Do autopilots have an 'activate' switch/button, in addition to 'on' and 'off'?

Question: Say cruising at FL310 and on a 270 heading with autopilot on. If pilot decides to descend to say, FL180 on a 180 heading, is simply changing the altitude and heading numbers on the autopilot control panel enough for the autopilot to get going with the new commands, or after changing the altitude and heading request, there is some sort of button that commands the autopilot to execute the new commands? And if so, where is that switch (or button) and what is it called?
Comment: I think "commit" is a better word than "activate" for what you describe
Answer: It is complicated (-;
First thing first, autopilot systems come with a variety of forms and complexity. The autopilot on a Cessna 172 or Piper Cherokee is going to be very different than the one on a Airbus or Boeing. Different manufacturer will also design their autopilot interface differently; while there are certainly similarities, there is no set standard in the aviation industry for autopilot interface and behavior.

(...) is simply changing the altitude and heading numbers, or (...)
  there is some sort of button that commands the autopilot to execute
  the new commands?

Both.

Here I will discuss using the Boeing 777 autopilot, which I am familiar with. On the autopilot panel, there is a heading window, which displays a 3-digit number. Directly below the window is a knob, turning the knob counterclockwise will decrease the heading, while turning clockwise will increase it. The knob can also be pushed.

The heading section of the Model Control Panel on a Boeing 777. The knob is a 5-in-1 control: the outer ring can be rotated, the knob can be rotated, and the center of the knob is a push button.
If the autopilot is in "HDL SEL" mode, it will fly the heading specified in the window. In this mode, if the pilot rotates the knob to adjust the heading, the new heading will take effect immediately. However, if it is in "HDL HOLD" mode, turning the knob will adjust the number, but it will have no effect - the plane will hold the current heading. Pushing the knob will change the mode from "HDL HOLD" to "HDL SEL", and the plane will then turn towards the selected heading.
A similar logic exists when climbing using the "VNAV" mode. Let's say the plane is initially cleared to 5000 feet after takeoff. The pilot set the altitude window to 5000 prior to the takeoff roll. Once autopilot is engaged, it will climb to 5000 feet, after which it will hold that altitude. At any point, the altitude knob can be rotated to set a new altitude, say 7000 feet, however it will not take effect - the plane will still climb to 5000 feet, then stop the climb there. To climb to a higher altitude, the pilots have to push the knob, after which the plane will initiate a new climb from 5000 feet to 7000 feet. This is because ATC often clear planes to "step climb", i.e. climbing then holding at certain altitudes until reaching the cruise altitude. The autopilot function is designed around that.

where is that switch (or button)?

It depends on the model. Other manufacturers call them differently, but the logic is similar. Also, advanced autopilots have a lot of functions; the ones I discussed are just selected examples about heading and altitude selections. Pilots can also "arm" an autopilot mode, i.e. mark it so that it will become engaged when certain conditions meet. The specifics of that are too long to describe in this post.
Like I said, it gets complicated.
Comment: No wonder so many incident reports on AvHerald involve autopilots in a mode other than what the pilot thought they were in.
Comment: *"At any point, the altitude knob can be rotated to set a new altitude"* Does this "any point" include *during the initial climb*? Say, pilot initiates a climb to 5000 ft, and before reaching 5000 ft, increases the target altitude to 7000 ft. In such a scenario, does the plane still level off at 5000 ft or does it continue climbing to 7000 ft without pausing at 5000 ft?
Comment: @MichaelKjörling it depends on when VNAV is engaged. If the altitude is changed before VNAV is active, the plane will fly straight to 7000 ft. If it is changed after VNAV is active, the plane will level at 5000 ft. If VNAV is engaged during the initial climb (which is usually the case), then the answer to your question is "it will level at 5000 ft".
Answer: The terms you are looking for are TARGET, ARM, ACTIVE, CAPTURE, and HOLD.
The pilot selects FL 180, that's a new TARGET. Then they choose one of the different ways to descend*, and they ARM that one. If the A/P is allowed to**, the armed mode becomes ACTIVE. As the plane is about to reach FL 180, the A/P will change to CAPTURE, once the FL is captured, the A/P will HOLD the new flight level.
Simpler autopilots do not have all those features, and require more button pressing. Shown below is the mode control panel (MCP) for the different A/P and flight director functions on the Boeing 787, it is found on the glareshield, right above the main screens in front of the crew.

* The various ways to descend:

Maintain a vertical speed (V/S)
Maintain a forward speed with the thrust idle (FLCH or OPEN)
Maintain a flight-path angle (FPA)
Follow a varying programmed vertical path / profile (VNAV or PROF)

There are fewer modes to turn or follow a lateral path. And an approach or ILS mode combines both vertical and lateral guidance.
** The A/P may not be allowed to select a heading when the ILS is captured, for example, so turning the A/P OFF then ON is needed to reset it to allow a mode change.
Answer: It varies between AFCS units, but in general most have different steering and vertical selection modes.  Steering modes in general allow the AFCS to track either a desired heading or a course generated by terrestrial or GPS navaids.  Vertical selection modes in general allow the pilot to enter an desired altitude and various types of climb methods ie constant vertical speeds, constant airspeed climbs, vertical descent planning, etc.
In the scenario you just mentioned a pilot might set his AFCS to HDG mode, then select 180 on your heading bug knob.  ALT mode would the be selected, dial in 18000 on your altitude bug, then select V/S mode and select -1000 to set a descent rate.  The autopilot can then fly the aircraft on a heading of 180°, and descend the aircraft from FL310 to FL180 at 1000 feet/min.
Answer: Heading change is much less critical than climb or descent. So most of the autopilots will start turn immidiatly. Climb or descent is more complex. You can run out speed and stall in climb, over speed in descent or hit the ground. Also all turnings are done with preset bank. For climb or descent autopilot has to know how to do that. Keep vertical speed or forward speed or specific angle. So more buttons to push. Also this also helps with additional monitoring of the selected altitude. Pilots has to monitor this more actively because you can soon end at the wrong speed. In turn you can loose several knots but it most cases no any problems at all. Otherwise if you set wrong vertical speed or forget to add throttle in climb you can stall very soon.


How Drive synchronization works when we share a file?

Question: I would ask you a question about the design of Google Drive in terms of synchronization of files among users.
Let me describe a simple scenario with the usual Alice (A) and Bob (B) personas.

A creates a gdoc and start writing inside it. Then, she decides to share this file with B, giving him a writing permission.
B receives the notification and finds the file under "Shared with me". Therefore, he can start editing the file.

Thus, the question is: the B's file is only a copy on B's Drive space of the A's file or it is a simple pointer? In other words, a synchronization process is implemented between A and B documents but they are physical files or the B's file is a pointer so B simply writes in the A's copy?
Answer: They behave as though it's a pointer.    No one outside of Google knows if they use separate physical files "under the hood" to achieve this.


Openlayers plugin not displaying any source

Question: I was previously using QGIS 2.2 and using the openlayers plugin to display google streetmaps on an area. Reopening the project several months later I found that this layer no longer displays. In fact it displays as blank and white. If the google streetmaps is the top layer it blanks out all the layers below it. None of the other sources on openlayers plugin displays either. Usually, when selected, the map appears with a grid with little question marks in the middle of each square. I uninstalled 2.2 and installed 2.4, 2.6 and 2.8 in sequence, at each stage removing traces of the previous installation. However I can never get anything on the openlayers plugin to appear on any map. I am running windows 7
Answer: Make sure you're using the plugin version that is compatible with your QGIS version. You can intall the latest plugin version via the toolbar:
Plugins > Manage and Install Plugins.
Note that using the latest version of a plugin may no longer work with older versions of QGIS.
There is a good answer here by @Thomas which allows you to save different plugin versions for their specific QGIS version.
Answer: Just use quickmapservices plugin. This is QGIS featured plugin.


What are the Benefits of Using Algebraic Spaces over Schemes?

Question: I have heard that algebraic spaces have better formal properties than schemes. What are these benefits? Also, is there a natural way to go straight from affine schemes to algebraic spaces bypassing the locally ringed space construction?
Comment: "They possess better formal properties than schemes, but are still geometric enough to allow us to import many definitions and properties from scheme theory." http://www.tolypreygel.com/notes/note_stacks.pdf
Answer: The better formal property is that algebraic spaces are closed under taking quotients of etale equivalence relations (in practice typically coming from group actions), while schemes are not.
One can define then directly from affines as done in Toën A master course in algebraic stacks, Cours N° 2 (in French; this source gives also a nice impression of the difference/similarity of schemes and alg. spaces and shows how they are exactly designed to support more quotients)
Comment: Could you update the broken link?
Comment: @Arrow, usually you can do it using http://web.archive.org.
Answer: Here is one intuitive way to think about it:

A scheme is something which is Zariski-locally affine,  whereas an algebraic space is something which is etale-locally affine.

One way to make this precise: a scheme is the coequalizer of a Zariski-open equivalence relation, whereas an algebraic space is the coequalizer of an etale equivalence relation.
Another way is to say that, as a functor on rings, a scheme has a Zariski-open covering by affine functors, whereas an algebraic space has an etale covering by affine functors (thus bypassing reference to locally ringed spaces, regarding your second question).
Why do we care?  A priori, if you want to work in the etale topology anyway, why not fix the definition of scheme to say "etale-locally affine" instead of "Zariski-locally affine".  This is just one motivation for studying algebraic spaces, which you can read more about in Laumon, Moret-Bailly Champs algébriques.
(Edit: For "a fortiori" reasons to study algebraic spaces, I'll just say read the other answers :)
Comment: Pity I could not see this before. It raises a natural question, let me still try to ask it here, if there will be no response maybe I will make a question. Are there any sensible notions produced if one plays this game with other topologies?
Answer: One of them was answered in response to question 1558 on when quotients of schemes by free group actions exist. When the group is finite, they exist as algebraic spaces. But, there are examples where they do not exist as schemes. So, being closed under quotients by free finite group actions is certainly nice.
I know the second part of your question is explained in the first couple of sections of Champs algebriques. They define a space as a covariant functor from algebras to sets that satisfies descent. Then, an algebraic space is such a functor that has an etale cover by the functors associated to some affine schemes. I don't really remember the details here.
Comment: Actually, every post (question or answer) is numbered, and the numbers are consecutive. For example, this answer is number 3201 (you can get this by clicking the "link" link at the bottom of the answer and looking in the URL). If you try the URL http://mathoverflow.net/questions/3201, you'll be brought directly to this answer.
Comment: Are questions numbered? That's a fine feature, but where do the numbers show?
Comment: The number 1558 appears in the URL of the question.  But note that questions aren't necessarily numbered consecutively (but increasingly).  These numbers probably are some internal id.
Comment: Eek, "free group actions" is a scary phrase, due to the two ways of parenthesising it (though here the context makes clear what is meant).
Answer: In addition to being closed under taking quotients by etale equivalence relations, algebraic spaces are also closed under taking quotients by arbitrary finite group actions (need not be free, so the induced relation need not be etale). I only realized this recently, but I think the following argument is correct.
Suppose G is a finite group acting on an algebraic space X. Then the stack quotient [X/G] is a Deligne-Mumford stack (it has an etale cover by X). By the Keel-Mori theorem, DM stacks have coarse spaces. Let [X/G]→Y be the coarse space of [X/G]. Then Y is an algebraic space and the map [X/G]→Y is universal for maps from [X/G] to algebraic spaces. This means that Y is a categorical quotient of X by G. In fact, I think Y might actually be a geometric quotient (or at least a good quotient) of X by G, but I haven't unraveled all the definitions yet.
Comment: You need to assume that [X/G] has finite inertia for the Keel-Mori theorem to apply. This happens exactly when every stabilizer X^g is a closed subscheme. An important case is when X is separated.


What are these things on my apple tree?

Question: I have recently bought an orchard. And one of my trees has these things on its bark. Is these some kind of infection? is it important and what should I do about it?
Answer: They are called crown galls or burls. The cause is bacteria which have invaded the tree structure, and cause genetic modifications to the tree. The result is that the infected parts of the tree grow in a disorganized way.
They may be harmless, or they may kill the tree completely, depending what parts become infected.
There is no known cure. If you remove the tree and destroy it, the bacteria will remain in the soil for a few years, so don't plant another tree straight away.
Comment: Thanks.  I have about 1 hundred trees and just one of them has this infection (I will check again). and you see that this tree has three trunks. only one of them has this infection . Should I remove this tree completely?
Comment: If you just bought this orchard (as in another question) I would wait and see how well it grows. If it only affects where branches have been pruned off, it might not make any difference to the tree except for that it looks ugly. If the infected trunk isn't growing at all, then get rid of it.
Comment: Thanks for your help. To me there is no difference between this trunk and other apple trees in garden. Flower buds and branches all look healthy. So I would leave It for now.
Comment: There are some varieties that naturally tend to produce these ('Northern Spy', 'Burrknot', 'Arbroath Oslin' and 'Sweet Bough'). They used to be very popular in rural areas as they strike readily from cuttings (the burrs develop roots underground).
Comment: Note that a number of the Malling series of rootstocks readily produce burrs. The image appears to show the three or more stems emerging from the ground. It is likely that some of these are suckers from the rootstock, which may explain the presence of the burrs. Adding weight to this theory is the fact that the part of the tree in the background appears to have a subtly different bark colour - this may be the original tree. Look to see if you can find the graft union, usually around 150mm above the ground level.

What are these things on my apple tree?


Android CONTENT TYPE - Is vnd.android.cursor.dir some standard constant defined by android?

Question: I have very basic understanding problem of Content types.
I went through lot of examples and text explaining the above term, but still have some basic understanding problem. Can some clarify me please.
In the android notepad example, and many others, it is mentioned vnd.android.cursor.dir/ resolves to a list of items in a directory and vnd.android.cursor.item/ refers to specific item in a directory.
Is this vnd.android.cursor.dir some standard constant defined by android. Where did this come from?, or can i change it like
vn.com.android.myexample.dir/

How is this even resolved and what is its purpose, why not use the full CONTENT_URI?
Sorry, i'm totally lost, and don't understand this.
Comment: There is also a `String` constant for both base types: [`ContentResolver#CURSOR_DIR_BASE_TYPE`](http://developer.android.com/reference/android/content/ContentResolver.html#CURSOR_DIR_BASE_TYPE) [`ContentResolver#CURSOR_ITEM_BASE_TYPE`](http://developer.android.com/reference/android/content/ContentResolver.html#CURSOR_ITEM_BASE_TYPE)
Answer: Documentation: https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/providers/content-provider-basics#MIMETypeReference
The MIME types returned by ContentProvider.getType have two distinct parts:
type/subType

The type portion indicates the well known type that is returned for a given URI by the ContentProvider, as the query methods can only return Cursors the type should always be:

vnd.android.cursor.dir for when you expect the Cursor to contain
0 through infinity items

or

vnd.android.cursor.item for when you expect the Cursor to contain
1 item

The subType portion can be either a well known subtype or something unique to your application.
So when using a ContentProvider you can customize the second subType portion of the MIME type, but not the first portion. e.g a valid MIME type for your apps ContentProvider could be:
vnd.android.cursor.dir/vnd.myexample.whatever

The MIME type returned from a ContentProvider can be used by an Intent to determine which activity to launch to handle the data retrieved from a given URI.
Comment: When searching for a contact using a phone number as the query (as shown here: http://stackoverflow.com/a/3712739/878126 ) , you can get a cursor with multiple results. Will it be correct to use a specific mimetype there, if I wish to update the contact's photo, for example? If so, what is the needed mimetype?
Answer:
Where did this come from?, or can I change it like vn.com.android.myexample.dir/

No, because "vnd" stands for vendor in MIME Registration trees, android in this case.


What's the difference between a stream and a queue?

Question: What's the difference between a stream and a queue?  They both have the concept of an ordered set of elements, but tend to have different implementations and a different vocabulary of 'insert'/'extract' (streams) vs. 'enqueue'/'dequeue' (queue).  Are these interchangable?  Do they suggest different concepts or patterns?  If so, what are the differences?
Comment: Apparently "stream" refers to different things in different contexts. There are differences in characteristics between a character stream vs. Windows [IStream interface in COM](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa380034(v=vs.85).aspx) vs. an event stream in architecture speak. Can you clarify?
Comment: A woodsman gathers some water from a stream, but they do not consume *all* the water. So there is a sense of gathering an amount from a stream without entirely consuming it. On the other hand, items in a queue may be exhausted.
Answer: A stream is not really a data structure as such (conceptually), but is a sequence of digitally encoded coherent signals (packets of data or data packets) used to transmit or receive information".  So basically a sequence of data.
A queue is a simple FIFO mechanism allowing you to add items to the back of the queue or take from the front.
Streams always have a source, e.g. a file, network location, etc.  A Queue does not inherently contain any data.
So essentially they are quite different in concept and as Mason pointed out, they are used differently.
Comment: @JBRWilkinson That's not the case. In Scheme, `(stream)` returns an empty stream. Also, this answer is wrong, a stream is a data structure, streams may not have a source, and streams do not inherently contain any data, they may be nil or null or the empty list. See [SRFI-41](http://srfi.schemers.org/srfi-41/srfi-41.html) for more info.
Comment: There's actually a data structure called "stream", with (effectively) a list of data to consume, with a producer function at its tail, callable if you need more elements.
Comment: The Unix 'yes' command looks like a stream but has no particular data source.
Comment: @JBRWilkinson:  Run without an argument, the data source for `yes(1)` is the embedded default string.  Run with an argument, it's whatever provided the argument.
Comment: Yes, you're right - all data has to come from somewhere. Perhaps the actual point here is that a queue could be empty and a stream, by definition, is usually not?
Comment: @JBRWilkinson:  I suppose you could open a stream, send nothing through it and then close it.
Comment: @JBRWilkinson Sorry to poke you on this old question, somebody else answered it which bumped it to the top.
Answer: If we think more visually about how the words are commonly used, we can avoid the clutter of specific uses by particular languages and implementations, so that these terms can actually mean something:

A queue of people waits in line and are served one by one. More people join the queue at the tail. Everyone waits as service proceeds and the service time is expected to vary. You can speak of how many people are served in total.
A stream of people, for example leaving a building through a door, are not served one by one, they just pass the exit point at a more-or-less steady rate. Delays are not expected and not well tolerated. You can speak of a rate of people: one per second.

That is the intention of these terms. They are metaphors. (like everything else) (Shhh! you'll ruin the story!)
Answer: In my experience, a stream is a sequence of bytes that are produced/consumed at rate often determined by data within the stream. For example, an MPEG data stream will have frame headers which describe what the next sequence of bytes does and how many need to be consumed. Binary serialisation of a document would be similar. It is not always self-describing : writing to STDOUT can be done in a stream-wise manner but it may be humanly-readable/non-parseable data.
Conversely, a queue is usually of a well-known type of object (or interface-supporting objects) that are consumed in their entirety. An example might be a queue of database jobs that are processed by a number of database workers.
Answer: A difference between a stream and a queue is the way data rate is controlled:

in a queue, the sender adapts to the speed of the reader. The sender decides what to do if the queue is full: wait for availability of queue or throw data away.
in a stream, the reader adapts to the speed of the sender, The reader decides what to do if new data arrives before old one has been consumed.

With that perspective, character streams such as Unix pipes would not qualify as streams but as queues.
Comment: The intention of a character stream is that the data is consumed more-or-less as it is produced: it is a flow of data rather than a means of holding it. We know that this is not perfect in practice, but from a metaphorical standpoint it is expected to be true: the reader can process the stream as fast as it comes in.
Comment: In adaptive video streaming, the server will adjust to a lower fidelity stream because the client isn't keeping up.
Comment: @JBRWilkinson - In [adaptative video streaming](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_bitrate_streaming), the server just sends multiple variants of a stream at different bit rates. This is still the responsibility of the client to choose among these streams.
Comment: Yeah, HTTP streaming does that. I meant video calling which is point-to-point and the data isn't pre-encoded. My bad - I should've been explicit.
Answer: The basic difference is in the way they're used.  In a stream, you usually only use one side of the operation: you open a stream to read, or write, but not both.  Whereas with a queue, you're putting items on and taking them off.
Also, queues are very strict about the order in which you put things on and take them off, while streams often (but not always) support a Seek operation, especially if you're reading from them.
Comment: [`FileStream`](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/y0bs3w9t.aspx) can be opened in [`ReadWrite`](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/4z36sx0f.aspx) mode.
Comment: ..and priority queues gives options about order
Answer: A queue is a higher level concept than a stream. The base elements of a queue is a message/object, which is a coherent (usually typed) data structure that can be interpreted by the consumer on its own. On the other hand, at the base of a stream, there is (usually fixed-size) bits/bytes/characters, which, on its own, is usually meaningless to the application. A sequence of these characters may compose a "message", but a stream API leaves it to the application to split the sequence of characters into sensible chunks.
A Stream API usually also allows partial reads and writes, if the stream buffers are full and the other side isn't reading/writing; applications that handles queues usually expects the queue to handle these internally.
A queue may be implemented on top of a stream, this is done by implementing message framing. For example, TCP provides a stream interface, HTTP is built on top of TCP, and adds message framing using Content-Length/chunked transfer encoding. Users of an HTTP Connection API are abstracted from dealing with splitting HTTP connection stream to HTTP requests.
On the other hand, usually, it makes less sense to implement a stream API on top of a queue, as the handling of message framing adds unnecessary overhead.
Comment: It's worth to add that API for queue generally produces/consumes a single element at a time, while streaming API generally produces/consumes multiple "words" at a time. Though I agree, that the defining characteristic is that a queue high level and structured, while a stream is low level and structure-less.
Answer: In functional programming languages (e.g. Scala), and maybe other languages as well, streams are really more like functional lists and they are queues. I should note, however, queues can actually be implemented using a pair of lists. In Scala and probably elsewhere, a Stream is just a lazy List - more specifically, the tail of the list is a lazy val.
Functional streams can share some similarity with queues, as opposed to, lists, in that you can use them in a way that you don't keep a reference to the head of the stream - but you have to be careful: https://stackoverflow.com/a/5159356/3096687. This is somewhat analogous to a dequeue call to a queue (although in the case of a stream, you do so implicitly: http://daily-scala.blogspot.com/2010/01/streams-2-stream-construction.html).
Answer: Stream is a concept /framework to produce and consume infinite sequence of data serially or parallel or bulk.
Que is a data structure through which stream can be implemented. just like list or seq through which stream can be implemented.


"Post-Postdoc" Independent Researcher with Office in University?

Question: I knew a foreigner in the astronomy department at the university here who was a "post-postdoc" independent researcher. How could she have her own office in the astronomy department as an independent researcher?
Comment: Surely the allocation of office space is at the discretion of the department/faculty, rather than there being a universal rule that tenured staff get offices but postdocs don't. My undergrad university had very little space and couldn't offer all staff members their own offices, whereas the university I went to for postgrad had plenty of office space, enough that I had my own desk for the duration of my postgrad research. Moreover, there's no such thing as a post-postdoc. Perhaps there was some other reason she had an office, e.g., working for someone senior.
Comment: Universities generally give offices to visiting researchers, so I guess her situation was similar to that of a visiting researcher, except that she wasn't actually visiting 'from' anywhere else.
Comment: I have an office of my own at the university where I study. And I didn't even begin my PhD yet!
Answer: Many universities offer positions with titles such as "research professor" or "staff scientist" or other similar titles. These all indicate the same basic phenomenon: a researcher who is generally supported by "soft money" (In other words, a position subject to sufficient funding), but who is otherwise more or less "permanent" staff. Such scientists may or may not have their own dedicated office space, depending upon overall space constraints within the department and within their boss's research group.
Answer: Such possibilities depend a lot on recommendations and past achievements of such a researcher.
If one is a real scientist with good publications and good, interesting project, not only office space, but also laboratory access and resources like access to the supercomputing facility may be provided.
Most obvious, a researcher may be supported by his home institution (industrial or educational) and would not require also salary for the project.
The similar situation may also result from various funding schemes that allow to obtain the initial grant for a position easily, but make progressively difficult to extend it over time, regardless of achievements like publications. In such cases some researchers actually work for free for a limited time in institutions that are no longer able to employ them, to finish everything properly.


Termination from state employer

Question: Termination vs resignation? I work for the state and they currently are investigating me for not following a policy. I assume a termination is coming. If I resign now, I lose income even sooner than if I wait to be terminated. What repercussion exist for being fired from a state/govt position? Any different than other jobs?
Comment: You work for a government and there is a chance you will be fired? Which Country are you in?
Comment: United States. Yes they have fired two employees before me for similar offense. So I'm told...
Answer: To be honest the repercussions would be enormous for two reasons:

You were trusted to do a public service job
It's normally impossible to get canned, even incompetent people in the government sector. Therefore getting canned would mean you did something really, really, really bad and should be avoided.

So I think quitting is the best option if you can.
Comment: I keep hearing how hard it is to be fired from a state job, yet here we are. I have a perfect work record, personal life, etc. This is my first offense. The protocol for not following this policy is written reprimand, suspension or termination. I did not knowingly violate this policy. A coworker turned me in for falsifying a record. It was the only record in which this happened, my error was deleted but the whistleblower and subsequent management, is stating the documentation should have never been made in the first place. All coworkers are shocked. This was common practice in our office.
Comment: Yes, I'm sure people get terminated from government jobs just as much as the commercial sector. Point is though, there is a stigma that it is impossible to get terminated so folks will read into it and assume you must have done something really bad to get terminated. Either way you have options now, but none in the future.
Answer: It's not going to make a lot of difference. Your next few employers are going to want a reference from your current job, and the reference they give you will say:

"Harper james resigned on [some date]. At the time he was under investigation for "not following a policy".

Everyone reading that will assume you are guilty.
Being fired from a government position is going to be interpreted as you having screwed up in a big way. And they will find out what the reason was when they read your reference.
You should of course have checked what the normal punishment for "not following a policy" is. Your boss is likely to have an idea of what it is.
If the punishment is not automatically termination then you might be better off pleading/negotiating for a lesser punishment than quitting. If you are 'being investigated' then you usually get to have some input into the investigation, which might include providing reasons why you should not be terminated as well as reasons why you might be innocent.
Comment: I did check. First offense is written reprimand, suspension or termination. It could be any of the three.  My direct supervisor is staying tight lipped as it has gone above her head and is being decided on by the directors.
Comment: Downvoted and accepted. That's a first for me.
Comment: @E.Y. they are not following the correct procedures for a discipline case that is a bit of a red flag - did you not speak to the union about this.
Comment: There is no union for this position. Also, I am new to this site. I did not purposefully "down vote" anyone. I appreciate any and all advice.
Answer:
What repercussion exist for being fired from a state/govt position?

Being fired from any position is bad, and depending on the circumstances could be damning to your career.  If you resign, this allows you to put your own spin on your departure with out lying in regards to being fired.
Another thing for you to consider is in most states if you quit you do not get un-employment, whereas if your fired you usually do.
Seems like your in a tough spot, but if you have marketable skills consider rolling the dice and resigning versus having the blemish of being fired.
YMMV
Answer: There are pluses and minuses to either to option

Termination: looks bad on the resume and/or references. That's even more the case for a government job, since they are perceived of having a lot of protection in place. On the plus side, you may qualify for severance and/or unemployment benefits, but that depends whether you are terminated "for cause" or not.
Resign: looks better on the resume and negative references are little less damaging since they are less relevant. Financially you are on your own.
Wait it out: It's entirely possible that you are overreacting and you are not getting fired and one (or even none) of the other disciplinary actions will happen.

What to do then ?

Start looking for a new job RIGHT NOW. Not tomorrow, not in an hour, but RIGHT NOW. Your chances of landing something quickly are much higher while you are still employed. It's hard to tell how "bad" your infraction was, but if a small-ish problem can get you fired, you don't have much a future there anyway.
Talk to a layer and/or union rep. Government agencies have lots of rules an regulations about this sort of thing, and you probably have some non-trivial rights. Make sure you know them all, so can make informed decisions if needed.
Consider cutting a deal: After consulting someone knowledgeable (see item 2) you could approach your employer with a "mutually beneficial" solution. Terminating people is time consuming, expensive, and no fun at all. You could offer them to quit voluntarily in return for something good: severance pay, a reasonably neutral reference, garden leave, etc. Unless you are REALLY experienced at this, you would need professional help to coach you through the negotiations.

Termination from state employer


VSphere statistics interpretation

Question: Is there a simple summary...couple pages, maybe...explaining statistics and management information for VM's using vSphere Client 4 so we know about tuning VM's? Things like what's good or bad for host CPU, host mem, guest mem, performance counters to watch...I know what these probably are or should be, but I'd rather see a decent reference to verify things than assume I know it and be wrong.
Answer: I haven't seen a succinct summary for vSphere yet but there are quite a few presentations archived on VMworld.com that provide very good information on interpreting performance statistics and tuning with VI3. Most of this information is directly applicable to VI4\vSphere. You will have to register to watch\read the archives but it is well worth it.
For VI3 there is a pretty good session called "Interpreting Performance Statistics in VI3" from September last year - it is a recorded presentation but don't let that put you off in any way it's a great explanation of how to use the VI Client and ESXTOP to monitor what's actually happening with your hosts (and clusters).
It's not a short summary though unfortunately but in my view very much worth looking at.
With any luck there will be something similar for VI4 at the upcoming VMWorld that will cover the enhancements to monitoring and performance overview capabilities in vSphere.
Comment: Here is the URL at VMworld.com for the "Interpreting Performance Statistics in VI3" session - http://www.vmworld.com/docs/DOC-2148
Answer: Scott Drummond's Pivot Point blog has some good information on VMware ESX/VSphere performance including this post Performance Troubleshooting: No PhD Required! which has links to more information on the performance counters of vCenter, esxtop and vscsiStats.
Here are some links on CPU Ready times as well which can be critical to CPU performance problems:

What is CPU READY?
Understanding Ready Time
VMware ESX Server 3- Ready Time Observations
Answer: There is a breakout session scheduled for VMworld 2009 titled "esxtop for advanced users"
Comment: I think esxtop is run on the ESX host, but ESXi doesn't have the traditional console interface unless you use the "unsupported" console to enable SSHD and tools first, does it?
Comment: You can install the RCLI (on a Linux or Windows machine) and use the resxtop to get the info from ESXi servers.

VSphere statistics interpretation


Asteroids with an atmosphere

Question: What would be the likelihood of an asteroid developing a thin layer of gas? If an asteroid is capable of having an "atmosphere", then how likely would be be for primitive plant life, such as a moss, to grow on the asteroid? The asteroid would be stuck in orbit around a star, in an asteroid belt.
Answer: Due to the interaction of matters with stellar wind and radiation, it can happen that some of the substances making up an asteroid sublimate or are turned into plasma and will, for a short period of time, move along with asteroid on its orbit, before being blown away since the gravity is too weak to keep the molecules around the body.
That would make for a really thin layer of gaseous substances. However, that thin would be too thin for any life form to exist.
Just for reference, the pressure on the Moon (which is way bigger than an asteroid) is a mere $10^{-10} \ Pa$, while on Earth it is $10^5 \ Pa$.
You can see that info summarized here: small bodies like Pluto can hold some gases just because they are cold. Your asteroid is even smaller than Pluto.
Comment: You just beat me in regards of time and quality of the answer. Nice one!
Comment: Yeah me too. I was going to cite Ceres but the weak atmosphere of the Moon, which is two orders of magnitude more massive kinda drives the point even better.

Asteroids with an atmosphere


How to create a 'boom' sound?

Question: Jessica Jones Trailer
I like the 'boom' sound at the beginning of the trailer. how can I create it in ProTools?
Comment: Can you be more specific? Examples?
Comment: I mean that one right before the VO. That boom sound ranges around 100hz
Comment: Like the start to this (one of mine): https://soundcloud.com/james-oakwood/voices ?
Answer: I am not currently running protools, so I can't tell you the exact plugins to use... BUT, to roughly approximate this sound, find a kick similar to the one at the beginning of the sound. Add to this a long reverb around 80-90% wet followed by a delay set to 1/4 (at 120 bpm) with a feedback long enough for it to echo around 5-7 times or whatever sounds good to you. After this, you will most likely need to EQ out highs and mids (down to somewhere around 300-400Hz) fairly drastically with a subtractive high shelf, perhaps 10dB or so. Also low cut anything under around 50Hz to keep sub frequencies under control.
This will never sound exactly like the clip since there are many variables, but it should get you in the ballpark. You can play around with reverb patches, EQ settings and different kicks to get something you like. Hope this helps!
Comment: thanks for the reply! I'm new to sound design,I wonder what plugin can I use to create a kick/909 kick in Protools?
Comment: @Kei80, If you have BOOM drum machine plugin in pro tools, I believe it does some 909 style kits. You could always just find some free 909 samples online. There are plenty around. Try here:   https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=380004565452835&id=281867371933222
Comment: Thanks so much!I will try. I hope this will improve some impact and punchy SFX
Answer: It just sounds like a 909 kick with reverb.

How to create a 'boom' sound?


How to include pixels excluded by MASK in GRASS GIS?

Question: I have a 150km x 150km raster layer of elevation. I'm running a cell-by-cell PyGRASS script, with one step that considers all neighboring cells within a fairly large circular radius (25km). To account for edge effects, I've sub-divided my large region into four 50x50km raster tiles - each created with a raster MASK - factoring out the outer most 25km in each cardinal direction.
I'm trying to figure out a way to include pixels outside of these MASKs created in GRASS GIS. Basically, I'd like to use the MASK as a processing extent, but I don't want to nullify the values in the factored out 25km. They should be included in each neighborhood calculation for cells along the inner border of my mask.
I have quite a number of these 150x150 raster tiles, so I haven't just run my script across the entire region simply to save computational time. Any ideas as to how I can run my script on a subset of this larger raster, without losing values outside the MASKed region?
Answer: I know it is (too?) late, but I have the same problem and 'partially' resolve with v.buffer with certain distance, and then r.mask over the layer buffer.


How early can I check-in at KEF airport in Iceland?

Question: I am going to be traveling and doing a stopover in Iceland, but I am not planning on staying at a hotel. How early can I check in if my flight is at 7am?
Comment: Do you really mean check-in, or are you asking at what time you can show up at the airport to get XXX accomplished ? Online check in is almost always available 23-24 hours before departure.
Comment: Note that just because you can check in doesn't nessacerally mean you can drop baggage.
Answer: Checkin times are set by the airline, not the airport.
Most airlines have a 24-hour policy for checkin, but some have different periods.  Check your airline's website to find out their checkin period.
Comment: I believe some airlines (probably mostly LCCs?) have much much shorter periods. IIRC EasyJet has a 2 or 3 hour limit.
Comment: @jcaron That's entirely possible; I tend to avoid the ULCCs :).  I've flown Air Canada, WestJet, United, British Airways, and the now-defunct Canadian and Continental, and they all had checkin at T-24 hours.
Comment: @Abigail, by check-in I actually meant the baggage drop. Not 100% sure it was Easyjet, but it happened to be once at Gatwick, I had to wait for half an hour on the side before I could drop my bags. The Easyjet online check-in can actually be done weeks before, basically as soon as you have booked your ticket.
Answer: The website of the airport will tell you: it's 2.5 to 3 hours before the flight, depending on the airline. This is of course for an at the counter check in. Online check ins are often at least 24 hours before the flight. Many airlines also allow check ins at a kiosk, and they're open 24h/day.


Export feature not working when I installed Sakai as windows service

Question: I am unable to resolve export issue in Sakai LMS when I installed as windows service.
This functionality is working fine, when i use startup.bat from command line as I have included "-dhttp.proxyhost" and "-dhttp.proxyport".
However, it's not working though I included above options in tomcat6w.exe (in java tab). Have also verified in Registry key and it's correctly appear.
Any help on this would be more helpful.
Here are the configurations details:
Sakai 2.9.1
Apache tomcat6
Windows server 2008 (64 bit)
Have received an error message "org.sakaiproject.tool.assessment.qti.helper.AuthoringHelper - Connection timed out: connect
java.net.ConnectException: Connection timed out: connect"
Thanks,
Sakthi. S
Answer: This is not really related to Sakai but rather is related to tomcat6. You can find the answer here: Tomcat 6.0.35 Windows 32b Service useSystemProxies


What is line to line voltage supposed to meter at?

Question: I'm pretty new to this but I know that in three phase power, when I'm metering line to line its usually at 208V, but I've been told that line to line meters at 240V. I don't know what would cause for it to meter different. Does it matter whether its WYE or Delta? Or is it only 208V when there is a common neutral or ground? I refer to USA and Canada.
Comment: 208 for balanced three phase,  240 for "high leg delta" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-leg_delta
Answer: Here are common arrangements in the US and Canada, taken from a cached FAQ from Schneider Electric:

The 120/208VAC is common in residential complexes and some commercial situations (not ordinary houses, where single phase 120/240 is standard). In industrial installations you find other 3-phase options. For example, in one building I frequent the office lights operate from 347VAC, but phase-to-phase is 600VAC (Canada) so relatively heavy equipment such as screw compressors can be used. 277/480 would likely be used in the US.
Probably some huge houses are wired with 120/208 line-to-line.
As you can see, there are a few delta options with 240VAC.
Comment: In the USA, single-phase 120/240 is used in virtually all free-standing and most multi-unit residential occupancies. It is also common for the120 V distribution in commercial spaces and office spaces of industrial facilities. Three-phase 120/208 Y is much less common but common for multi-unit residential buildings in some areas. It is also used somewhat in commercial buildings. Hi leg wye appears to be very rare and never used for residential units. Where is is used, the 208 volt connection is generally prevented from being used.
Answer: For three phase, 120V line-to-neutral, the line-to-line voltage is 208.
Normal domestic power in North America is single phase from a center-tapped transformer, with the center tap being neutral.  In this case, line-to-neutral is 120 V (half the transformer secondary), and line-to-line is 240V (across the full transformer secondary).
Answer: There are several 3-phase systems used in the US.
208V is always in "wye" configuration (you need to know what that is) and is mainly for powering 120V single-phase hot-neutral loads, though it can power 208V single- or three-phase hot-hot loads as well.  208V is used where you have a lot of 120V loads and yet the power company wants you to load the 3 phases equally.  It is the default residential power in New York City, and pretty much nowhere else.
208V can supply 240V resistive heating appliances, though at 3/4 useful output.   So for instance a 120/240 split phase dryer will run on two phases of 208V 3-phase.
240V usually shows up as "delta".  It is either center-grounded, giving 137V from pole to ground, or sometimes is seen in corner-grounded or "grounded in the middle of one leg".
The latter, "wild-leg delta", allows 120V between a neutral wire pegged at that middle location, and its adjacent hot.  Meanwhile it can support 240V motors and the like.   The farthest leg, the "wild leg", must use orange wire - that is the only instance where US NEC calls out a specific wire color for a hot.
There are a variety of other voltages, in either wye or delta.  Wild-leg only exists in 240V, it would have no reason to exist in other voltages.


Analyzing Hisaishi Joe's "The Bygone Days"

Question:

( Play it from 1:12 to start from the [B] part )

what is that D#m7(11) ?
how does that leads to Gmaj7 ?
Answer: The V7 in GMaj is D7, and the tritone substitution for D7 is Ab7. The minor ii chord which leads to Ab7 is Ebm, the chord you're seeing here. Normally, we would see | Ebm7 | Ab7 | GMaj |, but here the V7 chord is omitted. So in terms of function, I recommend thinking of this as the first half of a tritone substitution which resolves straight to GMaj without first passing to the V7 chord.
In addition, something else that's happening here is parallel movement. The min7(11) chord starts on F#m7(11), then moves down a whole step to Em7(11), then moves down a half step to Ebm7(11). This sort of parallel movement is worth mentioning because it can appeal strongly to the ear even when it doesn't follow any traditional harmonic function. When seeking to understand why this sounds good, we'll want that parallel movement to be part of the explanation, too.
Comment: Wow thanks your answer really helped a lot ! Can I think the glissando after the D#m7(11) kinda replaced..? The Ab7 ?  And what do you mean by "any traditional harmonic function" ? When you're talking about the parallel motion on the F#m7(11) Em7 (11) ?
Comment: Yes, you can think of the glissando in that fashion, although it's not a substitution in the sense that the glissando doesn't serve the same role as a V7 chord. My comment about parallel movement is really just that those minor chords aren't diatonic. Instead, the idea is to take a chord and move it around chromatically, by whole steps, etc.
Answer: I have arranged (and played) that piece in classical guitar (that part starts in measure 26 in my sheet; my arrangement is  transposed a fifth).
I myself tend to see the last chord of the (parallel) sequence  F#m11 Em11 D#m11 as an (altered) tritone substitution for A7 (here it would rather be a A13), the dominant (not of the following chord but ) of the tonic of the passage (which is D major). Of course, this is rather contrived (for one thing: the G# note...) and I don't know much about harmony, so take this with a grain of salt.


How to speed up map display performance?

Question: I was wondering if there is any trick I can use to speed up zooming in/ out or panning through my maps in Arcmap. I usually work on county-wide studies in which I have lots of base layers, imagery and annotation which slow me down very much. I try to keep unnecessary layers off but can't think of anything else. I am using ArcGIS Desktop so I suppose I can not use caches.
I have not tried it yet but I guess I can use Dice (Data Management) to increase my speed. Any thought/ comment?
Comment: Does any of your rasters have pyramid files associated with them?
Comment: If you don't find that ArcGIS for Desktop meets your display performance then keep an eye out for [**ArcGIS Professional**](http://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/66438/what-are-esris-new-arcgis-for-professionals-and-arcgis-professional) which has "a multi-threaded (64 bit) application framework that can take advance of large memory address space and GPU's for display performance".
Answer: I think you should investigate Basemap Layers:

Basemap layers are a kind of map layer that provides a framework onto
  which you display your dynamic operational information. Basemap
  display performance is very fast. Since basemap layers are relatively
  static and do not change frequently, their display can be computed
  once and reused many times. The first time you visit an area at a
  particular map scale, basemap layer display is computed. The display
  is recalled on return visits to that area and map scale.


Why are not programs already in binary code?

Question: First of all, please forgive me if this question shows ignorance on my behalf. What I'm asking is not why we don't program in languages written in binary code, I know the answer for that. What I would like to ask instead is: considering all information we input into a computer is registered as binary code, and all data is stored in binary code, are not common programming languages already binary code, and what we see as instructions or variables just a translation? If that is so, why are assemblers or compilers necessary?
Comment: (The part between colon and question mark is too complicated for me.) `are not common programming languages` languages are sets of symbol sequences. Any given sequence in a programming language is a program - some argue correctness is required, too. What *we see* (on paper, screen, …) to me are *renditions*. Then, there is [binary code](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_code) and [binary code](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_code).
Comment: I believe that people answering this question are conflating two meanings of "binary code": (a) machine code, in other words, the programming language of a processor; (b) binary encoding of programs, as opposed to text encoding. For (b), see https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/119095/why-dont-we-store-the-syntax-tree-instead-of-the-source-code .
Answer: The short answer to your question is "for productivity and portability".
Let me expand on this. The very first generation of computers were indeed programmed directly in binary, either by entering each binary instruction using physical switches on the computer itself or by some simple bulk loading mechanism such a reading and loading instructions from a paper tape. This was first generation programming (although at the time it was just called "programming").
Programmers soon realised that it would be simpler and quicker to write programs use mnemonics instead of binary instruction codes. So instead of having to remember or look up the binary code for "load the next byte into register A", they could use the mnemonic "LDA". Translating mnemonics into binary instructions required a program called an assembler. Once someone had invested the time and effort into writing an assembler on a particular computer, programs could be written in mnemonics or "assembly language". This was much quicker than working out all the binary codes for yourself, and it also made it much easier to debug and update programs. This was second generation programming.
As more and more programs were written on different machines, programmers realised that the underlying concepts of programming were similar, regardless of which type of computer the program was being written for. Programmers would be even more productive if they could use a language that implemented concepts like variables, loops, case statements and sub-routines. It would also be convenient to be able to write complex instructions like "print the following string of characters to the screen" or "multiply A+1 by B+2, divide the result by C and store the final result in a variable called D" in one line of code instead of multiple assembly language instructions. So programmers invented higher-level languages such as FORTRAN and BASIC (and eventually C and Java) and wrote compilers and interpreters which would translate code written in a higher level language into assembly language instructions or directly into binary instructions. Not only did this make programmers even more productive, but also by creating compilers for different types of computer, the same FORTRAN program could be translated and run on different computers. So programs became portable and programmers did not have to learn lots of different different assembly languages. This was third generation programming.
Mainstream development in programming languages and computer architectures have continued in this direction, with more and more layers of abstraction between the languages that programmers write in and the machine code instructions that a CPU executes directly. Programming languages have become more specialised, with languages specifically designed for implementing user interfaces; processing data in large databases; creating management information reports; running simulations; processing graphics; developing video games etc. Developments in computer architecture design have concentrated on running a relatively small, simple and general set of machine code instructions more rapidly. Increasing CPU speeds and falling memory costs mean that it is more cost effective to translate each line of high level language into hundreds of machine code instructions than it would be to develop more complex CPUs that could execute higher level language code more directly.
Answer: You ask a good question. Why doesn't a CPU just execute say C++ directly? Why go to the trouble of translating it first (i.e. compiling or interpreting) into some arcane machine language (Intel x86)?
The answer is all to do with flexibility. Computer hardware architectures are designed to be able to execute a broad range of programs. To enable this flexibility there needs to be a kind of lowest common denominator - a common language to execute all those different programs.
The biggest hurdle to flexibility is that hardware is fixed in terms of operation. This means that the possible range of instructions it can execute is fixed. Yes, you could have a system whereby a microcoded CPU is reprogrammed on the fly, but there would still need to be a core set of immutable instructions that could do the re-programming.
Once you have have a fixed set of instructions, there's no possibility for upgrade or bug fixing and so on. You would have to release new hardware for every upgrade. This does happen, but constantly upgrading hardware is expensive. In other words for every new release of say the C++ standard, you would need a new C++ CPU and hardware. And for every different type of language you would need a different processor: a Pascal or C or Erlang processsor.
Of course, the way to improve the flexibility of a fixed instruction set architecture is to use emulation. Turing said that all computing machines are equivalently powerful (i.e. can run the same programs), as long as they can be made to emulate a Turing Machine. This is called Turing Completeness.
This means that one language (as long as it is Turing Complete) can emulate another language without loss of fidelity. The consequence being that all languages can be emulated by a generic CPU no matter what instruction set architecture it has, as long as it is Turing Complete.
So in practice the CPU instruction set is chosen so that it most closely fits the hardware model (bits and bytes) and then languages (C++ etc.) are emulated by it principally through a translation process (either compilation or interpretation). This gives you the most bang for your buck. You can upgrade and tweak and bug fix your translator to your heart's content and all the time keep the same hardware.
In practice this works both ways, hardware is made so that it is backwards compatible, so even new hardware can run older languages. It's win win.
But. My own personal opinion is: why not have a C language CPU? The whole world runs on C right? Compilers would then be very simple, but CPUs orders of magnitude more complex. Software is cheap, hardware is not.
Answer: Though the programs are in binary code, they are not still in the form of most basic operations that a CPU's logical unit can perform. The assemblers and compilers would remove the for loops, functions, etc that is our way of interpretation, and convert the code into one that comprises of more fundamental operations. These can then be processed by the logical unit of CPU.
Answer: That would be akin to reading a natural language in another with the same character set, "Hello" is meaningless in Italian even though the letters are in the Italian alphabet. Interpreting the code as we see it with English words and mathematical symbols into CPU instructions is meaningless for the CPU.


Pocket door latch side is higher than the other

Question: My pocket door has become uneven.  The latch side is higher than the other side and the roller cannot be seen. What is the easiest way for me to readjust the door?  It rolls a little hard, but does close, just lopsided.
Answer: If you're lucky, you can just lift the door and hook it back on to the track.
But that probably won't work. Usually, you have to remove the trim at the top of the doorway to get access to the tracks and rollers.
Comment: Yup, the roller assemblies will have a height adjustment screw, I can just get to mine with a long skinny screwdriver without removing the trim molding. I cut a small notch in the top of the door at both roller locations to make access easier.


Do Muslims view Muhammad as more important than Jesus?

Question: Do muslims view Muhammad as more important than Jesus?
If they view them as being on the same 'level', how come there have been negative reactions from Muslims against cartoon depictions of Muhammad but not against cartoon depictions of Jesus?
Comment: Were they not practicing the picturing of Jesus or other prophets from before?
Answer: Actually, it is true that the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) is the best of prophets. We do not differentiate between the prophets (PBUT) in the sense that we do not say one's message is superior to another's (they all came with the same message). However, the prophets do not all belong to the same level. Take a look at the following hadith,

Narrated Abu Sa'eed:
  that the Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) said: "I am the master of the children of Adam on the Day of Judgement, and I am not boasting. The Banner of Praise will be in my hand, and I am not boasting. There will not be a Prophet on that day, not Adam nor anyone other than him, except that he will be under my banner. And I am the first one for whom the earth will be opened for, and I am not bragging."

http://sunnah.com/urn/734770
I'm sure that all Muslims would condemn insults to any prophet of God. But if you're asking specifically about the Muslims who reacted violently, then you should direct this question to them in particular...
Finally, this might be one reason why they reacted differently (this is just my opinion)...when they insult the Prophet Jesus (PBUH), they are actually intending to insult Christianity and not Islam. It is true that both Christianity and Islam believe in the Prophet Jesus (PBUH)...however there are some differences between the Islamic and Christian descriptions of Jesus (PBUH), and the insults are generally directed to the Christian version of Jesus. However, when they insult the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), they are directly attacking Islam. In any case, this is just my opinion...you should really ask those Muslims who reacted that way to get a more accurate answer.
Answer: We're not allowed to compare Prophets, or view one as better than the other.  This is actually forbidden.
The Prophet Mohamed is reported to have said:
لاَ تُخَيِّرُونِي مِنْ بَيْنِ الأَنْبِيَاءِ
"Do not give me preference to other prophets..."
(al-Bokhari, Muslim)
It's quite unfortunate that we allow humiliation of other prophets and not ours.  We should be reasonable and not react in an unethical manner as the Prophet Mohamed never became violent when someone insulted him.
So it's an issue within the Muslim community that needs to be resolved properly, without emotional impulses.  but it's wrong to allow anyone to be insulted for entertainment, whether a person is a Prophet or not.
Comment: as a complement to the answer you can further read 2:136: Say, [O believers], "We have believed in Allah and what has been revealed to us and what has been revealed to Abraham and Ishmael and Isaac and Jacob and the Descendants and what was given to Moses and Jesus and what was given to the prophets from their Lord. We make no distinction between any of them, and we are Muslims [in submission] to Him." [Sahih International]. Allah makes no distinction between any of the messengers
Answer: Short answer is, no, we cannot say that this prophet or that prophet is more important than other prophets. Because all of'-em are very important to us all, whether is prophet Muhammad or Adam, all of them are very important to us


Programmatically move a document from one document library to another

Question: How can I programmatically move a document from one document library to another while preserving metadata? Preferably using the server OM.
Answer: I don't have the source code handy but the SPListItem.Copy() method would probably be a good place to start - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms455492.aspx.
Answer: There is SPFile.MoveTo() method which moves the file within the same site: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.sharepoint.spfile.moveto.aspx
Answer: I know you have expressed an interest in using the server object model, but there is also the Copy.asmx web service (specifically the CopyIntoItems() method). I, myself, don't like the Copy web service, because it creates a link back to the original document. I just wanted to provide another alternative.


Why do I wake up to my cat's toy on my bed?

Question: Every now and then my cat Bellatrix (Belly for short) will bring my husband and I her green mouse toy while we are sleeping. So we will wake up with the toy on the bed. We assume this is her favorite toy as she always plays with this one and will want to play fetch with this toy. We don't have a problem with her doing this and she doesn't wake us up when she does this but it is just curious as to why she does this. I honestly think it's cute to wake up with her favorite toy on the bed. I do know that some cats think their owners are just terrible hunters and will give them "prey". But I'm wondering if she does this because she thinks we are bad hunters or if in the middle of the night she just wants to play but then sees that we are asleep so she leaves us alone or if she just wants to give us a gift. This is the only toy she brings us. Belly is also an indoor cat. I'm just wondering of the different possibilities she could be doing this. Does anyone else's cat(s) do this?
Answer: While I think StephenS' answer is likely correct (i.e. bringing a toy to ask you for plays), it's also possible that the toy is left there because it's where the cat sleeps and it kept the toy near its spot.
Our cats cuddle their favorite toys and softly play with them as they lie in a comfortable spot. One of our cats specifically hides her favorite toys in her favorite bed to keep them away from the other two.

I do know that some cats think their owners are just terrible hunters and will give them "prey".

It's not a matter of thinking you're a bad hunter, but more a matter of contributing to the household. You give food to them all the time (which they can only assume you hunted), so when they have caught something and aren't that hungry, they share their spoils with you as well.
Answer: Cats aren't as cooperative with researchers as dogs are, so we don't understand nearly as much about how they think. However, it's fairly obvious cats know the difference between toys and real prey (and hunting or fighting vs play), so she wouldn't be giving you a toy because you're bad hunters.
Most likely, she is bringing her favorite toy to you because she's bored and wants you to play with her; if she plays fetch with it when you're awake, that is almost certainly the case. My cats regularly bring me their toys when I'm on the couch, though so far not be in bed.
It's possible she's bringing you her toy as a gift, but such empathic behavior is usually only seen from cats when you're behaving oddly during the day, e.g. because you're sick or injured or upset, not when sleeping as usual at night.


Is there a solution to glitches when deleting features from shapefiles on network drives?

Question: We are a small GIS department of 4 folks working with a shapefile composed of points.  We have local installs (C:) of QGIS 2.8.1 on our work stations, which run Windows 7 x64.  The shapefile in question is installed on a network drive.
Lately we have noticed that, only sometimes, deleting a single point causes the attributes of the remaining points to be replaced with those of the next record in the feature set.  For example, say we have 3 points, all with a field called "Label."  The labels of the 3 points are as follows: FOO.1, FOO.2, FOO.3.  I want to delete FOO.1, so I do so using the tool in QGIS whose icon is a red trash can, either in the map canvas or in the attribute table of the layer.  The point "FOO.1" is deleted from the map and the attribute table, but now the point "FOO.2" has the attributes of the point "FOO.1," and moves to the location of the deleted point.  This glitch seems to cascade down the attribute table, affecting all subsequent points in the layer and moving attributes from one record to another.
In searching for similar glitches to this one, our team has discovered a documented bug from 6 years prior that seems to replicate our situation:
Delete feature bug
Unfortunately, the documentation doesn't seem to suggest a solution for those folks like us who store their layers on a drive separate from the one where QGIS is installed.
I was wondering if anyone else has come across this documented bug during their workflow, and if so, they have found sustainable ways to work around it.  We have come up with a temporary solution to fix the problem of "rolled back" attributes, that is, loading the table as a .csv file and manually fixing the unique IDS associated with the features to accommodate the deleted record.  However, this is not a long-term solution.
If the only solution turns out to be that we need to temporarily move our layers to our local drives and only edit them there, that'd be just fine, but we want to make sure there isn't some other simpler or more elegant solution.
Comment: Did you place a comment on the bug asking developers for help as well?
Comment: In the long term you should probably look at using Postgresql/Postgis in the network drive and move your data to it, QGIS has native Postgis edit support and you can export to whatever format you need. I would suggest you file a bug in hub.qgis.org so developers can look at it
Comment: I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it should be a bug report rather than a question on StackExchange.
Answer: Bug reports generally need to be logged on the qgis site with screenshots and posibly sample data so that developers can try to replicate your error. In the meantime try to add the shapefile to spatialite and try to eliminate if it is a shapefile error. Vector>properties>save as>choose type as spatialite and try to replicate the behaviour then you can know its a bug


When is a stochastic process defined via a SDE Markovian?

Question: I was wondering when a stochastic process defined via a SDE is Markovian? The SDE may involved Ito integral, Lebesgue integral, jump component, and any other things. The reason I ask this question is that I don't understand when we can and cannot discuss properties of a Markov process, such as Kolmogorov equations, for a process defined by a SDE. Thanks and regards!
Comment: Hi, in Protter's book "Stochastic Integration and Differential Equations v 2.1", more precisely in Chapter V section 6 the matter is extensively treated in a semimartingale setting.Best regards
Answer: Consider the following SDE
$$ X_t ^{s,x} = x +\int _s^t \sigma(u,X_t ^{u,x}) ~ dW_u+\int _s^t b(u,X_t ^{u,x}) ~ du $$
satisfing the following hypothesis:
there is $C>0$ such that, for all $(x,y) \in \mathbb R ^p \times \mathbb R ^p$ and $u \in \mathbb R _+$
$$\left|\sigma(u,x) -\sigma(u,y) \right|+\left|b(u,x) -b(u,y) \right|\leq C\left|x-y \right|$$
for all $t\in \mathbb R _+$ and $x\in \mathbb R ^p$
$$ \int_s^t \left(\left| \sigma \right|^2(u,x)+\left|b \right|^2(u,x)\right)~du <+ \infty$$
If $b$ and $\sigma$ are time-homogeneous, ie, $\sigma(u,x)
 =\sigma(x)$ and $ b(u,x)= b(x)$, the simple Markov property applies to the solution of this SDE.
Comment: what is the reasoning ?
Comment: @mastro this is the definition of Ito diffusion, and also a condition for solution existence. You can find the proof on Oksendal's book that this is Markov.
Answer: If SDEs are of the form $\mathrm dX_t = \sum_{i=1}^n f(X_t)\mathrm dY^i_t$ where $Y^i$ are Markov processes and $f$ are some functions, than unless $Y^i$ and $f$ are not "nice enough", $X$ will be a Markov process. Intuitively, this is the case since the future dynamics of $X_t$ is independent from its past: e.g.
$$
  \mathrm dX_t = X_t\mathrm dW_t
$$
is a Markov process whereas
$$
  \mathrm dX_t = \left(\int_0^t X_s\mathrm ds\right)\mathrm dW_t
$$
is not. I am not sure that there is a complete answer, which "nice" conditions $Y^i$ and $f$ have to verify in order for $X$ to be a (strong) Markov process - but I guess you are aware of many example of such conditions for jump diffusion.
Comment: Thanks! Actually, I am little aware of "example of such conditions for jump diffusion", although I hope to learn them. (I haven't figured out the definitions of diffusion processes and jump processes yet).
Answer: A good example of this is the time-integral of the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process. On its own, this is not a Markov process. However, a two dimensional stochastic process, with one co-ordinate being the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process and the other being its time-integral, will be a two dimensional Markov process. Similarly, a one-dimensional Markov process and its supremum process, comprise a two-dimensional Markov process.


Why can't plasma proteins migrate from capillaries?

Question: Why can't plasma proteins shift from capillaries to connective tissue but WBCs can be very rich in connective tissue even though obviously the WBCs had to go through capillaries.  Another example: in alveolar sacs neutrophils are there in the lumen  despite the presence of epithelia of alveolar sacs,  and it can only reach there via capillaries. So, how can they get into lumen despite the epithelia lining? Histology textbooks say that no plasma proteins can enter or leave capillaries, but WBCs (which are much larger than proteins) can move to connective tissue via capillaries?
Comment: WBCs typically invade inflamed tissue through post-capillary venules.
Comment: See [Leukocyte extravasation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leukocyte_extravasation).
Comment: I believe the white blood cells that invade inflamed areas do so via the lymphatic part of the circulatory system.
Answer: Cells of the endothelium are joined by tight cell junctions which are impermeable or selectively permeable. Generally, proteins can only migrate through the endothelium via active transcytosis.
Leukocytes (specifically neutrophils, lymphocytes and monocytes) express various adhesion molecules and cytokine receptors which allow them to interact with endothelial cells and facilitate their movement (diapedesis) either between (paracellular) or through (transcellular) the cells. The process of leukocytes leaving the endothelial lumen is known as extravasation.

Carman CV. 2009. Mechanisms for transcellular diapedesis: probing and pathfinding by `invadosome-like protrusions'. J Cell Sci 122:3025-3035.
(C,D) The process of diapedesis, whether during intravasation or extravasation, can occur by two distinct pathways: paracellular or transcellular. (C) Paracellular diapedesis. Leukocytes and endothelial cells coordinately disassemble endothelial cell-cell junctions and open up a gap between two or more endothelial cells (Muller, 2003). (D) Transcellular diapedesis. Leukocytes migrate directly through individual endothelial cells via a transient transcellular pore that leaves endothelial cell-cell junctions intact. Note that the two individual endothelial cells in C and D are distinguished by different shades of pink.
Answer: Generally, for plasma proteins to enter the tissue space, they must be able to passively diffuse out of the vessel into the tissue. This requires sufficiently large gaps between the endothelial cells of the vessel wall (and if passing into the lumen, space between the epithelial cells forming the barrier of entry into the lumen.
However, under the proper circumstances, white blood cells can actively invade the tissue across the endothelial barrier, migrate through the tissue, and may even cross over into the tissue lumen. This is a active, highly coordinated process  allowing the white blood cell to bind the endothelium and push its way through a gap and allowing it to bind extracellular matrix proteins to migrate through the tissue to its destination.
Comment: Sounds very good, and plausible. There are answers opposed. Why don't you add some reference.
Answer: Let me add that during the process of inflammation (e.g., the skin has been infected), there will be foreign materials introduced into the body which are picked up by resident macrophages and dendritic cells, which are basically waiting for this stuff to happen. Once they engulf a foreign particle, they will become activated and start releasing inflammatory molecules which attract other white blood cells to come into the said interstitial tissue (you called it CT). They come in because the capillaries in those areas become permeable to the white blood cells due to WBC-endothelial cell interactions, like adhesins and also the capillary cells (endothelial cells) may separate slightly from each other, forming little gaps, that allow proteins, more fluids to come out with the WBCs. So that's why you get swelling if you injure yourself, like if you broke your bone.. or if you got a pimple and it filled with pus (that's all the WBCs and proteins and plasma coming out of the blood vessels into the interstitium).
The reason why we want WCBs to come out during these times is because they clean up debris (macrophages), kill bacteria (neutrophils, macrophages, T-cells, etc), and the proteins may come out like antibodies, anti-bacterial proteins like complement, etc.
tldr; WBCs extravasate through capillaries in certain situations where they are needed (i.e. inflammation). The process of leukocyte (WBC) extravasation has been described by the other answers so I won't go into detail about it.
Comment: welcome to Bio. Please add sources or references. Unreferenced answers don't allow users t background read on the topics discussed.
Comment: I'd be interested in reference on "the capillaries in those areas become permeable" which might be different from and opposed to "extravasation". Third, there seems to be uptake and release of protein - LDL, VLDL - via endothelial cells' receptors.  - Is there reference on local lymphocytes (Langerhans) already situated on lumen side, as "somebody's go to do the job" of signalling for permeability (in the first place)?


Calculating watershed runoff with landuse and rainfall data?

Question: What is the method for computing rasters of total rainfall of a given month, flow accumulation, and land use (runoff coefficient) or soil K factor? I am using ArcMap 10.
Comment: I would like to estimate the amount of run off of a town. Do you have any information how I can start doing this? I need to use spatial analysis tools like you mentioned above. I am not a GIS person, I am just learning on my own.
Answer: In some cases you will be computing and others you simply need to obtain the data.

Rainfall: you will need these as input rasters by month. Do you have this data?  You could check out NOAA http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/GIS/GIS_DATA/
Flow Accumulation: This should be calculated off of a flow direction grid using Spatial Analyst.  Flow direction is based on elevation.  Do you have a DEM for your area, preferably high resolution? http://help.arcgis.com/en/arcgisdesktop/10.0/help/index.html#//009z00000051000000.htm
Land use / runoff coefficient / soil K factor: I'm guessing you have a land use raster and the associated coefficients for different uses?
Comment: Thank you. I have created the listed data layers. What I am missing is the formula for calculating total runoff with these layers.
Answer: If you want to calculate rainfall rasters for yourself you should have enough point-sample data and profound knowledge of interpolation techniques like spline interpolation or kriging.
Therefore I would use data from NOAA instead as they are more reliable. If the resolution of these rasters is too coarse you may want to try a hybrid between interpolation and already available data.
Comment: thank you. I used spline to create a rainfall surface from 12 weather stations. I am stumped on a solid method to calculate total runoff from watershed using 1. rainfall, 2. landuse/coefficients, 3. flow accumulation.


Are all tires that are labelled p205 have the same width?

Question: Are all tires that are labelled p205 have the same width?
Then does p205 simply designate the width of the tires?
Comment: This may help: https://mechanics.stackexchange.com/q/13460/10976
Answer: The "P" designates a "passenger" tire. The 205 is the "general" width, expressed in millimeters. I say general because no two tire manufacturers are going to measure the tire width exactly the same. A single tire manufacturer may even measure width differently depending on the type of tire. There's no hard rule here, but the number is going to be in the ballpark of tread width. Even so, I'd suggest you can expect tire width to be within a couple millimeters of the number on the sidewall, +/-.


Unable to cut out a shape from an image in Illustrator

Question: I made a house drawing from line segments on Adobe Illustrator CC. I used the join command and wanted to cut out the house shape from a color gradient I downloaded. I tried using "Object > Path > Divide Objects Below" but it's not working. I am sure this is a simple fix but I am a newbie and would greatly appreciate anyones help and input.
Comment: Additional Note: Object>Path>Divide will only work with vector shapes. The gradient you downloaded was probably an image rather than a vector image.
Answer: You will need to make the compound shape of the house you created into a Clipping Mask!

Place the image of the gradient in your document
Align the house shape that you created over top of the gradient
Select both items and from the Menus choose Object > Clipping Mask > Make
Comment: You are an Angel! Thank you all this is exactly what I needed to do. I do have a follow up question in the matter but since its not directly related to the topic im not sure if I should ask it here or make a new thread. Kindly I ask if I can ask this?
Comment: No problem. Feel free to ask. If it's a substantial question, then yea, maybe start a new thread.
Answer: You can't divide an image in Illustrator. Use the gradient tool to fill in your shape. OR if you really want to clip an image of a gradient (again, not the correct way, but it's possible) I recommend using a layer mask or clipping mask.
With your image below, draw your shape on top select both and go to:

Object > Clipping Mask > Make ⌘ + 7 (Ctrl + 7)
Comment: @GoofyMonkey You beat me! I shouldn't have gotten up. :P
Comment: There's a time and place for clipping images/gradients. I quite regularly clip a background image I've created in PS to use in a layout in Illustrator. Drop shadows, layer blend modes, etc... Still safer doing a lot of that in PS if you are going to print!
Comment: I just default to copying vector elements as smart objects to photoshop if working with images. But it's true, there's always a weird case here and there for putting using in Illustrator.


Corpora of Indigenous American Languages?

Question: Does anyone know of any (preferably free) online corpora of indigenous American languages (anywhere on the American hemisphere)? I've managed to find corpora of many of the common world languages, but I'm interested in adding some of the more diverse languages to my library as well. However, just about all of the indigenous American languages have been so marginalized that I can't find any widely-spoken enough to have corpora available.
Comment: A colleague who works with indigenous American languages tells me: "People in this business are very protective of the materials. Many local communities have really tight restrictions. And the corpora are, in general, miniscule, even for the insider who has full access. The best places to find things like this are to go to archives' websites, like [this one](http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/Survey/).  Warning: it will likely be frustrating and disappointing."
Comment: @jlawler Mind to provide that as an answer?
Answer: If you are interested, then here's a website with a list of resources for Quechua, the most widely spoken indigenous language in the Americas. I highly recommend that you visit the following website:
http://www.cl.uzh.ch/research/nlp4quechua_en.html
There is a project that is dedicated to collecting corpora for indigenous languages in South America. They are focusing especially on Quechua, Aymara and Guarani. The project is called hltdi-l3 and is collecting parallel corpora for these languages and English.
I am from Peru and I work in the computer linguistics area. In my experience I have found that the institution in my country that has the most corpora is the "PUCP". They have a project called lengamer which is focused on lots of indigenous languages (the website is in spanish):
http://www.lengamer.org/
In my case I work with Quechua and Ashaninka. If I could be of any help just write to me.
Hope this is helpful.
Sorry for the spelling and grammar mistakes in advance.
Comment: @JustinOlbrantz please accept this as an answer or upvote, if you found it helpful :)
Answer: While not actual native text (and thus potentially lacking some of the subtleties of the grammar), I just ran across a site of possible interest: http://www.scriptureearth.org/ which contains Bible translations for a substantial number of obscure/marginalized languages, with PDF versions available.


How do I point my domain to seperate hosts for web and email

Question: I would like find out how to keep my email hosting and domain registered and hosted with 123 reg (my current website host) but point my domain to another host where i want to move my website to?
Thanks in advance.
Answer: Edit the DNS records to
1. keep the MX records and naked domain A record (domain.tld only) - as is
2. Create A or CNAME records for www.domain.tld for the web site subdomain (www).
You may point the naked domain to another provider as well, but it might be a bit tricky with some DNS editing interfaces.


Raw sugar vs. refined sugar in making kombucha

Question: Can one use raw sugar in making tea for kombucha? Most recipes recommend refined sugar, but I wonder if it is for any particular reason.
Answer: Absolutely you can.  I typically use a Turbinado sugar when making mine because it's what I buy in bulk and because I like the robust flavor.
In my searches, I did come across this article indicating that you shouldn't use such raw sugars because they're more difficult for the scoby to digest, but as long as you start with a healthy one you should be fine.  Maybe just don't go as far as using a brown sugar, or something very raw like muscovado.
Answer: I brew Kombucha and use Organic but refined sugar. This helps especially when cooler temps come and the brewing time slows down because of it. The harder you make food available for the scoby the slower the brew time. With a slower brew time comes a higher risk of contamination.
Remember that the sugar isn't for you, it's to feed the scoby If you flavor your tea in a second ferment, I would recommend adding your raw sugars then if it's for flavor alone. The refined sugars should be pretty much depleted during the first ferment.


Identification of Confusion Component in a Cipher

Question: Confusion is a necessary component of any encryption algorithm. S-boxes play an important role in ensuring confusion.
If an encryption algorithm does not use any S-box (rather some other Operations/technique to provide confusion), then by looking at Cipher Algorithm,  how can we identify which component is providing confusion.
Answer: You can express the output of a cipher in terms of XOR and AND gates applied to the ciphers input bits.
"Confusion" implies an increase in the degree of the equations that represent the bits of cipher output. Basically, the goal of confusion is to make the expressions that represent the bits of the cipher too complex to be able to work with, and to make it to where there is no linear expression that can be used to approximate the actual expression; A linear approximation would imply a % chance that a given set of inputs will make the expressions easy to work with.
For a boolean circuit (i.e an s-box), AND and OR gates will increase the degree of the equations. XOR and shift/rotations will not increase the degree of the equations. (They increase the number of terms in a given equation, which is helpful in making more complex expressions).
Another technique to obtain non-linearity is to interleave operations from different fields, for example mixing bitwise XOR and integer ADD operations. However, if you were to pull apart the adder circuit, you would find AND/OR gates providing the non-linearity yet again.
So look for the AND/OR gates, and you should find the source of confusion in the design.
Comment: In fact, all deterministic relationships between a fixed-length input word and a fixed-length output word that can be written down with a non-Turing complete algorithm (essentially, without while loops or for-loops with non-compiler-time length), are combinatorial, and hence can be expressed by NAND ports (or NOR ports, your choice) only.  Whether that is the technologically smartest implementation is to be seen, but as a matter of principle, it is possible.   Any boolean expression can be written as a combination of NAND ports only or a combination of NOR ports only.


Blomberg's K and branch length

Question: Do different values of the smoothing parameter lambda for estimating the divergence times (in situ Sanderson 2002) will affect trait conservatism (e.g., Blomberg's K)?
Answer: I don't know if lambda for estimating divergence times works in the same way as it does for scaling internal tree nodes, but I'm going to assume it does given the context of your question.
My gut reaction was: of course it must because K is the ratio of observed to expected variance and tip variance is moderated in part by branch lengths. So if you change the node positions, the expected tip variance should also change.
A quick simulation shows that this appears to be true.
<code>library("ape")
library("picante")
library("geiger")

set.seed(5)

tree <- rtree(30)
y <- rTraitCont(tree)

lambdas <- seq(1.0, 0.05, by = -0.05)
M <- data.frame(lambda = lambdas, k = numeric(length(lambdas)))

for (lambda in lambdas){
  tree_trans <- rescale(x = tree,
                        model = "lambda", lambda = lambda)
  M$k[M$lambda == lambda] <- phylosignal(y, tree_trans)$K
}

plot(k ~ lambda, data = M)
</code>
Generate a tree with 30 tips and generate random data along the branches. Then rescale the tree for a series of lambda values and calculate k for each lambda scaling.

Blomberg's K and branch length


How do I migrate Google Drive from 'Google Apps for Business' account to a personal Google Drive account

Question: I want to migrate Google Drive from a 'Google Apps for Business' account to a personal Google Drive account, as my company has decided to move to office365+sharepoint, and close down the Google Apps for Business account.
Comment: Possible duplicate: http://webapps.stackexchange.com/q/26245/19350
Answer: You can use Backupify's free Snapshot for Google Apps tool to accomplish this.

Snapshot for Google Apps extracts all the Gmail & Gchat messages, Google Drive documents, Google Calendar events, Google Contacts entries and Google Sites data from a single Google Apps user account.

You can then import that data into another Google (or Google Apps) account.
You'll have to add the app as a Google Apps administrator.


Running a full node VS mining

Question: I read the following on bitcoin.org

A full node is a program that fully validates transactions and blocks.
Almost all full nodes also help the network by accepting transactions
and blocks from other full nodes, validating those transactions and
blocks, and then relaying them to further full nodes.
Most full nodes also serve lightweight clients by allowing them to
transmit their transactions to the network and by notifying them when
a transaction affects their wallet. If not enough nodes perform this
function, clients won't be able to connect through the peer-to-peer
network—they'll have to use centralized services instead.
Many people and organizations volunteer to run full nodes using spare
computing and bandwidth resources—but more volunteers are needed to
allow Bitcoin to continue to grow. This document describes how you can
help and what helping will cost you.

In some ways it sounds like they are describing mining when they say "validating those transactions and blocks", but I also believe running a full node is different than mining. In what way is running a full node help the bitcoin network? Does it just help transfer information about transactions that have been processed by miners?
If running a full node is in fact distinct from mining, what incentive do people have to run full nodes if they aren't able to earn the reward as a miner would. Is it just for bitcoin supporters who want to help bitcoin grow?
Answer:
If running a full node is in fact distinct from mining, what incentive do people have to run full nodes if they aren't able to earn the reward as a miner would. Is it just for bitcoin supporters who want to help bitcoin grow?

Incentives to run and use a bitcoin full node:

Not trusting anyone, verifying everything.

Privacy. Not sharing information about your transactions with others.

Enforce consensus rules.

Running a full node VS mining


Can someone with more rep than me create a tag for Bloodborne?

Question: I searched through the tag list for "Blood" and none of the results were for Bloodborne. I even searched through the new tags page as the game came out yesterday the 24th but I couldn't find a tag for this game. Could someone add it for me please?
Answer: Ask a question. Tag it PS4 or whatever and flag it for a mod to fix it. (Or don't even do that last part, now that this thread exists.)
Tags can only be created when there's a question to put them on.
Comment: +1 Just make sure you either include the name of the game somewhere else in the post or include it as a comment. that way A) any non-mod can fix it too B) Doesn't get closed as unclear what you're asking
Answer: If you ask a question about it and can't yet create tags yourself, someone can create the tag for you on the question if you let us know it needs it. Otherwise, it will have to wait until someone asks a question about the game - tags are only created when they are used on a question.


Video on Amazon Cloudfront CDN does not play in Firefox mediaelement.js

Question: Using W3 Total Cache, I have just distributed a video on the Amazon Cloudfront CDN and have been testing it with mediaelement.js. It is working well on Windows 7 (Chrome and IE9) and Windows XP Pro (Chrome and IE8). But, it does not play in Firefox ver 16.01 on either Windows 7 or Windows XP. On Win 7 / Firefox, I see the poster and controls, click play and it tries to play showing the dotted download circle, but does not complete. On Win XP / Firefox, I only see a black rectangle - no controls or anything.
Firefox does work in Win 7 if I play the video from the origin server where mediaelement.js is installed, i.e. not from Amazon Cloudfront CDN. It still has issues in Win XP - it plays the video but the controls cannot be activated by the mouse. So, it plays once then stops and cannot be played again.
So this appears to be an issue with Firefox and the Amazon Cloudfront CDN. Does anyone know why Firefox does not like playing the video from the Amazon Cloudfront CDN?
Thanks!
Answer: Check your video. Firefox doesn't support mp4 if this is your only format. Convert the video in webm also and add it to your in same way as the mp4 file.


Do edits really need to bump a post in the "active tab"?

Question: A few minutes ago I changed one word in an answer from years ago and I noticed the post (which was closed, in fact) was bumped to the top of the active tab. Is that something that's really desirable and/or is that something the community has any control over?
Comment: It's pretty built-in as far as I can tell; you might get more clarity on meta.SE
Answer: Meta Meta has long discussions of this feature, see The problem with automatically bumping edited posts and its predecessors, including its use for spotting malicious edits, complaints about "deliberately bumping posts", and requests for "minor edit" marker that would prevent the bumping. Here is Servy's surmise:

"If people don't want to look through recently edited posts, and only want to see newly posted content, they can use the "newest" tab rather than the "active" tab. If they're using the "active" tab then it means they specifically want to see questions recently bumped in this manner."
Comment: makes sense. might be good if it somehow didnt bump edits by the author under a certain number of characters, but yeah.
Comment: @Timkinsella One concern was that defacing posts by adding /deleting words at strategic places or adding expletives, etc., does not require many characters. Additionally, there is an upside to bumping even minor edits. If someone thought them worth making perhaps the post deserves a chance at getting another look.