 9 speed and then modified again to a 10 speed deraileur?

Question: I have Shimano RD-5700 105 Rear Derailleur (10-Speed, GS Medium Cage, Black).   I bought it to use on my 9 speed bike, but now what to add new shifters (3x10).  My bike shop wants to replace the cassette and chain, which I have done.   But Rear Derailleur, he wants me to replace as well.  I disagree, but I need to show him in writing.   Please post the web link or manual.   (I am an America in Spain trying to demonstrate to my Spanish bike store).
Comment: I'm pretty sure that derrailleurs are dumb and don't care about how many speeds they are used for.  The amount of cable pull is all controlled by the shifters. Any derailleur with work with any number of gears.
Comment: Just match up the 5700 group  http://cycle.shimano-eu.com/publish/content/global_cycle/en/nl/index/components/road/105_5700.html And it is typically cheaper to buy the group than components one at a time.
Comment: You need to match the cable pull between the derailleur and shifters so indexing works, which is why 9 speed shifters won't work with a dynasys shifter for example. In this case, it should work fine though if the shifters are Shimano road.
Comment: If your derailleur is 10-speed and works with 2x9 there's no reason it won't work with 3x10.
Comment: @Kibbee Yes the cable pull is determined by the shifter but the derailleur must support the range.  You can put 7 speed cassette on a 10 speed hub with spacers.  But a 7 speed derailleur most likely will not have the range to go 10 gears.
Answer: There is no modification to be done. You can use a 10spd Shimano derailleur with 9spd or 10spd components no problem. If they're telling you that they need to "modify" your 10 speed derailleur because you were previously using it with 9 speed components, bid them good day and go find another shop. However I don't think that's what they're concerned with.
Since you're going to be running a 3x10 setup, my guess is that the reason your bike shop wants to replace your derailleur is the cage length of the current derailleur that you have. 3x10 gives you the widest gear ranges, but with wider gear ranges come longer cages to account for larger capacity, that is the derailleur's ability to take up or deal out extra chain between gearing extremes (big-big, small-small, or close to either). Too short caged of a derailleur can cause the chain to lose tension when nearing the small-small combination, or cause the bike to be unable to shift into gear combinations approaching big-big at all. Neither one of those are a good situation and can potentially damage your bike's drivetrain.
If you're running a 3x10 setup, you likely need at least a medium cage derailleur. If you're running a dinner plate on the back (read: cassette with very low gearing, likely 29t or larger) you may actually need a long cage derailleur, or a mountain bike derailleur.
Comment: I appreciate all the comments, especially Joelmdev.  I have a RD-5700-GS-L (long) on the rear and a Shimano FC-3503 Sora 30/39/50t as a crank.
Comment: I can't imagine any compelling reason why you would need to replace your rear derailleur. That's the one you need, assuming you're running a 28t cassette or less. Details here: http://bike.shimano.com/content/sac-bike/en/home/components1/road/105.html#


Which version of iOS is the May 12 security paper referring to?

Question: Apple has published a paper on security controls in iOS, which specific version is this referring to?
Answer: The given information seems pretty generic to me. A statement of how Apple manages security with the iOS devices seems more plausible rather than how security is handled with a specific version of it.
iOS 5 is referred a couple of times in the paper, though, while no earlier version are, but in a very vague way.
Answer: I would hazard a guess by saying iOS 5, simply because of the date.


Saving website copy and browsing saved copies

Question: How can I automatically save site's copy each week with an option to browse saved copies? I need kind of WebArchive, but on my local computer.
Comment: Is the site "copy" stored in a database or static HTML pages? From your comment below, you do appear to use a database (for something). You might need to implement some kind of versioning in the database itself?
Comment: It's dynamic (i.e. Wordpress) website. But I am looking for smart solution, which doesn't require lots and lots of programming, like if I was going to implement my own search engine with caching, etc...
Answer: You could try using a program like HTTrack to perform a site mirror. This gives you a local browsable copy that you can archive.
Comment: Actually none of existing tools update all links correctly. Some sophisticated CSS-links are not updated, unfortunatelly. So, the only way I come to by the moment is to make locally unbrowsable copy and deploy it to server.

The huge advantage — it won't require database, thus allowing us to deploy copy automatically.
Comment: Ok, seeing that you said you're running a Wordpress site, I would still consider HTTrack, but combined with one of these plugins:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/static-html-output-plugin/
 ...or...
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/really-static/
 ...which will generate a static version of your site which you will mirror with HTTrack. If you don't like these ideas, search the WordPress plugin repository for modules that related to archive, backup, mirror, etc...
Answer: You can backup your website easily within the panel of your hosting account. After that, you can download the backup and, thanks to a server engine like Apache, you can browse it locally.
Comment: It's ok solution, but how do I browse many many copies without deploying each of them? As I said — like WebArchive?
Comment: @user1065145 You don't need to deploy. If, for example, you have all php or html pages, you simply have to unzip (or so) and browse
Comment: And database? Anyway it requires time and experience. I need a solution for dummy user.


How to measure scroll-able cards?

Question: We are creating a news app, which provides short news. For this, we have used google's material cards which are scroll-able and tabs for categories. Our main concern is how to track these cards properly? since everything gets tracked if you scroll too fast.
Comment: I'm not sure I completely understand where you're coming from. How would you get multiple page views? In Google Analytics?
Comment: @DanielSlowacek I mean if you scroll too fast even those articles you don't read will be counted in PVS.
Comment: This is true, but that's a tracking issue then. For example facebook videos generate 1 view only after they've been played for a certain amount of time (3-5 seconds afaik). You just need to define this threshold and then keep it in mind when analyzing the data. I don't really understand how this challenge is related to Usability though.
Answer: Take a look to the image below and imagine articles are in cards layout:

Now, after seeing this page, did you read all articles and news in it? Or just a snippet of the article with maybe a photo?
Translating to your app, what you have is called a coplanar

A card collection is coplanar, or a layout of cards on the same plane.

So it's easy to see a coplanar is just a container, and you want to track cards, not coplanars
Well, there goes your answer: you track the container or coplanar for all cards like in any web page and you track cards only if the user chose to click on any of them, therefore effectively going to a new tracked page or an expanded view of the card (in this case, you can track the expand button)

How to measure scroll-able cards?


How can deanonymize me? vpn tor vpn

Question: I want to use connection vpn1 - tor - vpn2, where vpn1 and vpn2 I will buy with openvpn connection more likely, entry node of tor
will be on my raspberry pi (in my home) with disabled logs, I'm going use this chain to connect to the vps server, I'm not going to
to do anything illegal. For this chain, I will use whonix on virtualbox, Linux on the host, Linux on the entry node and Linux on vps.
To connect to vps, I want to use most likely remmina or another client and rdp or vnc connection. How can deanonymize me most power people?
If they will do this. I research anonymity of internet, and for this I am asking this question. I need it
for these purposes. Vps will probably be interrupted, after each connection I want delete logs for connecting to it.
Comment: e.g. they will de-anonymize you via payments for your VPN/VPS... so using Tor in this setup may be pointless.
Comment: one suggestion to think about in general: it's not guaranteed that a more complex setup will be more secure, it is even more possible that you make a mistake (or suffer from a software-bug) and you are screwed.
Comment: "e.g. they will de-anonymize you via payments for your VPN/VPS... so using Tor in this setup may be pointless", it is excluded as well as any other methods that are not related to my first message are excluded. Tor doesn't exchange path during connection if is using chain vpn-tor-vpn with whonix to connection to vps as I know (like in IRC chat), can they see time of connection to vps (31 minutes, etc) and see what relay node and entry node were connected this 31 minutes? And deanonymize?
Answer: I don't really know why you want to use such config, if you don't want to do smth illegal (even SilkR0ad creator didn't have paranoia like you XD). Firstly, it will take you to reach simple website about 2 minutes, and you won't be able to search comfortably.
The idea to use Raspberry Pi is very good, so I suggest you to set up R Pi, and from it connect to Tor(if you need this setup to visit .onion links).
If you only want to search anonymously and get rid off BigBrother, you can config openvpn server or purchase NordVPN (remember, it is better to use cryptocurrency as a payment method, more secure and it is less chance that "THEY" will trace you) and plugin Firefox to use DuckDuckGo search engine. If you done with your job, you can easily break R Pi and drop it to the further trash box.
Hope this would help you :)

How can deanonymize me? vpn tor vpn


Does non-synthetic 10w30 motor oil contain sulphur?

Question: I ask this question as I plan on using 10W30 motor oil in my Jeep's manual transmission and need no sulphur added to the oil so that it is "yellow metal safe". I'm not looking to start a discussion around whether or not motor oil may be used in manual transmission but rather, looking for information on whether motor oil (synthetic or mineral) contains sulphur as an additive. I assume synthetic does not.
Answer: Synthetic based oils do not typically contain sulphanates. Mobil, as an example recommend
Mobil 1 synthetic gear oil in lieu of a GL-5 lubricant that does contain sulphur and as
you correctly state is injurious to copper, brass, and the like.
Comment: I'm sorry, Mike ... how does this *in any way* answer the OP's question? Also, when posting an answer, please refrain from using abbreviations and local color. You may know what a g/box is, I can figure it out, but some others may not have a clue. (I know, g/box is an easy one, but I've seen many more you've left behind which has taken me a minute to understand). Remember, as well, punctuation, sentence structure, capitalization and spelling are you friend.
Comment: point well taken paulster-shall comply
Comment: Thanks for the response. So far no really clear answer but I did find thus link to be very useful: http://www.widman.biz/uploads/Transaxle_oil.pdf


Connecting Roland drums to Ableton Live

Question: This is the first time I have tried to use electronic drums through Ableton Live. I use a Focusrite Scarlett interface for other instruments so I am assuming that I will need to do the same for the electronic drums (Roland TD-11). This  means finding a cable with a USB type B at one end and a jack plug at the other. Do such cables exist or could I connect straight into the back of the computer? Other people must have had this challenge, any help is gratefully received.
Comment: Do you want to record the TD-11's audio output, or the drum hits as MIDI data for triggering a soft synth or sampler in Ableton? You can get both audio and MIDI to your computer from the TD-11's USB connector, but if you want to record audio from the Focusrite Scarlett at the same time, then you'll want to get the TD-11 as MIDI only... or bring in the TD-11's audio as audio through the Scarlett. Ableton can only input audio from one device at a time.
Answer: You can connect direct via usb lead to your computer from your TD11. I've just started this but have now stumbled across the issue of additional latency (compared to my existing minilab midi controller) and it not have a 'v drums' allocation in the midi control interface when in the 'link midi' preferences. Good luck

Connecting Roland drums to Ableton Live


New world in Dwarf Fortess?

Question: What does it mean to create a new world in Dwarf Fortress?  Is a world the same as a game?
Answer: The world is where you create new games, you can play many games in a single world.
You may want to create a new world if you are toying with world creation parameters:
https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2010:Worldgen_samples
By altering these parameters, you could generate a world made only of ice and magma, where you are under constant siege by Goblin hordes. If you're finding the game too easy on standard settings...
Comment: "If you're finding the game too easy on standard settings..." hehe
Comment: @McKay didn't I ask a question about making it *easier*?
Comment: @C. Ross Yes, that's my whole point. My whole premise is that the game is very difficult, and that "liking" DF (if that's possible) means that you're at least a little masochistic. Asking for the game to be easier is ruining the "point" of the game. (which is what you were mentioning in your original question) Saying something like "if the game is too easy" is expected, given the nature of the players of the game, but is funny, because "what, this is a hard game and you want it even harder?" I understand why what I'm saying seems contradictory, but I don't think it actually is.
Comment: @McKay Believe it or not I actually understand humor.
Answer: A world is the environment around your fortress/adventure, all the actions you do have influence on this world, and you can play several fortress after each other inside the same world.
However, there are certain limits on this, such as there can only be one active fortress in each world, requiring you, if you want to play another fortress without abandoning your current one, to create a new world.
Comment: no, certainly not, each world will be saved in a seperate directory.
Comment: I thought creating a new world would wipe out any currently active games; is this not the case?
Answer: Each world you create can have a single game being played in it at a time.
E.g.:
You create a world (named "Shards of Beer" or something). You make an adventurer, and adventure for a while. You retire that adventurer and start a fort (which will be founded in the same year you stopped adventuring). If you abandon that fort, you can then reclaim it with another expedition, or start a new fort somewhere else, or start another adventurer (and maybe go find your old fort...)
While all that is going on, you can create a separate world "SheepDeath". This world is completely separate from the other one--none of the forts from the Shards of Beer will appear in this world, nor will any of your adventurers be in the legends of this world.

New world in Dwarf Fortess?


Meditation on a concept

Question: Is samatha concentration meditation's object always an idea, concept or something else?
Why meditate on a concept and what else besides concepts are  there to meditate on?
Answer: There are 40 meditation objects are prescribed in Visuudhimagga.
https://dhammawiki.com/index.php/40_meditation_subjects
Answer: Samarha means tranquillity state of the mind. Keeping this state for the considerable time is the result of the meditation.
There are many ways you can do it, there are many meditation techniques to do this which are not advised in buddhism.
Meditation can be done concentrating on something like air, fire, soil etc.
But in buddhism you may concentrate on insatiable state of the world.
When mind is thinking about something it goes to neutral/calm state, where it won't react to inputs but just read them as it is.
Answer: At its best, samatha meditation almost never involves an idea, concept, etc.  Apart from the brahmaviharas, meditations on the foulness of the body, and a handful of other techniques, samatha almost by definition can't involved any kind of discursive thinking.  It would simply be impossible to enter into higher states of concentration with this kind of mental content in place.  In fact, the Visuddhimagga and other texts make a point of saying that while the 1st jhana can be reached by any number of techniques, in order for it to be exceeded discursive content has to be abdonded (and frankly, I'd argue that the 1st jhana can only be approached by conceptual techniques; there's just no "room" for conceptual thought when one attains absorption).  Even in Rinzai Zen, where we work with koans, you aren't brooding or ruminating on the huatou (i.e. the part of the koan that you say over and over again in seated meditation).  Rather, the word becomes an object of focus - no different than the tip of your nose, the breath, a kasina, the dan tien, etc.  What you are really aiming for is a mental energy that is applied and sustained.  The less discursive that mental energy is, the easier it will be for your concentration to stabilize and mature.  It's why it's often better to stick with objects like the breath.  You can direct your mental energy there in a way that doesn't give rise to extraneous mental content.
So much of samatha involves letting go (vossagga).  As your concentration deepens, it will become exceedingly apparent just how riling and disruptive even the slightest thought object actually is.  If what you are after is pure concentration, it seems counterproductive to enter into any practice relies on the production of mental content no matter how refined or virtuous that content might seem.
Answer: To do samatha means to still something. In first jhana unwholesome perception is stilled/tranquilized, in first arupa jhana the perception of form has been stilled, with the attainment of 'cessation of perception & feeling' perception and feeling is stilled. This is clearly explained in Patisambhidamagga.
The modernist expression of to samatha meaning to meditate on a concept unlike doing vipassana whereas one meditates on 'an ultimate reality', is foreign to the pali canon. It is to me a disagreeable expression with a disagreeable meaning.
The 'vipassanists' who use this framework will usually tell you that the way they present the teaching is quite different to the canon but they do go on to justify their way loosely drawing from various commentaries and works produced in the last century.
It is very sectarian way of teaching and is imo one shade off chakra and kundalini frameworks.

Meditation on a concept


rewriting results in view: trim from the back

Question: I am working on Drupal 7 Omega Subtheme, Panels Views.
In one of my views I have a path field which displays the whole url and I need only the last 6 characters (6 digits, to be precise. Also, if it helps - part of the URL I want to get rid of is fixed.)
Under REWRITE options there is 'Trim this field to a maximum length' but I need to trim it from the end (i.e. from the right).
Do I have to use php? Do I require views_php module?
Thanks.
Answer: Yes. You will have to use something like
<code>$newstring = substr($dynamicstring, -6);
</code>
in the php code for the field.
Comment: Thanks Gokul. How would I use tokens (namely - [path]) in combination with that?
Comment: Could I do something like  $Dynamicstring == [path]; $newstring = substr($dynamicstring, -6); print $newstring;
Comment: If you are using view_php it should be available to you as a php variable. If you want to use tokens you can use
Comment: Also, is there a drupal way of doing this as sorting a view using PHP always has a considerable perfomance impact?


At what rate are stars accelerating?

Question: How fast stars accelerating away from a central point? Are they increasing in acceleration or decreasing? If possible could you please provide a plot of the acceleration of stars away from the central fixed point.
Comment: There is no central fixed point.
Comment: Partly answered by http://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/11584/are-galaxies-moving-away-with-constant-acceleration
Comment: Are you talking about the expansion of the universe? Because everything in the universe is moving away from everything else, not from a central point.
Answer: As has already been mentioned, stars within a galaxy do not generally expand. The stars in a galaxy are gravitationally bound together.
But as you observe more and more distant galaxies, you see a general trend that distant galaxies are moving away from us at a speed that's proportional to their distance.  (There are some small variations due to the random motion of individual galaxies; for example, the Andromeda galaxy is approaching us, and will collide with the Milky Way in about 4 billion years.)
This does not indicate that everything is expanding from some central point.  An observer in a galaxy a billion light-years away would see the same thing, all other galaxies receding at a speed proportional to the distance from the observer.  This can be interpreted as space itself expanding.  Going into more detail would require General Relativity, which I'm not competent to explain.
Your question is about the rate of expansion.  The answer to that is what's called the Hubble Constant, which describes the ratio between a galaxy's speed of recession and its distance from us.  The current best estimate of this ratio is 67 kilometers per second per megaparsec.  A parsec is about 3.26 light-years; a galaxy one million parsecs away will be moving away from us at about 67 kilometers per second.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble%27s_law#Determining_the_Hubble_constant
Comment: "At what rate are stars accelerating"? "Are they increasing in acceleration or decreasing"? The question is not asking about the present rate of expansion, but about $\dot{H}$ or even $\ddot{H}$.
Answer: No part of the universe, at least on a large scale, is believed to be accelerating away from a central point. And, in any case, the movement of stars in galaxies is dominated by the effect of galactic gravitation rather than the expansion of spacetime.
The universe as a whole is believed to be expanding (the observational evidence for this is generally not questioned these days), but this is also believed to be happening everywhere at once. The big bang - the moment at which this expansion started also occurred everywhere at once and so there is no central point of the expansion.
My favourite analogy - which I have used on this site a few times now - is of the surface of a balloon as it is blown up - all the points on the surface move away from each other but there is no central point on the surface.
Comment: The question was about the rate of expansion. You haven't addressed that.
Comment: The question was how fast are they accelerating away from a central point. The answer is they aren't - as stated in the first sentence of my answer.
Comment: no central point **on the surface** there is one on the inside

At what rate are stars accelerating?


Is there any non-pathogenic gram negative bacteria?

Question: In the category of Gram-negative bacteria, is there any non-pathogenic species? Is such a list of non-pathogenic gram-negative bacteria's available? Can you give maximum 5 examples of such bacteria which has been proved to be non-pathogenic and is gram-negative?
Comment: Well, most of them are not pathogenic. It would be quite a long list.
Comment: The most diverse, yet phylogenetically coherent, bacterial phylum is the Proteobacteria, and its members are Gram-negative. If you go through the list of bacterial genera and species belonging to Proteobacteria, and if you look into the papers that describe them, you will always find the information about the source, i.e., the environment from which the bacteria were isolated, and from that you can infer about the pathogenic potential.
http://www.bacterio.net/-classifphyla.html#proteobacteria
Comment: Another strategy is to make the list of all pathogenic bacteria, remove them from the list of all bacteria, and exclude Gram-positive ones. You will be left with all Gram-negative bacteria for which pathogenicity is not known.
Answer: As Canadianer already mentioned in the comments, the majority of bacteria (this includes gram-negative bacteria) are non-pathogenic.
I think a prime example is the human gut flora. You can find loads of bacterial species living in your gut without doing you any harm, if anything they are doing you a favour by breaking down food.
Here some examples of gram-negative genera:

Bacteroides
Escherichia

Most species within those genera are non-pathogenic, however, there are exceptions.
Comment: So bacteroides vulgatus is gram-negative and non-pathogenic?
Comment: It would appear so.. Here is a study (http://jb.asm.org/content/193/15/4025.full) that refers to Bacteroides vulgatus as one of "the most commonly isolated microbes from the human gastrointestinal tract, and it has been found to constitute part of the core gut microbiota in healthy humans".
Comment: I should add, however, that infections may have been reported for said organism. This happens when they grow in environments where they shouldn't be growing. The questions of pathogenicity isn't always as black and white as we would like it to be. Generally, _Bacteroides vulgatus_ is considered commensal.
Answer: There are more than 15,758 named bacterial species, and the majority of them are Gram-negative, and most of them are non-pathogenic.
Comment: the document is password protected, how to open ?
Comment: The password for "Bacteria I. Taxonomy: Genera and Species" is: 1


Newton and Newton polygon

Question: What did Newton himself do, so that the "Newton polygon" method is named after him?
Comment: Here is some bibliographic info on the book, courtesy MathSciNet: Harold M. Edwards, Essays in constructive mathematics, Springer-Verlag, New York, 2005. xx+211 pp. ISBN: 0-387-21978-1, MR2104015 (2005h:00010)
Comment: You might try looking at Essay 4.4 in Harold Edwards' "History of Constructive Mathematics". The essay is titled "Newton's Polygon" and describes the algorithm discovered by Newton.
Comment: Ben, I can't seem to get my library, Google, or Amazon to acknowledge the existence of this book.  Do you happen to know who published it?
Comment: another question of similar flavour I had for quite some time but never bothered to answer: what did Gauss himself do, so that the "Gauss-Manin connection" is named after him?
Answer: The Newton polygon and Newton's method are closely related. The following theorem was first proven by Puiseux:

if $K$ is an algebraically closed field of characteristic zero, then the field of Puiseux series over $K$ is the algebraic closure of the field of formal Laurent series over $K$

However according to Wikipedia

This property was implicit in Newton's use of the Newton polygon as early as 1671 and therefore known either as Puiseux's theorem or as the Newton–Puiseux theorem.

A place where this is illustrated in more detail is "A history of algorithms: from the pebble to the microchip" By Jean-Luc Chabert, Évelyne Barbin, page 191. I will quote the first paragraph

Immediately following his description of his numerical method for solving equations, Newton used the same principle to show how to obtain algebraic solutions of equations. He explains how the method of successive linear approximations can be adapted by using a ruler and "small parallelograms", the first version of what is called Newton's polygon. The method was applied in a more general case later, by Puiseux in 1850, both in considering multiple branches and in considering functions of a complex variable

Then it explains Newton's approach in detail. You can follow the references given there. And then we know the story that this nice tool is now used for the understanding of polynomials over local fields even tough originally the local field was the field of formal Laurent series.
Answer: here are some references:

"Plane Algebraic Curves" by Brieskorn and Knorrer, around page 370.
"Plane Algebraic Curves" by Fischer, Appendix 4.
The link

https://www.maa.org/sites/default/files/pdf/upload_library/22/Polya/07468342.di020774.02p0260v.pdf
is an article from The College Mathematics Journal about the Newton polygon as developed by Newton.
I especially recommend the first reference because it has a wealth of pictures.
(However, it is a monster of a book.)
Comment: In reference #3, the link is to an article in The College Math Journal, not the Monthly.
Comment: OK, I fixed the description of the link.
Answer: If memory serves correct the history of Newton's polygon and Puiseaux series has some subtleties, so be a bit wary of secondary historical sources. Histories of mathematics are bursting at the seams with romanticized legends, so it is always best to consult primary sources if you wish to know the real history. The following note from  Chrystal's Algebra may serve as a helpful entry into the primary literature.

Historical Note. - As has already been remarked, the fundamental idea of
  the  reversion of series, and of the
  expansion of the roots of algebraical
  or other  equations in power-series
  originated with Newton. His famous"
  Parallelogram" is  first mentioned in
  the second letter to Oldenburg; but is
  more fully explained  in the
  Geometria Analytica (see Horsley's edition of Newton's Works, t. i.,  p.
  398). The method was well understood
  by Newton's followers, Stirling and
  Taylor; but seems to have been lost
  sight of in England after their time.
  It was  much used (in a modified form
  of De Gua's) by Cramer in his
  well-known Analyse  dea Lignes
  Courbea Algebriques (1750). Lagrange
  gave a complete analytical form  to
  Newton's method in his "Memoire sur
  l'Usage des Fractions Continues,"
  Nouv.  Mem. d. l'Ac. roy. d. Sciences d. Berlin (1776). (See OEuvres de
  Lagrange, t. iv.)
Notwithstanding its great utility, the
  method was everywhere all but
  forgotten  in the early part of this
  century, as has been pointed out by De
  Morgan in an  interesting account of
  it given in the Cambridge
  Philosophical Transactions,  vol.ix.
  (1855).
The idea of demonstrating, a priori,
  the possibility of expansions such as
  the  reversion-formulae of S.18
  originated with Cauchy; and to him, in
  effect, are due  the methods employed
  in SS.18 and 19. See his memoirs on
  the Integration of  Partial
  Differential Equations, on the
  Calculus of Limits, and on the Nature
  and  Properties of the Roots of an
  Equation which contains a Variable
  Parameter,
  Exercices d'Analyse et de Physique Mathematique, t. i. (1840), p. 327;
  t. ii.  (1841), pp. 41, 109. The form
  of the demonstrations given in SS. 18,
  19 has  been borrowed partly from
  Thomae, El. Theorie der Analytischen
  Functionen  einer Complexen
  Veranderlichen (Halle, 1880), p. 107;
  partly from Stolz,
  Allgemeine Arithmetik, I. Th. (Leipzig, 1885), p. 296.
The Parallelogram of Newton was used
  for the theoretical purpose of
  establishing the expansibility of the
  branches of an algebraic function by
  Puiseaux in  his Classical Memoir on
  the Algebraic Functions (Liouv. Math.
  Jour., 1850).  Puiseaux and Briot and
  Bouquet (Theorie des Fonctions
  Elliptiques (1875), p. 19)  use
  Cauchy's Theorem regarding the number
  of the roots of an algebraic equation
  in a given contour; and thus infer the
  continuity of the roots. The
  demonstration  given in S.21 depends
  upon the proof, a priori, of the
  possibility of an  expansion in a
  power-series; and in this respect
  follows the original idea of  Newton.
The reader who desires to pursue the
  subject further may consult Durege,
  Elemente der Theorie der Functionen einer Complexen Veranderlichen
  Grosse,  for a good introduction to
  this great branch of modern
  function-theory.
The applications are very numerous,
  for example, to the finding of
  curvatures  and curves of closest
  contact, and to curve-tracing
  generally. A number of  beautiful
  examples will be found in that
  much-to.be-recommended text-book,
  Frost's Curve Tracing. -- G. Chrystal: Algebra, Part II, p.370
Answer: This was intended to be a comment on Bill Dubuque's answer, but I apparently don't yet have enough reputation points to comment, and in any event this is probably too long to appear as a comment.
Given Chrystal's intended audience, I'm surprised that he didn't mention Talbot's 1860 English translation and extensive commentary of Newton's Enumeration Linearum Tertii Ordinis. In Talbot's work, which is freely available on the internet, see the sections On the Analytical Parallelogram (pp. 88-104) and Examples (pp. 104-112). By the way, whoever scanned the book for google wasn't paying attention when the lengthy list of figures at the end of the book were being scanned, so I'm also giving the University of Michigan Historical Math Collection version, which has those figures correctly scanned.
Sir Isaac Newton's Enumeration of Lines of the Third Order, Generation of Curves by Shadows, Organic Description of Curves, and Construction of Equations by Curves, Translated from the Latin, with notes and examples, by C.R.M. Talbot, 1860.
http://books.google.com/books?id=6I97byFB3v0C
http://name.umdl.umich.edu/ABQ9451.0001.001

Newton and Newton polygon


Auto-Deleting Swaps, Backups and Undos while Quitting vim?

Question: Cluttering Swaps and Backups that I never use are so annoying and takes up unnecessary space. Is there a way to delete them as one quits vim with :q and similar quitting commands?
Comment: are you sure you want to delete them and don't need them later on? That sounds a bit risky here...
Comment: Well, I thought once a file is saved and I quit Vim, there's no real need for it to stay around.
Comment: Thanks to @Hotschke for correcting and adding tags to this question.
Answer: As Christian pointed out in his comment, there are some risks.
Swap-Files: They are deleted automatically on Vim exit. If you have swap files lying around, they are most likely from abnormal terminations (terminal close or reboot while Vim still running or crash).  In that cases it might be worth to check the files.
To disable backup files, I would propose the following for your vimrc:
set writebackup
set nobackup

This settings writes a backup file while saving. After saving was successful, the backup file is deleted. This is a safety net in case Vim crashes while writing the file.
BTW: I had (rare) cases, where I was really happy that I had a backup file.
Well, and undo files is easy. Add the following to your vimrc:
set noundofile

Then undo is only held in memory and does not survive multiple edit sessions.
Note: Doing set noundofile at runtime, does not delete an existing undo file.

Another idea for backup files
Create a directory to hold all backup files. Let's say $HOME/vimbackup. Then add the following to your vimrc:
set backupdir=$HOME/vimbackup//

(The two trailing slashes are important! Even on Windows use //.)
Then Vim will create all backup files in that directory. Because of the trailing // It will create filenames that contain the entire path. Like %home%user%bin%script.sh~. Without the trailing slashes, it will just use plain file names, like script.sh~, which is bad if you have the same file name in different directories.
With this the backups are there, when you need them, but will not pollute your working directories. Well, you have to clean up from time to time.

(Unix only, I guess you are on Windows)
Regarding backup files: I let Vim write backup files. So some of my code directories are scattered with backup files. If I decide to get rid of them all (e.g. after I committed the stuff), I have a bash shell function rmbak:
rmbak()
{
    typeset opt OPTIND OPTARG depth="-maxdepth 1" action="-delete"
    while getopts ":rn" opt; do
        case "$opt" in
            r) depth='' ;;
            n) action='' ;;
            "?")
                echo >&2 "Invalid option: -$OPTARG"
                echo >&2 "USAGE: rmbak [-rn]"
                echo >&2 "  -r recursive"
                echo >&2 "  -n print files but don't delete"
                return 1
                ;;
        esac
    done
    find . $depth -name \*~ -type f -print $action
}

Comment: Since backup files may be important later on I guess I'll find a way to organize them. That `set noundofile` is going straight to my `_vimrc` tho. Thanks!
Comment: @K.Paul See my update "Another idea for backup files"
Comment: Uh...one tiny footnote, that trailing `//` doesn't work on Windows (I guess it works on Unix) and I will comment a Win10-refined version of said code for future reference...once I find out what it is.
Comment: @K.Paul According to the docs it should work. In general you should also use forward slashes for paths on Windows too. Makes life easier. Like `C:/vimbackup//`. See `:help 'backupdir'`.
Comment: Oh. Whoops, my bad, the problem was with other backslashes in path; apparently I need to write **two** backslashes instead of one for Vim to recognize it as a backslash. `//` is right, people, and tread carefully around those backslashes.


Animating Z-transparency in the game engine for multiple objects sharing the same material

Question: I have a single material shared between multiple instances of a reference object that is spawned in from a secondary layer. I'm trying to animate the Z-transparency of the sared material but i don't want the animation to effect all the object sharing that material.
How can i animate each object's material separately?
Thanks
Comment: Have you tried animating the alpha within each of their object colors? In the objects properties panel, each one has an object color. I suggest animating the alpha channel of that.
Answer: You can play a material action on each of the objects. The actions play independent from each other even when you use the same mesh and/or material.
You can indeed animate the object color too.
Comment: Since the objects are actually copies of the same object spawned in from a second layer to edit the object color was the right choice.


Varnish cache not region aware

Question: We have a Drupal 7 site whose content is split into geographic regions. The concept is that page view blocks and filters will display region specific content based on the users IP address or selection of their country, the page URL is the same throughout.
The issue we now have is that Drupal cache and Varnish cache are not regionally aware in that the cache is built up by the first visit upon start and clearing of cache so the wrong content gets displayed to a user who wishes to view content for his region, because someone before him opened the same page from another region. Any ideas?
Answer: Possible solution of separating your caches, by regions, in Varnish is to use GeoIP VMOD: https://github.com/lampeh/libvmod-geoip
Simple example:
put country code to hash
<code>sub vcl_hash {
        hash_data(req.url);

        if (req.http.host) {
                hash_data(req.http.host);
        }
        else {
                hash_data(server.ip);
        }

        # separate caches by countries
        hash_data(geoip.client_country_code());

        return (hash);
}
</code>
Now caches for different countries will be different.
Of course, you still need to take care about page generation in Drupal, it should provide different content for different regions too.

Varnish cache not region aware


sendrawtransaction RPC format across core versions

Question: Has there been any changes across core versions for the sendrawtransaction interface. I am trying to understand if upgrading the core version from say 12 to 15 needs a change in serialization. I'd also like to know if there are any versions across which such upgrade would fail.
Answer: sendrawtransaction takes transactions in the network serialization format. There is a new network serialization format for segwit transactions, so such transactions would be broadcast in one format for 0.12 and a different one in 0.15. If you are not making segwit transactions, then sendrawtransaction has not changed and you can use it in 0.15 as you did with 0.12.
Comment: @achow101 :  Is it possible to know across which versions was the serialization changed in the past as well ?  I assume this applies to all clients across the board ( Unlimtied , ABC etc). Thanks!
Comment: You can read the release notes of each release. The serialization format will only change when a fork happens (both hard or soft), but not every time there is a fork. The only time the serialization format has changed is between 0.12 and 0.13 with the introduction of Segwit. The format has only changed to allow a new format; the original format is still supported by all versions.


TeX display problem

Question: Sometimes maths seems to have strange and squashed spacing, but the problem is intermittent. For example, this is what Fitting a fixed, exponential relationship between categories with categorical data looked like for a while on Chrome today:
alt text http://robjhyndman.com/Untitled.png
But a few minutes later it looked fine. Is this a known problem and is someone working on it?
Comment: If I see this problem, then open the same page in firefox, followed by a refresh in chrome, the problem disappears. Is anyone from the SE team reading this? Can someone please fix it?
Comment: @Jeff For me, all pc's with Ubuntu (9.10 and 10.10) and Chrome 7.0.517.41 always messes up the formula's. So I suggest trying a ubuntu live cd and install google-chrome for reproduction
Comment: I was having the same problem with Chrome 7.0.517.41 on Ubuntu. I've just restarted the browser to pick up an update to 7.0.517.44, and the problem seems to have gone.
Answer: same thing here (ubuntu+chrome==formula no show) since 'it' updated TO chrome 7.0.517.41
EDIT: it all works perfectly on the same machine with FFox.
Answer: For me (Chrome 7.0.517.41 on Fedora 13) LaTeX inserts does not appear or appear in random places. On the same machine Firefox 3.6.10 manages to render it well.
Comment: Try Chrome 7.0.517.44; the update has fixed the problem for me.
Comment: Indeed, things got better after auto update; I forgot to write it here.
Answer: This morning I had the same problem in chrome for this answer, I checked and the tex did render correctly in IE version 8 (although I was surprised how much slower it was in IE than in Chrome, alot slower).
Comment: By the time I finished posting my comment it has already corrected itself.
Comment: In my case after today Chrome update I can see only white space instead of equations.
Comment: Having this problem, too.  Chrome 7.0.517.41 on Windows 7.
Comment: ... and now it's randomly fixed after visiting Meta.
Answer: I see this problem with Chrome 14.0.835.186 on Ubuntu 11.04 (classic mode).
Today is the first time it has occurred, but when it did, only one of two uses of \sum() had smushed brackets (see below). The question Calculating likelihood from RMSE (I edited the first equation to \sum\left(...\right) thinking it would help, but it didn't).
Comment: Notice the *i* beneath the $\Sigma$ in the first equation: it appears to be almost in the correct location with respect to the summand and clearly is shifted left of center.  This suggests that the positioning algorithm thinks the $\Sigma$ is much smaller than it really is, but then rendered it at the correct size, fixing the bottom left corner position.  The only apparent difference between the two "\sum" commands is that one of them initiates the $\TeX$ line and the other does not.
Answer: I can't reproduce this -- how do we reproduce this?
Comment: Look at a recent question in Chrome. Right now, http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/3727/approximating-prn-leq-x-leq-m-for-a-discrete-distribution is a mess on chrome on my PC.
Comment: For me, all pc's with Ubuntu (9.10 and 10.10) and Chrome 7.0.517.41 always messes up the formula's. So I suggest trying a ubuntu live cd and install google-chrome for reproduction
Comment: I am seeing this problem with all formulae on the site. I am using Chrome 7.0.517.41 on Ubuntu 10.04.
Answer: I'm not getting any equations at the moment. I see the TeX code for a few seconds, then this (Firefox 3.6.3 on Windows XP):

A "Failed to load" message appears in the bottom left corner of the screen, but goes away before i have time to read or capture it. It was ok earlier today (i have restarted my PC since then though).
UPDATE: Just rebooted my PC as I was having another, apparently unrelated, internet problem too (failing to contact the proxy server). It fixed that problem, but not this TeX display one.
2ND UPDATE (Following morning): It's OK now.

TeX display problem


Efficient random generation from truncated Laplace distribution

Question: We have several ways of drawing random samples from Laplace distribution. Is there any efficient way of sampling from left truncated Laplace distribution? Inverse transform sampling is an obvious solution, but maybe there is something better?
Answer: A straightforward method that is reasonably efficient if the left truncation point is below the median is to just generate a Laplace random variate, then reject it if it falls to the left of the truncation point and generate another, repeating until one is generated that falls above the truncation point.  If the Laplace random variate generation algorithm requires $n$ uniform variate generations on average for one Laplace variate generation, the truncated Laplace algorithm requires $n/(1-F(\alpha))$ uniform variate generations on average, where $\alpha$ is the truncation point, and therefore never requires more (on average) than twice the uniform variate generations as the original algorithm regardless of the truncation point - and if the truncation point is well into the lower tail, e.g., at the 10th percentile of the distribution, is almost as efficient as the original algorithm.
If the left truncation point is above the median, then you have an exponential distribution for the sampling distribution with lower bound equal to the truncation point, so plenty of efficient algorithms there.
Another approach, useful if your Laplace random variate generation algorithm uses inverse transform sampling, is to shift and rescale the initial $\text{U}(0,1)$ variate to fall into the range $U(\alpha,1)$, where $\alpha$ is the percentile of the Laplace distribution where the left truncation occurs, then just use the inverse transform as usual, without regard for truncation.  The resulting algorithm requires one addition and multiplication more than the original, so is essentially just as efficient as the inverse transform method for the un-truncated distribution.
Comment: Given that the CDF is available, inverting the CDF into$$F^{-1}(p) = \mu - b\,\text{sgn}(p-1/2)\,\ln(1 - 2|p-1/2|)$$ with the nice trick of simulating $U(\alpha,1)$ is hard to beat.
Comment: I was considering the same approaches, I guess I was over-thinking this by looking for something more fancy. Thanks for detailed answer!
Answer: If you need extreme efficiency and don't mind increased code complexity, you could adapt this ziggurat-like rejection sampling technique to the standard laplace distribution directly and use shifts and scaling to produce distributions with arbitrary parameters.
Comment: True, but it doesn't answer the question, which was not "how do I generate exponential random variates efficiently?"  or even "how do I generate Laplace variates efficiently?"
Comment: You're right. I realized that you don't need to simulate exponential variates first but that the algorithm can be adapted to the laplace directly as a location-scale family.
Comment: I personally like ziggurat generators, as my simulations are usually for simulation-based optimization and involve lots of random number generation, hundreds of times more than what a single run of the simulator might require, and 80+% of the runtime can be random number generation if you're just using off-the-shelf stuff.  +1 for the suggestion!


What constitutes a call?

Question: Recently played a cash game with friends and had a situation arise. I was head to head with a friend, culminating in me going all in after the river. My friend asked for a chip count, then counted his matching bet, then said "I'm not folding" and tossed his cards down face up. Based on my reaction (I had a winning hand) he quickly said that he folds. All night, most players were not pushing their chips in the middle on all in bets, including my opponent. What are your thoughts on this situation? Rules, etiquette, etc.
Comment: That's clearly an intentional angle shot. If I were on the floor, I'd rule it a call, and eject the player.
Comment: That is not a call in my opinion.
Comment: I agree with paparazzi. I don't think it is a call, it is pretty bad etiquette though.
Answer: That is a call. I think I would rule it that way and most would.
Here's why, when your all in the opposing player has two choices, fold or call. Saying "I am not folding" then turning cards up is indicating nothing but a call. There is nothing ambiguous about that. When there are only two choices indicating that your not taking one is an indication your have chosen the other.
Even if he had said something a little more ambiguous that indicated a call turning up his hand when he did so, he is going to end up with a ruling that says he calls very often. The thing about angle shooting in poker is that if you do it badly enough where it can reasonably be considered an action by an opponent than it comes down to a ruling in poker, it is going to go against the angling player, as it should.
Answer: Not pushing chips on all bets does not really matter.  On an all in you only need to throw out one chip.  It is easy to make your intention clear.  It is easy for you to force them to make their intention clear.  If you don't want to ask them then ask the dealer.
A verbal is binding but it must be clear and heard by the parties involved in the hand (including dealer).  "Call" is the word.
"I'm not folding" is angle shooting but I would not call it a call.  You hear stuff like "I don't think I can fold here" or "I want to fold" a lot.
Be careful and not say something like "Not sure I can call here".  Don't use the word.  Not saying the table would force a call there but don't chance it (unless you are angling).
When someone does not make their intention clear then you need to think angel shooting.
You can angel shoot back "Then I guess you got me" and wait for them to formally call.
In some rooms showing your cards before you declare is a penalty but not forfeit the hand.
Comment: "i'm not folding" when there is only one other option (Call) is completely different than "I don't think I can fold here." The first clearly states a decision, the second is merely a contemplation of a decision.
Comment: So it is *completely* different.  Does not make it a call.  Know the *safe* word.
Comment: well...like Jon's answer, it is the House/Floor's discretion and can be ruled a call even if the exact word "call" was never used.
Comment: @Dustin Fine,  no purpose to debate it with you.
Answer: It was ambiguous language and obvious angle shooting. When ambiguous language occurs, call the floor for interpretation, or, simply ask the opponent, "Is that a call?"
Since it was obvious angle shooting, I would have called the floor and advised. The opponent should have been given a warning. But in a home game, everything is open to interpretation, but I agree with previous poster that it is very bad etiquette for a home game.
Answer: House Game = House Rules. It all depends on the rules of where you play.
It's a clear angle-shot which by definition is very poor etiquette! And if it were my house, that's a call. Your opponent deliberately conveyed a "call" in order to elicit you to expose your hand. You said it's common practice at this house game that chips don't actually move on actions. You should express to the House owner the issue and that a rule needs to be implemented for the integrity of the game. Rules are, in nature, there to prevent angle-shots.
But more important than effectively taking a poll on how others would rule this...take this as most likely, a very cheap lesson.
NEVER expose your cards until your opponent puts his chips in the middle or the dealer has verified it's a call. On the other side, when facing a "fold", NEVER release your hand until the pot is pushed to you. And I do mean NEVER.

What constitutes a call?


Are there any luggage lockers in Ho Chi Minh City?

Question: We'll be leaving for Phnom Penh for 1 day, would like to know if there are storage lockers near HCMC and how much will be it's rate.
Comment: anywhere near backpacker street I guess... We'll we don't have any accomodations yet. But does the hostels have lockers?
Comment: Most accommodation in that area will let you leave bags in a cupboard behind reception or something. It's good business for them since you're more likely to stay at their place again if you've got something to come back for. If you want a locked locker for security, not all will offer that, so ask around.
Comment: Like, the whole city? Or is there somewhere in particular you want to leave them? Any reason you can't leave your luggage at your present accomodation?
Answer: There are definitely luggage lockers at Ho Chi Minh airport, although this might not be ideal for you. Unfortunately the internet says that there are no luggage lockers in the train station. Your best bet is likely to be asking your accomodation to store the luggage for you. They might do this for free if you promise them you will come back for another night after your trip. Others might charge you a small nominal fee for the service.
In general, don't leave valuables in your left luggage. There is no guarantee that the luggage will be locked away, and establishments usually deny all responsibility for damage and theft.
Answer: SG Capsule at 36 le Loi, district 1. It is a hostel but also supply professional luggage storage service. You can search and make an appointment with them on their Facebook.


When did the concept of probability density explicitly appear in mathematics?

Question: I was reading the wikipedia article about the normal distribution and it's attribution by some historians of science to De Moivre(althought he lacked the concept of the probability density function) and I was wondering as to when was the probability density function defined.
Comment: The ResearchGate (23 page, free to download) article [A Short History of Probability Theory and its Applications](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/271856948_A_short_history_of_probability_theory_and_its_applications) may be helpful here.
Answer: The answer depends somewhat on what "explicitly" means. The appearance of continuous distributions, and their densities, is generally attributed to Simpson. Namely, his 1757 response to Bayes's critique of his 1755 letter on de Moivre's theory of errors. As Stigler writes in The History of Statistics:

"Simpson's 1757 republication of the letter incorporated one other
  change - three and a half pages of additional material that is frequently
  cited now as the first publication of a continuous error distribution... Simpson
  (1757, p. 71) proposed to consider the situation ''when the error admits of
  any value whatever, whole or broken, within the proposed limits, or when
  the result of each observation is supposed to be accurately known." His
  analysis, in the spirit of the time, consisted of viewing the interval of possible errors (AB in Figure 2.3) as being divided into an indefinitely
  large number of indefinitely small subintervals, and effectively passing to
  the limit in his earlier expression for the discrete case...
In modern terminology, Simpson's idea is that we may consider the
  triangle ABD as a probability density along the axis AB... the curve AFEFB represented the
  probability density for the mean error. He integrated the resulting density
  to find that the probability that the mean of t errors did not exceed
  $(1 - y/t)\times$CA in absolute value".

This said, Simpson is certainly very far from abstract notions of probability distribution and density. Bayes's 1764 essay is noted as a step forward, "remarkable for its careful treatment of probability densities,
treating all probabilities as areas and not relying (in the later manner
of both French and English mathematicians) on the interpretation of densities
as attaching infinitesimal probability to points" (as Maxwell did as late as 1860). But he still deals with a specific density function. Finally, Laplace wrote a number of memoirs on the "error curve" in 1770s, where the said curve (density) gets denoted generally $\phi(x)$. He was aiming at the normal distribution density, but did not succeed at identifying it at the time, and had to treat his $\phi(x)$ more abstractly:

"All
  early workers, from Simpson on, accepted it as given that the curve should
  be symmetrical and that the chance of an error should decrease toward
  zero as the magnitude of the error increased. Laplace himself had repeated
  these conditions in his 1774 memoir, as I have noted. The problem
  was that there were too many possibilities, and the choice of just one was
  critical to the mean to be obtained. As Laplace wrote, "But of an infinite
  number of possible functions, which choice is to be preferred?"
Earlier writers had confronted the choice of an error curve by making
  an arbitrary selection. Simpson, for example, had based his choice of the
  uniform and triangular distributions upon mathematical expediency. For
  his limited aim (showing that an arithmetic mean was better than a single
  observation) this arbitrariness was not a major drawback - his audience
  only needed to accept the distribution as qualitatively correct in order to
  believe his qualitative conclusion - that averaging increased accuracy.
  Laplace, however, was attempting an exact computation, and he needed
  both a convincing case for any choice of $\phi(x)$ he might make and a mathematical
  analysis equal to the task of calculating the best mean for that curve."

As for the terminology, it is quite recent. According to Earliest Known Uses of Some of the Words of Probability & Statistics Markoff came up with "Wahrscheinlichkeitsdichte" (probability density) only in 1912, and the "distribution function", of which it it the derivative, only appears in von Mises's Grundlagen der Wahrscheinlichkeitsrechnung  (1919).
Answer: Hans Fischer, in his A History of the Central Limit Theorem writes:

The history of the CLT as a universal law begins with Laplace; all relevant studies in the 18th century, starting with [de Moivre 1733], essentially contained
  only approximations of the binominal distribution and their scope of application remained narrow. Laplace's finding of 1810, according to which the additive
  coaction of a large number of independent random variables generally leads to
  probabilities that can, at least approximately, be calculated according to the normal distribution, substantially expanded the numerical possibilities of probability
  theory, especially in the discussion of mass phenomena

and

In one of his first published papers [in 1776], Laplace had already set out to
  determine the probability that the sum of the angles of inclination of comet orbits (or
  the arithmetic mean of these angles respectively) is within given limits. He assumed
  that all angles, which had to be measured against the ecliptic, were distributed randomly according to a uniform distribution between 0 and 90 degrees (and also tacitly
  presupposed that all angles were stochastically independent). Laplace succeeded in
  calculating these probabilities for an arbitrary number of comets via induction (with
  a minor mistake which was subsequently corrected in his paper of 1781) . In this [latter] paper, Laplace even introduced a general — however very intricate — method, based
  on convolutions of density functions, in order to exactly determine the probability
  that a sum of independent random variables ("quantités variables," as Laplace put it)
  was within given limits

Personally, I feel that the notion of a probability density would have had earlier provenance; since, after the integral calculus had been invented, it wouldn't taken much to realise that the generalisation from finite probability to a continuous probability would require integration over a density (and the term density suggests that the notion migrated from physical theory).
It's probably worth adding that Kolmolgorov introduced the notion of a probability density in measure theoretic terms (the now standard notion) in his book, The Foundations of the Theory of Probability, first published in 1933.


How do I find my DBET tokens in MyEtherWallet?

Question: I mistakenly bought DBET tokens directly from my Exodus wallet. I used the public key of Decent.bet (DBET). I assume I should be able to find/see my DBET tokens in MyEtherWallet, but I do not know which steps to take. Hopefully, someone in here can clarify this for me.
Answer: With MyCryptos latest release yesterday, scanning for your tokens is much easier and faster due to the upgraded process of showing your token values.

Go to MyCrypto (local copy or the website) and safely unlock your account.
Scan for your tokens on the right side of the UI
You can now interact with the token (i.e: sending) in the middle part of the UI.

If the DBET token doesn't appear, it may not be added as a default, so you'll have to add a custom token to the interface. With MyCrypto, this is a pretty easy flow - kb article
Once you've scanned for your tokens, click the "Save" button. Now that view partial will have a new button called "Add Custom Token". From here, we can grab the token details from Etherscan or from the dev team in Slack/Telegram/Discord/etc.
For DBET, the values are;

Token Symbol: DBET
Address: 0x9b68bfae21df5a510931a262cecf63f41338f264 (this is the token contract address)
Decimals: 18

Once you've saved, MyCrypto will automatically rescan your token values and you can interact with the tokens.