How do I make an interesting escape from a fire?

Question: So, the last session I tried to make an encounter where my players had to escape from a burning house. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a boring bunch of pass-or-suck checks. How can I make this interesting?
Comment: One thing you might (or might not) want to take into account is how unrealistic the portrayal of fires is in most films. In reality, a building on fire is rapidly filled by very dense, very toxic smoke that is far more dangerous than the flames.
Comment: I can't say anything that hasn't been said better in that answer: http://rpg.stackexchange.com/a/33307/2900
Comment: @Cristol.GdM that is a great suggestion on how to count the timer, but it does **NOT** explain how to make it interesting.
Answer: Make it interested by adding challenges which are interesting in their own right.  The fire can play a number of roles.  It can be as simple as background scenery, a cause for the challenge, or simply add a time dimension to something that would otherwise be be straight forward.  Some examples might be illustrative.
Combat in Fire
Perhaps the fire was started by an enemy that wants to eliminate the players.  But the enemy needs to make absolutely certain the PCs are killed, so he sends in henchmen to either verify the kill or help ensure it happens.
Of course, this presupposes that the henchmen are either immune to fire or so fanatical they will expect to die.  (Mindless undead perhaps?)
The fire could serve as just scenery.  But perhaps you place "active fires" on the map, and moving through those or worse being forced to stay on one could cause fire damage.  At your discretion, you could also add smokey areas which provide concealment.  You could consider dealing with suffocation from smoke damage, but that is probably more trouble than it is worth.
Locate someone that needs to be rescued
The building might be large and mazelike.  The heroes now need to explore it to find the person they need to rescue.  You can have the fire play an active roll, forcing them to pass through areas, perhaps collapsing upper levels.  But alternatively, you could just use it to set a timer.  The rescuee will die in X rounds, they must find the rescuee and get out in that time.  Now they have to face decisions.  How do they search?  Do they split the party to cover more ground?  What if there are hostiles in there, or just the possibility of hostiles will affect the decision to split up or not.
A series of challenges.
Perhaps all they have to do is escape.  But they need to find the way out, and deal with obstacles appropriate.  In a building it might be areas blocked off, doors that are locked, etc.
This risks becoming the "succeed on roll or suffer" that you want to avoid.  But you can mitigate that by providing choices.  When they come to a locked door, do they use magic to destroy it, use force to destroy it, or pick the lock?  If they come to an area on fire, do they rush through just accepting damage, try to go around, or perhaps try to do something (coat themselves in water?  Breathe through clothing?) to mitigate the damage before rushing through?
And of course, some of these examples can be combined or shift from one to another.
Of course, its worth pointing out that a lot of this is depending on their abilities.  Fire becomes a lot less intimidating if you have serious protection from fire or can regenerate fast.  Escaping is easy if teleporting is an option or flying is an option and you can find an upper story window (or break through a wall to make one).
Comment: I like the idea of zombies -> fire -> burning zombies ... inside a fire.
Answer: Not a definitive answer, but here are some suggestions for getting creative with fire:

Have some sort of counter or cumulative system set up to account for all the smoke/other chemicals they're inhaling. For example, maybe they have to make a Fort save every turn. Each failed save results in adding one to the counter. If the counter adds up to their Con score, they pass out. Or perhaps rather than running a counter, they simply take 1 Con damage each turn they fail the Fort save, making it harder and harder to save each turn. Just the intense heat itself might be enough to sap their vitality. This save might be affected by armor check penalties. Crashing through a burning building wearing full plate as it starts to heat up would be pretty torturous. Maybe allow them to crawl along the floor in order to get a bonus on these saves.

A burning building can make for a mess of interesting traps. Fire causes floors to fall through, ceilings to collapse, burning beams to come crashing down, etc. Items they grab might be scalding to the touch. This could be construed as pass-or-suck, but you should be able to make it interesting. Maybe a fall through the floor deals pitfall damage and also momentarily splits the party up. Maybe it allows them to escape an overwhelming adversary.

Visibility should be a major issue in a burning building with billowing black smoke everywhere. This can make for more challenging Perception checks as well as giving adversaries the option to surprise. Concealment falls nicely out of this as well.

Fire can have neat offensive uses for the characters (or their adversaries). They might try to set their enemies on fire. There might be barrels of black powder or other chemicals strewn throughout the building. A normal vat of water or oil might be boiling hot after sitting in a burning building for some time. I can imagine scenarios of shooting a burning arrow into a barrel of black powder, or rolling a barrel down a stairwell to have it explode on the enemy at the bottom.

Fire should play a very active role in the combat terrain. Walls of fires here and there, they can be crossed but with significant damage. Placing patches of fire on the mat and allowing characters to bull rush their enemies into these patches would be neat. You could even build an enemy combatant with all the feats necessary to push the characters into fiery pits, trip them into patches of fire, etc. Also flames themselves might play a role in concealment or may be used to momentarily stun or even blind someone. An enemy who throws burning coals into a character's eyes is one villainous dude.

Finally, to add some intensity (as others have mentioned), you could have a sort of ultimate timer. If they can't get out/complete their objective by the time the clock strikes X, the entire building collapses and their death is assured. This should force them to economize their actions, and pick and choose what routes to take, where and how to fight, who to save, etc.

In other words, in addition to your classic dungeon manipulations (e.g., labyrinthine halls/rooms, clever combats, rescue/escort a noncombatant), there are a few nice tricks to use that rely on the fire itself.
Answer: You might want to take a look at the chase rules in the Gamemastery Guide;  my DM used them for us once when I was pursuing a fleeing enemy, and I don't see why they couldn't be adapted to a burning building scenario. The basic gist of the rules is that you have a series of obstacles, each of which can be overcome by one of two checks, and the players get to pick how they want to overcome the obstacle. There wouldn't be an enemy to gain on, but you could have the fire metaphorically chasing them from behind, in which case if it catches them they start suffocating from smoke or some such dire consequence.
Comment: isn't this a bit of a "pass it or suck" system?
Comment: http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/mastery/chases.html also see http://geek-related.com/2009/12/13/life-in-the-big-city-chase-rules/ which I've used successfully in a convention adventure
Comment: @NetHacker It depends what you mean by that. It makes things more involved and dynamic than a series of set rolls, letting the players feel more engaged. Ultimately every mechanic in the system boils down to a dice roll, but some feel boring and some feel more dynamic.
Comment: Ok. I'll try that. Unluckly my manual does not have the chase system. What manual are you referring to? The core book?
Comment: @NetHacker Edited to link
Comment: Also see this expansion of (my) system from Geek Related DaddyDM did recently: http://daddydm.wordpress.com/2014/03/07/pathfinder-alternate-chase-rules/
Answer: In addition to, or instead of, the chase idea, you could create a countdown situation with a timer that is counting down that they can visually see.  A creative timer based on a candy bowl has been suggested here:
How to make a countdown?
The advantage of the visual timer is that it adds something more than dice rolling, both visually and tactile.
Comment: And here, of course, one should be using cinnamon red-hots :)
Answer: For my most recent D&D 3.5 game, I actually stole the idea of "skill challenges" from D&D 4e (which I generally dislike), modified it very heavily, and plugged it in to 3.5.  In my incarnation of the idea, it's essentially a challenge abstraction.  My players loved it.
Here's the general idea:

I tell them the goal of the skill challenge.  In this case, it would be "escape the burning building."
I set up two tracks on the game map: a success track and a failure track.  I place a mini at the beginning of each.  The length of each depends on the difficulty and importance of the skill challenge.  More difficult means fewer failures on the failure track, more important means more successes on the success track.  In this case, depending on the party level, I would probably do 10 successes (fairly important) and 3 failures (fairly difficult).
I have them roll initiative.  This gives them an order to go in and makes sure that one player with really good stats doesn't dominate the entire challenge.
Here's where it really diverges from the Skill Challenges of the version-that-may-not-be-named:  I don't mandate "primary" or "secondary" skills that they must choose from. All skills and abilities are on the table for any party member to use if they are able, with two stipulations: you must be able to adequately explain why that skill will help you reach the goal (to my satisfaction), and your action may not be attempting to immediately accomplish the goal unless it is the final action of the success track.  (I also encourage them to try not to simply spam the same skill or ability over and over).  The players choose a skill, explain what they're trying to do (which brings them into the storytelling); I confirm whether that's allowed, and then they roll to see whether they succeed or fail.
I compare the roll with the DC of the challenge (which I usually set at about 7-15 more than the party's average highest skill score) and describe the flavor of what happens when the character succeeds or fails at what they attempt.  Then I move the mini up the success track or failure track.
When a mini reaches the end of either track, the challenge is over.

Two notes of caution: a skill challenge, being an abstraction of events, shouldn't take up much more time than a reasonable-length battle.  Also, there should be a reasonable chance of (and consequence to) failure.
This is a great way to encourage participation, make them feel like they have agency over what occurs, and frankly take some prep work off your hands as far as story goes, since they build that section of story as a party.  My players have had a great time with it, and the story has become much richer for it.
(Finally, I have to credit Rodrigo Lopez of the Critical Hit podcast for the ideas of rolling initiative and using any skill.)


Computing distance from points to coastline

Question: I have a shapefile with the nodes of a grid I have applied, for the purposes of interpolation, and I want to compute the euclidean distance that each grid node (it is a point vector) has to the coastline. I don not want to calculate the nearest neighbor for each point of my grid. I want to have in a table the euclidean distance that each point (the points are placed on the nodes of a regular grid) has from the coast, so that I can use this information as an auxiliary variable in my interpolation. I have found several tools in ArcMap that compute distances, but nothing that computes all the distances from one point feature to a line feature.
Comment: Would you be able to edit your question to include a picture of what you have tried to describe in words, please?  The first two answers have interpreted what you wrote differently, and I am far from certain that I have interpreted it correctly.
Answer: Have you looked at the Near tool? If I understand the question correctly, it seems like that might be the solution to your problem.
Comment: Yes, I have tried it. The Near tool calculates the nearest neighbor of each point. I want the distance that every point has from the coastline.
Comment: Near tool should do what you want, as would spatial join etc. Of course you need to join each point to the line of the coast. Could you explain exactly how you use spatial join/near tool so that it doesn't work ?
Answer: The approach to this that I would use is to:

Convert the vertices of your line to points using Feature Vertices To Point
Calculate distances to those points from your original point using Point Distance

Both tools require an Advanced level license but, if you do not have that, then searching this site may be able to uncover workarounds that create the same outputs using a Basic level license.
Answer: You quote

I want the distance that every point has from the coastline

In fact if i got you "Generate Near Table" tool will work for you if you have Advance License (e.g. compare distance) but both point and line feature layers to be projected on the projected coordinate system beforehand. My clarification is as below..
Comment: Thank you! I work with an unprojected DEM (using Lat/Lon). Should I use as a method "PLANAR" or "GEODESIC"?
Comment: Of course PLANAR--
Comment: Once I work on a Geographic Coordinate System, am I not supposed to use the GEODESIC method for calculating distances?
Comment: Yes Geodesic = Geographic Coordinate system.


When was "pennant" renamed "coat of arms" in Carcassonne?

Question: Carcassonne has historically used the term "pennant" to refer to the shield icons in cities but now appears to use the term "coat of arms".  They both do the same thing (add two points to completed cities and one point to uncompleted cities).  When did this name change happen?
Answer: The original German is Wappen.
English rules have translated that variously as Pennant, Banner, Shield, or Coat of Arms.
The Rio Grande edition called it Pennant.
The Z-Man edition called it Banner.
And when Z-Man printed "Carcassonne II" (art by Pätzke instead of Matthäus), they called it Coat of Arms.
From the German forum:

Das Wappen in dem Stadtgebiet:

Carcassonne (Grafik bei Doris Matthäus)
Bei RioGrandeGames: pennant
Bei ZmanGames: banner

Carcassonne II (Grafik bei Anne Pätzke)
Bei ZmanGames: coat of arms

So the change "from" pennant came in 2012 with ZMG 78000. That changed it to "Banner". The change from "banner" to "coat of arms" came in 2014 with ZMG 78100.
Answer: Carcassonne moved from being distributed by Rio Grande Games to Z-Man games in 2012.  Here's a quote from a June 2012 The Gaming Gang article :

Hans im Gluck announced that they will be using a new distributor for the English releases of their games. Their partnership with Rio Grande is coming to an end, and by this fall/winter you will only be able to purchase Carcassonne and all its variations from Z-Man Games.

This came with several accompanying changes, including an update to the art style on the box and tiles, as well as some terminology changes is the rules.  This is likely when the change in terminology from "pennant" to "coat of arms" occurred.
From the 2014 Z-man rules (emphasis is mine):

Each tile in a completed city is worth 2 points.In addition, each coat of arms is worth 2 more points.

From the 2006 Rio Grande rules (emphasis is mine):

A player who has a knight in a completed city scores 2 points for every city segment.  Every pennant scores an extra 2 points.


kNN improvement on Spam Classification

Question: Currently I'm trying to classify spam emails with kNN classification. Dataset is represented in the bag-of-words notation and it contains approx. 10000 observations with approx. 900 features. Matlab is the tool I use to process the data.
Within the last days I played with several machine learning approaches: SVM, Bayes and kNN. In my point of view, kNN's performance beats SVM and Bayes when it comes to minimize the false positive rate. Checking with 10-fold Cross-Validation I obtain a false positive rate of 0.0025 using k=9 and Manhattan-Distance. Hamming distance performs in the same region.
To further improve my FPR I tried to preprocess my data with PCA, but that blow away my FPR as a value of 0.08 is not acceptable.
Do you have any idea how to tune the dataset to get a better FPR?
PS: Yes, this is a task I have to do in order to pass a machine learning course.
Comment: As it is not a programming question, you should ask it her: http://cs.stackexchange.com/
Comment: What kind of Bayes did you use. Just a basic Naïve Bayes Classifier?
Comment: Yes, I did use a Naïve Bayes Classifier. That's the one we used in class. Would you suggest another Bayesian approach?
Answer: Something to try: double count the non-spam samples in your training data. Say, 500 of the 1000 samples were non-spam. After double counting the non-spam ones you will have a training set of 1500 samples. This might give the false positive test samples more positive nearest neighbours. Note that overall performance might suffer.

kNN improvement on Spam Classification


Why would a character's parents allow them to go on a lethal quest?

Question: In my fantasy epic, the protagonist meets a young, female thief who eventually become his partner in crime. She is part of a family business that involves theft, and she wants to go to give her family name a better reputation. In this case scenario, her parents are not dead or abusive, but in her culture, they need approval from parents. What would be a reason why her parents would allow her to go on this long, dangerous journey, with some random person they just met?
Comment: How old are the protagonist and thief? What are mile-stone ages in that society? ([Age of consent](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_consent), [age of majority](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_majority) etc)
Comment: is this medieval fantasy?
Comment: #Crafter  in Heinlein's *Time for the Stars* telepaths on starships use intantaneous telepathy to communicate with their telepathic partners on Earth.  The narrator meets a bratty fellow telephath in his early teens.  He wonders why the parents let someone so young go on a dangerous exploring expedition and thinks maybe they wanted something bad to happen to him. .
Comment: How big is the family?  two parents, single child, or a couple, or many, or pythonesque quantities of siblings ?
Comment: I read somewhere in scifi fantasy SE some question like why wizards have such dangerous lives and their parents are ok with sending them to hogwarts or whatever and then there was an answer that went 'all this danger is probably normal in their culture'
Comment: @BCLC: Perhaps you're thinking of worldbuilding.SE's [Justification for a Magic school being dangerous](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/231857) and [What circumstance would produce a society filled with parents willing to let the children be exposed to life-threatening Danger?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/85914) (also about magic schools like Hogwarts)
Answer: I'm not sure about the general case, but in your specific case, it's worth noting that thievery is a pretty dangerous profession in its own right:

There's obviously the threat of being caught by law enforcement, and subjected to whatever punishment is meted out for thievery in your setting (which may be as extreme as cutting off the thief's hands)
There's the threat of whoever they're trying to steal from fighting back - I read a news story just the other day about a guy in the US who tried to rob a convenience store and got stabbed to death by the owner
Depending on what kind of thefts they commit, there's the threat of booby traps (think Indiana Jones) or other dangerous anti-theft measures
There's the threat of being double-crossed by another thief, for one reason or another

Her parents may weigh up the risks of going on this long, dangerous journey, and conclude that it's actually not that much more dangerous than the life she's already living.
Comment: Great answer; just one more extension: who says that the kinds of parents that already condoned the thievery even make decisions based on the safety of their child? Rather than an informed and weighed decision (as mentioned in the answer), it may simply be bad decision making or easily being lured by the promise of something without considering safety at all.
Answer: I think you've answered your own question: "she wants to go to give her family name a better reputation."
This could be her parents' motivation as well. Going on a quest could be a once-in-a-lifetime goal for everyone from her cultural background.
Alternatively, she could have done something that has brought shame on her household and needs to go on a quest in order to restore her family's good name.  In the real world there are cultures where it's acceptable to murder and maim women in the name of honour, so requiring a long, dangerous journey isn't unthinkable.
As High Performance Mark also mentions in their answer, this is an opportunity to introduce additional conflict. Perhaps she doesn't want to go, but her parents insist. Maybe they even found your protagonist on her behalf. That would potentially give you conflict with her parents, her culture, and the protagonist.
Comment: I would add, this would work well if also her parents were in desperate straits to get an increased reputation. Maybe they're outsiders who have been trying to climb the social ladder for a long time and pulling off this quest successfully would allow them to finally do that. Alternatively, maybe they're really desperate in a financial way, and the money involved would save them from starvation or bankruptcy or something like that.
Answer:
"What would be a reason why her parents would allow her to go on this long, dangerous journey, with some random person they just met?"

They believe they raised her well, and they trust her judgment.
I mean, this is epic fantasy, we can pretend parents actually raise their children to deal with the world before they're kicked out of the house.
As she's been getting older, they've been letting her make more and more (and bigger) decisions that affect her life and could potentially hurt her. She's not living in a make-believe dreamworld where her parents flattened out any creases before she tripped over them. They've raised her to think about the consequences of her actions, to make mistakes and learn from them.
If her parents have any misgivings about the protagonist, of course they'll bring that up; ask if she's sure about this, etc. (And maybe take him aside a moment to quietly threaten him if anything happens to her.) But ultimately, they trust that this is a decision she can make. And if she gets hurts, they'll be here for her to come back to.
Comment: In Swallows and Amazons, when the (pre adolescent) children want to camp on an island without parents, the father replies to a telegram saying "better drowned than duffers if not duffers won't drown". Duffers meaning incapable idiots. You can word this according to your world, of course, but the concept -- I'm sure she's capable of this and if she isn't, better to die on a lethal quest than to live in the village being incapable -- is one you can easily write her parents having.
Answer: What do young women who want to run away with young men, against their parents wishes, usually do?  They ease the bedroom window open late one night after the house has become quiet, and climb down the trellis / drainpipe / stonework to be met by their lover waiting in the shadows across the street.
All the better that the young woman in your story is already a thief, how many times must she have climbed into a house late at night through an upper-floor window?  There's an interesting contrast for her to ponder as she elopes.
I think that by seeking to find some way to acquire her parents approval you're passing up the opportunity to make the start of the quest one of the points of conflict on which your story might further draw.
Answer: It's just as dangerous not to go
She is in serious trouble with a local mob boss or powerful gangster, perhaps having stolen something she shouldn't. The parents allow her to go on the quest because at least that way she would be getting out of town. Why can't she leave town without doing the quest? She really wants to do it, and uses her present danger as leverage to persuade her parents. (Or maybe the quest is simply to escape from the bad guy!)
It could even be that doing the quest somehow redeems her in the eyes of the gangster. e.g. the McGuffin she is going to get will make a suitable replacement and the danger she is willing to put herself in to get it is a sign of respect.
Answer: The most obvious answer is that your protagonist lied to their parents.
Either by omission or outright fabrication, the truth has been misrepresented. This is instantly understandable to anyone who has had an adventurous childhood or adventurous children of their own, and will be easier to write without causing cognitive dissonance and plot holes.
Answer: Perhaps on a recent heist, some locals spotted her, and law enforcement are rounding up people fitting her description for identification, so her parents decide it's probably for the best if she goes and gets more experience, whilst also not being around to be linked to the crime.
The harm she might befall is surely smaller than the punishment she will receive.
Answer:
The parents don't know the true nature of the quest. They are unaware of the details of the quest that would be morally/culturally objectionable to them. It's framed in a different way.
It's some kind of rite of passage for a girl coming-of-age in their culture to go on some kind of quest or journey, and this one seems to fit the bill.
The girl is extremely strong-willed, and wears down their parents after a while. They finally throw their hands up in the air and go, oh well, she will be the way she will be. Better to let her go with our blessing than to continue to have all this trouble in our household.
Answer: Good parents wouldn't allow an underage child to go on a dangerous quest.
Of course if her parents have raised her in a family of the trade of thieving, they would not be good parents from the viewpoint of society as a whole, and perhaps not from the viewpoint of their child, depending on the probability that their child will be severely punished by the law when caught.
I repeat:
Good parents wouldn't allow an underage child to go on a dangerous quest.
But real life historic parents often did allow their underage children to go on dangerous quests and to have dangerous occupations, or even ordered them to do so.
Of course many children with dangerous jobs or going on dangerous trips were orphans or otherwise separated from any parental authority.  I once accidentally found a record of a household of children living in Lancaster, PA, according to a 19th century census. The census stated the head and oldest person in the family was a 12-year-old boy who worked in a factory.
So many of the boys who held dangerous jobs or went on dangerous voyages or military expeditions were parentless.  Others had parents who opposed their dangerous activities but ran away from home to do them.
And many other kids took up dangerous occupations with the permission or even the orders of their parents.
According to:  W.W. Gist "The Ages of the Soldiers in the Civil war", Iowa Journal of History and Politics, July 1918, pages 387-399:

"On June 30, 1917, there were 329,226 survivors of the Civil war enrolled as pensioners. Of this number 38,190 receive pensions on account of general disability. The remaining 291, 036 receive pensions in accordance with their length of service and ages. The table showing their ages in 1917 is as follows:
62 years and under 66….3,113
66 and under 70 ….28,966
70 years and under 75…121,476
75 years and older….137,481
Total: 291,036"

The 28,966 pensioners aged 66 to 69 were born between July 1, 1847, and June 30, 1851 and were aged between ten and fourteen when the war began and between fourteen and eighteen when the war ended.
The 3,113 pensioners 62 to 65 would have been born between July 1, 1851, and June 30, 1855, and were aged six to ten when the war began and between ten and fourteen when the war ended.
Of course some of the 38,190 pensioners who were pensioned for disabilities would have been boys during the war.  Some boy soldiers and sailors during the war would not have claimed pensions by 1917.  And many boy soldiers and sailors during the war would have died during the war or in the 52 years since it ended.
So there were a lot of boy soldiers and sailors during the war, and some were orphans, some ran away from home, and some enlisted with the permission of their parents and guardians or even at the command of their parents and guardians.

"Abram F. Springsteen was born 5 July 1850 in Brooklyn, Kings County, New York…Abram enlisted…on 15 Oct 1861, in Co. A 25th Indiana Regiment as a drummer Boy; he was only 11 years, 2 months old at the time.  His parents consented to the enlistment as it was believed he would only be a member of the Home Guard, and his drumming would be beneficial to the cause.
When it became clear that his regiment would be sent off to fight in the south, his parents demanded that he be discharged, which was done 23 Dec 1861.
Just eight months later, when Abram was all of 12 years old, after beating the drum about the streets of Indianapolis while a regiment was being recruited, Abram re-enlisted 9 August 1862 into Co. I of the 63rd Indiana Regiment. He did have parental consent, perhaps because his father had runaway to the circus when he was a young lad, and thus understood the yearning of a young boy for the excitement of new places and war.  His parents probably realized they could not deter Abram from military service any longer…Abram was discharged 21 June 1865."

https://heritageramblings.net/series/abram-f-springsteen/
Thomas J. Foy enlisted in the 5th US Infantry, his father's unit, in 1860 aged 11 year, 1 month, and 27 days.
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/data/batches/mohi_dred_ver01/data/sn86063615/00211109117/1897053001/0165.pdf
William Howe of the 55th Illinois Volunteers had 2 sons with him, Orion P. Howe (1848-1930), who enlisted age 12 and earned the Medal of Honor aged 14, and Lyston Howe who enlisted aged 10 years and 9 months.
Thomas Hubler (1851-1913) enlisted in his father's company of the 12th Indiana Volunteers aged 9 years and 6 months old, reenlisted, and served until the end of the war, being present in 26 battles.
https://warsaw.in.gov/179/Cemetery-History
Bernard Brady enlisted aged 8 years, 11 months, and 7 days.

"I had a stepfather whose name was James Dempsey.  He enlisted as member of the 4th United States artillery in 1859, when it was stationed at Fort Monroe, Va.  Two years later he left the army and with my mother and me, removed from our home at Hampton, Va., to Portsmouth, Va., where we resided until 1862, when the latter place was taken by Union soldiers. Among the troops there was the 58th Pennsylvania Volunteers.  Immediately upon their entry to the Virginia city, my stepfather enlisted in Company D.  Shortly afterwards he had me enlisted in his company as a drummer boy, giving my age much older than I was.
"I was but nine years old when I entered the army, and thirteen when the war closed."  continued Mr. Brady.  "As a matter of course I was entirely too young to fully realize my position, but, boylike, I was only too willing to enlist, even though my stepfather made it compulsory.  He died in a hospital at Hampton in 1864, when my mother removed to Philadelphia, where she died two years later.

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/data/batches/dlc_jabbathehut_ver01/data/sn83045462/00280658704/1915092501/0114.pdf
John Brooks began serving as a drummer boy aged 8 years and 9 months, though he was not officially enlisted.

...Johnnie made it into the service as a drummer boy at the age of nine years.  He served from July, 1863, to August, 1865.  But he was not enlisted.  His father was a fifer in the musicians' corps, and the boy went along to beat a drum.  One of Johnnie's sad duties was to beat the dead march in Indianapolis when the body of President Lincoln was borne through the streets there to lie in state for a brief time on the journey from Washington to Springfield.  Thirty years after the war this drummer boy's congressman introduced a resolution to have the secretary of war muster in and discharge John F. Brooks, so that he might get the regular pay for his two years of service."

https://nyshistoricnewspapers.org/lccn/sn85054447/1908-05-30/ed-1/seq-3.pdf
George H. Black of Indianopolis served in the 21st Indiana Infantry, which later became the First Indiana Heavy Artillery.

...His son, Edward E., enlisted in July, 1861, when only eight and a half years of age, as drummer boy in the Twenty-first Regiment band, and was the youngest boy in the United States to enlist.  He served two years and nine months when the band was dispensed with and he returned home.  At the time that Company L. was recruited by his father, George H. Black, this boy reenlisted as bugler and served until the close of the war.

https://books.google.com/books?id=JRsVAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA437&lpg=PA437&dq=Edward+Black+first+Indiana+Heavy+artillery&source=bl&ots=3o0gZ_Tj7I&sig=iQmwdlWidHWp5NuKR6c9Vala9I0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiDnPL5r_vJAhWEQyYKHdXmA2cQ6AEISDAJ#v=onepage&q=Edward%20Black%20first%20Indiana%20Heavy%20artillery&f=false
Curiously, I have not yet found confirmation that George Black's older son Charles H. Black (1850-1918) also served in the Union army.
Anyway, these few examples show that many parents were willing for their children to take up dangerous occupations, even children who were probably much younger than than the female thief in the original question.
And one other possibility, in Heinlein's Time for the Stars telepaths on starships use intantaneous telepathy to communicate with their telepathic partners on Earth.  The narrator meets a bratty fellow telephath in his early teens.  He wonders why the parents let so yung a kid go on a dangerous exploring expedition and thinks maybe they wanted something bad to happen to the bratty kid.
Comment: "Good parents wouldn't allow an underage child to go on a dangerous quest." I cannot disagree with you more. You list lots of examples of people in the real world doing exactly that and there is no indication that most of these people were not good parents by every other measure. While I was an adult, my father encouraged me to go into the military and congratulated me on my first deployment. He was a very good parent. And those are in the real world, in fantasy it is easy to set up situations where a young child is the only hope for the whole world.
Comment: +1 for the examples; but then that makes me wonder about the opening sentence. Are you saying that all those parents during the Civil War era were bad parents? (By today's standards they probably would be, but it seems the standards of the time were different. Which could also be true for the culture of the OP's world, and might make an interesting theme to explore in the story.)
Comment: Good parents will not let their children go on a dangerous quest unless all other possibilities are as bad.  Historically, they often have been.
Answer: She Ignores their Disapproval
I question the premise that this is a family of thieves who deeply abide by cultural norms. Robbing people is generally not approved of in any culture.
So the answer is: this is a source of conflict between the woman and her parents, and when they try to forbid her departure, she throws their hypocrisy in their face and leaves.
Now she gets to examine her culture and her upbringing and choose which parts of each she wants to embrace.
Answer: "cultural training"
In "The Lies of Locke Lamora", the thieving youths are sent to train at various priesthoods, noble's houses, guilds, etc so they learn as much as possible about their future marks. If they're impersonating a noble from x country, they need to know the intricacies of how a noble eats, talks, & walks.
This quest will give a budding thief great experience outside of her city and give her an understanding of future marks. Her parents had to go on similar missions when they were young, and they know it's time for her to get this training.
Answer: A similar real life question would be: What would be a reason why parents would allow their teens to go on this long, dangerous training and potential war with some military recruiter they just met?
In the US, you can legally join the military at 17.5 years old with parent or guardian permission. (This is 6 months before the teen is considered an adult at 18 years old.) I did. Joining the military can be a cultural or family tradition. (During different eras, very young boys joined the military as non-combatants, or even as fighters as young as 12.)
In your story, it sounds like it's just as much a family tradition as it is a cultural thing. And yes, these two types of tradition tend to intertwine so they reinforce each other. Sometimes they are so intertwined that there's little to no difference between them. And sometimes they are eventually codified into law. But I digress.
In some cultures, thieving is a respected profession. In some cultures, joining the military or police is akin to being a traitor.
Some cultures even conscript very young kids (usually boys) to fight their wars. Maybe the culture in your story does something like this. Maybe they treat volunteers better than they do conscripts. Knowing this, the parents gamble that their child will do better as a volunteer than as a conscript. Since they don't have a choice about their child is doing this, they can choose how well their child is treated. This can be anything from size/availability of food and drink rations, availability of sleeping quarters, how roughly the child is treated in general, or even just garnering the goodwill of the people involved so there isn't a "black mark" against them, think horn/halo effect.
So let's circle back to the question I raised about military service. Maybe in your story's thieving world, there are benefits. Maybe "serving time", as it's called in the military, garners student financial aid packages. There's also the realization that the child will fit better into a rigidly hierarchical system with a tendency to curb actions that would otherwise end up in disciplinary problems throughout the child's later life.
Maybe the child was going to be a thief regardless and the parents wanted them to get better training than they can provide, sort of like how some people join the military to make sure they have a better chance at becoming police officers.
Heck, it might even be a situation that the child was going to do it anyway, so instead of completely destroying what little respect the child has left for their parents, the parents decide it would be better to concede and give their permission.
One other possibility exists: the person they met is has a reputation that precedes them. They have a more than uncanny knack at surviving the unsurvivable, and bringing their crew back safely at the same time. Consider this, if General Dwight Eisenhower personally asked you to to let your child join him on a campaign in his personal guard, would you let them go? Maybe that's not a great example, but you get the idea: someone with extreme fame asks you to do something, are you doing to refuse, especially if completing the mission makes you or your child just as highly regarded as the person asking?
Answer: The survival rate is not that great, truly. But the rewards balance out the risks, and there's more children in the oven.
OP didn't say but I'm assuming this is a medieval-esque fantasy setting.
Peasants, even the urban burgeois, don't have many prospects in life. They will toil, get taxed, get robbed by brigands, get robbed by the tax collector, tithe most of their labor in the Lord's fields, starve through Winter, then start it all over again.
Their children are fated to the same cycle. The only way to break out of it is to try to strike it big by adventuring. Also, most children don't survive to adulthood, disease, starvation, goblins, and monsters taking their toll on the vulnerable ones.
Fortunately, peasants have access to one source of entertainment that's free. And surprise, surprise, it often gives them more children.
A daughter wishing to try her luck and going on an adventure don't have a hard time getting permission. It is one less mouth to feed, one that doesn't have as much physical strength than a son, for example.
In the rare event she succeeds and becomes a wealthy adventurer or something else worth of notice, the family instantly improves their standing in life in a way that not even 10 generations toiling the fields or crafting goods could achieve.
The thing is, we XXI century folks value our children a lot. The medieval fantasy peasants, maybe value theirs as much but they don't have the luxury or opportunities we do. They need to gamble.
Answer: Because she has told them she will have the opportunity to steal great riches.
If the family steals because they're money hungry then the moment they hear promises of rich rewards the currency signs will hit their eyes and they won't think twice about letting her go.

Alternatively, she has convinced someone wealthy to pay her parents a large sum of money in exchange for their consent. Perhaps one of the people supporting the quest is a wealthy businessman or a rich countess?


Syntax highlighting in Terminal Mac OS X

Question: How can I highlight different parts in the Mac OS X Terminal app? For example a different color for input and output? Are the pre-defined color themes I can activate/download?
Comment: you can use some of the themes from http://www.toddwerth.com/ as well
Answer: A great way to get basic syntax highlighting on your console is to install fishfish. It offers basic syntax highlighting and much more.
Here is a screenshot of how it looks like:
Answer: This answer explains how to configure the colors used by your Terminal profiles (e.g. a Futurama based color scheme) and how to enable color output for selected commands.
You can easily adapt this answer to make only your command input colored by applying what is explained in this post's section Colors instead of making text bold.


Why does the cave of machpelah have special significance?

Question: Avraham spends considerable money and effort to acquire the cave of machpelah. I think the medrash mentions that Adam and Chava were buried there. My question is,  is the cave of machpelah special because of the people who were buried there, or was that area special and therefore the Avot and Emaot wanted to be buried there? If the cave of machpelah has some sort of significance apart from the people who are buried there, what is it?
Comment: can't find source atm, but I've seen meforshim before explain that Avraham paid the market rate for the cave (and the land around it), so that there was no question whatsoever who owned it.  (Something that the UN still doesn't understand, but I digress).  It's not because that spot had a special significance before Avraham purchased it, and buried Sara there.
Comment: @Jake why would he choose that spot over any other? why not just bury her in land he already owned?
Comment: That's where Sara died.  (Bereshis 23:1)  Interestingly, it teaches us that Avraham somehow knew to be concerned about burying soon after death.  He bought the nicest plot of land nearby, and insisted on paying full market value for it.
Answer: The source of the name Maaras Hamachpeila could shed some light on this question. - According to one opinion in Eiruvin 53a, either Rav or Shmuel (the Gemara doesn't say which one said it) says the cave is named because it is "doubled with couples" i.e. there are many couples there.  This would seem to imply that its main significance is who is buried there. (The other opinion says that it was named for its multiple levels.)
On the other hand, the Yalkut Reuveini brings from the Zohar on Chayei Sarah that this cave is the entranceway through which souls enter Gan Eden.  This is why, the Zohar says, Adam chose to bury Chava there, and may very well be why Avraham wanted to bury Sarah there.
Comment: I'm not sure I understand, wasn't it called machpelah before it was "doubled with couples"? The Yalkut/Zohar you bring is interesting but only pushes the question further back, why would that particular spot be the entrance way to gan eden (whatever that means!)?
Comment: @user6641 A good question, but we find plenty of examples where something is named before the event before it was named occured.  I don't know if it is prophetic, or the name is being narrated before it was really given.  Regarding the Zohar, is there a reason any particular spot should have been the place more than any other?  It is where Hashem made it.
Comment: @user6641 According to the medrash discussing why Adam and Chava were buried there, the cave had places for couples so that they could be buried there. Thus it was "available" for couples from the beginning. Once Adam and Chava were buried there, the Avos wanted to be there as well. Once Avraham and Sarah were there, the following Avos regarded it as the "family plot". Not the medrash as to the dispute Esav had at the burial of Yaakov and the reason Chushim ben Dan killed him. Note also that Yishmael made no trouble for Yitzchak because he regarded Yitzchak as the rightful heir.
Answer: After Rav Avrohom Azulai (1570-1643) in his sefer Chesed L'Avrohom explains that the lower Garden of Eden is entered by way of the Garden, and that both the Garden and Gehinom - the dwelling place of harmful creatures and angels of destruction - are located on the north side of this lowly world, he writes:

Because it is difficult for both the living and the dead to go to the Garden of Eden because of the fear of the harmful creatures of Gehinom who are located on the north side of the world, Hashem's wisdom decreed the making of an underground tunnel from the Cave of Machpelah which is in Chevron to a place outside of this lowly world next to the Garden, in order that the souls of the tzaddikim can go there directly without encountering any harmful creatures.
Adam and Chavah (Eve) knew this secret and therefore they endeavored to be buried there, and after they were buried there the mouth of the cave was sealed so that no one would
  know about the specialness of the place.
But on the day that Avrohom went with his son Yishmael to take three bulls from his herd, the angel Refael, on a mission from Hashem, secretly followed him, and after Avrohom took two bulls and gave them to the lad to take home, Refael appeared before him in the guise of a very superior looking bull (this is alluded to by the name פר אל - רפאל
  - an superior bull), and thus this was the third bull that Avrhom planned to take. But when Avrohom tried to take it, the bull evaded him and ran a little way off.
This process repeated itself until it brought him to the entrance of the Cave of Machpelah and the entrance of the cave opened. When he saw Adam and Chavah buried there and smelled the fragrance of the Garden of Eden, he immediately understood the specialness of the place and desired that his burial should be there.
The bull now delivered himself into the hands of Avrohom, but when he reached his tent he only found two bulls, and so Avrohom had to create a third bull using the Sefer Yetzirah
  in order not to cause distress to his guests, because if he returned to the herd to take a third bull the time when it is fitting to eat would have passed. This is what the posuk in Bereishis 18:8 means "and he took…the young bull which he had made" - which he had actually made.

Full text in English can be found here.
Comment: +1 - this is a source for the last line of my answer as well.


Recreating the Animation Nodes FCurve Animation Offset Template

Question: Hi i've been trying to find a way to create and control traffic (thats also flying) in a large futuristic city scene. To do this I'm trying to re-create an old animation nodes template that I feel will solve the problem but i keep coming up short. Does anyone know the layout of the subprogram for this video? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsrQk1kiGF0&t=75s
Answer: Lets say we have a cube with some f-curves that controls its location.

And we have an array of spheres that we want to transform based on the f-curves of the cube with an offset it time.

What we are going to do is create a loop that evaluates the x, y and z f-curves at multiple offset values, combine the result in a vector and append it. The offsets shall be of uniform range generated using the Float Range node.

By adding the evaluated locations to the locations of the spheres, we get the result you are looking for.


Protecting KML/KMZ files created in ArcMap from being copied?

Question: Is there a way to lock/protect a kml/kmz file that is created in ArcMap from being copied in Google Earth and/or geoprocessed in ArcMap when you want to give to third parties?
Answer: KML is just XML. That is plain text as XML. KMZ is XML that has been zipped and could include other elements like images inside. There is nothing special about it. That's why so many software packages can read it / use it.
There is no mechanism within ArcGIS to "lock" or secure a KML/KMZ.  Even if one existed, some other software package wouldnt care about the 'lock' and just read the XML data inside.
To my knowledge there is no way to secure a KMZ. There is some conversation here: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/maps/AHVe3PjBu5I - but it boils down to once someone has your KMZ, they have free access to whats inside.
You could possibly host your data as a service and make a KMZ that references that service. Odds are people could still put the geometry out of that (if they really wanted too), but it'd make it a tiny bit more difficult.
Comment: Thanks KHibma for the information, it is much more clear now
Answer: No. License restrictions are effectively an "honor code" issue. If you allow fair use, you can't prevent unfair use. If you don't trust the end-user(s), don't give them the data.
Answer: You could use the option to generate a licensed file geodatabase

Generates a license definition file (.licdef) that defines and restricts the display of contents in a file geodatabase. The contents of the licensed file geodatabase can be viewed by creating a license file (*.sdlic) and installing it with ArcGIS Administrator. The license file is created using the Generate File Geodatabase License tool.
Licensing is ideally suited to mature datasets that will be shared or licensed under a use agreement and do not require further editing. The output licensed file geodatabase cannot be unlicensed to return it to its original unlicensed format.
Comment: If I create a lincensed file geodatabase and I convert a feature class within in it as KMZ/KML file through the conversion tool, will it inherit the restrictions that I created within the licensed filegeodatabase?
Comment: @Victoria, I would suggest that you create a separate post for your second question. It helps others to be able to find and sort to be able to answer and for future reference. If a question is in the comments plus answer it can get lost.


Is there any app to add a keyboard shortcut to a mouse click on a specific location?

Question: Basically I have a program that I use to study and I need to be able to quickly choose between a 8 choice answer button. The program does not have inbuilt keyboard shortcuts. I need to answer a question every 2 seconds so moving the mouse around gets tiring if I could just associate where the buttons are to 1-8 on the keyboard that would be great.
Answer: Try the TAB + Enter key.
The TAB key should move the cursor to next question, the enter key should answer it.
Setting it up with 1-8 requires more doing, and you need to tell us what program are you using.
Answer: Try saving scripts like this in AppleScript Editor and assigning them shortcuts with FastScripts or other applications:
<code>tell application "System Events" to tell process "Safari"
    click at {923, 186}
end tell

tell application "Safari" to tell document 1
    do JavaScript "document.querySelectorAll('#hmenus div ul li:nth-child(3) a')[0].click()"
end tell

tell application "Google Chrome" to tell tab 1 of window 1
    execute javascript "document.querySelectorAll('#hmenus div ul li:nth-child(3) a')[0].click()"
end tell
</code>
Another option would be to use Keyboard Maestro:


How do I migrate a question here to StackOverflow?

Question: I recently asked a question here, but in retrospect I'd rather have asked it at StackOverflow. Should I just ask the same question there, or request in my question to have a mod migrate it, or is there a better option?
Answer: Actually, mod_rewrite questions generally belong here, and it's fairly likely your dupe(don't do that) is just going to get migrated back.
But to answer the question:
At your current rep level you can flag the topic for mod attention and request migration via the options. Later on, you'll also have access to close votes, with the same "off-topic" option available.
Comment: To further clarify: click "flag" (beside "edit") and then click "It doesn't belong here" and then "off-topic" -- you'll be able to indicate if it belongs on another site in the network.


Facebook Group with a Restricted Friend

Question: On Facebook, I've got my boss as a "Restricted Friend" so he isn't seeing my posts unless I make them public. Now, he's joined a Group that I manage. Will he be able to see posts I make to the group's page?
Answer: If he is in the group you are managing and if you are posting something then only in that group he is able to view your posts but not all the other posts.

Facebook Group with a Restricted Friend


Cocos2d + box2D remove sprite from world

Question: Should be easy but i don't have find...
I have a lot of sprites in my world and on a moment X, i need to destroy multiples sprites.
With the code below, i can remove this sprite by tag number:
CCSprite *sprite = (CCSprite *)[self getChildByTag:TagFromMyArray];
[self removeChild:sprite cleanup:YES];

The problem is the body that remain on screen...and crash the game on the next tick.
With the code below i can find "a body":
for(b2Body *b = world->GetBodyList(); b; b=b->GetNext()) {
        if (b->GetUserData() != NULL) {
            CCSprite *sprite = (CCSprite *)b->GetUserData();
            if (sprite.tag = [[[myGrille.grille objectAtIndex:point.x] objectAtIndex:point.y]blockTag]) {
                [self removeChild:sprite cleanup:YES];
                world->DestroyBody(b);
            }
        }
    }

The problem is that it remove every body on the world.
Isn't b a reference to a unique body ?
Answer: I was around this for hours and it was a small error...
Just have to replace "=" with "==" in the last if condition.


Good references on PNL explain?

Question: Can anyone share good references for how PNL explain should be calculated and presented for the best use of a derivatives trading desk?
Comment: darbyshire "Pricing and Trading Interest Rate Derivatives" has a reasonable amount of relevant material on this topic, whilst not specifically being a book dedicated to this exact task.
Answer: I'm not aware of any great reference. However Peter Nash Effective product control: controlling for trading desks. Wiley (2018) chapter 10 Review of Mark-to-Market P&L is a good start. Andrew Colin Mastering Attribution in Finance: A practitioner's guide to risk-based analysis of investment returns. FT Publishing International (2015) is worth a look too. David Bolder Fixed Income Portfolio Analytics Springer (2015) Part III "Performance" has a decent discussion of risk-theortical P&L attribution for bonds. Carl Bacon Practical Portfolio Performance Measurement and Attribution, 3rd edition Wiley (Wiley 2023) has good literature reviews.
I wrote some notes here that I hope may help.
You should have risk-theoretical P&L (RTPL - Taylor sereis approximation of the P&L) for all positions. For the positions that are marked to model, you should have Brute Force - both "Cumulative" and "Independent". (It is possible to do bruce force P&L explain for positions with observable price, but it's harder and less useful.)
Comment: Hi Dimitri, I have a method of attributing theoretical PnL (or the change in *any* function between two points) into an additive series of single effects. Bivariate example: $f(x_1,y_1)-f(x_0,y_0) = e_x + e_y$, with $e_x = \frac{1}{2}\left(f(x_1,y_1)-f(x_0,y_1) + f(x_1,y_0)-f(x_0,y_0)\right)$ and likewise for $e_y$. This method is extendable to more components of course. It attributes cross-effects evenly on the single components. It can be used with effects like decay, rates, FX, credits etc and does not require sequential shifting. Would that work for you? I have a prototype in R at hand.
Comment: Thanks!!! I'm always curious to see what people do, even when I have no immediate use for it. The Nash book is from a product control point of view, not mathematical. I  I'm thinking of editing my old answer I cited and adding more details, particularly on RTPL, and on practical euristics that would help someone trying to build a P&L explain from ground up, a common task. I don't know any place that explains it to my liking. Certainly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PnL_Explained Wikipedia article is less than great.
Answer: References

https://www.bis.org/publ/bcbs265.pdf
This one is directly used by banks for programs such as FRTB.

https://assets.kpmg/content/dam/kpmg/xx/pdf/2018/10/frtb-white-paper-july-2018.pdf. This one describes it from a P&L variance ratio point of view.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PnL_Explained. Basic summary of P&L attribution.

Summary
The purpose of the P&L explanation (or Volcker P&L attribution) is to test  how well your risk factors explain your actual P&L and hence the overall logic and consistency of the model.
$$ P\&L_{unexplained} = P\&L_{model} - P\&L_{risk \ factors}$$
$P\&L_{risk \ factors}$, the "explained" portion of P&L, is estimated using the Greeks/sensitivities of the risk factors (sum of first order sensitivities with respect to individual risk factors multiplied by risk factor shifts). First order sensitivities (i.e. delta) use forward differences while second order sensitivities (i.e. gamma) use central differencing and are typically used for futures options.
$$ P\&L_{model}=P\&L_{comprehensive} - P\&L_{new \ positions} - P\&L_{other} $$
is actual model P&L calculated from the price of a position on two consecutive days, where
$$ P\&L_{comprehensive}=NPV_{T}-NPV_{T-1}-CASH-CVAHedges $$  and $$ P\&L_{new \ positions}=P\&L_{new \ position} + P\&L_{trade \ event} $$
$P\&L_{trade \ event} $ is NPV changes from notional changes in existing positions and  $P\&L_{other} $ are finance adjustments.
The $P\&L_{unexplained}$ thus compares the difference between the model P&L and the P&L of the risk factors used to explain the price movements. A modeler would like to expect that $P\&L_{risk \ factors}$ explains more than 90% of P&L. In other words, you would like to minimize the portion of P&L that is unexplained by the risk factors used in the model which are supposed to capture the effects of actual P&L experienced by the position.
Comment: Thanks for the summary.  I am aware of the basics; what I am really looking for is a reference like a textbook or academic paper that discusses more nuances.
Comment: I have updated my answer to include references. The first link is the one banks implement due to regulatory requirements. More papers can be found from BIS website. Also the summary/formula section I provided is directly used in practice too in model testing of derivative products.

Good references on PNL explain?


The meaning of aishdas

Question: I have read that aishdas (Deut. 33:2) means "fiery law" or something of the sort.  However, doesn't the word das with the meaning of law/religion come from Persian (i.e. did not have the meaning of law in Biblical times)?  Can someone help me out here?
Answer: Prof Richard Steiner argues in this article that דת here is short for דאת, a rare verb meaning "fly" (like Deu 28:49 כאשר ידאה הנשר, but in an archaic construction like Lev 25:21 ועשת and with the א elided). So the meaning of the verse is really "from His right hand, fire flew to them," and the commonly seen "fiery law" is based on Midrash. Indeed given the structure of the verse a verb like that is to be expected here. He and Rabbi Dr. Sid Z. Leiman in this article find support for this in Targum Psuedo-Jonathon to Exodus 20:2 which, in parallel to Sifre on our verse, explicitly describes at the Revelation at Sinai a torch/fire flying (טייס -- the same root the Targum uses to translate ידאה) from God's right hand to [surround] the Jewish people.
In defense of the more common translation, one might argue that דת as "law" may be a native Hebrew word that is otherwise unattested, rather than a loanword from Persian.
Comment: The word דת is used frequently in Megillat Esther. That may support your claim that it is originally a Persian word.
Answer: Based on the k'siv, in which "אשדת" is only one word, I have heard it being related to the independent word אשדת, meaning waterfall, as in "תחת אשדת הפסגה". (D'varim 4:49)
Comment: You may enjoy the improvements I made to Alex's answer.
Comment: @DoubleAA I do enjoy them. And to make this a non-"thank you" comment, I will add that the verb "אשד" also appears in the translation of Micha.
Comment: No one has suggested a verb אשד. If anything it would be relevant to understanding the כתיב not the קרי. What does it mean there?
Comment: @DoubleAA My point is that if you're looking for a (f.) verb in that part of the _pasuk_ to validate the parallelism it doesn't need to be "das".
Comment: It does if they are two words (as in the קרי)
Answer: Conceivably, דת is simply a semitic root that happens to only come up once in the earlier Hebrew of the Chumash, but was used more in Persian. It appears in Aramaic and Syriac as דתא (which is also found in the book of Ezra).
But yes, the kesiv is "waterfall".
A nice metaphor for Torah -- fiery passion and rite fused into a whole that is neither, from which flows life.
Answer: The Persian language did not exist at the time of Torah? Not even a prototype?
I'm not sure I really understand the difficulty. The Torah has words that were not (originally) Hebrew. A couple of examples off the top - Totofos (tefilin) and Moshe.
Is there anywhere stated that all the words in the Torah had to be of Hebrew origin?
Comment: Still a fair point, though. Conceivably דת could have been a really early loanword into Hebrew/Lashon Kodesh from proto-Persian.
Comment: "Is there anywhere stated that all the words in the Torah had to be of Hebrew origin?" This question presupposes a difference between "Hebrew" and "the language of the Torah", both of which - for the purposes of this discussion - could probably be more precisely conflated into "Lashon Hakodesh".
Answer: According to Rash"i (on B'reshis 37:17), Ya'akov's other ten sons used the word דת on their way to plot against Yosef.
Comment: I suspect that that's more likely to be a paraphrase in Rabbinic Hebrew rather than a quotation in Biblical Hebrew.
Comment: אה"נ that it's a paraphrase but Rash"i is explaining the word דתינה as "toward their calculations" or something similar.

The meaning of aishdas


How to block specific username from ssh?

Question: I have testuser and I want that user to be able log-in locally, but not via ssh. How can I implement that?
Answer: Put DenyUsers user1 user2 user3 in /etc/ssh/sshd_config
Answer: Artyom answer is correct.
I'd just like to point that there is also the possibility to opt for a 'white-list' approach instead of the 'black-list' one by putting a line like this in /etc/ssh/sshd_config:
AllowUsers AuthorizedUser1 AuthorizedUser2
and reloading ssh service (service ssh restart)
Then every other user will be denied ssh access (be careful not to lock yourself out ;-) )
Comment: you can also make access tighter even more by `AllowUser AuthorizedUser1@[ip-address]` I believe. This should only allow that specific user when coming from the mentioned IP address


"(An) exactly (the) same": two articles ok?

Question: Does it make sense when two articles are used, for example "An exactly the same"? If the former conveys inspecific/abstract item, then what does the latter do?
Answer: You're asking if we use the phrase: An exactly the same?
Not normally. It's not generally grammatical to use an article to introduce an adverb (exactly), nor to use two articles to introduce a noun (same).
But it could be used for some kind of special effect, as could almost any string of words. A context might be that two people see a woman. One says she's the same woman they saw on the TV news because she robbed a bank:

A: I'm telling you, she's a completely different woman!
  B: And I'm telling you: she's an exactly-the-same woman. Let's catch her!

That's something I can cook up in my imagination as possible. But whether or not it's grammatical depends on a careful definition of grammar.
Comment: Hmm, thanks. I like English because it is so much more free/liberal then Russian :) I mean in Russian no one would even imagine that grammar can be defined (carefully or not). It just exists (and it's very strict) :)


Can Red Dragon generate electrical power after a Mars landing, or will it rely only on battery power?

Question: Red Dragon will presumably have to shed or re-stow solar arrays before any landing. What will be the source of electrical power after landing?
Comment: I seem to recall the solar arrays are shed before landing, so the payload has to provide any power needed.
Answer: Solar panels for both Dragon versions are on the trunk of the craft, the unpressurized external (relative to the capsule) component that separates the capsule from the upper stage of the rocket that launches it. There's a bunch of reasons that the trunk must be jettisoned before landing:

The trunk is aerodynamic for takeoff, though only with the panels stowed (on Dragon 1, they are stowed folded inside fairings on each side; I'm not sure about Dragon 2). It is not aerodynamic for landing, nor is it heat-shielded (it actually covers the capsule's heat shield) so it certainly can't survive (re-)entry anywhere with an atmosphere.
The small Draco thrusters used for maneuvering and orbital adjustments can be used with the trunk attached - otherwise, the Dragon 1 wouldn't be able to reach the ISS safely - but I'm not sure if the large SuperDraco thrusters that Dragon 2 uses to land propulsively can be used while the trunk is attached (without damaging it).
While the trunk can withstand considerable vertical compression force (it certainly does so during liftoff), it has no landing legs or similar. Dragon 2's landing legs are behind its heat shield, which is behind the trunk, and they aren't long enough to land on even if they could be deployed with the trunk still attached.
The trunk adds weight (equipment and structure) that will probably not be needed after landing. Of course, part of that equipment is the solar panels, but other parts are just dead weight. Jettisoning it means there's that much less work for the heat shield, parachutes, and/or SuperDracos to do.

So, altogether, the trunk definitely has to go before landing (unless Dragon 2 gets massively redesigned to permit the trunk to survive landing). However, that doesn't necessarily mean that the capsule will only be on battery power. Dragon 1 has 11 cubic meters (388 cubic feet) of internal capacity (couldn't find the numbers for Dragon 2, but Elon Musk has described it as "about the size of an SUV"), and Falcon Heavy can get the capsule to a Mars orbit with several (numbers I've seen have said 2-4) tons of payload. That's plenty of space and mass to carry solar panels, a radioisotope thermal generator, or even a small nuclear fission reactor, probably with volume and mass left over for a scientific payload.
Comment: I believe the dragon pressure hull has two hatches. One in the nose, ie. the docking port, and one on the side, which incorporates one of the windows. (This space.com link  -  http://www.space.com/26188-spacex-dragon-v2-manned-spacecraft-infographic.html has a graphic showing the side hatch)
Comment: I realise that the trunk is jettisoned together with the solar arrays. What ends up on the surface is the capsule which has plenty of internal volume for equipment but is a pressure vessel. So any solar arrays or scientific equipment must be deployed outside through pressure hatches of limited size. This will involve some engineering challenges, I imagine.
Comment: ...and I thought those were *windows*!
Answer: It could use a large radioisotope thermoelectric generator. If it used this along with several rechargeable and non rechargeable batteries, it could possibly remain with power for several months.
Comment: Like the other answer, this is speculation. We won't know until SpaceX releases some details on the Red Dragon mission.
Comment: I've never heard of a radioscopic isotype generator. I assume you mean some sort of a radioisotope thermoelectric generator? The problem with these generators is that there is no available source of Plutonium-238 to power them. The recently restarted production by the US DoE will not be producing significant quantities for a number of years yet.
Comment: An RTG requires that the rocket be certified for it. At the moment, you can't use an RTG on a Falcon 9 payload.
Comment: Putting RTG into private hands... I just can't see this happening, politically.


Difference between minor and major pentatonic scale boxes?

Question: Is there a difference between minor and major pentatonic scale box shapes? Some say you can do the same pattern as a minor scale but three notes up the fretboard and some that you must change pattern to do the major pentatonic scale in the same key? i'm confused...
Comment: 'The same key' is the confusing bit. Parallel maj and min keys as in A and Am are NOT the same keys. Relative maj and min, as in C and Am are not the same keys either! Except they CAN be construed as the same in some ways. However, when soloing on guitar, it's common practice to use parallel  pent. scale notes.
Comment: http://www.groovenue.com/2016/01/14/putting-scales-together-berklee-caged-pentatonic-major-and-minor/
Answer: The first thing to note is that to specify a key, you need both a root note and a formula. A root note on its own is not sufficient.
A minor and C major contain the same notes, so we can say they are different modes of the same scale. Another way of saying this is that A minor is the relative minor of C major, and C major is the relative major of A minor.  So why do we need two names for the same thing? Well, the correct name (which can sometimes be a bit subjective) will depend on which note the music is "pulling towards" i e which note appears more.

A minor pentatonic: A C D E G A (formula 3 2 2 3 2)
C major pentatonic:   C D E G A C (formula 2 2 3 2 3)

Now let's look at the complete, 5-position diagram of the pentatonic scale. You can play a pentatonic scale by walking your fingers across the neck at any one of these positions, playing 2 notes per string. If you want A minor / C major, you need to consider this diagram to represent the space from the 5th and 19th fret.

Let's focus on position 1. Here we can play the notes A-C D-E G-A C-D E-G A-C (hyphens just to show which notes are played on the same string.) If you play that, you've either played two octaves of the A minor scale (plus an extra C at the end) or two octaves of the C major scale (plus an extra A at the beginning.) So all you have to do is remember to OMIT the last C and you are playing A minor, or OMIT the first A and you are playing C major!
If you want to play C minor / Eb major, you need to move 3 frets up. If you want to play F# minor / A major you need to move 3 frets down. It's that simple.

some say you must change the pattern

I think what's happening here, is that it is common to associate position 1 with the minor, because that's where we start by playing 2 notes on the low E string (and only 1 on the high E). As I have just explained, that's not really true, because, we can play just as much major scale in position 1, but then we play only 1 note on the low E and 2 on the high E.
I strongly disagree with this fixation that "you must start at bottom left" because you can actually start playing a scale anywhere. After all, you want to play tunes, so a scale is really just a pallette of notes to choose from. But those that subscribe to that fixation would call position 2 the "major" position. Here, we can play C major like this, starting with 2 notes on the low E string: C-D E-G A-C D-E G-A C (-and a final D if we want to.)
Now, one other point touched on by Tim, is that if you take for example a 12 bar blues progression such as A A A A D D A A E D A A (all major chords) you would expect to be able to solo over it in A major (this has a jolly, rock and roll type feel.) But surprisingly, you can also move three frets up and solo over it in A minor! (this has a more moody, bluesy feel.) You can play lead in minor over rhythm in major! But the reverse (playing lead in major over rhythm in minor) doesn't really work.
(As an aside, it's very common in rock music for rhythm guitar to substitute a what "should be" a minor chord for a major chord.)
To be a good guitarist, you need to know all the positions of the pentatonic, but if you just learn the odd ones, which are easy (1,3 and 5) you will already know where the notes are for the more complicated looking even ones (2 and 4.)
Finally, a small rant on my personal philosophy...
When you move onto the diatonic (7-note) you may be bamboozled by endless scale boxes with greek names. The diatonic (the most important scale in western music) is made by adding 2 notes to the pentatonic and is the scale of the white notes on the piano. As there are 7 different notes, there are 7 different modes of this scale all with the exact same notes. For example from the notes of C major we get C Ionian (major), D Dorian, E Phrygian, F lydian, G mixolydian, A Aeolian (minor) and B Locrian. There is in my opinion no need to consider 7 different and independent scale boxes for the diatonic scale, (and even less to name them after the modes) because there is an enormous amount of repetition where they overlap and as I said above, relating a scale position to a particular mode is a fallacy (I do concede it might be a good way of identifying the position, but there is no unambiguous "right way" of crossing the neck with diatonic scales anyway!)
Comment: Looking at the fretboard you show, it's easy to understand that the boxes overlap - the higher notes in position 1 are the lower notes in pos. 2, and so on. I quite like the 3-notes-per-string scale, where the same 3 frets are used on the 5th & 6th strings, another pair on 4 & 3, and yet another pair on 2 & 1.
Comment: I'll take you to task on 'you can actually play a scale anywhere'. I guess you mean start and finish on any note. Those aren't scales any more, but modes. Musically, it's excellent to be able to do that, but they're not *scales*.
Comment: @Tim what I meant is you can start any scale on any string. So you can play the exact same C major scale starting on the 5th fret of the 3rd string, the 10th fret of the 4th string or even the 1st fret of the 2nd string (though that gives you very little room for moving across the neck.) The tone quality in each case will of course be different. This is one of the reasons I think calling the position 1 pentatonic scale box  "minor" and position 2 "major" makes no sense: Rarely when soloing would I start a scale run on the 6th string. And I'd move diagonally rather than stick to a single box.
Answer: Dom's answer is of course correct, but I think there's a misunderstanding as to what is meant by 'pattern'. In Dom's answer, he refers to the interval structure of a scale as 'pattern'. In this sense he is of course right that the patterns of major and minor pentatonic scales are different. However, I believe that Chris refers to patterns on the neck of the guitar. And in this sense, you could argue that the patterns of major and minor pentatonic scales are the same, i.e. the 'boxes' look the same. But the important difference is the location of the root, which is of course different for major and minor pentatonic scales.
So if you play a minor pentatonic pattern in some key, and you want to use that same pattern in the major pentatonic scale with the same root, then you need to shift that pattern down by three frets. E.g., if you play the A minor pentatonic scale in the 5th position, and you want to switch to A major pentatonic using the same pattern, then you need to move that pattern down to the 2nd position.
The other thing is, if you want to stay in the same position to play major and minor pentatonic scales with the same root, then the pattern of course changes as you go from minor to major. But the new pattern is also one of the familiar pentatonic patterns. So, for example, if you play in the 5th position in A minor, and then you want to change to A major (basically) without leaving the position (plus/minus 1 fret), you need to play the pattern that you would normally play three frets higher if you were still in A minor. This sounds much more complicated than it actually is when you have a guitar in your hand.
Comment: Yes, I think you caught the essence of the OP's question. It's more about patterns on the fretboard. However, did you mean UP 3 frets from the min. pent. to find the root of the relative maj. pent. Up, as going higher, as in making higher pitched notes, as in moving towards the bridge?             E.g. Am pent goes from 5th fret to 8th fret (1st position). Root for Am is 6th string 5th fret, whereas root for Cmaj is up 3 frets at 8th fret.
Comment: @Tim: I meant down (i.e. lower), in the sense that if you want to use the *same* pattern and you play in minor, then you need to go down by 3 frets to end up in major of the same key. E.g. A minor 5th position => A major 2nd position (same pattern).
Comment: @Tim: Right! As soon as I have more time I might edit my answer to make things a bit clearer. It's so easy to see on the guitar and so hard to explain clearly ...
Comment: Got you. You're meaning parallel maj and min, moving the pattern down 3 frets, but still starting on the same string/fret/note (as in A in my comment).Rather than the relatives.No wonder folks get confused...
Comment: Thank you Matt L.! I've been focusing on this for a week now and I finally understand the relation between the minor and major pentatonic scales. Your comment help me and explains it very well!
Answer: There's two things going on that you need to understand.

The pattern for the major and minor scales are different. If you were to play a C major pentatonic scale you would play the notes C, D, E, G, A. If you were playing the  C minor pentatonic you would play the notes C, Eb, F, G, Bb. Both are shown below:

There are major and minor pentatonic scales that share the same notes. These scales are related and typically refereed to as the relative major/minor. If you were to play a C major pentatonic scale you would play the notes C, D, E, G, A. If you were playing the  A minor pentatonic you would play the notes A, C, D, E, G. Both are shown below:

So yes there are major and minor pentatonic scales that share notes, but the pattern is not the same. There are technically more than just two patters and using them you can span across the whole guitar as shown in this question.

All pictures from basicmusictheory.com


How does Red Guard / waterproof relate to floating for tile?

Question: I'm going to tile my bathroom. I'm in the second story, but the surface is concrete. I live in a condo. I'm told you're supposed to use Red Guard. Do you Red Guard after you float, before you tile? Or, before you even start to float?
Answer: You use Redguard after the floor is prepped. You can do minor floating as in a thin layer of thinset to fill in an area that may have been overlooked while floating the bath floor the first time.
Being its a condo and the floor is concrete, the floor is either poured in place or precast panels set in place. That in mind, I can't see the floors being much out of whack that would make the floors difficult to get right. Worst case with a precast floor, you may have a joint where two precast slabs meet, that would be the most problematic. If there is two distinct levels then there is not enough grinding that will fix it, better to use a self leveling underlayment with their approved primer, the add the Redguard. You can still touch it up a bit with thinset if you feel it is needed.
The larger tile will take a LARGE notched trowel (1/2"X1/2")to set the floor. This itself will automatically build in some give and take. A level floor is good, but you can work with a floor that is all on the same plane. In other words, flat, no high spots, maybe just a little out of level, not much though.
Comment: so you float first, and then use redguard? I'm not sure if prepping means floating or etching/cleaning.
Comment: I'm not doing a shower, I'm doing a bathroom. It'll get wet. But not soaked. I'm just confused at the order of operation with the waterproofing and floating. Do I make the bathroom level with self-leveling mortar, and then waterproof and then the thinset for tiling goes over the waterproofing? Or, do I waterproof and then level the whole bathroom using self-leveling mortar.
Comment: It's a mortar bead of some sort, already. I live in a condo and all I can see for the floor is concrete. The floor is pretty bad out of level. I'm thinking about using a grinder on the concrete to take down the high points -- I'm not sure if that's a kosher idea, that'll be another question. I'm not sure what I'm using yet. To be honest, I don't much care. I tend to think bigger tile looks better and is less grout to clean. So probably something 16 inch or larger. Thanks for all the help.
Comment: I modified the answer I gave to better reflect the question, I included some of my comments into the answer.


How can I resolve a .htaccess internal server error setting up a WordPress multisite?

Question: I am stuck in .htaccess file creation for multisite. I am getting an error in page now internal error 500 and when i checked my log in apache it says C:/www/vhosts/localhost/wordpress3/.htaccess: RewriteEngine not allowed here. I allowed it in httpd.conf by removing the hash from LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so, still getting an error and it says page cannot be found. Can you please help me in this.
Comment: It helps if you phrase your title as a question.  Also you might get more responses if you choose the answers that worked for your in your other questions.
Answer: You may need to set "AllowOverride All" in your apache config, for the Directory block for the server root, or root of your Wordpress install.
Here's what the relevant block looks like on a *nix system; things will probably look a little different on Windows:
<code><Directory /var/www/>
    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
allow from all
</Directory>
</code>
The AllowOverride tells Apache that .htaccess files are okay; without it, it will ignore the contents of any .htaccess files it finds.
hth,
~ Patch
Comment: Thanks, I did this but now I am not getting any error but i cant go to my admin section now, the admin page also redirects to the main page now :S
Comment: My super admin is created and i can make sites, but the root path is not showing any site now and is showing 404 forbidden error
Comment: You need to setup a different .htaccess file for a multi-site install than for a single site install. Try backing up the contents of you .htaccess file, removing the file, and then logging into the admin. There is a part of the config that gives you the .htaccess file to use; don't have it handy right at the moment.


Are there any game items that grant fishing luck?

Question: The Arcane Statistics page for each character has a line item labeled "Fishing Luck." What, if anything, affects this? Mine has always been at 0, and I've never seen any gear or potions which boost that stat.
Answer: Emberbright Cod is the only item I know of that has Fishing Luck anywhere.
The Emberbright Cod in theory, can be caught anywhere but have a high consistency of being caught in the Orden Mines. To be honest, a lot of people have the same question as you. I would help you if I could but there is no "clear" explanation of to why there is the luck section in your stats. In torchlight 1 there was the option to craft the Sushi Helmet, which granted some luck in fishing. One of the items used to craft it is Sushi Grade Fish Meat, which has been implemented in Torchlight 2 getting many people wondering. In the end the only item known is the Emberbright Cod, which is extremely rare and requires many many hours of fishing.
http://torchlight2armory.com/
http://torchlight2armory.com/item?i=-1247376097256533538
Comment: I'm assuming that's a type of fish that can be caught? If so, where can they be caught (I've never seen one in ~300 hours of gameplay)?
Comment: Hey, are you having any luck?
Answer: There are only a very small number of items in Torchlight 2 that claim to improve Fishing Luck and they are very rare. The problem is that there is no item in the game that really does so.
There are two reasons for this - first, in Torchlight 2 a bug in the affixes means that any items claiming to improve fishing luck do not do so - they improve magic finding luck instead. Second, there is actually no need for improving fishing luck in Torchlight 2 because none of the fish are classified as magic items, they are all classified the same thus there is no 'heirachy' of items meaning in turn improving your luck makes no difference in fish quality you find as they are all effectively just randomly rolled form the same table.
My Unearthed Arcana mod fixes this and adds the fish from TL1 meaning that not only does fishing luck work properly again, theres also a use for it.


What are the exact requirements for The Floor is Lava?

Question: One of the two achievements in Overwatch that are specific to Lucio is called "The Floor is Lava", which requires you to get three killing blows whilst wall riding. Does that mean you simply need to be wall riding at the moment of the kill, or when firing the killing projectile? Maybe even both?
Answer:

This Video might help you.
You must be riding a wall while killing three enemies without dying in between the kills. To clarify, you need to be wall riding when the elimination happens and you receive the notification on your screen. What the guy does, and seams to be easier is to push them off the map and just ride till they hit the bottom.
Comment: Worth noting, the important part about the knockback strategy is you need to get credit for the killing blow, and you need to be actively wall-riding when the elimination message appears on screen.
Comment: Lucio starts at 4:58. He gets the achievement at 13:20. Takeaways: you don't have to wallride for the whole time, just at the moment each enemy is eliminated. You can blast someone off an edge while on the ground, then jump up on a wall til they actually die, then go back to the ground until the next one.
Comment: If you could esplicitly mention that you only need to be wall riding when the elimination happens, I'll accept it.
Comment: @DanmakuGrazer there 'ya go.


How would an underground civilization that mines deal with mine tailings?

Question: This is based on the Silo by Hugh Howey. I don't have any spoilers here though. In that book (actually a collection of 5 novels), the characters live in an underground city, and some of them mine for metal ores and crude oil. What would they do with the leftover rock separated from the ore and from digging pipelines? They cannot access the outside. Is there a way to get rid of the rock, or is this just something the author did not think about?
Answer: A Zero-Sum Game
You have an initial volume. As you dig a new mine shaft, the tailings go into an old mine shaft and the metal goes into the living areas. If the tailings have roughly the same density as the ore, it evens out.

It doesn't work quite that way for oil, but then burning oil will give all sorts of problems in a closed ecosystem.
As the area around the habitat caves gets mined out, more volume will be taken by transit corridors and less by living caves. At some point they might have to dig new living caves nearer to the mines, and fill the old living caves and transit corridors.
Comment: No its is about the nature of compaction, compaction is moving the grains around to minimize the porosity as much as possible, but they will never be as compact as when they were one solid piece with no gaps or pores whatsoever. And of course the less broken up the tailings are the less compaction you can actually do. Compaction is actually fairly well studied, because compaction can be very good/very bad for certain purposes like road building, foundations, or agriculture.
Comment: tailings tend to take up significantly more volume than they occupied as native rock. Of course if they had some convient caverns to fill to make up the difference...
Comment: @John, good point, but surface mines have limited incentive to compact tailings. Perhaps they *could* be compressed.
Answer: its possible that if these miners have access to underground rivers then they could be pulverising the rock and sending it down steam without ever directly encountering the outside world (this would be especially supported if it's the case that these people get their water from an underground river but I don't know if that is the case.)
porous rock and Kilns could probably also solve your problem. When placed in a kiln many rocks decompose, giving off gas (carbonates like limestone give of carbon dioxide sulphates give off sulphur dioxide) when they do this they shrink so you produce the space you need. Most underground caves and mines are not perfectly sealed from the outside world they leak so the partial pressure of the gases produced would slowly force them into the outside world. The gases would however kill all your inhabitants so a special "leaky zone" would need to be set up to divert the gases too. While this should work in theory i'd be very dubious about it in practice and I personally would never trust it with my life. If this works it could be made more effective by using electrolysis to turn rocks into metal (mostly silicon) and gas.
Or alternatively you have as O.M. suggests a "zero sum game" however the region contains enough voids (i.e. caves, valleys, sink holes or other man made mineshafts) to keep adding space into system to make up for lost space. its worth noting that simply  because of how packing works your tailings aren't going to be as dense as your rock (its impossible infact). Think of it like this: take a jigsaw puzzle draw around the rectangle the solved puzzle and then try to fit the pieces in that rectangle without solving the puzzle. its impossible in the same way, you wot be able to fit all your rocks together perfectly after the fact so you do need a constant influx of new space.
Answer: Density
Living underground, the issue is how to create space. The only way you can make space is by putting more stuff in less room, so they would have to pack the dirt somehow. A trash compactor or just something heavy and mobile would do the trick, but you have another issue to deal with - the leftover gasses from burning the oil.
Comment: If gasses can be pumped out, why couldn't the sludge left over from mining? And the difference between rock and dirt only changes how much more work it would take to pack it - not the process itself
Comment: Is the only problem with going to the surface the conditions there? if so is it possible they could send rock without sending people?
Comment: rock starts at very close to if not at maximum "pack" so the best you can hope for is to take up the exact same volume, which is unlikely.
Comment: It's not dirt, it's rock. And gases can be pumped out or used in greenhouses. It's just that physical objects can't be thrown out.
Comment: Wouldn't there be solid waste left over from mining? They basically can't leave, as anyone who does is dissolved, even in a biohazard suit (at least, based on what you see in the beginning), and they have no vehicles. Removing solid waste would be very hard. And do you have a source proving that rock can be significantly compacted?


Deleting website in Magento gives page not found error

Question: I have multiple websites in a store. I want to delete two of them. Including the main website and its stores and store views. After I delete them when i try to access my site from the websites that are not deleted it displays page not found error. What could be the cause for it and how can I solve it?
Comment: So you deleted the default website? Did you reconfigure and set another website as the default for that store? Is everything setup in Admin -> System -> Manage Stores, and defaults set?
Comment: Cache cleared? Reindexed?
Comment: Yes. First I deleted from admin and when the error occurred I thought maybe it's not the way to go. So then I restored my DB and deleted entries directly from the DB table. First store views, then stores and then website.
Comment: Sorry but I asked about Magneto caches and indexes.
Comment: Yes. I first made a new website as default and then deleted the other website which wasn't default anymore.
Answer: You shouldn't delete the store with id 1.
In the method Mage_Code_Model_App::getStore there is this
if (!Mage::isInstalled() || $this->getUpdateMode()) {
   return $this->_getDefaultStore();
}

This means that when you are installing, or running upgrade scripts, the result of _getDefaultStore is used as a store.
_getDefaultStore() looks like this:
protected function _getDefaultStore()
{
    if (empty($this->_store)) {
        $this->_store = Mage::getModel('core/store')
            ->setId(self::DISTRO_STORE_ID)
            ->setCode(self::DISTRO_STORE_CODE);
    }
    return $this->_store;
}

And since the constant DISTRO_STORE_ID is 1, this means that for installing and running upgrade scripts the store with ID 1 is used. Deleting it can cause malfunctions.
Try to change the id of a store view (the default one) to 1. The constraints on the tables should change it everywhere else. This process may take a while, so be patient. And back-up your database before trying it.
Comment: I changed the id of the store to 1 and then deleted the default store and then changed the ids of store views to sync with the new store but it is a messy process and there is so much inter-connection. I am still getting the error.
Answer: I think I got it. First of all I did backup my DB so thanks @Marius :) After a lot of re-install DB and various trials I found out that the trick is the code of the default website. After I changed my website to default I deleted Magento's own Main Website and changed the code of my site to base since it's what is given by Magento to the main website. Then I ran my store once and after the value has been saved in DB and everything was working fine I again changed the code of my default site to its original from base. Turns out keeping 'base' as code is needed only once to set up all the values in the related tables.
Thanks everyone for helping me in the right direction. :)
Comment: Your self selected answer is not working for me. I don't know how just only changing the main website code your site started working? Actually Marius answer is  correct direction. I will update my points as well.
Answer: I am going to update my points here for My reference and for all those who want to achieve this task (removal of all website including main website having store code 1)
1) Delete all web sites except The one you want to keep from GUI (delete base site at the end)
2) Now delete base website you will have only one site left in DB which you want to keep.(after this everything collapse)
3) Run query: UPDATE `core_store` SET `store_id`='1' WHERE `store_id`='7';
(change reaming website's store code to 1 your front-end starts rendering )
4) For admin need to change urls in core_config_table
and that's it.

You may face few more issues or error depend upon your project you have to resolve it as well but main steps are same.
On delete website it will delete all of its data but even then you can verify it by running the following queries:
DELETE FROM catalog_product_entity WHERE entity_id NOT IN (SELECT product_id FROM catalog_product_website);
DELETE FROM catalogrule WHERE rule_id NOT IN (SELECT DISTINCT rule_id FROM catalogrule_website);
DELETE FROM salesrule WHERE (rule_id NOT IN (SELECT DISTINCT rule_id FROM salesrule_website));
DELETE FROM core_config_data WHERE (scope="stores" AND scope_id NOT IN (SELECT store_id FROM core_store)) OR (scope="websites" AND scope_id NOT IN (SELECT website_id FROM core_website));
DELETE FROM cms_page WHERE page_id NOT IN (SELECT DISTINCT page_id FROM cms_page_store);
DELETE FROM cms_block WHERE block_id NOT IN (SELECT DISTINCT block_id FROM cms_block_store);
DELETE FROM sales_flat_order WHERE store_id IS NULL