How can I know who is at war with whom?

Question: Is there a way to know which country is at war with another country? I know that there is the Diplomacy Panel, but it only tells my situation with other AI civilizations. What I want to know is : Is there a war between other civilizations (AI)?
Answer: You can get a lot of information about other civilizations through the Diplomacy Overview screen. You can access this screen through the drop down menu in the top right corner. This menu is accessible by using the button next to the Social Policies button. Once you open up the Diplomacy Overview, click the tab labelled Global Politics. A screen like this should appear, which informs you of the relationships of each opponent:
Answer: From the Diplomacy Overview click on the tab at the top: Global Politics
From here you can see each civilization's :

Social Policy counts
Wonders
war/friendly status for all other civilizations/city states.
Answer: The InfoAddict mod is very helpful. One of its screens shows a circle of civilizations with lines connecting them, each colored to denote different conditions: war, open borders, trade agreements, attitude, etc. This is similar to the Diplomacy Advisor from Civ4 but with much more information.
It doesn't break saved game compatibility so you can safely load it for use with an existing game.
Comment: Maybe this was true in April, but as of today (end of July 2012) it says it only works if it is enabled throughout the whole game, and turning it on mid-game I don't see any obvious changes. It's really shameful that Civ 5 downgraded diplomacy so much that a mod is needed to get key functionality back.

How can I know who is at war with whom?


how to deal with seemingly paranoid behavior

Question: I have worked for 10 years for a small company, 28 employees. The owner, my manager, is kind-hearted and generous, sometimes to a fault, but on the flip-side, she has a tendency to default into thinking that people are taking advantage, stealing from her or will steal, or behaving suspiciously, when in fact she just doesn't have all the facts, so she makes knee-jerk decisions. Any suggestions on how to approach her about this, or even if I should?
Comment: How does this impact you, what type of decisions? It does not have to be bad to default into being suspicious. My boss does that (sometimes), and makes decision I disagree with, but are at the end harmless (and often useless, but if it makes him sleep better). In that case I just let it go. If it however would take away enjoyment out of my work and life, or if I believe the company is losing money because of it, then I might make work of it.
Comment: What are you hoping to accomplish? Are there specific behaviours that you would like to / need to see changed?
Comment: It's really normal for a successful proprietor to be "super cautious".  I would really say "it's standard".  It's like saying "my mother worries about us kids".  Try to support boss, see her view, and act in ways that assist her goals.  Enjoy!
Comment: Just what do you mean by "paranoid"?  Is there a hidden message in there?
Answer: One of my former employer (and owner of the small company where I was working) drove to work 2 days after getting hemorrhoids surgery, when he was supposed to lay flat in bed and rest. Reason? He thought that without him watching on us we would slack the entire day and steal time from the company.
As an underling you can do pretty much nothing about this: anything you may say can trigger her paranoia into thinking you are plotting something against her, ending up in making your work life miserable.
If the paranoid behavior is annoying you and affects your working, I suggest:
Short term: try to make visible what and why you are doing things to deflect her paranoia from you.
Long term: search for a more healthy employment.
Comment: I find it ironic that it's not okay for employees to steal the time of their employers slacking off, but it ***is*** okay for employers to steal the time of their employees by requiring extra overtime without compensation.


Can Software Engineers become certified Professional Engineers (PE)?

Question: Does anyone know if a Software Engineer can become a certified Professional Engineer or PE for short?  I know that my buddies who are Mechanical, Electrical, or Civil Engineers were able to become PEs by taking an exam.  Does such an exam exist in Software Engineering?
Comment: @AnnaLear It's extremely common in Europe for computer science departments to sit within their engineering faculties.
Comment: @BoTian It is possible through both BCS and IEE to become a chartered engineer.
Comment: @AnnaLear ABET accreditation has been extended to 258 universities for Computer Science and 21 universities for Software Engineering as of now.  I know that "certified" programs in engineering are considered certified if they have the ABET accreditation, I think the same is afforded to CS and SWE Please see the link to be able to search for specific schools. http://main.abet.org/aps/Accreditedprogramsearch.aspx
Comment: See also: [Is Information Technology really Engineering?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/13793/is-information-technology-really-engineering)
Answer: In April 2013, the Professional Engineer exam for Software Engineering was offered for the first time. The IEEE Computer Society, IEEE-USA, and National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying (NCEES) partnered to develop an exam specifically for software engineers. State boards issue the exams and manage the requirements for taking and passing the exam.
However, the last time this exam will be offered will be in April 2019. In the news release, the NCEES cited a low candidate population. The examination was offered 5 times and only 81 candidates sat for the exam.
Comment: NP, it's a shame because, IMO, our field is in need of a way to solidify it as a true engineering discipline; one way to do that is having a standard way to test and identify professionals.
Comment: Presumably you'd still need to have passed the FE exam (and have met degree and other requirements) before you could register for the software engineering PE exam.
Comment: @Caleb There is a process to apply for waivers to take the PE exam without taking the FE exam first, if you meet certain criteria. Also, the FE exam is designed for undergraduate students and most of the components of an FE exam aren't covered in undergraduate software engineering programs.
Comment: Unfortunately, this is no longer true; they are [discontinuing PE Software Engineering exam](https://ncees.org/ncees-discontinuing-pe-software-engineering-exam/) due to lack of interest/applications per their rules.
Comment: @ChiefTwoPencils I will edit this answer later (and I may have some other answers that also reference this exam), but I'm not surprised. I attended an accredited Software Engineering program and I would not have been able to pass any of the FE exams needed to line up for that PE exam. The process never really lined up with the industry, which is unfortunate. Thank you for the head's up on this, though!
Answer: The IEEE has been working on establishing a similar credential for software engineers, but I don't know that it is getting any traction.
Note that in the US at least, you can't get the PE certification simply by taking an exam. You have to have a degree in an engineering discipline from an accredited school. You can then take a written exam to become an Engineer in Training (EIT). Then after working at least four years under the supervision of a PE, you can sit for the PE exam.
Comment: The web site for the IEEE certification program is here: http://www.computer.org/portal/web/certification/home. Note that the PE certification is not just a sticker for your resume. In the US it has real legal consequences, though exactly what those are varies from state to state. It generally includes committees on standards of practices and much higher exposure to liability and charges of malpractice. I don't know that most programmers are interested in opening that can of worms, even if they call themselves software engineers.
Comment: It may differ from state to state but I believe it's two years of experience working under a PE. (CA)
Comment: +1 Thanks for the answer!  Do you know if we as software engineers can help IEEE gain some traction in this field?
Comment: In other words, yes, but it depends heavily on where you work and is, outside of those particular sorts of jobs, not worth the trouble.  If you're, say, an EE and you write software in the power industry, though, go for it!
Answer: I don't see why not.  As long as you pass the exam, you should become certified.  That said, the PE exam isn't like getting an MCSE or SCJD, it's a serious professional exam with some hefty requirements.  Things like:

You need a degree in Engineering from an accredited university
You need your EIT (Engineer In Training) certification
You need verified experience (usually 2-4 years) as a working engineer

If all you've got is a CS degree, you're not going to get anywhere close to getting your PE without some serious work.  OTOH, if you got a EE from a good school and already have your EIT, then it's not unreasonable to expect you'd be eligible for taking the exam.  It'd be worth checking with the licensing board in your state, anyway.  As others have mentioned, software engineering isn't seen as a "real" engineering discipline, so you'd probably be better off applying as an electrical or mechanical engineer (whatever's on your diploma).
Comment: ... Software Engineer as a job title and might have undergraduate or graduate degrees in the same, but would have no path to licensure without having some way of grandfathering them in. Likewise, you have to have some PEs with the appropriate background that can supervise the EITs until they sit for the PE test. It's an interesting problem that will likely result in some sort of PE exam for software engineering in certain environments in the future, but in the short run it is going to give some people some headaches.
Comment: I don't think software engineering will be considered "real" engineering until there is a standard core curriculum with accreditation.  When I went to college, the first two years in the engineering curriculum were the same for all engineers, regardless of discipline (electrical, mechanical, aero, nuclear), and many courses had special engineering sections (calculus and statistics, at least).  In contrast, CS only required 200-level calculus (although many courses recommended a discrete math course).
Comment: Depends upon who you talk to in regards to if software engineering is seen as "real" engineering or not. If you are just writing business applications (mission critical or not) most developers are not going to be able to make a good case. It is when you start dealing with aeronautical, medical, or any control software, where if something goes wrong people could be injured or killed that the case for P.E. credentials tends to come into play. The problem is that the traditional route to the P.E. credentials is difficult to apply as there are a lot of people that have ...
Comment: No arguments from me, as I actually think that there should be some sort of standardization in regards to how life-safety software is written and who is responsible for ensuring it is done correctly. This is the whole purpose of the P.E. credentials in that when a P.E. applies their seal, they are saying things where done correctly and opening themselves up legally if things go wrong. Currently an equivalent doesn't exist in the software development community even though the results of software failure can be just as based as those in other contexts.


Is respect the main objective of all acts of worship?

Question: Asaalamualeikum.
I know that we must obey Allah no matter what. But i want to understand things also from a practical perspective.
What is the main reason why looking at women with skirts is seen as a bad thing in Arab culture? Is it because looking at awrah of women dressed in skirts that don't cover the body properly is seen as one of the biggest way of disrespecting women?
In European culture women who dressed with skirts and attractive clothes are seen as a symbol of respect and stature in the society.
Is the main objective of the hijab to respect women because a women that doesn't cover is considered disrespectful in Arab culture just like the disrespect of bad behaviour towards parents?
Is looking at uncovered women considered disrespectful in Arab culture just like the disrespect of showing your soles?
Is the main objective of the entire Islamic religion < to increase the respect>?
Is respect the main reason for the existence of all those prohibitions?
Is respect the main reason for the existence of all those obligations?
Is respect the main objective of all acts of worship?
Comment: Just look back to the early years of the 20th century and your statement about the European culture would be wrong. Older people still look with a certain sadness at what has mainly changed "the good manners" of early days to this "nakedness" especially in the 60's and 70's and later with smaller or bigger developpments.
Answer: As'salaamu alaikum.
The ultimate purpose for the revelation of the religion of Islam is to teach humanity what it must and should do to prepare for the coming of the Day of Judgment. Everything - and I mean EVERYTHING - is aimed at that one purpose.
"We said, 'Get down from here (Heaven). If, as is sure, there comes to you Guidance from Me, whoever follows my Guidance, on them shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve. But those who reject Faith and call My Ayah a lie, they shall be Companions of the Fire. They shall stay in it forever.'" Surat-ul-Baqarah (2), ayah 38-39.
This passage from the Qur'an is telling us that, at the time Allah expelled Adam and Eve from Heaven (the Original and True home of Humanity), He promised to show them what to do to make it back.
Now, Allah is very generous. In addition to the blessings that will be received on the Day of Judgment for having lived our lives on earth in harmony with His instructions, Allah has also made our obedience to His Will a source of many blessings for us in this world too.
You mentioned women's covering up and men averting their gaze from women, so I'll speak on that to make a point.
In the time of the Prophet Muhammad (SAWS) women were not highly esteemed and valued members of society. This was partly because they were seen as weaklings and financial liabilities, but it was also because a lot of them were living a slutty lifestyle. It is said that, in the times before Islam, the women routinely danced naked around the Kaaba and that they (the pagan Arabs - both men and women) used to indulge in public orgies. These behaviors only serve to further debase and devalue women.
Then Islam came with its rules and regulations regarding women. Women should cover themselves when they leave the house; men should not leer at women (and vice versa); men must marry a woman if he wants to have sex with her; husbands must protect and provide for the upkeep of women; men must not go out of his way to make women's home life miserable; men should treat women with gentleness as a general rule; women should not go out of their way to draw attention to themselves nor to entice men. These and other rules worked together to restore dignity to the women of Arabia. Put another way, Islam made women WORTHY of respect by the way it required them to carry themselves, and by the way it required men to treat women.
But there's more to it than that. It was not only about restoring dignity and respect to women. Allah is the Most Wise. His ordinances are designed to solve many problems at once.
Islam requires Muslims to abstain from a lot of vices (drinking alcohol, indulging in fornication and/or adultery, gambling, etc.) Because vices give us pleasure, many people have a hard time abstaining from the them.
"Allah does wish to make clear to you and to show you the ordinances of those before you. And He does wish to turn to you in mercy. And Allah is All-Knowing, All-Wise. Allah does wish to turn to you, but the wish of those who follow their lusts is that you should turn away from Him -- far, far away. ALLAH DOES WISH TO LIGHTEN YOUR DIFFICULTIES, FOR THE HUMAN BEING WAS CREATED WEAK." Surat-un-Nisaa (4), ayah 26-28.
Allah knows that it's hard for most of us to do the right thing, so He put a lot of laws in place TO MAKE IT EASIER TO BE A GOOD MUSLIM. Instead of having to wrestle with resisting temptation, just remove the temptation. It's simple mathematics.
If you take a person who likes getting drunk and put him/her in an environment where alcoholic drinks are not readily available, he/she won't have a hard time staying away from drinking. In this way, it is very easy for them to stay sober. Likewise, if we create an environment to where vices are not readily accessible it's easy from Muslims to abstain from vices and, consequently, easier for them to be good Muslims in that respect. Those are sins they won't have to answer for on the Day of Judgment.
In a nutshell, Islam is about preparing for the Day of Judgment. Allah wants us to be successful on that Day, so He has made laws that are designed to make following His Guidance very easy on us. And, of course, we get all the other (worldly) blessing's and benefits that come from obeying Him too.
I hope this answer helps your understanding.
Maa'as'salaam.
Answer: Ve aleikum salaam.

What is the main reason why looking at women with skirts is seen as a bad thing in Arab culture?

It's not something about Arab culture, it's about Islam's restrictions for a better/safer social life. Arab culture does not equal to Islam and Islam does not equal to Arab culture, they are different things.
Of course respect is an essential part of Islam but, the other reasons of hijab are safety and privacy.
Women are extremely precious and private in Islam, like jewels. You won't want to show your jewels everyone.
A woman is created very beautiful and attractive for men. Every single part of their bodies are attractive for men. A man is created with a very high level of attention, love and lust to women which women does not have same level of lust.
Leaving these attracting forces uncontrolled causes and inappropriate sexual life, sexual abuse or exploitation of women which we see in many cultures nowadays.
Unfortunately, these properties of women are opened to public in most of the world. Their beauty and attractiveness are used in commercials, porn 'industry' and every other place to please eyes and lust.
This is just keeping doors locked to stop robbery and keep privacy.
In Islam only way to join this attractive forces is marriage, which loads many responsibilities to a man, so no one can leave women when they're bored. Married couples are very transparent to each other and very private to others. So, no aspect of women is shareable with other people.
In the other hand, Islam has restrictions for men too. They are not allowed to look and enjoy other women. A woman with a short skirt or tight/transparent clothing, absolutely disregards all men who try to obey Islamic rules. And men are created very weak to keep their eyes off the women. So, this is not a respectful woman behavior.

Is the main objective of the entire Islamic religion < to increase the respect>?

Is respect the main reason for the existence of all those prohibitions?

We can say that the respect is one of the main objectives of Islam but not the only one.
Respect to other people's personal privacy is one of the most important things to keep social life safe/private and to make the world livable.

Is respect the main reason for the existence of all those obligations?

Is respect the main objective of all acts of worship?

The main reason for all those obligations and all acts of worship is to prove yourself as a obedient only to 1 single Allah who orders only good things and prove yourself as a faithful, respectful, peaceful one to win to consent and love of Allah and his heaven. Because He accepts only respectful, peaceful and faithful people to his heaven to live together forever.


How to handle deadnames?

Question: Are there any recommendations with how to store the deadname of a contact that is undergoing a gender change? i.e. They have not yet changed their legal first name and we want to communicate with them using their (corrected) first name, but legal/financial documents must use their deadname.
Comment: Interesting question! Another exemple that happens to us is people who have a legal name like "María Concepción" but colloquially say "Conchi". We must address her as Conchi but for the presentation of taxes we must do so with the legal name "María Concepción". At the moment we store this information in a couple of custom fields "Legal Name" and "Legal Lastname"
Answer: A custom field works well, but I would also consider repurposing the nickname field via Word Replacements, since you can enable QuickSearch on nickname.
With regard to legal/financial documents, I'd probably repurpose the postal and email greetings for normal communications and communications requiring the deadname.  If you're already using those, you could also create a deadname salutation using the Salutations extension.
Comment: Instead of Word Replacements you can update the display and sort name format to include `{contact.nick_name}`. At admin - customize - display preferences.
Comment: Would use use the deadname as the main contact name? I would be tempted to use nickname/legal_name, for example, as the deadname, and customize the contribution receipts to use it if it exists.
Comment: No, I'd use their current first name as their contact name.

How to handle deadnames?


What makes the Jews a nation?

Question: Are the Jews "a nation" by virtue of ethnic origin or by virtue of being chosen by God? (That is, which of these two criteria has lexical priority over the other?) What constitutes the peoplehood of Jews? What are the relevant scriptural sources for these questions?
Comment: What do you mean by a 'nation'? This seems more like a semantic discussion than anything.
Comment: Yes, it is partly a semantic question. Therefore, defining what is a nation beforehand (using any putative definition) does not work. My current research requires that I understand the Jewish answer for my question (in any which way that the Jewish tradition itself understands that question) and then reconstruct the idea of a 'nation' based on that.
Comment: It is the covenant.
Answer: The Jewish people became a nation ("עם") at Mount Sinai:

וְלָקַחְתִּי אֶתְכֶם לִי לְעָם
  - And I will take you to Me as a nation (Shemos 6:7)

See Ibn Ezra, Sforno, Ramban there that this refers to the event of the giving of the Torah.

הַסְכֵּת וּשְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל הַיּוֹם הַזֶּה נִהְיֵיתָ לְעָם לַיהֹוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ
  - Pay attention and listen, O Israel! This day, you have become a people to the Lord, your God (Devorim 27:9)
וכי אותו היום נתנה תורה לישראל והלא אותו יום סוף ארבעים שנה היה אלא ללמדך שחביבה תורה על לומדיה בכל יום ויום כיום שנתנה מהר סיני
  - But was it then on this day that the Torah was given to the Jewish people? But was this day not at the end of the forty years? Rather, it comes to teach us that each and every day the Torah is a dear to those who study it as on the day it was given from Mt. Sinai (Brochos 63b, see also Yevamos 47b)

At Mount Sinai we were chosen by G-d:

שכשיאמר ובנו בחרת יזכור מתן תורה
  - When one recites [in the paragraph preceding the Morning Shema], "You have chosen us [from among all nations and tongues]," he should remember the Giving of the Torah (Shulchan Aruch Harav OC 60:4)
Comment: Lots of "likes" and "as" and comparisons here.  But we were a nation before Har Sinai as well.  That's the whole point of Yaakov's blessings to his children, isn't it?
Comment: @avi I'm not following your logic. Why does a father's blessing to his children mean they are a nation?
Comment: the content of those blessings seem to assume that the brothers will be part of a nation.  "Dan shall judge his people As one of the tribes of Israel." "The scepter shall not depart from Judah, Nor a lawgiver from between his feet,
Until Shiloh comes" etc.
Answer: That's actually from this week's parsha Yitro.

19:1    In the third month after the Israelites left Egypt, on the first of the month, they came to the desert of Sinai.
  19:2    They had departed from Rephidim and had arrived in the Sinai Desert, camping in the wilderness. Israel camped opposite the mountain.
  19:3    Moses went up to God. God called to him from the mountain and said, 'This is what you must say to the family of Jacob and tell the Israelites:
  19:4    'You saw what I did in Egypt, carrying you on eagles' wings and bringing you to Me.
  19:5    Now if you obey Me and keep My covenant, you shall be My special treasure among all nations, even though all the world is Mine.
  19:6    You will be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation to Me.' These are the words that you must relate to the Israelites.'
  19:7    Moses came [back] and summoned the elders of the people, conveying to them all that God had said.
  19:8    All the people answered as one and said, 'All that God has spoken, we will do.'
  Moses brought the people's reply back to God.

As you can see by parsing the words of the Torah carefully, first we are recognized as the "House of Israel" or here it's translated as "The family of Israel".  We are first and foremost an Ethnic group.  Modern DNA research confirms this as well.
We are then secondly, a "Kingdom of Priests, and a Holy nation".  It is this "Kingdom of Priests" which is promised if we "obey and keep" the mitzvot.
However, the keeping of Mitzvot is our main task, along with creating a nation and country which is both Ethnic and Religious in nature.  Thus allowing for a full long history of converts into our nation.
So one can say we became a nation because of our shared Ethnicity, but we continue to be a nation because of our relationship with Gd.

What makes the Jews a nation?


Run Oracle SQL script and exit from sqlplus.exe via command prompt

Question: I would like to run an Oracle script through SQL Plus via a Windows command prompt. The script does not contain an "exit" command, but I would still like SQL Plus to exit, returning control to the command prompt on completion of the script. My goal is to do this without modifying the script. Is this possible?
Comment: Are you executing this with "sqlplus ....


First time askers modal

Question: Stipulations
The first time askers modal has two required parts: A sentence about searching for existing answers on the site, and a list of specific actions. These have to stay in place. However, we can propose changing the text before the search sentence, and text between the search sentence and the list. We can also request to drop the third item in the list. Here is a visual from the linked meta.stackexchange post:

The process
We discussed possible guidance to first askers in this meta post, and had specific proposals in this meta post. We are now putting forward the top proposal, modified to fit the exact stipulations.
The proposal
Based on this, we now propose the following modal (this proposal has the support of the current moderators). It uses the first two items in the list, and there are two blocks of Chemistry-specific guidance (before and after the sentence about search before you post):

For easier copying and pasting, and for checking this on different screen sizes and aspect ratios, here is a text version as well:
Asking a good question
Welcome to Chemistry Stack Exchange! To get you the best answer, we provide this guidance for first-time askers.
Before you post, search the site to make sure your question hasn't been answered.
Follow our policies when asking homework-like questions (questions about problem sets, exam items, etc.). Carefully write your question, using clear language, technical terms and formatting as best as you can. Give sufficient context (what you understand and where you need help). It helps us and helps you.

Summarize the problem
Provide details and any research

[Start writing]
Next steps
If you want to express community support for this proposal, you can upvote this question. If you have other feedback, you can use comments or answers.
Comment: Why can't this be applied to all sites! :3
Answer: I am curious to know why point #3 ("When appropriate, describe what you've tried") was dropped. Is it unimportant, irrelevant or redundant?
Otherwise the only point I would argue is important (as in "sweeps a problem under the carpet", or "sweeps the elephant in the room under the carpet") is the implicit interpretation of homework ("questions about problem sets, exam items, etc"). The link of course provides a broader definition of what is meant by homework. Maybe sub that sentence with "for instance from problem sets or exams" ?
Otherwise I find nothing to nitpick.
Comment: I deleted the third point because I wanted to keep it as short as possible while saying the site-specific things. I felt that the sentence "Give sufficient context (what you understand and where you need help)" was more helpful than "When appropriate, describe what you tried".

First time askers modal


Did Buddhism ever go through a period of relatively high violence?

Question: Catholicism/Christianity had the dark ages and the inquisition in which 'heretics' were prosecuted with violence.  One could claim that Islam is currently in a period of high violence.  Did Buddhism ever go through such a period?
Comment: Where Buddhists persecuted non-Buddhists or where Buddhists were persecuted? There is also the category of socially sanctioned (war, e.g. Zen at war/the Tibetan Army) and non-sanctioned violence done while incidentally being Buddhist (ethnic rioting).
Answer: Buddhism experience some very harsh periods. E.g.

The destruction of Nalanda
Decline of Buddhism in India due to many factors
Kalinga Magha's invasion
Persecution of Buddhists

Buddhism would have gone through some violent times in the Malay Peninsula also as it was predominantly Buddhist before.
Following may also be interesting:

Decline of Buddhism in Thailand
Buddhism in the World Today
Answer: Well, Buddhists countries have had violent periods just as everyone else has, but I can't really think of any major violence committed by Buddhists with a religious motivation, at least not on a large scale. In China there was a rebellion called the Red Turban Rebellion that was caused by a strange breakaway Buddhist group called the White Lotus sect and they managed to overthrow the Yuan dynasty, and one of their military leaders took the throne as the Hongwu emperor. I don't know whether or not their rebellion was motivated by religion or just opportunism though.
Answer: When Buddhist tried to spread their religion into Japan, there were countless number of battles throughout Japan between Shinto and Buddhism. Today, Buddhism is regarded as a peaceful religion but it was introduced into Japan in a violent way and today it is integrated into Japanese people's faith as if that is their belief(when foreigners tries to identify their faith) when their original faith and still is Shintoism.
Comment: Which centuries (in history) are you talking about, or ... can you cite any reference with any details of what/when/who you're talking about?
Comment: I was taught this, I can try looking for it though.
Comment: Can you? Wikipedia's [article on Shinto](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinto), for example, seems to describe the period in which Buddhism was introduced (i.e. from the "Kofun Period" through to the "Nara Period") as Buddhism and Shinto co-existing at the imperial court ... nothing there about literal battles between Shinto and Buddhism. And this description of [the Assimilation process](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinbutsu-sh%C5%ABg%C5%8D#Assimilation_process) doesn't mention any violent battles, either.
Comment: There's another, separate mention (500 years later) of "[warrior monks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C5%8Dhei)" -- but that talks about disputes between Buddhist monasteries (not disputes with Shintoism), and maybe some involvement in the ongoing feudal/inter-clan warfare
Comment: There is this Japanese source maybe you can try: http://kojiki.co/blog/%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%AC%E3%81%AE%E5%AE%97%E6%95%99%E6%88%A6%E4%BA%89%E3%80%8C%E4%BB%8F%E6%95%99vs%E7%A5%9E%E9%81%93%E3%80%8D%EF%BC%9D%E3%80%8C%E8%98%87%E6%88%91%E6%B0%8Fvs%E7%89%A9%E9%83%A8%E6%B0%8F/    I can ask the person later(if she is available to) for a better source
Comment: That does seem to be talking about the period of the earliest introduction to Japan, ending at about the time of [Prince Shōtoku](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Sh%C5%8Dtoku); and some rivalry between nobles (some of whom descended from Nigihayahi).


What iTunes menu bar?

Question: When I open iTunes I don't see anything that says "file" so I can't select "transfer" in order to transfer files from my devices (iPhone or iPad) to my iTunes library, which should be done before I can update the devices.  When I open iTunes the play, rewind, and fast forward arrows are on top.  under that I see the music, movies, and tv icons, followed by my device icon and a battery life indicator.  No "File"  So, why doesn't my iTunes menu bar have "file" for me to click on?  It's not anywhere on the iTunes page that I can see.  I've been trying to update my devices for quite a while but I always wind up with the same dilema
Comment: If youre on Windows, try tapping "Alt". That usually shows the menu bar temporarily.
Answer: Looks like that you are using iTunes for Windows. The menubar is hidden in iTunes. In order to turn on the menubar follow the instructions provided on Apple support page link given below. You can turn on and keep it temporarily or permanently.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202662

What iTunes menu bar?


How brake pad dust/residue affect braking and rim life?

Question: You know the dust that's left on the rims' groove after a while, does it have any significance in braking or rim life? When washing the wheels I just realised that the dust must be coming from brake pads but couldn't figure out whether or not I should wash the wheels more often to keep it clean. Will I make the pads and rims wear out faster if I clean more often?
Comment: I certainly see no need to clean the rims unless they're badly dirtied by mud or tar or such.  (Don't see much point in washing the wheels either.  Or any part of the bike, for that matter.)
Comment: Right, I was looking for any reason for washing the bike J Starting with the wheels, being the easiest part to remove and clean. That said, I love a clean bike as much as I hate to clean one.
Comment: Took my bike to the shop for a complete overhaul a couple of years back.  Got it back and didn't recognize it, it was so clean.  It's only now beginning to look "normal" again.
Answer: Cleaning the wheels regularly will probably help the life if the brakes, but most likely only modestly. The most important reason to clean the wheels is to remove the road dirt/grime that builds up and can wear on the pads faster, but the brake dust most likely isn't causing undue wear.
Cleaning the rims shouldn't adversely affect the life of the rim if you are doing it correctly and making sure that the rims are dry after cleaning.
Comment: The pads will wear at the same rate no matter what. It just will depend on where the dust gets deposited. If the grooves in the rim are clean, the dust will accumulate there, if they are filled with brake dust, then the dust will still be produced, but won't stay on the rim and will blow away. Either way the pads are being worn at the same rate.
Comment: I agree that dirt/grime will cause more trouble than the dust. I'm just thinking if I clean the dust, will the pads just deposit more to fill the space left by cleaning and won't that wear out the pads faster?


What to invest in with low capital?

Question: I am a recent college graduate, and have a stable job now. I do not waste my money on useless things, so now I have a decent amount saved up (around $50,000). I noticed that my money is just being saved. Is there something I should be looking to invest in?
Comment: I have to agree with both comments. First pay down any debts then invest in rental property if you have the nuts for it. BE WARNED the life of a land lord is one of insults and hard knocks. Be ready
Comment: Down payment for a duplex.  Live in one side, rent the other.  Their rent increases your 'Net Worth' by paying off the mortgage.
Comment: Pay off any debt, highest interest rate first. Set aside working capital -- several tmes your average monthly expenditures at least. Make sure you're taking advantage of your company's 401k (or equivalent), especially if they match part of the savings --that's free money -- to whatever extent you can afford to save for retirement. What you put the rest in depends on how soon you think you're going to need how much of it, but a diversified  mix of index funds is  a low-effort, low-overhead way to start and many of us never fee a need to do anything more complex than that.
Comment: It is hard to beat the simplicity and ease of regular mutual fund contributions for investing.  The returns are good and boring.  Boring helps one sleep at night.
Answer: First, of course, I agree with the comments about paying down debt. Then reserve some of those savings as an emergency fund.
After that, the default answer is to invest in an index fund as Mr Belford suggested, such as Vanguard's total stock market index fund, and leave it there forever. Even when the market tanks -- especially don't sell it when the market tanks! I might leave some cash in reserve so I can buy when the market corrects/tanks and stocks go on sale, but I'm paranoid that way. (Pick 5 random people and you'll hear 6 contradictory opinions on where the market will move soon.)
I personally would just park it in the index fund. You just graduated; you have so many things you could spend your time on (building career, socializing, learning kickboxing and sailing and rock climbing and woodworking and intramural soccer and.....), and landlording has the potential to become a time sink.
On the other hand, if you're really into landlording, why not. Just be aware it's a lot more complex than pay $50k down and collect $500 in easy profit each month. There's a lot of learning to do before jumping in.

What to invest in with low capital?


What does the segwit upgrade path look like?

Question: I've been wondering what the upgrade path for the ecosystem would look like to increase the number of segregated witness transactions. What should wallets do and what should exchanges do and in what order? When do you change to displaying bech32 addresses as a merchant? When do you start being able to send bitcoin to bech32 addresses? It seems like a chicken and egg problem but presume that's because I don't adequately understand the upgrade path.
Answer: Wallets and merchants should first upgrade to support receiving and spending from segwit outputs. The software should be capable of recognizing segwit outputs that belong to its wallet and be able to spend from them.
Then wallets and merchants should then upgrade to giving out P2SH nested segwit addresses as those do not require users to have upgraded to new wallet versions. Wallets and merchants should also provide an option to give out bech32 addresses if the user wants to use those but also warns them that not all wallets will be able to send to those addresses.
Over time, as more wallets support bech32, wallets and merchants should transition to give out bech32 addresses by default. The timeframe of when to do this is unknown as it is hard to know when all wallets support bech32.


Can governments require administrators of groups on social media platforms to buy licenses?

Question: The Kenyan government now wants administrators of WhatsApp groups and other social media platforms to pay for licenses. Is this possible with the GDPR, Facebook privacy policy, etc., as the proposed law also requires such administrators to keep all the data of the users of the platform and submit the same to the authorities when required.
Bill summary
Answer: If the Kenya legislature passes such a law, they can impose such a requirement on Kenyans who want to create such social media groups. Note that this is a license from the Kenyan government, not a copyright or trademark license. In effect, it is a tax on running a social media group, along with various regulations.
I have no idea if this bill is at all likely to pass. If it does pass, it might be hard to enforce, as it would probably require cooperation from Facebook and other social media platforms, and the companies which run those platforms are not located in Kenya, and might not cooperate.
Answer: This has absolutely nothing to do with GDPR. GDPR only applies to data held on EU residents. Kenya is not part of the EU.
Comment: Welcome to [Law]!  This would be better posted as a comment on the original question, not as a new answer, so it may be removed.  As you gain reputation on this site, you'll gain the ability to comment on questions and answer. (In the meantime, I've approved your proposed edit on the original question, but it still needs one more vote to go through.)


In the Walking Dead why don't humans turn after being cut with infected weapons?

Question: I could never understand how is that a few times I have seen someone fighting with a knife or a sword, killing zombies and then make a cut on a human which would then have no effect? Does the virus spread through blood like for example when being bitten?
Answer: Note that everyone is already infected, as explained by k0pernikus on the Sci-Fi SE:

In the comics it is established that everyone already is infected,
  though the symptoms only show after you "die" unless the brain is
  damaged too much.
This was shown with

Shane. He died by gunshot, yet turned into a zombie while laying six
    feet under without having endured any zombie-bites. After Rick learned
    of that fact, he dug him up again and killed him for good.

This also applies to the TV-show:

There was a man, who committed suicide by hanging himself in a tree,
    and he turned into a zombie as well. Andrea had him killed out of
    mercy.

The finale of the second season also confirms this:

Daryl brings up Randall, explaining that he turned without being
  bitten. "We're all infected," Rick says solemnly. "At the CDC, Jenner
  told me. Whatever it is, we all carry it." The others are furious at
  Rick for keeping Jenner's secret, but Rick insists he had no way of
  knowing if it was true.

Why walker bites are so deadly is not stated, so one can only speculate, like Jeff on the Sci-Fi SE:

Firstly, human mouths are dirty. A bite from a normal human is likely
  to become infected in many cases even today, when we have
  over-the-counter disinfectants, bandages, etc on hand in almost all
  locations. Left untreated, this alone could be fatal. This is unlikely
  today, in modern society, but not nearly as unlikely if society has
  broken down and medical treatment is unavailable. This is discussed to
  some degree in The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks, which is based
  (as is TWD) on Romero-style zombies.
Next there's the reanimation. The virus is dormant, as you say, until
  death. If the zombie has any form of saliva (which they seem to) or
  moisture in their mouth (without which verbalizing would be nearly
  impossible) their bites will almost certainly introduce the live,
  active virus into the bitten person's bloodstream.
Answer: TL;DR:  Being bitten by a zombie doesn't turn you into a zombie (it just kills you, and then something else, which you were already infected with, turns you into a zombie).  As such, neither bites nor cuts from infected weapons have anything to do with why a person becomes a zombie.
Robert Kirkman, the creator of the Walking Dead franchise, has explicitly stated that "zombieism" has nothing to do with people dying of zombie bites.

The rule is WHATEVER it is that causes the zombies, is something everyone already has. If you stub your toe, get an infection and die, you turn into a zombie, UNLESS your brain is damaged. If someone shoots you in the head and you die, you're dead. A zombie bite kills you because of infection, or blood loss, not because of the zombie "virus."
  - Originally written in the "Letter Hacks" section of an issue of the comic books, and quoted from the TWD wikia.

Being bitten kills due to either blood loss or mundane, non-zombie infection (e.g., sepsis).  You turn, regardless of how you died, because the zombie virus was already inside you.
However, in the comics, the rules may be a bit different, and we have actually seen bad guys contaminate knives and arrows before attacking the good guys.
Possible spoiler, definite NSFW language:

 You all know how this shit works. You get a bite, you get any kind of wound from these things, something from them gets in you...and you fucking die. — Negan, referring to zombies in the comics, quoted on the TWD wikia.

Wounds inflicted with these contaminated weapons do indeed prove fatal in the comics, although - again - they don't cause people to turn.  The virus that turns dead people into zombies is already in everyone, on the show and in the comics.
So your question has now changed slightly:
Why do wounds from contaminated weapons kill people in the comics, but not on the show?
The only case in which this clearly happened on the show, to the best of my recollection, was Rick cutting his hand with his knife, immediately after using it to kill a zombie.  This happened in season 6, episode 3, "Thank You". As of this writing, only a few hours (at most) have passed since that happened - according to Talking Dead, from the opening scene of the season, at the quarry, until the midseason finale, only one day has passed (the flashback episode notwithstanding).  Thus, we don't  know yet whether Rick will suffer some sort of complications from this wound, and since the next episode is the midseason finale, and will also take place during the same 24-48 as the previous episodes, we probably won't know until the midseason premiere in February.
We did see Tyreese having his arm lopped off with Michonne's katana in season 5, but in that case, he did indeed die shortly afterwards.  However, he probably died from loss of blood rather than infection (there was so much fake blood used in those scenes that the crew had to replace the carpet on set several times), and if infection was involved, it was probably caused by being bitten twice, then having a significant amount of time pass before the bitten limb was amputated.
Comment: I still do not understand one thing, if you get bitten then according to your explanation you can sanitize your wounds and survive? But then we don't see any survivors after getting bitten even when the group had medical supplies? And once again, how is a bite more deadly than a stab wound or cut, we see many times people survive after being cut?
Comment: @eYe - I didn't say you could sanitize the wounds.  You can't.  I can't explain it, because neither the comics nor the show have explained it.  I also haven't seen that many people being cut with contaminated weapons.
Answer: The Zombie virus is a two stage infection. The first stage has already infected everybody, but it is dormant or held back by an active immune system. This first stage is unable to kill a healthy human.
The second stage happens after death. When the immune system is no longer active the first stage can mutate and take over the corpse. This happens regardless of cause of death, unless the cerebellum is destroyed.
But introducing a second stage infection in a human will kick start the transformation. Being bit is almost guaranteed way of dying. Along with any other infection from the zombies mouth (less likely for the first wave of zombies), the immune system is compromised by the active zombie virus.
The simplest reason that an infected weapon won't infect a person is that the second stage virus, which is blood-borne, will not last long outside of its natural infection environment. Real viruses like the Cold (rhinoviruses) or Flu (parainfluenza) can only survive hours outside of the body, and infection rates decrease dramatically every hour. On a hard nonporous surface of a sword, your looking at few hours at best, which unlike poison, is just not viable for a weapon. It's not a good infection vector.
In comparison, snake venom also breakdowns within hours, while poison ivy oil will still be good for five years after secretion.
Comment: This is what I always assumed, but have not found any canon sources to validate the theory.


Strumming patterns and timing

Question: Here's an obvious beginner question:
If 4/4 timing means 4 beats (strums) to a bar, but a strumming pattern (for example - d du udu) contains 6 beats or strums, it seems to me that playing the strum pattern 4 times results in 24 beats or strums.  Conversely, if I only play 4 beats in a bar, I don't even complete one strum pattern.
Please explain how a strum pattern of more than four strums fits into 4/4 timing.
Answer: It's a good question!
The short answer is that not every strum is the length of one beat. Thus we can have more than four strums in four beats.
This means that your first sentence is a little misleading:

If 4/4 timing means 4 beats (strums) to a bar

The parenthesized (strums) suggests that strums = beats, when that is not always the case. 4/4 does mean 4 beats, but not necessarily 4 strums.
As you said, we're in 4/4. We know that there are two eighth notes per quarter note, so that means that there are eight eighth notes in a measure of 4/4. Your d du udu pattern can be understood like so:
d  ~  d  u  ~  u  d  u
1  &  2  &  3  &  4  &
The numbers above are a method of counting four quarters notes, and the ~ marks two spots where no strum happens. So really your strum pattern can be understood as based in eighth notes, so your six strums (plus two rests) align perfectly in a measure of 4/4, which has eight eighth notes (6 strums + 2 rests = 8!).
Comment: I think a better way to describe it is "four counts to a bar", not "four beats to a bar".
Comment: @SamDufel - but that's just what 4/4 means. 4 beats of one crotchet value each. With a fast 4/4,  I often *count* up to 8 in each bar, when reading, but the beats remain as beats.
Answer: Another explanation adding to Richard's great (as usual) answer is that you move your hand down ( in this case) four times per bar. That means you move it up four times as well. So, you could strum the strings 8 times every bar. 4 down, with 4 up in between.
However, in this particular pattern, there will be 'ghost strums', where your hand will move without actually strumming. This is a critical part. In this pattern, there are ghost strums on the & of 1 and also on beat 3. everything else being strummed.
The sting in the tail (literally) is the last up strum after beat 4. It gives very little time to change to another chord, and could benefit you by being another ghost strum. Try it. You may thank me later!
If you find this difficult, strum all 8 strums, then gradually leave out those mentioned above. DO NOT change the direction or speed of the up/down.
Comment: Ghost strums; clever!
Comment: @Richard - works well with the kids! That particular rhythm pattern used to be a nightmare before, them trying to strum down and up alternatively. It may work, but it never sounded good, and the rhythmic pattern wasn't regular enough to change to any other pattern simply. Downs and ups *ARE* different!

Strumming patterns and timing


Why is the E step in expectation maximisation algorithm called so?

Question: The E step on the EM algorithm asks us to set the value of the variational lower bound to be equal to the posterior probability of the latent variable, given the data points and parameters. Clearly we are not taking any expectations here, then why is it called the Expectation step? Am I missing something here?
Answer: In expectation step, firstly we calculate the posterior of latent variable $Z$ and then the $Q(θ | θ^{(t)})$ is defined as the expected value of the log likelihood of $θ$, with respect to the current conditional contribution of $Z$ given $X$ and the current estimates of $θ^{(t)}$. In maximization step, we update $θ$ using the argmax on $Q$, with respect to $θ$.
$$Q(θ | θ^{(t)}) = E_{Z|X,θ^{(t)}}[logL(θ;Χ,Z)]$$
To be more intuitive, think of k-means as a special case of EM, where in expectation step the $Z$ variables are defined, that is the latent variables indicating the membership in a cluster, and calculated in a hard assignment way. In maximization step the $μ$s of the clusters are updated. If you want to see the corresponding relation for $Q$ in k-means, I suggest you read the chapter 9.3.2 in C.Bishop's book: Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning.
Comment: I understood the intuition behind the E step in k means, but is it possible to extend the same intuition to the general EM algorithm?How do we visualise the posterior as an expectation in the derivation of the general EM algorithm? Or equivalently, can we show that the expectation term in the formula given by you for the E step can be expressed as the posterior?
Comment: @Manish Kausik Hari Baskar. The Q function uses the posterior calculated in E step as the sum of posteriors * $ln(X,Z|θ)$ over Z. Also, I fixed my post.


Supreme Court Nominations

Question: If the GOP loses the Senate majority in this upcoming election, will they still have enough power to block Supreme Court Justice nominee?
Comment: With or with out filibuster? Have you read Article 2, Section 2, Clause 2, of the US Constitution?
Comment: Also depends on how many seats in your hypothetical argument are lost
Comment: Welcome to Politics.SE @KAtG your answer is not specific and need improvement before we can answer it. Take the [tour of Politics.SE](http://politics.stackexchange.com/tour) first and then proceed to re-write the question.
Comment: I removed the sub-question "How is their refusal to advise and consent legal?" because it is already answered on ["Can congress be sued for prolonging the nomination of a Supreme Court Justice?"](https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/9928/can-congress-be-sued-for-prolonging-the-nomination-of-a-supreme-court-justice) so
Answer:
If the GOP lose the Senate this election, will they still have enough power to block Supreme Court Justice nominations?

No.  With a Senate majority, the Democrats can change the rules to allow a simple majority to carry a cloture vote and end a filibuster.  And they have said that if Republicans filibuster a candidate for what they consider to be insufficient justification, that they will.

How is their refusal to "advise and consent" legal?

If they could not refuse their consent, what is the point of requiring their advice and consent?  They have no requirement to give consent.  The President is required to get it.
Comment: We should change "Democrats will change the rules" to "Democrats can change the rules".  Saying what they will do is pure speculation. We won't know for certain until they do it.  It might be good to point out that changing the rules would break with a long-standing tradition, but that Democrats have previously done so for non-Suprem-Court nominations.
Comment: And there's no requirement that the advice and consent be based on the qualities of the nominee. If the Senate wants to hold up a confirmation because they want the President to reduce the US's involvement in Syria, or because a powerful Senator wants to put a new NASA facility in her state, or other political things like that, that's perfectly allowed.

Supreme Court Nominations


Where does the Play Store store the apps I am currently downloading?

Question: I was downloading Facebook from the Play Store awhile ago when the phone suddenly hanged up so I forcefully shut it down by removing the battery. Now when I re-boot Facebook is no longer in the queue and I need to download it again. Now my question is, where did the Play Store temporarily store it while it was being downloaded? I fear that there's now a rogue incomplete Facebook apk file somewhere that's using up wasted space.
Comment: chances are, it is stored in a corrupt format that the phone cannot read. Plug your phone to the PC and do a scan and repair to clear out broken files, that should take care of it.
Comment: @forums PCs do not generally have tools to clear incomplete downloads from partitions on Android devices.  `/data` isn't even accessible without ADB.
Comment: ok, I just assumed android automatically scans partitions on reboot and clear out broken files in partitions so its only the sdcard that need scanning. Big files (50mb-up) cannot be stored in phone memory, so when it is interrupted, only scan and repair may be able to reclaim the memory.
Answer: The Playstore app usually uses /data/local to temporarily store .apk files while downloading, then installs them from there, and finally removes the temporary download-file (which then went to /data/app). The /data/local directory should be readable by all processes (so no root needed to list its contents), as it is used as a kind of "temporary directory" for a lot of things (you might think of it as a "misnamed" /tmp directory).
This directory should be "cleaned up" on reboot1, so your issue might rather be a broken .apk in /data/app. A new install should solve this anyway. I further recommend using AppMonster Pro -- yes, the Pro version: on each install/update it grabs the .apk file of the installed/updated app and stores away a copy. So in cases like this, you could simply grab a previous version and install it over.
Just for completeness: There seem to be more such "temporary directories" on Android devices. Investigating a dump from a stock 2.2 Motorola Milestone 2, I e.g. also found /data/download. Different devices might use other directories additionally. But that should not affect your Playstore question.

1 I can only base this on one of my devices (Motorola Milestone 2, stock Android 2.2), where I extracted a Nandroid backup stored on my PC. There the init.rc file (which is called during the boot process) a.o. contains the following:
mkdir /data/local 0771 mot_tcmd shell
mkdir /data/local/tmp 0771 mot_tcmd shell
mkdir /data/local/12m 0771 mot_tcmd shell
mkdir /data/local/12m/batch 0771 mot_tcmd shell

Easy to see: the /data/local directory is created during the boot, which suggests it being empty at this point. Same is valid btw. for /data/download
Comment: In your opinion it's cleared out?  Do you mean in your *experience*? :P
Comment: I never felt the need to thoroughly check. Whenever I looked, it was empty. But as I never experienced trouble with an aborted install, I cannot say for sure. Not being at my computer when I wrote this, I had no chance to verify what I *thought* might be behind -- so thanks for the reminder, I'll update my answer...
Comment: On my Xperia Ray (ST18i) running ICS, I do not have access to the `/data` directory. Could the settings be different on Xperia phones or it's an ICS thing?
Comment: You don't have full access to the `/data` directory and its contents unless your device is rooted. Without root, you can access parts of it if you know where they are; you should e.g. be able to *directly* access the `/data/local` folder, but might not be able to "browse" the `/data` folder contents. So with clicky-clicky graphical interfaces, you might have a hard way getting there unless you can input the full path manually :)


When should we not use #pragma pack?

Question: In C, when we use structures, when would it be inappropriate to use #pragma pack directive..?
an addition to the question.....
Can someone please explain more on how might the accessing of unaligned data specially with a pointer fail?
Comment: A better question would be: "When would it be *appropriate* to use **#pragma pack** ?". (Answer: very rarely, and only if you know what you're doing.)
Comment: A possible reason to use pack(1) would be for data structures that should be spit directly into the net without any realignment . That for example a struct with a character and a 16bit integer really is only 3bytes long.
Comment: Using `#pragma pack` is pretty rare - and you potentially give up portability of your code as packing is system dependent.
Comment: @alk: Even then, you have to worry about byte order. It's much better just to write it as `unsigned char[3]`.
Answer: Firmware developer here.  #pragma pack is very familiar territory.  I'll explain.
In general you should not use #pragma pack.  Yes, it will make your structures smaller in memory since it eliminates all padding between struct members.  But it can make accessing those members much more expensive since the members may no longer fall along their required alignment.  For example, in ARM architectures, 4-byte ints are typically required to be 4-byte aligned, but in a packed struct they might not be.  That means the compiler needs to add extra instructions to safely access that struct member, or the developer has to access it byte-by-byte and reconstruct the int manually.  Either way it results in more code than an aligned access, so your struct ends up smaller but your accessing code potentially ends up slower and larger.
You should use #pragma pack when your structure must match an exact data layout.  This typically happens when you are writing code to match a data transport or access specification... e.g., network protocols, storage protocols, device drivers that access HW registers.  In those cases you may need #pragma pack to force your structures to match the spec-defined data layout.  This will possibly incur the same performance penalty mentioned in the previous paragraph, but may be the only way to comply with the specification.
Comment: R.. can you give a few examples of "plenty of other ways to handle this situation"?  I have also always used #pragma pack just how Andrew suggests.  Thanks.
Comment: In my experience with embedded platforms and network communication, I've found #pragma pack to be exceedingly useful. If you know how to properly order and align your structure for your given architecture (and compiler), there should not be a performance degradation.
Comment: -1 for "You should use #pragma pack". There are plenty of other ways to handle this situation which are actually valid C.
Answer: I would say that you shouldn't pack unless there's a really good reason to do so.
When pack is specified, all the padding is stripped out. Therefore the struct members could be unaligned - which could have performance consequences.
Comment: Not just performance consequences - misaligned accesses for certain data types result in an exception (i.e. crash) on many architectures.
Comment: Indeed. SSE/AVX instructions will result in exceptions. (unless you're using the misaligned load/stores)
Answer: In most architecture, the underlying access must match the alignment of the accessed data.
This mean, that if you have a 32 bit value, you can access it efficiently if it is stored at an address that is dividable by four.
If you use #pragma pack, the location of the variable can be anything, and the compiler must access the element piece by piece and combine them together. Concretely, below is the generated code to read a normal int on a V850E (a popular microcontoller in the embedded world):
LD.W        a[zero],r5

Correspondingly, the following is the code to access an int in a packed structure:
LD.BU       g+3[zero],r1
SHL         8,r1
LD.BU       g+2[zero],r6
OR          r1,r6
SHL         8,r6
LD.BU       g+1[zero],r7
OR          r6,r7
SHL         8,r7
LD.BU       g[zero],r1
OR          r7,r1

Another reason not to use packed structs is that it's not possible to dereference a pointer to a member of a packed struct, unless the architecture support unaligned pointer accesses. The reason for this is that type of the point will be a plain int pointer, and the compiler has no knowledge that it must access whatever it points to piece-by-piece.
I would strongly recommend that you don't use '#pragma pack' at all, unless it's absolutely necessary. If you have control over the struct definition, there are techniques to make sure the struct layout is padding-free. If not, a better approach would be to copy any unaligned data to a new, aligned, struct and use it in your application.
Answer: The #pragma pack directive offers a way to fulfill this requirement. This directive specifies packing alignment for structure members. The pragma takes effect at the first structure declaration after the pragma is seen. Turbo C/C++ compiler doesn't support this feature, VC++ compiler does.
Answer: You should never use #pragma pack or similar. It always results in dangerous portability problems. For instance, consider the struct:
struct foo {
    char a;
    int b;
} bar;

and call scanf("%d", &bar.b). On machines without misaligned access, this will fault (or corrupt memory!) inside scanf! This is because &bar.b is not actually a valid int * -  it's misaligned, but the code it's passed to can't know that and work around it like the compiler would if you had just written bar.b = 42;.
The only intended use for packed structures is serialization, but that also results in non-portable files. You should simply write proper serialization functions.
Comment: Just stumbled onto this thread. I didn't downvote you, but I hesitate to upvote. The reason is, you said "should never use". But I use `#pragma pack(push, 4)` quite a lot in code that I need to be portable between ARM and x64, so I disagree with the assertion that `#pragma pack` should never be used. IMHO, whether or not you should use it depends on *how* portable you need your code to be.
Comment: — It doesn't help me achieve portability per se. It's just that I am able to use it on code that I need to be portable between ARM and x64, without losing any portability. That is, it doesn't hurt portability in the cases I'm using it. For example, I use `#pragma pack(push, 4)` liberally in `structs` containing both a `uint64_t` and a `uint32_t`, so that it's always a multiple of 4 bytes instead of 8. I love `pragma pack` and I highly recommend using it in limited situations. Even on x64, it's faster to loop over a large table of 12-byte structs than 16-byte structs.
Comment: Downvoter, care to explain? I believe I answered the question and offered useful additional information on why.
Comment: @ToddLehman: I don't see how `#pragma pack` can help you achieve "portability between ARM and x64".
Comment: @ToddLehman: 4 years after he asked for clarification, and you are sure you would even swear you were not the downvoter at that time? * sarcasticaly* :D
Comment: I use `#pragma pack` in this use case: a single c# dll for all platforms that define a struct that is passed to native code. The struct in C# enforces a specific packing with attribute `StructLayout`. Without `#pragma pack` on the native side I can't ensure structs can be safely blitted on all platforms. So your argument "It always results in dangerous portability problems" is plain wrong.

When should we not use #pragma pack?


How do I find a Facebook "friend request" that I declined?

Question: How do I find an old "friend request" that I declined?
Comment: Did you try looking up your friend by his/her name and submit the friend request from your end?
Answer: In order to find Facebook friend-requests that you previously received, but chose to postpone at the time using the Not Now option, you should:

Click on the Friend Requests icon on the top menu-bar. A menu will open.
Click on See All at the bottom of that menu.

There, you will see all of your previously-received friend-requests. For each one, you can click on Confirm or Delete Request, if you wish.
Facebook does not offer a way for you to see friend-requests that you previously rejected explicitly or deleted.
Answer: If you have "following" activated, and if the person who you declined didn't unfollow you (manually), you should find that person in your followers, from where you can send a friend request.
Comment: This is a clever way to solve the issue, I found some of rejected requests there. Thank you!


Control Panel won't login on one single computer

Question: ExpressionEngine 2.5.2 site. I can login as me (super admin) and my client (non-super admin) on several browsers on my computer, and from iPad and iPhone via LTE, and my client could login on her old laptop. At the same location on her new laptop, she can't login. I stopped by and couldn't login as me or her on her computer, using IE9 or Chrome. Checked cookies, they are on, and working, but none get set on the Control Panel login page and it reloads the login page with no error. Caches cleared, cookies cleared, browser and computer restarted. I'm puzzled.
Answer: Chad, if you are in South Africa (SA?) then I strongly suspect you have an ISP (Telkom) / proxy related problem - something that has given me a few grey hairs in the past. Try setting "Require IP Address and User Agent for Login?" to off under Admin > Security and Sessions and set Control Panel Session Type and User Session Type to cookies only.
Comment: SA = Super Admin


Is there somewhere that we can view a graph of the site statistics?

Question: I could have sworn there were move visitors daily, I am wondering if there is a history graph showing how the site has been progressing in each field as displayed on the current statistics on the sidebar or area 51. I have no clue what to tag this question, sorry.
Comment: Basically, we had an increase which stayed high for quite a while during examination time, then semester got over for a lot of folks, with a drastic decrease in views/etc. That's all... It's climbing up again :)
Answer: There are site-specific stats that are available, but they are only accessible by moderators and administrators, unfortunately.
You can, however, approximate the visits by using something like Quantcast:
Comment: Nice thanks, very interesting that graph is. It has a kind of steadiness, but at the same time it does not.
Answer: The specific day-to-day analytics are not generally shared with the public, but on occasion I may post limited views of data to illustrate a larger point, like how a site is trending in its overall growth or whatever is being discussed.

Chemistry Stack Exchange traffic correlates strongly with academia usage, as you might expect. You can see this site surge through a course of strong, steady growth starting in September with the start of the new school year. As such, usage dropped off somewhat during the winter holiday break… and what you are seeing now is traffic picking up as everyone is getting back into the the routine of their studies. Nice job. Enjoy!


Are stationarity and low autocorrelation the prerequisite of regression model?

Question: As said in the title, are stationarity and low autocorrelation the prerequisite of general / linear regression model ? That is, if a time series is non-stationary or has large autocorrelation, would it be easier or harder to be predicted using regression model such as linear model and deep learning ?
Answer: For (linear) regression models, the following assumptions have to hold:

Linear Relationship
Multivariate normality including your error term with zero mean + some infinite variance following a normal distribution
No-autocorrelation
No (strong) multicollinearity
No homoscedasticity

Non-stationarity (caused by changing mean or/and variance over time) is prevailing in most level data (e.g. stock prices) - as it has a unit root or is trend stationary.
To cure your data from non-stationarity in most of the times, it is sufficient to use the relative change (percentage change - or log changes). Taking logarithmic changes, can also cure of homoscedasticity a bit.
To test for stationarity, you can use the Augmented-Dickey-Fuller-Test where the Null hypothesis states that a unit-root is present in your data set, thus you have a non-stationary variable.
Coming to your second question about time-series and deep learning. Unfortunately, I haven't found a good paper/article yet that discusses the assumptions on the main data properties that have to be satisfied to get correct statistical results. See my own post - not answered yet
However, as deep learning models make use of the same underlying statistical assumptions - e.g. probability distributions etc. or even the underlying models (see e.g. linear activation function) - I guess, in a time-series framework, the same assumptions have to hold, otherwise, there is the chance of spurious regression.
Comment: To leverage my answer and give another insight I found this [answer](https://datascience.stackexchange.com/a/24838/63096) about stationarity in an LSTM framework. I hope that helps!
Answer: You can use regression models, but for the correlation, if you are using any categorical columns one hot encoded data, you need to ensure that you are handling the dummy variable trap properly as it highly affects your model accuracy.
Refer here to know more about this:


How to sand round edges

Question: I want to make many irregular shaped cutting boards. for making smooth edges , I want to use round over bit. because of the round edges , I don't know how to sand perfectly. I just found pipe belt sander tool. are there any better way/jig for this problem ?
Comment: If you do the routing well and your router bit is properly sharp you should need to do minimal sanding, possibly no sanding at all. If you do need to sand a little light sanding by hand, with paper wrapped around a soft sanding block or a sanding sponge, or just by using paper backed with the fingers should be all that's necessary. If you need to do more sanding than that you should look at the routing step and address any problems there, not do more sanding.
Comment: @Graphus , Thank you for your quick reply , I edited the post and changed `some` to `many` , the raw material is plywood (19mm) the problem is the 1 or 2 mm in middle ( between the round overs) the hard part is the count of the boards , looking for the fast solution , But I think I should do that by hand finally
Comment: If you need to sand the unrouted portion of the edge then careful sanding with a standard sanding block can be perfectly sufficient, but if you want to ensure they remain flat and square to the faces you might want to make a simple sanding jig, see [this Answer](https://woodworking.stackexchange.com/questions/5291/cutting-dressed-pine-to-make-it-narrower/5293#5293). But getting the edges of plywood to a very nice finish can also be done with a hand plane (generally working in towards the centre from both ends to prevent chipout at the corners).
Answer: A well-executed roundover should require very little sanding. I might start at 240 grit. You can back your sandpaper with a sponge or wad of cloth so that it will conform to the edge even better than your hand will. A sharp bit and a light touch are key.
I will note, though, that rounding over plywood edges can be problematic. The layered surface of plywood doesn't always make a smooth surface for the bearing to glide over, and the alternating grain of the layers can leave you with some tearout, even creating voids at times.
Also I would think twice about using plywood for cutting boards if you mean them for food preparation. Plywood's veneer layer may be good quality wood but the layers are joined with adhesives which are not necessarily food safe. By rounding over the edges you are almost certainly exposing more of these adhesives to contact with food. With a countertop or table, you can protect with a polyeurethane finish and come away with a food safe surface, but this won't work well on a cutting board that's going to see a lot of direct knife contact.

How to sand round edges


Understanding electric heaters power

Question: I have tried a few electric heaters but they are not strong enough. My electric stove emanates more heat that those portable electric heaters. So Perhaps I am not looking for the right thing. What is the right heat measure for indoor radiant infrared/ceramic heaters (without fans)? (regardless of energy efficiency) and can they be used on normal outlets.
Comment: What does "the right heat measure" mean? Are you trying to calculate need?
Comment: Are there portable heaters without a fan? A fan will help them heat up the room, if only a little bit. Without a fan you would have to be pretty close to the heater to feel its effects.
Comment: I rather enjoy the long fanless convection style of space heater.  http://www.homedepot.com/catalog/productImages/1000/20/205e4bc0-299a-4fc2-a198-704944f0c12a_1000.jpg  Completely silent.  But once it heats up there's a pretty good flow of hot air rising off of it.
Comment: @BillyC., completely silent, if you ignore the sounds of differential thermal expansion.
Comment: In a completely silent room you can hear the thermostat click in and out when it does, but other than that, mine is pretty silent.  Nothing with a fan can even remotely compare.  If you want to reduce the noticeability of the thermostat you can keep it on low once the area is at temp.
Answer: Well stoves aren't space heaters.  Remember that.
If you think your stove heats better, its probably due to your stove having 50 AMPS at 240V available to it.  That' 12,000 watts.
Any portable cheap electric space heater that you can plug in to mere common outlets will be limited to 1800 watts, but more often 1200 or 1350.
It's about the amount of energy available
Stoves have bigger wiring, bigger outlets, and access to more power.
In contrast my home electric furnace is hard wired and can draw up to 28,800 watts with an additional 2500 via the heat pump.
What it comes down to is this...
Heaters gonna heat
Install an appropriately sized heater.  If you want more heat you should buy one with a higher wattage rating, and it will probably need to be hardwired.  Don't use your stove for heating.
Comment: There's an old physics joke (which is technically correct) that "All heaters are 100% efficient" because energy wasted as heat is still heat.
Comment: @Johnny I suspect BlueRaja-DannyPflughoeft is aware of that, but your electrical description only holds from where the power reaches your house - generating and transmitting electricity isn't very efficient.
Comment: @BlueRaja-DannyPflughoeft -  That's only technically correct for electric resistance heaters inside your house. A gas heater that's burning inefficiently is going to waste chemical energy that would have otherwise generated heat, so it's less than 100% efficient. Likewise, waste heat up the chimney is not the same as waste heat from a fan from a space heater in your room where the heat is still heating your house. A heat pump can be greater than 100% efficient (even though it's generating some waste heat outside from the heat pump)
Answer: Power (heat) is measured in watts. A heater with a higher wattage will put out more heat than a lower wattage heater. In the USA, most portable heaters will be limited to around 1500 watts due to typical 120V/15A home wiring. Permanently installed electric heaters are often higher.
Note that a single large electric stove burner could well be more than that: up to 3000 watts. This is possible due to the special wiring that is necessary for stoves (more amps) and 240V instead of 120V for most other household outlets.
Also all electric heaters have essentially 100% efficiency, so that should not be a meaningful comparison point.
Comment: That depends *an awful lot* on ambient air.  I know of a Canadian 1200sf apartment heated by a heat pump on a 20A breaker. Not magic. It exchanges into a facility-wide coolant loop heated to 90F.  If you are interchanging with -10F air, the heatpump not only has to work so hard it may fall below unity, it may also have the wrong Freon (wrong boiling point) in it.
Comment: @chrylis, apartments frequently don't have access to the ground.
Comment: In contrast, heat /pumps/ run anywhere from 150%-450% efficiency.  Put 1000 watts in, get 3500 watts of heat out (indoors).
Comment: @Harper Do Canadian installations not use ground-source heat pumps?
Comment: thanks .. I wanted to understand is why in different countries I have encountered electric heaters that are stronger than the ones in the US. It most likely had to do with the voltage being 240 instead 120.
Comment: Some countries will have weaker electric heaters too btw.  More electric power (watts) are available in a UK outlet than a US outlet.  Even though they are typically only 13 amps instead of 15, the increased voltage more than makes up for it.  3000 watts in the UK vs 1800 in the US roughly.  And that directly translates into the amount of heat coming out of most types of space heaters.

Understanding electric heaters power


Tourism Multivariate Time Series Dataset (daily observations)

Question: I am looking for a tourism related dataset (ideally air traffic) with daily observations and a reasonable number of dimensions (thinking at least 1000 observations, and over 50 dimensions), ideally it would include the year 2020 (i.e. it has the impact of COVID). Most tourism datasets aggregate monthly/annually, and if they do aggregate daily they are only one or two dimensions. Any pointers would be greatly appreciated!
Answer: You could use the anyflights R package. - The anyflights package supplies a set of functions to generate air travel data. (but not vacation inforamtion and traveller information) - similar to nycflights13 with its 337000 + x  rows in ~45 columns

Gather flights + airlines metadata from https://openflights.org/data.html
or from https://www.transtats.bts.gov/databases.asp
Answer: Found what I was looking for here EU airport traffic dataset. Daily observations for many EU airports going back to January 1 2016.


JFK Airport to a hotel in NJ, Newark with my luggage? How to get there cost effectively and easily?

Question: I am traveling to JFK New York airport from Dubai and need to go to a hotel in Clark, NJ. Please tell me what is the cost effective and easiest mode of transport as I will have my luggage with me too. I heard by taxi it's around USD 125.
Answer: ETS and All County Express have direct JFK-EWR shuttles for ~30 USD and your hotel is almost guaranteed to have a free shuttle from EWR. This is not the absolute cheapest but certainly the most convenient. It might take a long time, these are shared services. I doubt there's a shared shuttle from JFK to anything in Clark but you can try entering your hotel in either and see whether you get a shared offer, checking costs nothing.
You could save some money by taking public transit but the savings will be low, you will need two transfers and at the end might not be anywhere near close where you want to be as there is only one stop in Clark (well, two, but no bus stops at both!) and altogether it's just not nice. I will not recommend someone off a 12 hour plane ride to transit at the hellhole called Port Authority. If you want to experience it, sleep first. And you will experience it if you manage to take public transit from Clark into Manhattan, your bus is 112 and arrives to Port Authority.
Even if you end up needing to take a cab from EWR it's still a hell lot cheaper to ride ~11 miles from there. Theoretically you could take another shared shuttle from EWR to Clark but I bet you won't want to, 12 hours on a plane, two hours to get to EWR...
Unasked advice: unless you are in Clark, NJ because it's your destination (but why on earth would it be??) or you are going to fly out from EWR the next day, pick a hotel somewhere else. If you are flying from EWR make sure you have a hotel that provides a shuttle to EWR because otherwise you are pretty much stuck. Public transit in Jersey is close to non-existent. As with many other places in the USA, you need a car.


Should the taxonomy of forms and publications search match the site IA?

Question: We have a search for forms and publications feature on a wide range of subjects on a government site for our users. We're trying to develop a filter option that will narrow the results based on a subject (e.g. Electrical). The content producers of the forms and publications have proposed subjects that matches the information architecture of the site pages. As a UX/IA designer, this doesn't seem the right approach given the changing nature of the site architecture, and some proposed subjects would be too-specific, resulting in few results. I need to provide qualified reasons to reject their proposed taxonomy. Are there resources from studies that could help?
Answer: Sometimes you don't need 'qualified' research to justify a decision that is based on 'common sense' logic.
If as you say, the filter is going to be based on the IA of the site pages and the site architecture will change with some level of frequency, then the question to be asked is whether the filter option will need to be adjusted to consistently match this or not. If not then the original rationale for the design of the filter is then invalid (or needs to be reconsidered).
In terms of the proposed subjects being too-specific and resulting in few results, that's not necessarily a bad thing to reduce the amount of results returned, but there are other considerations such as whether the same IA would result in users not being able to locate certain information on the site as well.
So I think it is worth calling out the decisions being made and the rationale/logic behind it. In my opinion it feels contradictory and is likely to cause issues down the track when you have to make other decisions.


How can I rename the file I'm editing?

Question: Is it possible to rename the file I'm editing from within Vim? Currently what I do is exit Vim, rename the file and open from Vim again.
Comment: Related: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1205286/renaming-the-current-file-in-vim
Comment: @MigueldeVal-Borro Just use [vim-eunuch](https://github.com/tpope/vim-eunuch). It also works for Neovim.
Comment: I am interested to do this in neovim
Answer: You could save the file under a different name using :w newname. But this operation won't remove the old file and the 'old' file stays in your buffer, so any changes will be applied to your 'old' file.
:saveas saves your new file and opens it in a new buffer. But it doesn't delete the old file.
I use tpope/vim-eunuch to :Move files.

:Move: Rename a buffer and the file on disk simultaneously.
Comment: One downside of `:w` or `:saveas` is that it will lose the execute permission if you were editing a script. `netrw` Rename will keep the permissions.
Comment: Is `:Move` effetively the same as `:!mv {src} {dest}`, and then running `:e {src}`, where {src} is the name of the old buffer which consequently is destroyed seeing as you will get `E211: File {src} no longer available, and where {dest} is the name of the new buffer?
Comment: If most of the time all you do is rename files, then sure, VS Code perhaps does a better job. But if most of the time you edit code or text, then you might want to check the VIM motions, commands, and other features that beat VS Code and potentially all other editors out there hands down. Watch this video to get an idea of what I mean: https://youtu.be/X6AR2RMB5tE
Answer: You could drop to Netrw and rename the file there.
If the file you're editing is in the current directory, then do:
:edit .

Navigate to the file, press R, and change the name.
Press Enter to edit the file.
There's a caveat though: the original buffer remains in the list of buffers.
If you switch to it, it's empty.
If the file you're editing is in a different directory, you can change to the file's directory with:
:cd %:p:h

If you don't want to change the directory for the entire Vim session but only for the current buffer, then you can do instead:
:lcd %:p:h

Comment: Typing straight `:edit %:p:h` also seems to work.
Comment: `:E` will also open netrw
Comment: I use `:ex` which expands to `:Explore`.
Comment: This should be the accepted answer.
Answer: I've been using the Rename2 plugin for this for years. It renames both the current buffer, and the file on disk:
:Rename {newname}

EDIT: I found this a .vimrc file on github:
function! RenameFile()
    let old_name = expand('%')
    let new_name = input('New file name: ', expand('%'), 'file')
    if new_name != '' && new_name != old_name
        exec ':saveas ' . new_name
        exec ':silent !rm ' . old_name
        redraw!
    endif
endfunction
map <leader>n :call RenameFile()<cr>

Comment: If those who use this snippet need to delete the buffer with the old file, you can add `exec ':bd ' . old_file` after the `silent !rm …` line
Answer: The best way is to use :Move, as OrangTux said. For completeness, you can also perform terminal commands in vi editors using a bang (!) in command mode.
:!mv {current_file} {new_name}
:e {new_name}

However, this method doesn't remove the old buffer from your buffer list.
Answer: An easy way to rename file in Vim is :Explore command. Navigate to file which you want to rename type R command than rename file
Answer: You can just shell command from vim. A bit dirty since the old buffer is still in place but with NerdTree plugin it's good enough for me:
!mv <current path> <new path>

Comment: Welcome to [vi.se]!

How can I rename the file I'm editing?


Mesh box? Lattice box? barred box etc.? Which one(s) of these to use for a flashcard?

Question: I'd like to create a flashcard for that thing below. But the longer I try to do so, the more confused I get. None of the words suggested for this box (mesh box, lattice box, barred box, skeleton container, iron-barred box) appears in a monolingual dictionary on the web (I got the English terms from ENG-GER dictionaries and tried to look them up via OneLook Dictionary search). There is no entry in the English version of Wikipedia for this type of box (strangely, only the German Wikipedia seems to have one, "Gitterbox"). But which of these words should I know as a learner? And what would be a good definition for this box?

Comment: The companies that sell containers of that nature call them "wire mesh containers".  If you Google that term, you will find plenty of examples.  Smaller ones are called "wire mesh bins".
Comment: I think it's a framebox or a container of some sort. At least in Russia one would call it a container. If it's used in science then it could be a specimen container. It may be a cargo container.
Comment: I've also heard the bame "cargo cell"... And as far as I remember it looked something like this only it had a closed top.
Comment: Could you add a link to the item, or at least the German word for it? And what is it used for?
Comment: @user3169 Actually, I had to use these boxes twice at work: the frist time for temporarily storing folders inside them, the second time for taking out television sets that had to be recycled. So they are used for a lot of different things. As I had written in my post, there is a German Wikipedia article for it: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gitterbox
Comment: @fixer1234 The term "wire mesh container" seems indeed to be widespread. I've also seen "wire mesh crate" a lot, but mostly in offers hosted on alibaba.com, not that much on sites from the English-speaking world. "Wire mesh container", however, seems slightly more "international".
Comment: Based on the Wikipedia article, it seems to be a standardized container for use with automated handling and storage equipment. Probably you need to ask an industrial engineer about what such a container would be called in English. But I think you were using it for storage in general, not the intended usage. So maybe "storage container" is enough.
Answer: Huh.  I've never thought about what this might be called.  I would simply describe it an "open box with wire-mesh sides".  It's possible the industry that uses something like this has a more specific jargon for it which new employees have to learn, but the average English speaker wouldn't know.
I guess the lesson is that not all objects or concepts have an exact name in English, even if they do in German.  Like these, for example.
Comment: What about "wire mesh crate"?
Comment: @ColleenV  From the picture I can't tell what this thing is used for, but I think "crate" is fine since it looks like it's used to hold *stuff*.  If it's a box that moves *people* around then you wouldn't say "crate".
Comment: The number on that particular picture makes me think it's used for some sort of automated goods handling. I assume the people equivalent would be a "basket elevator", so I did a quick image search for `wire basket crate` and it returned some interesting results, but not really an industrial weight basket like that one.


Icon for "More", like more results

Question: I need an intuitive icon which represents "more" ITEMS (or "more items like this") (or other "similar" items to this item). I have space constraints on the screen, so I can't exactly use a label.
Comment: Are you planning to use the icon at end of paragraphs of text, list of items, ... Different uses will require different icons.
Comment: hey emil, i've updated the question to better reflect my needs.
Answer: You could combine the ellipsis and a right arrow as follows - where the arrow is similarly styled to the ellipsis - same height lines as dot diameter, same curvature, same colour, same spacing.

larger version:

[edit] After Philip's comment below, I added the downward versions just to compare and contrast...
Comment: This is a neat idea, but I'd go for it only if the content will be displayed in the direction where the arrow is pointing. in other words, it could work fine if the content area expands horizontally, but the metaphor would be lost if the content expands vertically (as the vertically aligned dots would no longer look like an ellipsis)
Comment: They're not just very clear, but also very good looking!
Comment: @Philip yep - agreed on that
Answer: As far as I know, the "icon" that's used a lot for this purpose is a simple ellipsis (...), probably as a contraction of "More..." or "Show more..."
Ex.:

Also popular are all sorts of arrows pointing in the direction where the additional content will be loaded.
Ex.:

Plus signs are also occasionally used.
Overall, it seems to depend largely on context. If the content is loaded below the button, an arrow pointing in that direction may be appropriate.
If the loaded content is "more of the same," an ellipsis may be a logical indicator, but if it's somthing that extends the currently visible information, but is not necessarily similar in nature, a plus may be more appropriate.
Comment: I would still suggest the Ellipsis (...), you can style it a little to make it look like a button. I remember reading a research paper on this topic but can't for the life of me recall the paper. IIRC most users simply preferred the word "more" and icons always took a bit of learning. Don't quote me as I can't find the article.
Comment: Thanks for your input philip. To provide you with better context, in my app, I show the user an image. They can click an icon ('more'), to view similar images to this. '+' is a good candidate, but I'm not sure if it users will perceive it as 'more', specially if there are no labels.
Comment: @raunak, how about a triangle facing right. Users are familiar with the convention from picture sliders.
Comment: I already use that for loading the next image.
Answer:
This is my approach, ellipsis with some background color.
Answer: I would actually use multiple offset versions of whatever you have more of, like this:

So for the example above, if you have a list of pages/documents, I would use something like this as an indicator of "more."

Icon for "More", like more results