Why do some companies only consider local applicants?

Question: Recently, I've noticed a couple job postings that say they'll only consider local applicants. What is the motivation for this? It seems like it shouldn't make a difference if applicants are willing to travel for interview and/or relocate on their own budget.
Answer: You should specify how much "local" you mean: same country ? Same region ? Same city ?
As a recruiter explained me a couple of years ago, in their specific case they request only local (here local means "same small city or the neighboring area") applicants for quality of life reasons.
The logic behind their decision was that the nearer the worker is to the office the better from a quality of life perspective: no long travels to/from work, maybe option to go home for lunch, possibility to take the children from school or to get through all the small tasks of the everyday life without any particular hassle.
Of course there is the other face of the medal, that they tend to not specify: you are near, so they have not to pay for travel (very rare where I live anyway) or for lunch (no tickets, no canteen) and maybe you can work some more time since being so near to home even if you work 30 minutes more in the evening you are home at a pretty decent time.
Answer: They do not want to have to pay for travel or relocation.  Even if a candidate made the trip on their own, what is to say they did not ask for relocation assistance once the offer is made.  Now you have an additional expense the employer was not expecting.
I personally worked around this by removing my address from my resume and replaced it with 'relocating to the DC area' when I was targeting Washington DC for jobs.
Comment: Employer also weeds out all the applicants that require VISA sponsoring.
Comment: @Isaiah3015 yes and no, they could be working for a company currently, but would require continued sponsorship.  I usually see that as a separate statement to the effect that only US Citizens or Citizenship required in the posting.
Comment: Exactly this.  However most employers who have it on there will have no problem if you tell them you're moving there for personal reasons and are not expecting relocation.  And even if they will, trying and seeing never hurt-  worst case you'll get a rejection.
Answer: I can imagine that employees who have moved to the city extra for the job are at greater risk of quickly resigning - just because they realize they do not like the city - for whatever reason: too expensive, missing friends, different culture.
Comment: Opposite is also true, if you moved because of the job then there are more chances you endure a job which doesn't fit because of the expenses and troubles of relocation
Answer: There is a number of reasons for the employer to post "local only candidates" offer. In reality, it doesn't mean that company only considers local employees - I was leading a project in Frankfurt in 2015-2017 and most of my recruiters could only find people from London or Berlin, so I posted "local only", knowing that our recruiters will cover London and Berlin pool of candidates.
I can think of some other reasons:

They want to hire somebody really fast, maybe even interview within a
week.  They had a bad experience recently, and just want to avoid it.
For some reason they might think it's easier to get a culture fit. Once colleague of mine was complaining that their hire spent 2 month trying to find a suitable apartment, and then just left. If that happens twice in a row - I can imagine employer being a bit afraid for a period.
As in my example - they have other agents/recruiters looking
globally.
Could be "Agency Experience Mentality" - Employer might
believe that there is something about local people, that will give
them specific perspective. Usually ad agencies organisations for
example try to find people with "Agency experience".
Answer:
Recently, I've noticed a couple job postings that say they'll only
  consider local applicants. What is the motivation for this?

Some companies conclude (usually through experience) that hiring non-local workers isn't working out for them, and choose to avoid the hassle.
Sometimes the local market for talent is rich enough that there is no need for non-locals.
Sometimes they have been burned by applicants travelling long distances who later drop out of the running after several interviews.
Sometimes the company just wants to support the local economy.
Lots of reasons, lots of possible motivations.


can i use candiquik in baking recipes?

Question: I was gifted a ton of candiquik, which I thought was baking chocolate. However, after looking over the package, I learned that it is a candy coating. I checked out the product FAQ and learned that I most definitely should NOT add butter, milk, egg, or any liquid to it. Why shouldn't I use milk, butter or other liquids with this product; and, can i use candiquik in baking recipes?
Answer: The ingredients it lists are

Sugar (Sugar, Corn Starch), Partially Hydrogenated Palm Kernel Oil, Cocoa Processed with Alkali, Corn Syrup Solids, Nonfat Dry Milk, Milk Powder, Cocoa, Soy Lecithin, Natural Flavors

This sounds like a product which has been very much engineered and fine-tuned to produce a very specific consistency when melted and cooled. I suspect that the "do not add" list means to not add those when using it as a glaze, because any of those will either cause it to seize, or make an inferior glaze texture when firmed up, if it firms up at all.
In principle, you could try using it as baking chocolate in a recipe, for example when making the dark part of a marble cake, and see what happens. The result will probably be edible, although you are running a risk of creating weird textures in some recipes, and it is almost impossible to predict which will go well and which won't. The taste will suffer - baking chocolate is already an inferior substitute for real chocolate, and this product has only a small proportion of cocoa-derived products (cocoa powder only, and no cocoa butter). It may turn out that it is good enough for you, not every eater expects to get the complexities of an original Sacher torte in a muffin.
So, the bottom line: it is OK to experiment. Just don't do it where it has to come out perfect, for example when you are time pressed to bake something for an occasion with guests. Make a dessert for your family now and then and see if it goes well.

can i use candiquik in baking recipes?


How to turn off CPU cores on Samsung Galaxy A8?

Question: I need to turn off CPU cores in order to make energy measurements of sets of cpu cores in isolation (meaning that I want to run an application on a set of cpu cores and turn off the cpu cores that are not in the set). I looked at the documentation on the android linux kernel source and it says the following:

Q: How do i logically offline a CPU?
  A: Do the following.
#echo 0 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpuX/online
  Once the logical offline is successful, check
#cat /proc/interrupts
  You should now not see the CPU that you removed. Also online file will report
  the state as 0 when a cpu if offline and 1 when its online.
      #To display the current cpu state.
#cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpuX/online

But when I write 0 to the online file, it still reports the CPU as being online even with superuser permissions and marking the file as writable (chmod +w).
I imagine that the kernel is enabling the cpu again after I disabled it. Also I did not try to turn off CPU 0 because in the same documentation it says that it's not removable in some architectures, this behavior is happening on other CPUs.
Do I need to rebuild the kernel in order to enable the cpu hotplug or is this an architecture specific problem? Maybe my cpu doesn't support hotplugs.
What I've tried by now

Writing to /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpuN/online with a rooted device. (echo "0" > ./sys/device/...../online)
Changing the kernel to a custom one and trying the step above again. (Kernel installed was Quantum Kernel)
Using kernel adiutor to turn off the CPUs on the CPU tab (this turns off the CPU for a while then it turns back on again)
Using su on adb shell to change file permissions on sysfs (chmod 664 /sys/devices/...../online) and then trying to write to it.

Device Information
Model: Samsung Galaxy A8 (SM-A530F)
Android Version: Android Pie (9)
Kernel: Quantum Kernel V4
Kernel version: 4.4.111-Quantum_pie.V4.0-A530F
Processor: Samsung Exynos Octa 7885
Architecture: aarch64
EDIT: Forgot to mention that my device is rooted.
Answer: This helps on Galaxy-S7:
echo 0 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpuhotplug/enabled
echo 0 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/online


Default Dota 2 config.cfg file?

Question: Where can I find the default Dota 2 config.cfg file? Also, is my current config.cfg file identical to the default one when I first installed the game, or is it changed based on what settings I've changed in the in-game menu? I've heard people say that no matter what you change, changes are temporary, just for that session and they are all gone/back to default once you close the game. Question is what is the default, how can I see what the default is? And where is it stored? Hopefully I've made myself clear.
Comment: What do you see when you edit your config.cfg with a basic notepad ?
Comment: What do you mean?
Answer: I think I'm sure I know what you're talking about.
First off head to: Steam\steamapps\common\dota 2 beta\dota\cfg
You might already know that but there's your config.cfg
Your current config.cfg will be altered by your settings ingame though.
Keep in mind that most of the settings altered by your autoexec.cfg file or even the temporary settings done via ingame menu will be set back to default if you delete your config.cfg and restart the game.
Again, it's "most of your settings" as the keybinds will prevail thanks to the Steam Cloud.
Comment: So what does Steam Cloud actually possess? The pure default config.cfg file (the one that comes with the fresh install of the game) or what? Question is, where can I find the DEFAULT (the one that comes with a fresh install) config.cfg file, not a changed/modificated one.
Comment: The config.cfg is recreated by the DotA 2 itself I believe, only personal settings are preserved (like keybindings), so since they are "borrowed" from the Steam Cloud, right clicking DotA in steam, choosing properties and disabling the Steam Cloud in a proper tab should do the trick. That should _really_ bring your config to default.
Comment: So I should
1. Delete config.cfg
2. Disable Steam Cloud
3. Open the game (this creates a fresh new config.cfg file)
4. Enable Steam Cloud again so it can replace the old one with the one on my PC?
Comment: If you enable the Steam Cloud you will get your bindings back. Usually it should just tell you there is a conflict and let you choose which version of your files it's going to use (cloud or local). This is not the case as instead it often just forces the cloud settings over the local files without asking. This is a known issue, you should consider reading this:
[Method to delete Steam Cloud files](http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2470784)
Comment: So I guess, Steam Cloud is not needed unless you are playing on different machines..
Comment: The autoexec settings won't be applied after a restart? Strange. Maybe because the creation of a new conf file is done after executing autoexec

Default Dota 2 config.cfg file?


What type of wok apparatus is depicted in this home?

Question: The following looks like a standalone burner, not just a wok ring. What is it called? What would the power output be like? Where can I find more information?
Comment: Looks like a stainless steel wok to me, so the purpose of this setup is likely not high heat stir frying with the corresponding power requirements...
Answer: The upper green arrow looks like it is pointing to a frying/draining rack on the inside edge of the wok.  The lower green arrow looks to be pointing to the base of a wok rink to a wok range.  There would usually be another flashing or baffle to prevent the intense fire burning your hands or wok handle.  It may be on the other side of the picture.  That would be my best guess on it.
Answer: This is a hibachi, which makes this answer confusing, because what westerners call hibachi is actually called teppenyaki (flat top stylized and often theatrical cooking).
Further more the "grill", is not really called hibachi either, but rather shecherin. It was easier for Americans to say hibachi so that's what it's called. You can put a grill plate over it for BBQ or place a wok on it for that high temp stir fry cooking you can only get at that high heat and constant tossing.
What hibachi really is to a Japanese person is a brazier that hold burning coals for heating water for tea or just heating the room.
Look it up on Wikipedia, it's rather fascinating how the names of so many Japanese things have all been shifted around to market to America.
In commercial restaurant supplies, this is called a wok burner or wok stove.
Comment: Do you mean [shichirin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shichirin)? I guess there are electric or gas versions of it now?


Is there a free way to schedule posts from Facebook pages, the way that TweetDeck does with Twitter?

Question: Hootsuite isn't free as far as I know.
Answer: Facebook Pages natively supports post scheduling on a Page.
Hootsuite is free for up to 3 social profiles.
Answer: In addition to HootSuite's free plan, you can also try Buffer.
Comment: I've heard good things about Hootsuite, but Buffer has changed my life from scheduled to unscheduled for ALL social media (almost, they don't support Google+ profiles yet, but they do support pages)


Change domain on exchange server login credentials

Question: I am trying to setup Outlook 2010 in Windows 7 Pro to connect to my company's exchange server.  However, when I try to enter my username and password to verify my account, it forces me to use a default domain of clayton-pc (my computer name).  I need to use a domain of CORP.  How do I configure this?
Answer: Use either "DOMAIN\USERNAME" or "USERNAME@DOMAIN".
Answer: I was having this same issue with the same circumstances (office 2010 on win 7) and it seemed that I needed to change the proxy authentication settings to basic which allowed me to modify the login domain.


image preview not loading in backend after SUPEE patches

Question: I just updated my magento 220.127.116.11 store to the latest SUPEE patches and shortly after when I was adding a new product to my site I found that something was wrong.  When I upload a new image the jpg/png file won't preview like it used to.  The exisiting images on other products load and preview when I place my cursor over them, but new images just give me the no preview icon.  Where do I start to look here?
Answer: The problem is that Magento changed the permissions for newly created media files from 0777 to 0640.
This bascally means that you (or your hoster) have to make sure, that newly created files belong to the web-server User.
In some cases, this is not possible, then it should at least have the webservers group. This way, it can at least read the file.
If both are not possible (we have this problem with one hoster), you can create a cronjob which changes the permissions for your needs every x minutes.
Worst case would be, that the file is neither owned by, nor has the group of the webserver. In this case you would have to change the permissions to 0777 i think.
The cronjob entry would be looking something like this:
* * * * * chmod -R 0777 /your/magento/root/media

Answer: This is known issue.
The problem
The actual problem is when you upload the image from product edit page, it gets uploaded to all required folders, but not in the folder where edit area image thumb are kept. This is because security patch changed the media permission to prevent some attacks. Now, magento suggest we shouldn't have 777 permission in media folder.
How to fix it?

The web server must run as same user as PHP-FPM or be added to the
  PHP-FPM group. However, this will prevent an image from being removed
  from the product in the admin when you select the "Remove" checkbox on
  the Images tab.
To delete images manually, you must be logged to server as PHP-FPM
  user (not group, as the group permissions allow only reading of
  images).

This means, the physical image will be in your server, even after you delete it from admin area. This is to prevent some vulnerability on security.
UPDATE
If you have settings as above and still having problem, then Magento team has announced one more patch to fix it.

Today, we are distributing updates that improve our most recent
  security release. SUPEE-7405 v1.1, Enterprise Edition 220.127.116.11, and
  Community Edition 22.214.171.124 add support for PHP 5.3 and address issues
  with upload file permissions, merging carts, and SOAP APIs experienced
  with the original release. They DO NOT address any new security
  issues.

This will fix the problem.


Does "a range of" have the same meaning as "a number of" or "many"?

Question: Does a range of have the same meaning as a number of or many?
Answer: It will depend on context but generally these do not mean the same thing.  the phrase "a range of" is ususally used to indicate variety, whereas the other two phrases indicate quantity.
Example: "We keep a range of televisions in stock" is not the same as "We have a number of this model in stock"
I switched 'televisions' to 'this model' to highlight the different context for an example.
Answer: No, because it also implies variation or distinction at the same time. Range is a subset of many,  similar to the fact that all ducks are birds, but not all birds are ducks.
For example, an opinion survey is often said to collect a range of opinions. Not only is this many opinions, but it's also many different opinions.
Even in mathematical terms, a range is a group across a set of values.


Method of spending LTC Litecoin from a paper cold wallet?

Question: I know mycellium has a feature for BTC where you can spend partial amounts from a Bitcoin cold paper wallet. Is there something like this for a LTC Litecoin cold paper wallet? I just want to spend a few ltc, but not sweep the entire paper wallet.
Answer: You can import the private key, spend part of it, send the change back to the same address, and delete the key. This would leave a lesser amount in the same paper wallet, but is generally not a good practice (address reuse).
Also, if the address has multiple inputs, you can just spend X if Y distinct inputs with exact change and that will work too.
<code>litecoin-cli importprivkey 1LYourPrivateKeyThatIsWrittenOnThePaperThatYouWantToKeepForSomeReason
</code>
Comment: how do you send the change back to the same address with that command? or is it by default?
Comment: Just use the GUI if that's available to you. Otherwise: 1) List all the unspent inputs for your address: `litecoin-cli listunspent 1 99999999 '''["paperWALLETpublicKEY"]''` then 2) do the math and create a raw transaction sending your spend amount to wherever and the change back to you: `litecoin-cli createrawtransaction '[{ "txid" : "", "vout" : }]' '{"": , "": }' ` then 3) sign it and send it to the blockchain.


CiviEvent: missing are Total Fees, Payment Method

Question: First screen capture is from test drive. Second screen capture is from live.
Total Fees missing, Payment method missing.
Civi 4.7.8 on Joomla 3.5.1.
Comment: Please try to take a live copy and deploy to a local server and compare with your test copy - make sure you have all the extension same as test
Answer: Ann - the symptoms you describe here all point to an issue with JavaScript not being loaded properly.
General recipe for trouble shooting this is to check your Browser's console for Error messages: in Firefox - you could do this by installing Firebug plug-in on Chrome you can launch the Developer Tools.
Here's an excellent write-up on troubleshooting JavaScript errors by one of the core team member's: https://forum.civicrm.org/index.php?topic=35850.0
Comment: This is a specific issue to the Joomla platform, JavaScript is not loading properly, which is addressed once you use absolute paths. Once the change is made, like magic, the fields appear and work.
Answer: Go to Administer / Systems Settings / Resource URL's
Change CiviCRM Resource URL from using URL variable to absolute path, i.e. replace [civicrm.root] with the specific path for the site.
** This is a specific issue to Joomla sites only.


Since Ethereum is ASIC resistant, what happens when the GPU mining return is less than electricity bill?

Question: If mining return is less than electricity bill, no miners would like to provide their hash power to support the system, what happens to the system then?
Answer: If a miner decides that mining is not profitable (due to electricity costing too much, or whatever reason), and they stop mining, then the whole mining hashpower drops a bit, and the spacing between blocks would get a little slower (by how much depends on how much hash-power that miner that left had). If the spacing remains slow (the miner stays out of the ecosystem), the difficulty level will decrease, and the remaining hashpower of the miners will be able to keep the block timing consistent, but now the rewards are split among less miners, so it's more profitable for the ones who remain, so they continue mining.
In this way the ecosystem is self-stabilizing. If it's too expensive to mine, some drop out, making it profitable again for those left in. If it's way under-cost to mine, lots of miners will join in the game, and the difficulty will go up and the payments less frequent.
Comment: Thanks, sorry I can't upvote due to lack of points. So does this mean a currency can be mined forever?
Comment: Even if you cannot upvote, you're the question asker, so you can mark an answer as "correct", which would be great, if my answer helped you. In theory a cryptocurrency can be "mined forever" if at least one miner continues to mine. If all other miners exit (maybe the value crashes or something), the difficulty will drop, and could get so low that a single computer can be the sole miner. Private blockchains and testnets often start out that way, with only one computer mining blocks.
Comment: Additionally, I'm sure there are miners out there who have found ways to get/steal electricity for free or at least incredibly inexpensively. This is probably contrived, but there's nothing stopping someone from building a small hydroelectric power plant to power there mining operation. As long as rivers keep flowing, they keep mining with no costs but initial equipment and maybe maintenance costs


Is a word form defined solely by its grapheme sequence? Can two lexemes have a shared word form?

Question: If one lexeme has a word form "goes", and another lexeme has a word form "goes", are those two word forms considered by linguists to be the same?  In other words, is a word form defined solely by its grapheme sequence?  Or is it also defined by its relation to a particular lexeme?
Comment: The second. Also, notice that linguists distinguish language (spoken or signed) from its representation (writing).  Properly, a word-form isn't a sequence of graphemes at all; it's a sequence of phonemes (sounds or gestures).  The graphemes are just a device to represent the word-form graphically.
Comment: @NathanWailes no; those are two *realizations* (or dialectal variants) of the same word-form. We generally don't use the term "word form" to mean simply the form of a word; it's a technical term in morphology, and refers to a particular inflection of a word. So  /ˈdɔ.tɚ/ and  /ˈdɔ.tɚs/ are different word-forms (corresponding to the singular and the plural), but /ˈdɔ.tɚ/ and /ˈdɑ.tɚ/ are different English variants of the same word form (the singular).  How they're written is besides the point.
Comment: Thanks for the answer and clarification of what a 'word form' is.  If you want to post that as an answer I'll upvote and accept it.  If you know of any online resources with more information on this issue I'd also be interested in links to those, but it's not necessary.
Comment: @boiko jknappen just posted an answer that seems to directly contradict your answer.  How can I determine who is right?
Comment: I don't see a contradiction: "the second" refers to the second question in the headline "Can two lexemes have a shared word form?" and this is true.
Comment: @jknappen My understanding is that when boiko said "the second" he was referring to the body of my question, in which the second of two possibilities I put forward was that a word form is "also defined by its relation to a particular lexeme".  My understanding is that the second question in the headline is just a reformulation of the first question in the headline.
Comment: @boiko If a word-form is a sequence of phonemes, then does that mean that if there are two pronunciations of "daughter", one which rhymes with "or" and one which rhymes with "odd", that those are two separate word forms that share the same grapheme sequence?
Answer: First of all, words (and therefore word forms) are not made of graphemes. They're made of phonemes; either the kind of phoneme spoken as sound (as in English) or the kind of phoneme gestured with the hands (as in American sign language).  No human infant learns to speak with graphemes; we learn either with sounds, or with gestures.  So human languages are shaped with sounds, or with gestures.
Writing is simply a technology to represent words in graphical form.  By the time that writing arrives, the words were already there.  Writing can represent words in infinitely varied ways (cf.).  You could represent English words with Arabic or Devanagari or Tengwar characters if you wanted, or make up your own; it would still be the same words.
In general when studying language it pays off to distinguish language from writing, and to set writing aside unless you're dealing with writing-specific phenomena.  Words and word forms exist in the domain of language, not of writing.  If you want to understand words, first forget all about writing, and concentrate on the words themselves. You can later deal with the question of how they're conventionally graphed in a given culture.

Now let's consider the definition of "word form".  Technical terms can be tricky because they can have more specific meanings than the same terms would have in general language.  For example, we refer casually to our "weight" in kilograms, but in the technical language of physics, that would be our "mass"; the "weight" is a different property, dependent on local gravity and measured in Newtons.
Similarly, no one would blame you for using "word form" to mean, in a casual way, "the form of a word".  A word is an association between a sequence of phonemes (its form) and a meaning.  So if you use the expression "word form" to mean "this particular sequence of phonemes", then sure, many words will share the same form.  That's the common phenomenon of homophones.  For example, "matches" in "I brought matches to make a fire" and in "he matches the criminal description" are the same form (the same sequence of phonemes), even though they're different words (different form/meaning pairs).
However, when linguists talk of "word forms", they're not just talking about forms of a word in a general way.  Let's consult the Routledge Dictionary of Linguistics to see a technical definition:

word form
The concretely realized grammatical form of a word in the context of a sentence. The word in the surface structure that corresponds to the lexeme as the (unalterable) abstract base unit of the lexicon is realized according to grammatical categories (such as tense, number, case, person, and so on) in altered 'word forms,' cf. picture, paint in Interesting pictures were painted. [emphases mine]

There are a number of things implicit in this definition:

In some languages, some words can have multiple forms.  Earlier I said that a word is a pairing of form and meaning.  The notion of "word forms" complicate this definition a little bit; now there are several possible forms which we consider as belonging to "the same word", in some sense.
These word forms can be conceptualized as "alterations" of a basic (or "citation") form.  The most common alterations are affixes (walk→walked) and internal sound changes (sing→sang), though in some cases the forms are totally different (be→was).
The criteria to consider these alternate forms "the same word" are grammatical; that is, they depend on the role of the word within the sentence.  In English, for example, verbs will change for the past tense (though not for the future); so the past tense requires its own word form in this language.
This is how we can tell that "was" is a word-form of "be"; because it fulfils the same grammatical function as "walked" or "sang" do in a similar context.

Under the technical definition of "word form", it makes no sense to say that "(the) matches" is the same word form as "(he) matches".  They're the same form, but for different words; and a word-form is a grammatical variant of a word.

One way to understand the motivation for the technical definition is to consider what we use this concept of word-forms for.  You might be doing some corpus analysis, for example.  Suppose you want to calculate the frequencies of common verbs, something very useful for language learners.  But you don't want to count all verb inflections as different items to learn (you don't want to count "learn" and "learning" and "learned" as different objects); you want to count the verbs as lexemes (because, after some instruction, learners can derive their own word forms according to context).  So when you run your algorithm, I match, I'm matching and he matches all should increase the occurrence counter of the verb TO MATCH.  But the matches should not be counted, because it's a different word.  It doesn't matter that it has the same surface form as the verb matches; it's still a different word, so it's not a hit of the matches word-form that belongs to TO MATCH.
Answer: It can definitely happen. I have not example from English ready, but the Latin word form laudes can belong to two different lexemes: It can be the second person singular present tense subjunctive of laudare "to praise, to laud" or it can be the nominative or accusative plural of laus "praise, accolade".
Comment: _Leaves_ is the pl form of the noun _leaf_ and also the 3spres form of the verb _to leave_. For example. Normally if the forms are identical, the functions will be different enough so as not to cause confusion.
Comment: boiko's point seemed to be that even if you had the same phoneme and grapheme sequence appear as a word form for two different lexemes, it would still be different word forms because a word form is not solely defined by its phoneme and grapheme sequence, but also by its relation to a particular lexeme.
Comment: boiko's comment on my question seems to suggest otherwise; how can I determine who is right?
Comment: I have added wiktionary link to make it easy to cross-check my example. Note that in both cases the e in laudes is a long one, with macrons the form is in both cases *laudēs*
Comment: Homographs are words with the same written form but different meanings and/or spoken forms. The Questrel archive has a list of English homographs, here: https://stason.org/TULARC/self-growth/puzzles/251-language-english-pronunciation-homograph-homographs-p.html
Answer: Contrary to @jknappen I want to point out that modern linguistics tends to distinguish between representation and idea, for lack of a better word, so the difference between phoneme and grapheme is irrelevant. Going by a recent question for the definition of "word", there is no generally accepted answer. In information theory the smallest unit of exchange is a bit, in Computer Science, continuing the idea, a word is a fixed size bit sequence. In detail, there is a difference between phonemics and phonetics. Phonetically, @boiko's "matches" are not the same, the a in matchstick matches is longer - probably due to stress and place in sentence - though the broad phonemic descriptions are equivalent. So context is important, the word forms are not the same, the written description is broad and loose, and homophones are often enough related by etymology.
Edit: What a word-form exactly should be, depends on context, too. When searching for the term, I do see it used a lot in Computer Vision, so the written form does matter to some. There are results for developmental research on speech acquisition, too (check for example "Lexical exposure and word-form encoding in 1.5-year-olds" by Swingley et al. They use the more specific term "sound form" once but otherwise use "word form").
Comment: This does not provide an answer to the question. Once you have sufficient [reputation](https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/help/whats-reputation) you will be able to [comment on any post](https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/comment); instead, [provide answers that don't require clarification from the asker](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/214173/why-do-i-need-50-reputation-to-comment-what-can-i-do-instead). - [From Review](/review/low-quality-posts/20423)
Comment: This should be a comment to my answer, not an answer of its own. You already have enough reputation to comment everywhere.
Comment: @jknappen I didn't and do not (anymore?) have enough rep to comment (except on my own post of course).  Thanks for downvoting, very counter productive.
Comment: @Wilson: There is an answer in it: "*context is important, the word forms are not the same*".
Comment: I am very sorry I attributed @boiko's answer to J. in fact I contradicted both, though I agree with boiko on word form as grammatical alteration that is not "shared". I did not know the precise context of word form. Reading *Swingley 2007* I'm outright wrong, there's a distinction of word form, denotated object, category, etc. but there are different theories on mental representation, so it' s not clear.
Comment: @vectory: Ah, I messed the scales: Commenting everywhere is with 50 rep, not 15. Be patient, give some good answers, ask some good questions, suggest some good edits, and the point will come in.


What is Pre-beta release?

Question: I've been coming across this term too much recently. But I'm not sure what it is. I know about Alpha testing and Beta testing. I know the version of the application made available to users for and during beta testing is called a Beta release. But what exactly is Pre-beta? If they are releasing it to public for testing, it's already Beta, right?
Comment: If someone uses a term you are unfamiliar with, the best policy is to ask them what *they* mean.  And if multiple parties use the term, there is no guarantee that they all mean the same thing.  If you are concerned about sounding naive, you can say, "I've never heard that term before.  It sounds like it means X -- is that what it means to you too?"
Answer: Pre-beta sounds like a non-standard term that people are inventing.
The common term for pre-beta is an alpha release, hence beta being the greek alphabet letter that comes after alpha.
Microsoft use the term "Technology Preview" that essentially means not of beta quality and features may change but hey, have a look and tell us what you think.
Comment: Ok. But Alpha testing is supposed to be done by developers, right? Why are they releasing them to users? Is there some changes coming to testing concepts?
Comment: No. There is no such term as "alpha" testing. Beta testing refers to testing that is done on a beta release, if you are using an alpha, you are normally internal to the team and these are not likely to be available outside the company that develops the software. An example would be a version of software that a CEO would demo on stage, but is not made available would be an "alpha" release.
Answer: BETA releases generally refer to full functionality and minor-no bugs expected.  Pre-BETA releases are generally considered not as stable as their Beta counterparts.  Some features may not be implemented and it would not be surprising to the developers to experience a Blocker issue and/or major bugs.
BETA = minor tweaking needed
Pre-BETA = major development still needed
Answer: Alpha: Internal user base, development still in progress, all features fully not ready. Testing continues in parallel.
Beta: External user base, all features ready but extended to friendly customers to expose it to more people for identification of more defects outside testing environment as majority of the cases Beta is conducted on Production environment.
Pre - Beta: Few companies use it even if it is not a formal term coined by test standards but what I have encountered in few companies and projects mean the below.
An intermediate stage that does not last more than few weeks where for some reason example a) all trialists have not been recruited b) Beta trials date have been delayed due to identification of defects but the code is ready for majority of the functional features Pre Beta is considered as an option as a mitigation plan. This is primarily done for 2 reasons 1) if there are any contractual obligations to hit any particular dates and make the code accessible to third party vendors for integration purposes on Production environment or 2) There are particular scalability/operational items that needs to be validated and can be done only on Production. This trial base provides the perfect condition as the number of trialists are more than Alpha base but lesser than Beta (which also consists of paid customers).

What is Pre-beta release?


Stability of tertiary carbocation

Question: Our teacher told us that a carbocation connected to 3 cyclopropane rings is among the most stable carbocations. But I am unable to understand how, as resonance (the most important factor governing stability) is absent. How did other factors bring so much stability?
Comment: It is not called 'three degree', it is *tertiary*. Likewise, they are *secondary* and *primary* carbocations. The degree notation should have died out a long time ago.
Comment: https://chemistry.stackexchange.com/q/19090 Half-way dupe. If I vote to close it will be close-hammered because of my badge so I will leave it to others to decide if this is dupe-y enough.
Comment: Related: https://chemistry.stackexchange.com/q/48264/54655
Answer: Your teacher is correct, that

a carbocation connected to 3 cyclopropane rings is among the most stable carbocations.

This because of various electrical effects, such as:

The Inductive Effect
Resonance
The Mesomeric Effect
Electromeric Effect
Hyperconjugation

Here's a link for you, to study them: Click Here.
Please make sure that you learn this correctly and from standard resources, in order to avoid confusion.
There may be a little confusion between mesomeric effect and resonance effect, so here's another link just to avoid confusion. : refer to the answer by Maria Dar
Please, do ask your teacher to help you understand this topic better :-)
Comment: To state the blooming obvious, only one of those effects has anything to do with cyclopropylmethyl carbocations. Further, are you affiliated with that study link site because it may be considered spammy.
Comment: It is spammy as it is really bizarre to start speaking of electronic effects in chemical reactions than afterwards recalling what molecules are :) But the user invite to study standard resources, this is also true

Stability of tertiary carbocation


Sign on the edge of a cross-country ski trail in Ontario, Canada

Question: This sign has been at the entrance to a ski trail.  I've been wondering what it might mean for the past couple years.  thanks for anyone able to translate.
Comment: The sign is in Chinese only. Why no English version of it? Can it be possible that only Chinese, and no other people bothering the land owner?
Comment: There is a sign in English stating that there is no walking on ski trails in the winter.  I don't think the "no picking plants" part is listed in English.
Answer: These "what does this say?" are a bit borderline for this site (they're not really about learning Chinese), and why I started the post How do I self-answer "What does this say?".
Anyway, since I've read it already, and it's probably not that easy to use other methods...

这是私人领地。
This is private property
请不要摘蘑菇,野韭菜或任何其他植物。否则你将会遭到检控,因为这是非法的。
Please do not pick mushrooms, wild chives (?), or other plants, otherwise you will meet with prosecution, because this is illegal.
欢迎你在郊野小径散步,但地面上有雪的话,请不要入内(11月15日至4月15日禁止通行),谢谢。
[You are] welcome to walk on the countryside alley, but if the ground has snow, please do not enter (from 15-th November to 15-th April going through is prohibited), thank you.
Comment: Minor correction, 野 should be interpreted as *wild* (undomesticated, uncultivated), e.g. *wild mushrooms*.
Comment: I made the corresponding edit.  I'm still not clear precisely what 野韭菜 is: I think that requires local knowledge.
Comment: @Becky李蓓 it isn't an accurate translation of what the writer actually wanted to say; the writer probably isn't a Native Chinese speaker and just directly translated the plant's colloquial English name into Chinese
Comment: 韭菜, (Jiǔcài), in Cantonese (gau2 coi3), is a common vegetable known as garlic chives. It is a grass-like plant, usually chopped up and cooked in an omelette, which I hated to eat, (the chives I mean), when I was young because it looked and taste like grass, (while playing school sports I've got grass in my mouth, sometime) It is also found in certain type of meat dumplings, you know, the little flecks of green stuff in the minced meat? Since "mainland Chinese" like such greens, then perhaps it is not surprising that this particular green is singled out in the notice, out of other 植物.
Comment: Thank you for your answer.  I'd looked around for automated options before posting but for some reason didn't consider OCR.  I saw other translation requests on stackxchange so decided to go for it.


Action to crop a photo with user input. The batch processing

Question: I'm stumped.  All I need to do is open my photo, have the action stop to wait for me to decide where the crop should be (to center the important part of the photo), then close that photo so the batch processing can go get the next photo.  I see the "inset stop" is the key, but it never allows me to crop, it just moves on to the next photo.
Comment: Hey LBVandal and welcome. Could you include the script that you're working with?
Comment: Entire action is simply "crop" as the batch processing will open, save and close it.   I just need to zoom in on the part of the photo I need.
Answer: This is a common misunderstanding with actions.
Insert Stop can be used to give kind of like a reminder or to give a full stop. Full stop in the sense that it can stop the Action there and you have to manually continue the Action when you're done with what ever you need to do in between.
In the Insert stop window, checking Allow continue basically makes it a message that shows up and can continue normally after that. Unchecking it makes it a full stop.
I might use it if I need to remember that this action should only be used with print images or something. The other use case for me is debugging the Action. If the Action doesn't do something correctly, just put a stop where you think it might be going south and see what happens. Easier than disabling Action items one by one.

If you want user interaction with a specific item in the Action, you gotta click the empty box on the left side of it. If you enable dialogs, the action will wait until you Crop and then continue once you apply it.


Make a 3D tube with a Bézier curve?

Question: How can I make a Bézier curve into a 3D-noodle-like structure (like a tube)?
When I try, it keeps turning out like a rectangle with corners.
Comment: Great article! Also wrote a similar one that included using this same method but with tapering tubes as well:
[http://benchung.com/making-tubes-blender/](http://benchung.com/making-tubes-blender/)
Comment: Did you see there is a way to make a tree with a built-in addon in Blender? See here: http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/8688/is-there-an-easy-way-to-make-a-tree-in-blender
Comment: You can do simple tapers by adjusting the Radius of control points: Select any control point of the curve in Edit mode, then press Alt+S (Option+S on macOS). See https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/modeling/curves/editing/curve.html
Answer: To make a tube, set the Fill to full in Curve > Shape:

Then increase the bevel Depth and Resolution in Curve > Geometry:

If you want a more complex/custom shape, you can use a bevel object:
Comment: It would be better if you asked this as a separate question, asking multiple questions per post is discouraged.
Comment: Thanks so much!!!  I had everything right except the resolution lol. Also how do I make it branch off?
Comment: I just duplicated a segment and then extruded it in another direction. This will work as long as you don't mind the branches not actually being connected to each other, but if you do want them connected, you might want to try using a mesh object with a skin modifier.
Answer: Make a Curve into a Tube

Add a Curve: SHIFTA -> Curve -> Bezier

Now add a Circle Curve: SHIFTA -> Curve -> Circle

Now use the circle as the bevel object for the bezier curve:

Select the bezier curve
Object Properties window -> Curve tab -> set Bevel Object to the circle
Scale the circle until the tube is the size you want

If you would then like to edit the shape of your tube, just edit the Bevel Object, which here is the circle:
Comment: I really like this tutorial! I just wonder, why is there such a big size difference between the "tube" and the bevel object?

Make a 3D tube with a Bézier curve?


How to migrate TFS site collection from SharePoint 2013 to SharePoint 2019?

Question: Can anyone help with the best approach how to migrate site collection and documents from SharePoint 2013 to SharePoint 2019?
It is urgent. Thanks in advance.
Answer: Three main options:

database migration - move the content databases to SP 2016, mount them, back them up, move the backups to the 2019 farm, and mount them there. MS has this process fully documented, as usually you'll need to migrate the databases for a few service apps as well.
use a tool. There are a number of tools, ShareGate is one. These tools are usually not cheap, but they save a lot of time vs the next method for anything other than small environments.
manual migration: in 2019 create new site collections / libraries as needed. Open both the 2013 and 2019 libraries in explorer view, and copy files from one to the other.
Answer: What version of TFS are you using? It may not support SharePoint integration in the future as per Microsoft's article at here
Answer: We are using TFS 2015, but there also wiki site on that site collecetion and lot of documents. We need to provide versioning on 2019 site, which will be probably team site.


by-and-by: meaning in context

Question: It seems that in this context "by-and-by" doesn't mean "before long" or something of the kind.
It's an extract from Meredith's Diana of the Crossways. I'd be grateful if you could explain what it means; my only guess is that it is something like "your health" because the characters are about to drink champagne. Thanks in advance!

'I'll never live to hear a lady insulted.'
'You don't mean to say you're the donkey to provoke a duel!' Mr.
  Redworth burst out gruffly, through turkey and stuffing.
'And an Irish lady, the young Beauty of Erin!' Mr. Sullivan Smith was
  flowing on. He became frigid, he politely bowed: 'Two, sir, if you
  haven't the grace to withdraw the offensive term before it cools and
  can't be obliterated.'
'Fiddle! and go to the deuce!' Mr. Redworth cried.
'Would a soft slap o' the cheek persuade you, sir?'
'Try it outside, and don't bother me with nonsense of that sort at my
  supper. If I'm struck, I strike back. I keep my pistols for bandits
  and law-breakers. Here,' said Mr. Redworth, better inspired as to the
  way of treating an ultra of the isle; 'touch glasses: you're a
  gentleman, and won't disturb good company. By-and-by.'
The pleasing prospect of by-and-by renewed in Mr. Sullivan Smith
  his composure. They touched the foaming glasses: upon which, in a
  friendly manner, Mr. Sullivan Smith proposed that they should go
  outside as soon as Mr. Redworth had finished supper-quite finished
  supper: for the reason that the term 'donkey' affixed to him was like
  a minster cap of schooldays, ringing bells on his topknot, and also
  that it stuck in his gizzard.
Comment: I strongly suspect it *does* mean before long. The characters have agreed to duel by and by: as soon as they finish the meal.
Comment: The first quoted use is not consistent with the current idiomatic meaning.  It almost sounds like a toast.  The second use is slightly more consistent with current meaning, but still not totally idiomatic.
Answer: I think it means "eventually" in the first instance, and is used as a noun in the second:
By and by

adverb - presently or eventually
  n
noun -  US and Canadian a future time or occasion
  Collins English Dictionary –

by-and-by: meaning in context


89 Hiace, Coolant full but when I open the radiator cap its empty? Is this normal?

Question: recently bought a 1989 hiace an im worried if it is overheating. Check coolant level and it is perfect, but when the radiator cap is opened it is dry inside. Very little driving experience. Is this normal?
Also temp gauge is broken on van
Thanks
Comment: Welcome to Motor Vehicle Maintenance & Repair! Hmmm ... the temperature gauge is broken in a van which you recently purchased and the radiator is dry ... I think there's a coincidence here. I never put it past anyone trying to sell their POS to do underhanded things to get it sold. Is the dry radiator a problem, absolutely. You really don't want to be driving it until you figure out what the problem actually is and get if fixed. You can start by filling the radiator with coolant and seeing if it leaks.
Comment: Hey man thanks for the answer. So I added to the radiator and ran it for a while and no leakaage. The part of the radiator I'm seeing at the top has lots of slits for the coolant to fill through. This level is dry, so what I want to know is if the coolant should be above this shelf normally or below? Driven it 500kms already also
Answer: Under the radiator cap should be full - no air.  Fill up the radiator and make sure your overflow bottle is filled to the full mark.  Check it frequently and look for leaks until you can be sure it is not leaking.  It may take a couple heat cycles to get it full, as there are places coolant goes when the engine is hot that you cannot fill (or at least have a hard time filling) when the engine is cold.  I will fill the radiator, put the cap on, start the engine, pull the cap off, and top if off.  NEVER REMOVE THE CAP WHILE THE ENGINE IS HOT.  The coolant is under pressure.  If you remove the cap while the engine is hot, very hot coolant will spray everywhere and can burn you.
The overflow bottle serves 2 purposes.  The first is to provide space for thermal expansion of the coolant.  This allows it to overflow into the bottle when the cap pressure is exceeded, and draw from the bottle once it has cooled down and the pressure has dropped. The second purpose is to provide a 1 way check valve to assist in bleeding air from the coolant system.  Air can escape, but it pulls coolant back in.
You mention the temperature gauge not working.  The sender for the gauge works by being partially submerged in coolant.  With no coolant, it will read cold.
Comment: A bad radiator cap can prevent this system from operating properly. Because is is such a low cost item I would just replace it.


Atom Single Core + ION as a server, How much extra bill?

Question: I am planning to use Atom SIngle + ION as home server. How much extra $ should I expect per month?
Answer: 2 examples
the FitPC2 is running at 6-8 watts or 4.32 - 5.76 KWh per month), it's doesn't get much better. the Intel GMA500 is said to play full HD (but that's not really a requirement for a server, or is it?).
the Acer Aspire Revo, as a comparison, with it's ION GPU is consuming 22-27 watts (or 15.84 - 19.44 KWh per month).
so the difference would be about 11 - 14 KWh per month.
now the 'extra $' depends entirely on the rate your supplier is charging. :)
mind you, those figures are based on 24/7 operation and do not include costs for a monitor or external hard drives you may connect.
Answer: As a rule, given electricity prices of $0.14 USD (avg is $0.12 now), take the wattage of an appliance and divide by ten to get a dollar value for cost of electricity each month. An iBook using 30W will cost you about $3/month.
Molly's suggestions of the FitPC2 and Acer Aspire Revo would cost in the neighborhood of < $1 and $3, respectively.
Two biggest sources of energy waster with a home server are: displays (esp CRTs!) and old hardware. Using a slow 486 with a 13" CRT might seem like a good way to be cheap, but it's going to be costing you $10-20 in electricity to run a month.
Regarding how much electricity costs per month (if you live in the US) see:
http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/cost.html
The info is very easy to find- just Google for something like "average cost electricity $locale", where $locale is where you live.


Having the same username in two different domains in GSuite

Question: I've created a new domain in my GSuite account so there are two domains in there (not an alias but an actual new domain). There is an existing user 'email@example.com' and I'm trying to add 'email@example.com' however it is telling me that the username already exists and to either transfer my data or to rename the user. Granted the username is the same but the domains are different, how do I get around this??
Answer: Ok for anyone having a similar issue - I've figured it out, it seems that the email@example.com had already been setup under a different account altogether and that's where the conflict was coming from, not the GSuite account.
Answer: I had this same issue and the fix for me was to choose the new domain from the drop-down first and then type in the username.


Maintain old library for compatibility issue in ubuntu

Question: is there a way in Ubuntu to preclude the updater (apt-get) from removing certain obsolete libraries?. For instance to keep libstdc++5.so even when it upgrades to libstdc++6. It happened to me recently and another program started complaining it couldn't find the old lib. (Symlinc is an obvous option, but I'd like to now if there's anything "safer".
Answer: libstdc++5 and libstdc++6 are separate packages that don't conflict with one another. You can pin packages to a particular version, but since they're different packages that shouldn't matter in this case.
Answer: <code>echo 'libstdc++5 hold'|dpkg --set-selections
</code>
which will prevent that package from being removed/upgraded


How do I stain a pressure treated pine fence?

Question: I am putting up a pine PT post fence in front of my home. The fencing is new and green and I would like to stain it a natural wood color.I don't want to put it up green or wait for it to dry or turn a more natural color for a year. Any ideas?
Answer: If you stain it now, it will change the end color of the wood. You have to wait for it to turn natural, so either wait six weeks or put it up green. The outside environment will dry it faster than sitting in a pile.
Reasons Green lumber accepts stain poorly, while older wood absorbs stains relatively well. The porosity of wood can vary greatly, even within the same piece of wood. Green treated wood refers to lumber infused with chemicals that delay or prevent deterioration.
These chemicals reduce the possibility of wood rot. Unfortunately, they also infuse the wood with deep-set moisture that prevents uniform stain absorption. Let the green treated wood sit and dry out before attempting the project. Test the stain before committing to full-scale application, or you'll end up with disappointing results.
PS: Make sure your sealer is water- and UV-resistant and contains anti-mildew and anti-algae agents to help the wood stand up to weathering effects.
Comment: I've always been told, it's **best** to leave Pressure Treated timber (outside, exposed to the elements) a full year before applying paint or stain.
Comment: A full year might be too long, in my opinion. It's already been damaged by UV by then. I would say it's best to wait *only until it is dry enough to accept stain*. Some PT lumber (not so much any more) will have some sort of wax on it as well. If that is the case, then you'll have to clean that off first.
Answer: You really should wait at least a month or so before staining, in my opinion. However, if you really want to get it up and color it now the only option I see is to stain it now, wait for it to change color when the wood is finally seasoned, and then stain it again.
I recently stained my pine fence, but it had been up for almost a year (too long), so I had to pressure wash it first. I used a power sprayer and it went pretty smoothly.


Placement of primary button in pop up

Question: What is better position to display primary & secondary button in pop up?

download bmml source – Wireframes created with Balsamiq Mockups
Reference article : http://uxmovement.com/buttons/why-ok-buttons-in-dialog-boxes-work-best-on-the-right/
Answer: In your example there are no primary and secondary actions. Both are primary actions but are affirmative and dismissive. If you want to follow Material design guidelines then place the affirmative on the right and the dismissive on the left.

Actions
Dialogs present a focused and limited set of actions, which are generally affirmative or dismissive.

Affirmative actions are placed on the right side and continue the process. Affirmative actions may be destructive, like "Delete" or "Remove."
Dismissive actions are placed directly to the left of affirmative actions and return the user to the originating screen or step in the process.
Dismissive and affirmative action text can be "Cancel"/"OK" or specific active verbs or verb phrases that indicate the outcome of the decision.
Answer: If you using this pop up then first approach is preferred and if you want to go for web or desktop based application then use second approach placed on the right side.
The reason is in mobile people generally tap on the screen with right-hand side fingers or thumb so it would easy for them to select immediately. People prefer to click first on right so always positive action or in which app want to confirmation from the user, "SUBMIT" button used at right side.
In web or desktop based application, center point is considered. So if you have observed then when you get any pop up or notification or alert always buttons named as "yes" or "ok" or "confirm" placed at left of the screen.
Answer: I think this is the same situation as in any alert/ modal with "ok" / "cancel" buttons.
Here is a detailed article that explains why "ok" / "submit" buttons should be placed on the right: Why 'Ok' Buttons in Dialog Boxes Work Best on the Right.
On Material design you can see the same approach: Dialogs.
Answer: As per my understanding, the button placement should be based on the importance of the action.
For example, if it is an action like a bank traction or giving access to sensitive information which needs utmost attention from the user the affirmative button should be on the left side. The user tends to use the button on the right side as it is accessible very quickly. Both in mobile and web the right side is more easily accessible to 90% of the people in the world who are right-handers. If accidentally pressed the button on the right side it is the dismissive action button so the action will not have any impact on the user, they can start the process again.
As far as the information is not very sensitive the affirmation button can be on the right side as it is very well accessible.

Placement of primary button in pop up


How should I repair crumbling joist pockets in a brick wall?

Question: I'm renovating an old row house with wooden joist in masonry pockets. In many places, the mortar under the bearing point of the pockets has crumbled, cracking a few bricks and lowering the pocket. Assuming I can replace or at least temporarily move the joists, how should I repair the bottom of the pocket?
Answer: You remove the old brick and rebuild the bottom of the mortise.
If it was me, I would get a tile saw and cut a single rock that would exactly fit. Why use crappy brick, when you can use a rock that will last for a million years? If you cut the rock so that it exactly fits (and I mean EXACTLY to a hundredth of inch). Then you hammer the rock in tight and you need no mortar.
If you don't want to spring for a tile saw, you can use cold chisels.


Sharepoint Read only Not supported in chrome

Question: I have a SP 2013 document library with unique permissions. Condition is Read only user can just view the document but not download and not open in browser.
This works fine with IE. However when opened with chrome documents open in browser. I have already made Library Settings-Advanced settings-Open in client application. Is there a work around to fix this?
Answer: The permission is called View Only and allows the person to view the file in the browser and not download it. The permission called Read allows the user to view and download the document.
Other than those 2 options I do not know what you are trying to achieve. The only way to prevent downloading is VIEW ONLY and it requires Office web application and viewing in the browser. You cannot have one without the other.
Comment: Thanks for your response. Currently the permission setting is View only. When the file is opened in IE it directs to a page saying you don't have access and request for access comes. But in Chrome, the file gets opened in the browser and user is unable to request for contribute access to download
Comment: View only ALLOWS the file to be opened in the browser, so it looks like Chrome is having the correct behaviour.
Comment: Thanks Susan. My requirement is , user shld be able to see the files in document library. Onclick of the document, incase if he has read only he must be able to raise an access request to grant access for download. Is there a way i can achieve this. Your help is much appreciated.
Comment: As far as I know there isn't such automatism. Only on access denied there is a chance to submit a request to an email address.
Comment: http://sharepoint.stackexchange.com/questions/8811/disable-excel-web-access.My issue is same as this. Did anyone get a fix?
http://blog.armgasys.com/?p=133 - I tried this along with IIS reset still no luck. please assist


Paper about the upper bound of the number of inequalities to describe the Integer hull of a polyhedron

Question: I am interested in the upper bound of the number of inequalities to describe the integer hull of a polyhedron. That is, given an integer programming problem with n inequalities which construct a polyhedron P, we often adding some inequalities to get the integer hull P_I of P. Then what is the maximum number of inequalities needed to describe this P_I? I have known that there are some conclusions on this topic but I don't what they are. I need some paper about it. Please tell me if you know it.
Comment: If there is no such bound on general integer programming problem, how about 0-1 integer programming? Is there any bound on the number of inequalities to define the Integer hull of 0-1 integer programming problem?
Answer: Via Rubin:
There is a sequence of polytopes $\{ P_k\}_k$ each defined by two variables and one constraint (plus two nonnegativity constraints) such that the integer hull of $P_k$ has $k+3$ vertices and $k+3$ facets.
$P_k=\{ (x,y)\in \mathbb{R}^2_+ ~|~f_{2k} x + f_{2k+1}y \le f^2_{2k+1}-1\}$
Here, $f_j$ is the $j$-th Fibonacci number.
This shows that the number of facets of the integer hull $P_I$ cannot be bounded above in terms of the number variables and constraints of $P$.
Schrijver provides a nice collection of these kind of results in his Theory of Linear and Integer Programming.


Could you encode data in a Black Box ping?

Question: Black boxes put out a sonar ping at about 32kHz. From what I've read, depending on sea conditions the ping will be audible at the surface out to about 16 km, leaving a search area of around 1024 square km.
By adding a little complexity to the ping circuit, you could encode within it the last received GPS position of the box, before it hits the water. With average sea depth and average sink angles of less than 45° that information would cut the search area down to about 10 square km.
Is there some reason this tech is not used, or is it still in the rigorous testing pipeline these devices must go through?
Comment: under sea currents would still cause a large drift, also directional detectors (and just going a mile in one direction and detecting differences in the ping strength) will do more than an inaccurate GPS lock
Comment: What is the black box's "last received GPS position"? The black box is inside the plane: it can't receive GPS because it doesn't have line-of-sight to anything, including the constellation of GPS satellites.
Answer: Current underwater locator beacons (ULBs) have a detection range of only a few km. 16 km would be under exceptionally favourable conditions. So in most cases the GPS data would not be of any additional help. It might tell you where the aircraft was before it hit the water, not exactly where the debris ended up after falling through several Km of water.
An advantage of current ULBs is their extreme simplicity and small size. There's no need for external data-feed and power connections. There are no issues of openings in the casing for waterproof connectors that also need to withstand the g-forces and pressures expected to be endured by a ULB. They are easy to test regularly and relatively easy to maintain.

From what I have read, current proposals for improvements to ULBs mostly focus on

increase duration from 30 days to 90 days
increase range by changing frequency from 37.5 kHz to ~10KHz

There are trade-offs here - longer duration means bigger batteries. changing the frequency may make it harder to distinguish from other sources of sound in the ocean.

An interesting 2011 dissertation describes the difficulties involved  and discusses modulating the beacon signal to include data.
Comment: and GPS doesn't work under water!
Answer: Even if one started a search with many vessels whose equipment can detect nothing more than that a beacon exists somewhere within 16km, a ship that detected a beacon's signal could summon one or more ships with fancier equipment which would be able to home in on the signal much more accurately.  I don't think that encoding a plane's last above-ground location in the ping data would assist significantly with locating the beacon.
Having the black box "blindly" encode any significant amount of information in its pings would add greatly to the power requirements; there might be some benefit to having a black listen occasionally (the pings would indicate when) for an outside request for data, and then transmit some of its data in response to such requests.  This could be helpful in cases where the box could be located, but was in a place that salvage equipment could not reach.  Only a limited amount of data could be transmitted, however; depending upon how far away it needed to be received, transmitting even a minute's worth of audio might use more energy than a month's worth of pings.  I don't know that the number of cases where a box is detected, and holds data, but cannot be physically retrieved, would be sufficient to justify the extra cost and complexity of ultrasonic data communication.  It would probably cheaper to add redundant recorders to the aircraft in places that would likely end up in different parts of the debris field, so as to maximize the likelihood that at least one would be reachable by salvage craft.
Answer: Main reason those signals can be distinguished for what they are is because they have a specific signature. If the signals were to change all the time because you mix in extra information, they'd be impossible to recognise and thus useless.
Combined with the short range of the signal (inevitable consequence of the need to be low power, anything more would mean heavier equipment and/or shorter lifespan), there's just no benefit.
Comment: That doesn't follow. For example, radio receivers can only pick up radio waves that "have a specific signature" but those radio waves can be modulated to encode data and, obviously, this can be done without breaking the "specific signature".
Comment: @DavidRicherby such would mean replacing every single receiver out there, just like you now need AM, FM, LW, etc. etc. receivers for every single type of radio signal. And all for nothing. No, modulation is not the answer, it only adds complexity for no reason whatsoever (but then, that's politics, doing things for no reason whatsoever so I'm sure you'll get it mandated by the FAA if you just demand "they do something NOW!").
Comment: You would only need a new receiver if you actually want to decode the data. A simple receiver could still detect the fact that there is a signal, just as it would now.
Comment: @fooot Indeed: receiver records signal, sends to HQ, HQ decodes, HQ says "The message was xyz". I'm not saying this is a good idea, just that jwentings objections to is aren't well-founded.


Higgs Mechanism and Wave-Particle Duality

Question: According to Higgs Mechanism a particle acquires mass when it couples to the higgs field. Now consider Wave-Particle Duality. Suppose I am doing a Young's Double Slit Experiment using electrons. When they pass through the slits they behave like waves and quantum waves have no mass, there is just momentum given by de-Broglie relation. Now when they "impinge" upon a screen their behaviour is like that of a particle. So they must have mass. When did the electrons interact with the Higgs field to acquire mass when they did not have any mass while "passing" through the slits? Does this imply that Higgs field is decoupling and coupling with the electron field? Also, I could make the distance between the slits and the screen arbitrarily small, doesn't that imply that the coupling "speed" (for lack of a better word on my part) of Higgs field is infinite?
Comment: Why are the de-Brogile relations $E=\hbar\omega$ and $\vec p=\hbar \vec k$ inconsistent with mass? Mass means the dispersion relation is $E=\sqrt{(pc)^2+(mc^2)^2}$.
Comment: The de-Broglie relation is $\lambda = \frac{h}{mv}$ with $h$ as Planck's constant, $v$ velocity and $m$ the mass of the particle. If the $m$ were zero, the wavelaength $\lambda$ would be infinite which makes no sense.
Answer: The Higgs induced mass is due to the vacuum expectation value or v.e.v of the Higgs.  In the cold dead universe we live in, Higgs has a sort of "crystallized" background configuration (b.g.c) with perturbations around it.  This b.g.c is everywhere and all the fields that couple to it get their mass from it.  So it doesn't really need to propagate.  In theory if the energy level of the system was high enough (hot enough) you could destroy the Higgs b.g.c and decouple everything.
Answer:
quantum waves have no mass, there is just momentum ...

is a fundamental misconception about QM. The probability amplitude wavepacket desribing the motion of the electron fully accounts for the movement of its mass (and charge, and...) because this wavepacket, moving freely is restricted by the dispersive equation of Schroedinger, here in one dimension w.l.o.g.,
$$
\left (i\hbar\partial_t + \frac{\hbar^2}{2m} \partial_x^2\right ) \psi =0,
$$
which is manifestly "aware" of its mass.
The relevant solution is essentially a spreading wavepacket $\psi (x,t)$, yielding a probability
$$
\Large \rho(x,t)=|\psi|^2=\frac{1}{\sqrt{1+4(t\hbar/m)^2}} e^{\frac{-2(x-vt)^2}{1+4(t\hbar/m)^2}} ,
$$
in natural wavepacket length units, where v is the group velocity of the wavepacket.
The relevant probability flow current to the right can be seen to be ~  $v \rho$, and so the rate of transport of mass to the right is $mv \rho$, as you should confirm.
The takeaway is that the "wave" of your mental picture does very much transport mass, charge, spin, etc... to the screen. Calling it "massless" is meaningless. The Higgs mechanism has done its job of giving the electron a mass and completely decoupled from the problem, conceptually. The wave went through the slits and interfered with no less mass than a corpuscle.


How does Descartes make contact with the world?

Question: Descartes' cogito allows him to deny extreme sceptism; but then how does he actually make contact with the world as opposed to saying - I exist and the world is my (unconscious) invention -, i.e. solipsism?
Answer: To prove the existence of the res extensa, the sensible world, Descartes uses an argument that we nowadays don't accept anymore. First, he proves God:

I have an idea of perfection
An idea of perfection has to come from something perfect
I am not perfect
Then there has to be something else perfect (=God)

Then he says: if all that information from the senses isn't correct, I'm deceived, so there must be some bad deceiver. However, since God is ultimately good, he wouldn't accept such a bad deceiver, therefore I cannot be deceived. Therefore, the information from the senses is correct, and the sensible world exist.

On a metaphilosophical level, you could say Descartes breaks his world down and then builds it up again in his meditations:

Assume the sensible world doesn't exist

Assume God doesn't exist

Assume you don't even exist yourself
Cogito ergo sum: yes, I do exist

Proof of God (via the idea of perfection)

Proof of the existence of the res extensa

All these proofs are a bit outdated and there are criticisms on them. Especially the proof of God (and thereby also the proof of the res extensa) isn't accepted. However, in his time that was probably all very clear. The real problem he had, was the Mind-body problem (how can mind and body interact if they're separated?).

The problem was famously addressed by René Descartes in the 17th century, resulting in Cartesian dualism, and by pre-Aristotelian philosophers, in Avicennian philosophy, and in earlier Asian traditions. A variety of approaches have been proposed. Most are either dualist or monist. Dualism maintains a rigid distinction between the realms of mind and matter. Monism maintains that there is only one kind of stuff, and that mind and matter are both aspects of it.

In Cartesian dualism, there is contact between mind and body in the 'homunculus' (Latin for 'little man', but also the Latin name for the epiphysis), a little part of the brain1. The body sends information from the senses to the mind. The mind 'processes' those signals and returns commandos to the body. The mind can also do something without getting information from the senses, i.e. when it just thinks, and it can command the body in that case as well.
In this image, you can see the body-part of a human: eyes give information to the epiphysis, the mind processes the information, and sends a command to the arm, which moves.

René Descartes's illustration of dualism. Inputs are passed on by the sensory organs to the epiphysis in the brain and from there to the immaterial spirit.

1: Why there? According to Descartes that is the only part of the body that does not exist as two identical halves and doesn't have an identical twin. For example, it can't be the eye, because you have two, and it can't be your nose, because it has two nostrils.
Comment: @MoziburUllah you asked about how the mind could contact with the body, not?
Comment: Descarte admiited two substances - mind & extension (or body here). I don't think that this is quite answering what I am asking.
Comment: Not quite. Descarte is positing that ha can't doubt his own existence. Good. Now what about the other objects of the world? Do they exists - or are they figments of hisimagination. Thats what I'm asking when I say how does he make contact with the objects of the world. That is objects existing independently. Your answer is Descarte answering another related question. How does his mental world actuate itself within the world, that is by his body.
Comment: @MoziburUllah ah-ha! So the question actually is "how does Descartes prove the existence of the res extensa"? I'll edit my answer for that. According to the votes here there might be some confusion caused by your question, perhaps you could rephrase it to make it more clear? :)
Comment: @MoziburUllah Sorry for the delay, I just added information. Is this what you meant?
Comment: yes, that is what I was looking for. He relies on God to make the world objective. That is create it. Which is exactly in line with his Christian faith - although of course expressed in rational terms.
Comment: Though, if he has to bring in God to make contact with the world, then why bother with the cogito to dispel skepticism? You may as well bring him in the beginning. But I suspect that this gives an opening for a purely rational explication which the phenomenologists & existentialists picked up and ran with.


How to measure water turbidity with arduino

Question: I would like to measure water turbidity in the sea. The sensor does not need to measure it in an accurate way, I just need to know if water is clear or very turbided. I know that there could be used a light scatter but I do not know what kind of sensor should I use. Could anyone help how to measure turbidity?
Answer: http://uk.farnell.com/ams/tsl257-lf/sensor-light-voltage-converter/dp/1226886
is a good one according to http://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=299993.0
But it might be easier to buy a COTS sensor, its a bit more expensive but much easier.  http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Turbidity-Testing-Sensor-Module-Suite/1903197650.html?spm=2114.01010208.3.17.OSVwdj&ws_ab_test=searchweb201556_9,searchweb201602_2_10017_9868_10005_10006_10034_10021_507_10022_10020_1000020_10018_10019,searchweb201603_8&btsid=6dbcca61-3e0a-4e34-9359-a6c26b268509
BTW for everyone else Turbidity is the amount of muck in the water, so it would be no good looking at the crystal clear waters off the UK coast :)
Comment: Thanks, do you think that there could be find any datasheet or part number of this chinesse COTS turbidity sensor?
Comment: You could try and ask the seller.  There are quite a few that sell similar units, ask them all and take the average of the responses as closest to the truth.  From the pictures and experience of similar looking sensors you seem to have both an analog and digital connections.  The digital could be in or out, in is usually the signal to make a reading, out is usually just condition sensed / not sensed.
The Sensor looks to be the same as a IR Tachograph sensor, but the receiver board is a bit more complex.  Generally the sellers are really helpful.
Answer: I used an array of cheap light dependent resistors hermetically sealed and used a torch. For dark water, it clearly shows a lower value than for cristal water. It is kind of a binary sensor, but I was proud of my basic invention!


lead baserunner tagged while occupying base he is forced from

Question: R1 on first, batter hits grounder to 1B who tags R1 who is standing on first, and then 1B touches first base.  Is this a double play
Answer: Yes.
Until the out at first is completed the runner standing on first has no rights to the base.
MLB rule 7.01:

A runner acquires the right to an unoccupied base when he touches it before he is
  out. He is then entitled to it until he is put out, or forced to vacate it for another runner legally entitled to that base.

If there is still a force in effect (the batter is running towards first and has not been put out), then the runner is not entitled to first base and can be tagged out. This is more specifically laid out in 7.08e

[The runner is out if he] or the next base is tagged before he touches the next base, after he has been forced to advance by reason of the batter becoming a runner. However, if a following runner is put out on a force play, the force is removed and the runner must be
  tagged to be put out. The force is removed as soon as the runner touches the base to
  which he is forced to advance, and if he overslides or overruns the base, the runner
  must be tagged to be put out. However, if the forced runner, after touching the next
  base, retreats for any reason towards the base he had last occupied, the force play is
  reinstated, and he can again be put out if the defense tags the base to which he is
  forced

1.03b is also relevant here:

If a runner is forced to advance by reason of the batter becoming a runner and two
  runners are touching a base to which the following runner is forced, the following
  runner is entitled to the base and the preceding runner shall be out when tagged or
  when a fielder possesses the ball and touches the base to which such preceding runner is forced

However, this is exceptionally rare in high level baseball as I cannot conceive of a situation where a runner would move backwards on a ground ball. An MLB runner will be 10-30ft from the bag when contact with the ball is made. He will then determined the kind of contact, if it's a ground ball he's going to run as fast as he can to the next base, if it's a liner he will freeze and if it's a popup or flyball then he will use his judgement to determine if a fielder has a play (go back to the bag and tag up) or does not have a play (advance quickly to the next base and beyond).
Answer: The key wording is 7.01 is "forced to vacate it for another runner legally entitled to the base." Look further into the rules and you will find that the batter is not legally entitled to first base until he reaches that base safely. Therefore, the runner that was already on 1st base is legally entitled to 1st base until the batter reaches the base safely. When this happens, the runner is now not legally entitled to 1st base and can then be tagged out if still standing on the base. Until that happens, the defense has to throw to 2nd base to create a force out and cannot tag the runner standing on 1st base.
Comment: Welcome, Lee! Instead of saying "look further into the rules", your answer would be improved by citing the particular rule that covers this situation.


What is a good textbook for teaching Web Programming?

Question: Is there any textbook you would recommend as appropriate for preparing a Web Programming college course? I would prefer a book that comes with sets of exercises, practice, code examples, etc. Students are university level expected to have programming knowledge and to know about Internet. No knowledge of particular Internet technologies is required. Do you have any good practices you can share about Web Programming teaching?
Comment: Can you improve the question by telling us: What age, What prier knowledge (can students program in another language?, do students know `HTML` and/or `CSS`?, do students know the difference between a web-browser, internet, web, …?
Comment: Do you need a _textbook_ per se? I've taught web programming (I assume you mean basically HTML5: HTML/CSS/vanilla JS) for years but I've never used a book for it. Some colleges require(?) courses to be based on textbooks, so more context/motivation for why you need a textbook as opposed to any other resources would be nice. Are there particular skills you are hoping to teach? Any particular emphasis you want to place on apps, sites or games? Front-end web development is a broad topic. If you are open to using libraries and frameworks (React, Vue, p5, three.js etc), the scope blows up.
Comment: Related: [Beginner Javascript course - recommended books](https://cseducators.stackexchange.com/questions/5151/beginner-javascript-course-recommended-books)
Answer: This question is quite vague in terms of what you're asking for. I don't know the age of the students, their prior knowledge or what exactly you want to teach them other that "Web Programming" which could mean a lot of things.
Assuming it is an introductory HTML/CSS/JS course you're teaching, I also teach this kind of course to students of various ages and abilities. Two resources I've found useful when doing this are the projects on Raspberry Pi https://projects.raspberrypi.org/en/projects/?software[]=html-css-javascript and the content and exercises on W3Schools https://www.w3schools.com/.
This unit on code.org might also be helpful although I have not used it myself https://studio.code.org/s/csd2-2021
I hope you find those suggestions useful. I don't teach practical web related courses other than introductory HTML/CSS so unfortunately I can't make suggestions on any other content you might be teaching.


Part III of Form 8889 (2014)

Question: I don't understand Part III of Form 8889.
I was an "eligible individual" for the entire year of 2014. I believe this requires me to input $3300 on Line 18. Is this correct?
I had $297.78 gross distribution of my HSA. I believe that this than requires me to file $3597.78 as additional taxable income? I don't understand the logic.
Can someone help me understand? Thanks in advance!
Comment: Why are you filling part III, if you were an eligible individual for the whole year?
Comment: "Why are you filling part III?" This is a great question! :) I assumed that I needed to fill the entire form out. Is this not the case?
Comment: No. The instructions clearly state what portions of the form you need to fill.
Answer: (Entering in answer from comments as community wiki answer so that this question can be marked answered.)
As per the instructions of form 8889, Part III is only filled out if the penalty for failure to maintain HDHP coverage applies. If it doesn't apply to you, the Part should be left blank.

Part III of Form 8889 (2014)


Authenticating root certificate

Question: I'm building a web service and have questions regarding authentication. I have a strict requirement that this application only run on company machines. We have a root certificate this is installed on all the machines in the company. I'm planning to use this certificate for authentication. My idea is - when the client runs on any machine, it fetches this root certificate and sends it to the server. The server only continues processing the request after successful validation. What validations should I perform? Subject name? Thumbprint? Given that it is a root cert, the subject name and issuer are same. How can I ensure this certificate comes from a trusted authority? Also, is this a good approach for authentication? I'm new to this area and looking for any help I can get.
Comment: `'My idea is - when the client runs on any machine, it fetches this root certificate and sends it to the server.'`  Certificates are generally not secret.  In fact, most servers serve the entire certificate chain (including the root certificate) when you connect to them by TLS.  What is to stop a user from simply copying the company's root certificate from his/her company-issued machine to his/her personal laptop, then authenticating with your service?
Comment: Is the web service hosted internally or in the cloud?
Comment: @MarcWoodyard It's hosted in the cloud. If it was internal, security wouldn't have been a big issue.
Comment: @secert Couldn't you restrict access by IP? Also, Cloudflare offers a service called Cloudflare Access that I've used, and it works pretty well.
Answer: Use TLS you don't need to do anything else. Don't try to build your own protocol unless you have someone very good at cryptography, even then it is not worth the risk. The server, not the client sends the entire certificate chain including the root. All of your machines will have this root installed and thus accept it. Otherwise abort the connection. At most you may have to rewrite client so that it only accepts your company root as a trusted root.
EDIT:
Digital certificates by themselves do not authenticate anyone. They are never meant to be secret in the first place. It's purpose is to certify that the public key of some server or anything indeed belongs to it. Your certificate contains your public key which is used to verify your signatures. The public key is used to verify that the signature used authenticate the server (and client if it is two-way) is indeed valid. The signature is also used to ensure that key exchange has not been tampered with. After key exchange, the data communicated is secured by encrypting (which also includes message authentication with it) it. If you just send your public key bare instead of the certificate, an attacker can easily inject her own public key instead making it insecure. The signature in question can only be produced using a private key which is paired with that public key. I won't go into much detail you can look into mathematics of cryptography if you are interested but deriving private key from the public key is infeasible, at least we know of no easy way to calculate private key from public key.
Comment: Can you explain a little more about how I can use TLS? There's one small quirk I left out, not to over-complicate the question. Every department in the company (e.g. marketing, sales, engineering) has their own root certificate. There's only a handful of departments. On the server, I can maintain a list of all the certificates, and based on which department the client is calling from, I can validate against that particular cert.
Comment: Well, I would use a single root for company, one intermediate CA for each department and one certificate for each server in the department. That way storing one certificate on client would suffice. But you can still store many roots like all modern ssl clients do.   Guessing that you got confused about using TLS to authenticate clients. You can use two way TLS, Google for more about how to implement it exactly. This variant uses both the client and server certificate. It can provide simultaneous client and server authentication. Using it will likely be better than whatever you come up with.
Comment: see @mentallurg's answer. He has described step-by-step, the certificate verification part used in TLS. Looks like I wrongly assumed that you know all about TLS but do not know that it supports client certificates too. Anyway TLS also includes many other things (like key exchange) which you can look up yourself. In case it is not clear from his answer, I will try to clarify what digital certificates are for. See my edited answer.
Answer:
We have a root certificate this is installed on all the machines in
the company.

The purpose of this certificate is that every user of your company can validate your servers. For instance, some user to your server. Browser attempts to establish a TLS connection. For this purpose server presents a certificate. This certificate is signed by your internal CA. Browser retrieves a certificate from your server and checks who has issued it. Browser finds in the local registry a root certificate of your company, verifies that certificate presented by the server is really signed by the root certificate, verifies some other attributes (e.g. that the name in server certificate corresponds to DNS name), and then browser of this users trusts the server, and TLS connection will be installed.

I'm planning to use this certificate for authentication.

Presenting root CA certificate of your company does not mean anything. It is not secret. It is public information. It can be freely copied.
Anyone can present root certificate of CAs of your departments.
Main steps
If you want to authenticate users based on certificates and your root CA certificate, you should do following:

Issue a certificate for every user. Sign this certificate with
root CA certificate of one of your departments.
Every user should install his certificate on his computer.
Configure your server so that it knows root CA certificates of your departments.
Configure your server so that it requires certificate based authentication from clients.

How it works?
The authentication will look then as follows:

User wants to call some service. Browser on his computer sends a request to the server.
Server presents its certificate. Browser verifies it and trusts it.
Server asks browser to authenticate itself using certificate.
Browser uses a client certificate belonging to the particular user logged on this computer.
Server checks if this certificate is valid. On of validations is to check that this user certificate was issued by CA whom the server can trust. Server finds the root CA of the issuer of client certificate in its registry, verifies signature in the user certificate, and trusts this user certificate.
Since certificates are public and don't prove anything, browser signs data sent to server using the private key related to this certificate and available on users computer. The private key is secret, every user has his own private key and own certificate.
Server checks if the signature of the data received from browser does really match the certificate presented by browser. If matches, it means that the user is really the owner of the presented user certificate. Thus the user is authenticated.

This is a simplified description. In reality validation is a bit more complex: User certificates must have valid dates, they must have particular values of some attributes, e.g. for what purposes is this certificate allowed to be used.
Briefly, to make it work you need to do steps 1 - 4 above.
Important: You don't need to implement anything to get authentication based on certificates. You just need to configure your web server (Apache, Nginx, whatever) correspondingly. If you use a typical approach when a web server receives all requests and forwards application related requests to the application, then in the application you will know: If some requests has reached the application, user is authenticated based on certificate.
Answer: Significance of Root Certificate
I believe you're misunderstanding the significance of having the Root certificate installed on company computers. This certificate is the public key of the Root Certificate Authority (CA) for the company's certificate infrastructure and its presence doesn't necessarily indicate a system is a company computer. The Root certificate should be freely available so anyone can download it and install it as a trusted certificate. Doing so indicates the system will trust the certificate infrastructure the Root certificate is the parent of. Thus trusting any certificate issued by the certificate infrastructure. Examples of issued certificates include SSL/TLS, S/MIME, etc.
Authentication with certificates requires one to have the associated private key. For example, HTTPS (e.g. SSL/TLS) authentication works because the webserver has the corresponding private key. The public key can be shared with anyone. The private key is what allows one to know they are communicating with the correct endpoint. The SSL/TLS negotiation process ensures this. Which is why the private key must remain private.
Requirement: Run on Company Computers Only
With strict requirements to only allow your application to run on company systems, I can think of two options:
1. Leverage Existing Certificate Infrastructure
Issuing Client Certificates is the best approach if you desire to leverage your existing certificate infrastructure. Doing so requires each company computer to be issued their own computer certificate from your Root CA or more likely Issuing CA. Each system will then have a public and private key from the newly issued computer certificate. Having your application verify a system has been issued this certificate would indicate a company system. Presenting this certificate during authentication would be the best approach.
There are downsides:

There must be an established certificate lifecycle. Define characteristics of what a company computer is and properties of the computer certificate. How long should a certificate be valid, how will certificates be revoked, Extended Key Usage, etc. Then establish how a computer requests and receives a certificate. All of this requires changes to the Issuing CA (Root or otherwise) and Policy CA (if present).
Managing computer certificates must be automated. Company computers must be issued new certificates and expiring certificates need to be renewed behind the scenes. This should happen automatically and without intervention by users.
Users are accustomed to authenticating via username/password credentials. Using certificates is different and based on implementation it may produce a process undesired by users.

2. Restrict Access to Company Network
Since your application is hosted in the cloud, setup a VPN between the internal company network and your application. Thereby only making the application accessible via your internal network. This should satisfy the requirement since in theory only company computers should be connected to the internal company network. Check with the policymakers within the organization to be sure.
Based on your question and various comments, I'd recommend using this approach.

Authenticating root certificate