Secondary Fermentation for my beer, yes or no?

Question: I've brewed many batches of beer all with the extract method. All Brewers Best kits. I've generally let them sit in primary for one week then secondary for another before kegging. I've always been a bit reluctant to check the gravity to see if fermentation has stopped by opening the bucket because I was told that oxidation can occur if you add too much oxygen to the buckets and opening it for three days or more in a row to check SG would definitely do that. I was also told that you should get the beer off the trub after a week as it could add off flavors. Lately I've seen that some leave it in primary for several weeks and it's not a bad thing... I'm confuded..lol. Please help
Comment: Thanks for the info guys. I think I'm going to try and just leave it in primary the whole time for these two batches I'm brewing now. It seems like its not as important to get it off the trub as quickly as I was first told. Waiting a few days after the krausen has fallen before I keg sounds like a great way to be pretty sure fermentation has stopped. I remember having a couple of over carbonated batches and wondered why, I think I have my answer.
Answer: You don't have to worry too much about that, the answer is that you can, but don't have to.  I have done both in the past.
Opening your fermenter to take a gravity reading is not risky if you sanitize your equipment properly.
There are reasons when racking to a seconday is beneficial. There is a lot of discussions about that topic here, please take a look at:

If/When to move to secondary fermentation
What's the point of secondary fermentation?
What are the advantages and disadvantages of transferring to a secondary vs. a long primary?
Comment: This would be be the perfect answer IMO:  https://homebrew.stackexchange.com/a/6294/12699
Comment: Indeed!  That's a great one.
Answer: Most of us are not doing secondary.  After many many batches in my life, I came to the conclusion that most beers I made were done after two weeks in primary.  And by done I mean, ready to move to bottles or kegs. (The beers are actually done sooner than that with a good ferment, but 2 weeks fits my schedule most of the time and I KNOW its done at that point without worry... for most beers.)
I'd say you shouldn't fear oxidation from opening the bucket to get a quick sample with a thief or sanitized glass measuring cup.  The amount of oxygen exposure racking to secondary is much greater than taking 2-3 samples for gravity checks.  Eventually, you'll be confident/educated enough to not have to check so often.
Comment: Careful not to rack or package purely based on "2 weeks".  Some beers take a month or longer to finish fermentation.  I recall Belle Saison taking 3.5 weeks to reach FG 1.002.  It starts fast but finishes veeerrrry sloooooow.
Answer: I always rack my beer to a secondary and have good results.  I brew ales and the first rack occurs after about a week and then bottling 3 or 4 days after.  I think it makes for a cleaner beer but I have been doing this for so long (150+ batches) that I don't really remember what it was like before.
Answer: Great question.  Racking the beer too quickly can actually lead to worse off-flavors, because yeast can metabolize diacetyl and absorb sulfur, but when you rack then you remove like 95% of all the yeast.  Concerns regarding yeast autolysis are overblown and antiquated.  In reality, autolysis does not kick in for at least 6 or 7 weeks, and often much longer.  As such, I recommend leaving the beer in primary until you're certain it's done fermenting, based on the krausen falling in and the beer beginning to clear... and then wait even longer, about 3 more days, just to be certain.  From there, it should be safe to package straight away.  No need to move to a secondary step -- just skip secondary.  Millions of homebrewers have figured this out and are doing the same.
Cheers.
Answer: I've been brewing 6 years now and have about 120 batches under my belt. I have never moved a beer to secondary. I've listened to a ready a lot on this topic and general consensus is it is no longer necessary (if it ever was). I rarely let a beer ferment two weeks before I bottle/keg it.
As for gravity check - I used a long "straw" to take sample via the airlock port which limited O2 issues. For me the concern was about infection. Today I use a Tilt Bluetooth hydrometer. Not super accurate, but it will tell you when the fermentation is complete.
And to @dmtaylor's point, removing a beer from the trub/yeast before the diacetyl rest can cause off flavors.


How to containerize Eris service

Question: Eris is a unique architecture which has taken a very useful advantage of containerizing the data, services - contracts, js, into separate container instances themselves. With the intent of running eris inside docker, I created a docker image using the instructions on 'Getting Started' into a Dockerfile. However, upon setting a CMD/ENTRYPOINT to the instruction, eris init, I cannot create a container instance using docker run -i -t --name test_eris . This makes sense, as the eris server is connecting to the docker daemon to pull images for eris-db, eris-keys, eris-actions, etc. My question around approach to run eris server within a container?
 1. Install another docker-daemon inside the Dockerfile for the eris_image. However, this would create a container within container architecture. I suspect this might unnecessarily complicate a much desired laterally scalable architecture. Suggestions?
 2. An alternate approach I can think of is building separate container images for eris-cli, eris-db, eris-keys, etc. using the Dockerfiles from eris-ltd github repo. If this were to be the approach, what are the recommendations to ensure that upon creating a private chain, eris can function as expected, with this customer container set up?
Answer: Eris is a cli tool focused on container orchestration for blockchainized applications. Normally we recommend it be installed on the host. It's certainly possible to run from inside docker but it will be much less convenient.
That said, we have images available for eris on quay.io. You can also pull the eris-cli repo and build the canonical dockerfile from there.
If you're building your own you will want to have eris init as a RUN command in the dockerfile. The ENTRYPOINT should just be eris. Not eris init.
The easy way, though, to run eris from inside docker is below.
docker pull quay.io/eris/eris && docker run -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock ... quay.io/eris/eris erisCommand
Where ... are any other flags you need for your docker container.
Comment: Change [this line](https://github.com/eris-ltd/eris-cli/blob/master/Dockerfile#L53) and rebuild the docker image.
Comment: Thanks! In addition to the above suggested change, I had to call wrapdocker - which helped the user connect to the daemon, in case of the usage of privileged flag. Binding docker.sock files from host to container, ensured containers created by the eris commands are actually sibling containers. But this raises questions on how this can be handled in cloud. I have retraced back and separately built images for keys, contracts, ipfs, etc - which may be a better option than dockerizing eris-cli. Are there any suggestions to keep in mind while making custom calls to the containers or adding nodes?
Comment: Shouldn't need to build images yourself, but you always can. We keep images for everything in quay.io/eris ... If you want to handle in the cloud, for now the better way is to utilize kubernetes or docker cloud or another similar system and then utilize the images directly. Eris the tool is really just an automation framework for setting up, turning on, and connecting containers. You could use it from a cloud based container system, but it would likely be more work than is necessary if you are in a relatively stable environment where you just need to turn on and off chains.

How to containerize Eris service


How was the opening scene in Fight Club made?

Question: In the opening scene of Fight Club (1999) there is a visual journey through the Narrator's brain showing the "synapses". How was that scene made?
Comment: But you're Tyler Durden ... you should know this, right? J/K! Probably just CGI, but hopefully someone has a good answer for you.
Comment: Looks like pure CGI to me
Comment: I think there is a good commentary on it on the DVD, but don't have access to it now unfortunately. Pretty sure its CGI, the Movie was groundbreaking in that respect - lots of previously 'impossible' shots, like how his apartment was blown up, or the pull-back from the wastepaper basket.
Comment: I was hoping for a more detailed answer than "CGI". I mean it looks pretty detailed like it was made by somebody who actually knows a brain looks like at the microscopic level. There must an interesting story there.
Answer: The scene was shot using extensive CGI, and this was during a period in which David Fincher was not only exploring the use of 'impossible shots', but pioneering new techniques...

The film used texture mapping and matte painting combined with CGI to achieve previously unseen special effects, as the first motion picture to use Photogrammetry.
Comment: That is pretty cool. I was specifically interested in how they modelled the brain, although I guess nowadays that kind of CGI would be considered routine, back then it was really astonishing.


LWUIT S40 Nokia Calendar Events with sound

Question: I'm building an app to create events in the device Calendar, but when I have created them, all are set default without sound. I need to set the sound ON, when the user wants it.
How can I set the sound on the alarm in my created events?
Answer: Some guy from the nokia developer forum, solve my question.
He tells me that
You cannot access the Alarm from your Java app, but you can use the PIM API to create a Calendar event and add it (or better say import it) to the native Calendar app. The native Calendar application on Series 40 and Asha software platform devices, comes with a Reminder option that specifies how long before the event the user should get a notification sound about the event. This field can get several values (e.g. none, at start time, 5 minutes before, 10 minutes before etc). You can therefore specify a calendar event for a certain date and time and define its reminder attribute to "at start time". The calendar app doesn't allow you to specify the sound used for the reminder but rather uses the reminder tone defined in the device's sound settings under Settings > Sounds and vibra > Reminder tone (on asha software platform devices). The reminder uses the device's volume level. You cannot override neither the selected tone nor the volume level. So if the device is muted, when the reminder is activated there will be no generated sound, but otherwise the reminder should be heard in the tone and volume level set in the device's settings.
This is how you add an event with a reminder value set to "at start time" (tested on Nokia asha software platform and Nokia 501)
Code:
<code>pim = PIM.getInstance();
        try {
            EventList eventList = (EventList) pim.openPIMList(PIM.EVENT_LIST, PIM.READ_WRITE);
            Event event = eventList.createEvent();
            // get the current date
            Date date = new Date();
            // create a reminder starting 1 minute from now
            event.addDate(Event.START, Event.ATTR_NONE, date.getTime() + 60000);
            // and ending in 2 minutes from now
            event.addDate(Event.END, Event.ATTR_NONE, date.getTime() + 120000);
            /*
             * set the reminder value.  1   = at start time
             *                          300 = 5 minutes before
             *                          600 = 10 minutes before
             *                          900 = 15 minutes before
             */
            event.addInt(Event.ALARM, 0, 1);
            // import the event to calendar
            Event imported = eventList.importEvent(event);
            imported.commit();
            eventList.close();
        } catch (PIMException ex) {
            System.out.println(ex.getMessage());
        }
</code>


ROS for ubuntu precise 12.04

Question:
Hello,
There is any date for the launch of a ros realease for ubuntu 12.04? There is any beta repository available?
Many thanks,
Filipe

Originally posted by Filipe Santos on ROS Answers with karma: 346 on 2012-04-27
Post score: 13
Answer:
The build farm is still being set up for releasing Ubuntu Precise binary packages. I expect it will be ready soon, but don't know when. Maybe one of the people working on it can provide an estimate.
You can try building Fuerte from source right now, I suppose. There may be problems with some dependencies missing from Precise.
UPDATE: you can view the progress of Debian packages for Precise on the Fuerte debbuild status page.
UPDATE (2012-05-03): most Fuerte Precise packages look to be available now, including ros-fuerte-perception-pcl.

Originally posted by joq with karma: 25443 on 2012-04-28
This answer was ACCEPTED on the original site
Post score: 8

Original comments
Comment by Filipe Santos on 2012-04-30:
I have tried but I am getting troubles from python 2.7. In the roscore I get auto-starting new master
Exception AttributeError: AttributeError("'_DummyThread' object has no attribute '_Thread__block'",) in <module 'threading' from '/usr/lib/python2.7/threading.pyc'>. Anyone had this problem?
Comment by joq on 2012-04-30:
You will need to install the new catkin build tools and learn how to use them. The ROS core is no longer built with rosmake.
Comment by pbeeson on 2012-04-30:
Thanks Jack.  I'll try this again.  I tried last Thursday, but the install failed and rather than delve deep into why, I simply reverted everything.  I'll post here if there are still issues.
Comment by joq on 2012-04-30:
Good idea, Patrick. I would not be very surprised if we find some holes in the documentation. If there are, let's fix them.
Comment by pbeeson on 2012-04-30:
Not just documentation holes, rosdep install problems on Precise.  Just doesn't work properly (see answer below).
Comment by Filipe Santos on 2012-04-30:
Jack O'Quin do you know if there is any beta document,  available, to build ros fuerte with catkin? this http://www.ros.org/wiki/fuerte/Installation/Debian works in section 1.3.1 (Install core libraries), with problems in roscore (like i told before). If i try 1.3.2 i lost roscore, roscd...
Comment by Patrick Bouffard on 2012-05-03:
@Filipe Santos: I get that error too; just filed a ticket about it: https://code.ros.org/trac/ros/ticket/3950.
Answer:
There is no prebuilt install for Precise as of now.  And the source install linked above doesn't work for Precise.  Here's where I got into problems last Friday (and I am there again).  When following the source install for oneiric on precise I can get pretty far (though there are missing packages and missing dependencies in the rosdep yaml files that must be hand edited).  Then it starts trying to install things like ros-fuert-pcl that has a hard dependency on mysqlclient16, but precise only has mysqlclient18.  So, then you have to start downloading .deb files and forcing them to install and ignore dependency issues.  This is not ideal, and I refuse to start compromising the integrity of my OS packaging system by doing this shoehorning (not to mention that it's terribly difficult to know what ros-fuerte-* packages that rosdep wants, so I'd have to download the entire fuerte distribution and hand install all these "Layer 2" tools that rosdep install tries to install via apt-get ros-fuerte-xx).
So, as of now, I'm going to say that Fuerte is NOT installable (by any normal means) on Precise.  I really wish someone would have started looking at this stuff when the Precise Beta was released a month ago, but oh well.  In the meantime, none of my new machines can be used for ROS programming.

Originally posted by pbeeson with karma: 276 on 2012-04-30
This answer was NOT ACCEPTED on the original site
Post score: 4

Original comments
Comment by pbeeson on 2012-04-30:
To even get this far, there are things that need to be done: 1) apt-get install python-empy and python-nose, 2) after rosdep init, find python-qt-bindings in the local rosdep cache, and add a line for precise, 3) fix precise dependency for yaml-cpp in rosdep cache to look like oneiric.
Comment by pbeeson on 2012-04-30:
Got further than above by adding oneiric sources to my apt sources list, but then it gets into a loop where ros-fuerte-pcl installs libjpeg68-dev then ros-fuerte-opencv2 require libjpeg62-dev.  Manually install 62 which remove 68, then re-running rosdep simply reinstall 68 in order to reinstall pcl.
Comment by joq on 2012-04-30:
Thanks for the details, Patrick. Negative results are helpful, too. I suppose those bringing up the Precise build machines will solve these issues as soon as they can.
Answer:
From: http://www.ros.org/wiki/fuerte/Installation/Ubuntu/Source
UPDATE: The section 1.5.1 and 1.5.2 it works perfectly! After compiling the tools... they are working, rviz, turtlesim all fine! (After install some deb packages, like: eigen, libxml, curl, nvidea_tolkit...)
OBSERVATION: Python 2.7.3 from ubuntu 12.04 have some problem and I: see Exception AttributeError: AttributeError("'_DummyThread' object has no attribute '_Thread__block'",) in <module 'threading' from '/usr/lib/python2.7/threading.pyc'>. But all fine!

Originally posted by Filipe Santos with karma: 346 on 2012-04-30
This answer was NOT ACCEPTED on the original site
Post score: 1

Original comments
Comment by Eric Perko on 2012-04-30:
Just curious (and I'm not sure if there are actually any significant differences) but is there any reason you aren't using the Ubuntu source install docs (since you are on Ubuntu)? http://www.ros.org/wiki/fuerte/Installation/Ubuntu/Source
Comment by Filipe Santos on 2012-04-30:
Eric, I think that they are the same! The only change that i made was to put precise instead of oneiric in the deb rep: sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://packages.ros.org/ros/ubuntu precise main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ros-latest.list.. The problem, is now solved, the problem was my mistake!
Comment by joq on 2012-05-01:
Good progress, Filipe! I don't know of any additional documentation. The Debian and Ubuntu souce build instructions are similar, but the Debian version has some additional comments.
Comment by joq on 2012-05-01:
Asking new questions in an "answer" does not really work for this forum. Please edit your original question, or post a new one.
Comment by joq on 2012-05-01:
There is a new procedure for submitting rosdep rules updates: http://ros.org/doc/api/rosdep2/html/contributing_rules.html
Comment by pbeeson on 2012-05-02:
Following http://www.ros.org/wiki/fuerte/Installation/Ubuntu/Source does not simply "work perfectly".   I tried (yet again) and get stuck in the same place as noted in my answer.
Comment by pbeeson on 2012-05-02:
Also there is no Section 1.3.1/1.3.2, so I'm unsure exactly what you are doing to make this work.  1.5.1 and 1.5.2 work, but Section 1.7 does not, as pcl and opencv depend on conflicting packages in Precise.
Comment by joq on 2012-05-02:
I think he is still referring to the Debian instructions: http://www.ros.org/wiki/fuerte/Installation/Debian#fuerte.2BAC8-Installation.2BAC8-rosinstall.rosinstall
Comment by Filipe Santos on 2012-05-02:
pbeeson In section 1.2 I used "deb http://packages.ros.org/ros/ubuntu precise main". In 1.7, i had troubles with python-qt-bindings. But I had compile, rviz,amcl, gazebo and my stuff and all works fine! (offcourse that I have installed some deb manually, because i don't understand well rosdep!)
Comment by Filipe Santos on 2012-05-02:
I haven't compiled pcl... but my stuff uses opencv, and works fine (I have installed opencv from synaptic)... Probably there is some wrong repository, no?
Comment by pbeeson on 2012-05-02:
NOTE: If you only use precise in 1.2, you have to follow the debian instructions for building your own swig-wx.  Also, 1.7 became such a hassle (rosinstall tries to install ros-fuerte-opencv, etc that don't yet exist for precise) that I gave up.  Could not rosmake things I need (e.g. PCL) by hand.

ROS for ubuntu precise 12.04


How do I use TOR on a Windows computer securely?

Question: I'm asking this out of curiosity rather than practicality: If I install TOR on my Windows machine, how do I use it securely without exposing my identity? Also, what if my machine has already contacted other websites and servers prior to the usage of TOR? Would that have any effect on my anonymity?
Comment: You are correct there are some concerns with tor on Windows as it is the most popular OS. The three things I would recommend the most are: keep your tor browser up to date (when you start tor browser it will tell you there is an update available, go to the options to install, always do this), don't change the size of tor browser windows as monitor size is a fingerprint, and DO NOT open files downloaded over tor while connected to the internet as they could possibly have some malicious code in them to send out your real ip address.
Answer:
If I install TOR on my Windows machine, how do I use it securely without exposing my identity?

These are very broad questions and impossible to answer specifically for you.
Are you worried about Windows/Microsoft doing something bad? Well you need to convince yourself that they can't do something bad or they won't do something about to you. If you can't, then maybe you shouldn't be using Windows.
Are you worried about network-level adversaries correlating your traffic as it enters the Tor network with when it exits the Tor network? You'll have that issue on every OS.
Are you worried that the websites you visit will serve you an exploit and deanonymize you? Tor Browser already takes extensive steps to limit how well they can fingerprint you. When really good fingerprinting vectors have been found, they have been patched quickly. Historically, when big adversaries have an exploit and they use it to deanonymize some Tor Browser users, they used it on high profile people or people doing Really Bad Things. This is most likely because these exploits are rare (thus valuable) and using them to deanonymize all the boring everyday Tor Browser users would be wasteful since it would likely get detected and fixed.
So, in short, I don't think you or any other average Joe out there needs to worry when using Tor Browser on Windows. Most likely, the biggest threat to you will be yourself and your own behavior. https://www.torproject.org/download/download-easy.html#warning

Also, what if my machine has already contacted other websites and servers prior to the usage of TOR? Would that have any effect on my anonymity?

Probably not? It's impossible to say with the amount of detail you've given. What websites? Did you log in to them? Will you visit them with Tor Browser too? Will you log in with Tor Browser? Do you care if the website knows it is you but doesn't know where you currently are?
So, again, probably not anything to worry about here.
Comment: If I visit a website with TOR that I've logged into the past, will they be able to detect it's me? I've heard that it's better to download TOR on a brand new machine than it is to download it to a machine that's already been connected to the Internet before.
Answer: If you visit a website through Tor, they don't know who you are unless you log in or otherwise reveal personal information (for instance saying your name or email in chat)


Are comedy shows recorded with live audiences?

Question: I have watched How I Met Your Mother, The Big Bang Theory and there are these laughs from audiences. Are these shows recorded with live audiences watching?
Answer: It depends on the show.  Some still are, but lots just use sound effects (called laugh tracks) to replicate the style of the older style of shows that are/were done live.
The best bet for determining it for a particular show is to try and find tickets to the show.  If you can't find tickets or people talking about tickets, it probably isn't filmed live.  It does tend to be more prevalent with BBC shows, but there are still some US shows that have live audiences, though I'm not sure how many sitcoms and comedy shows specifically do.
Comment: Good clue on checking for tickets +1 for you. Also, laugh tracks can be called 'canned laughter', here's a little history from wiki, seems like this started in the 1940s:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laugh_track
Answer: They usually have stadium seating inside for a couple hundred people, with a bunch of microphones pointed at you. They have a comedian warm you up between takes to get everyone in the mood, play silly games etc. The sets are prebuilt for each show and they film most but not all scenes live, usually taking a few takes. The writing team is on standby and they change some jokes as they go if they don't get a big enough laugh form the live audience.
Answer: Often ones that are will mention some time during the opening/closing "filmed before a live audience" - I believe Big Bang Theory does.
Answer: It's really hard to be funny without an audience.  Audiences are brought in to help with that, and are also recorded for the laughter that occurs.  However, the end product you see on TV is heavily edited.  Timing is adjusted for better comedic effect.
This isn't a hard rule though.  Think of a show such as 30 Rock.  It has no audience (except when they do their live shows).


Dual Booting with xp and 7

Question: I have working windows 7 32 bit OS in drive C and windows xp in drive D. But I am not getting the option to select xp in boot menu. Boot menu shows two options Windows 8 Consumer Preview and Windows 7. Though I have deleted Windows 8 from drive D, but it shows in the boot menu. Now I have windows xp in drive D. I have tried using EasyBCD but it doesn't detect Windows XP.
One more thing, when I installed xp in drive D, I was only able to use XP not 7, that's why I used EasyBCD to get & back. When I got 7 back, I can't find xp, please help.
Comment: try to check allthe options of System Configuaration in Adminidtritive tools of control panel.
Answer: Try bcedit. Make sure you running command prompt with administrative privilage,  For more help on bcedit see http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc709667%28v=ws.10%29
Comment: That didn't help, I can't find any useful command for BCDEdit.
Answer: In that case I would recommend super grub. download it from http://www.supergrubdisk.org/ burn it to a disk and boot from it. menu is pretty self explanatory, there is a repair option also. Or The lengthy procedure is to reinstall windows Xp in D: then repair windows 7
Answer: Dual-boot Repair tool can help.
One-click solution - "Automatic Repair" which places latest Windows version in control of the booting (Windows 7 in this case) and fixes Windows XP boot files if necessary.

Dual Booting with xp and 7


What is the recommended way to upgrade elementary OS 0.2 Luna to 0.3 Freya?

Question: How can I upgrade from elementary OS Luna to Freya without losing my data?
Answer:
At the moment elementary isn't providing an upgrade path from update manager since results are mixed. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. You can try:

Back up EVERYTHING.
Make a Freya install disk.
Boot from the install disk and select the "upgrade" option.

However, as I said, results may vary. It's always recommended to perform a clean install. An upgrade will not give you the exact same experience as a clean install since it won't overwrite your personal settings. This is important for new features like tab naming in Terminal.

Source, Unix and Linux. Posted 2015-04-24, so the information is up to date.
As said, clean installs are often safer as they reset everything and nothing will conflict. If there is any way you can, try to do a new install.
For backing up, I recommend CrashPlan, and trust it when I reinstall. Instructions for installation on Linux.
Comment: This must be the first OS where a full reinstall is considered the safe option. I was about to install EOS as it looks absolutely delicious, but this...

A clean install also means new UIDs, a reinstallation of all packages, a reconfiguration of all packages, etc. At the very least EOS should be considering some kind of "back up and install package list/settings" if "clean install" is going to be the norm.

Shame. Such a good looking thing.
Answer: There is no officially supported way to upgrade to freya at the moment.
I recommend you to do a clean install, but keep the <code>/home</code> partition the same and create a user with the same name as in your Luna installation.
By doing so, you'll keep all of the files you've stored and most of the application settings (although you'll probably have install them again for the settings to be applied).
Comment: What makes the switch from luna -> freya or now freya -> loki a little bit more comfortable is to use [Aptik Migration Utility](http://www.teejeetech.in/p/aptik.html)
Comment: What if there is no separate home partition?
Comment: @user3 If you're doing a clean install, you can create new partitions at that moment.


How did Americans know to use smallpox infected blankets, before germ theory?

Question: How did Americans know that Native Americans would be infected with smallpox, from smallpox infected blankets, hundreds of years before germ theory?
Comment: The same way that people knew that objects fall downwards long before Newton explained gravity. They knew the effects even if they didn't understand the underlying mechanism of transmission.
Comment: Important to distinguish the accidental spread of smallpox when the Spanish first showed up and the intentional spread of smallpox in the 18th century mentioned above.  By the 18th century, while "germ theory" didn't exist, it was very close, and this was just around the time Jenner was figuring out vaccination.
Comment: Blame the British - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Fort_Pitt
Answer: Before germ theory, there were similar concepts of infectious disease- bad humors, bad air, etc. Miasma theory held that decaying organic matter transmitted infectious fumes to other organic matter. Girolamo Fracastoro went further and developed a proto-germ theory in the 1500s. So people got the idea.
Answer:
How did Americans know that Native Americans would be infected with smallpox, from smallpox infected blankets, hundreds of years before germ theory?

Did Americans know or merely hope that Native Americans would be infected with smallpox, from smallpox infected blankets?
Apparently smallpox can be spread by infected objects even though it usually spreads by airborn viruses from infected persons.
Certainly British commander in North America Lord Jefffrey Amherst hoped that giving Native Americans blankets from smallpox victims would infect them.
But wiser persons might have warned him that his evil and genocidal plan was highly flawed and would probably not work well enough to make any difference.
Certainly Native American populations had been decimated by infectious diseases many times in the last few centuries and their numbers had been greatly reduced.  But Amherst still had a terrible problem with hostile Native Americans. It was wishful thinking to hope that a new epidemic would be enough to end troubles with the Native Americans during his time in command.  Especially since simply reversing Amherst's own polices toward the Native Americans and granting them what they wanted would have ended the trouble much faster.
But at least Amherst's evil and over optimistic plan contributed to reducing the numbers of the eastern tribes so that after a few years they were no longer any trouble, as Richard Butler and Francis Dade could testify. Correct?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Butler_(general)1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_L._Dade2
Much later many plains Indian tribes were devastated by a smallpox epidemic in 1837.  And after that the plains Indians tribes were never numerous enough to fight the US government, right?  That is the reason why in the year 1890 such old soldiers as John Lawrence Grattan, William Judd Fetterman, and George Armstrong Custer said that the peaceful history of the plains since about 1840 had been caused by that great smallpox epidemic in 1837, and without it many brave soldiers would have died fighting the plains Indians.  Correct?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lawrence_Grattan3
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_J._Fetterman4
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Armstrong_Custer5
Comment: George Armstrong Custer was dead long before 1890!
Comment: @Peter Diehr  Lieutenant John L. Grattan was killed in the Grattan Massacre August 19, 1854, Captain William Fetterman was killed in the Fetterman Massacre December 21, 1866, and George Custe was killed at his Last Stand on June 25, 1876.  My last paragraph was an example of sarcasm.
Comment: @ Peter Diehr  And I may add that Major General Richard Butler was killed in St. Clair's Defeat November 4, 1791 and Captain Francis Dade was killed in the Dade Massacre December 28, 1835.  I added more sarcasm.
Comment: I'm happy to announce that Amherst street in Montreal was renamed Atataken ("group of persons or peoples with whom we share values") one week ago.


Can one dragon's destruction bring back all of my Keepers of the Shrine?

Question: If there are 3 copies of Keeper of the Shrine in the graveyard and a dragon is destroyed, can you summon all three back and get 3 dragons if normal? Or can you only use one a turn?
Answer: CDClarke is correct in his answer; you cannot do that what you propose.
To enhance on the reason why it is once again important to note that specific part:

You can only use this effect of "Keeper of the Shrine" once per turn.

One thing that this specifies is that only this effect has restrictions; you can use the "This card can be treated as 2 Tributes for..." part as many times as you want/can.
Another relevant thing to notice is that this quote references to the card in general. This means that the restriction applies to any Keeper of the Shrine you have.
You could do what you propose if the card text said instead "You can only use this effect of this card once per turn." Card texts that you see contain such phrasing or similar refer to that specific copy of your card, restricting it from being repeatedly used (however it does not restrict other copies).
It is important to note those two different situations to effectively tell apart from a restriction that applies to a copy from that that applies to the card in general.
Answer: Let's read through the text box of Keeper of the Shrine.

This card can be treated as 2 Tributes for the Tribute Summon of a Dragon-Type monster. While this card is in your hand or Graveyard, if a face-up Dragon-Type monster on the field, except "Keeper of the Shrine", is sent to the Graveyard by a card effect or because it was destroyed by battle: You can Special Summon this card, then, if that monster sent to the Graveyard is a Normal Monster, you can add 1 Dragon-Type Normal Monster from your Graveyard to your hand. You can only use this effect of "Keeper of the Shrine" once per turn.

Pay extra attention to the part I've emphasised at the end. The wording of this clause is known as a 'hard' once per turn, because it specifically restricts you from using the effect of any card with the original name 'Keeper of the Shrine' more than once in a turn. So, unfortunately, you'll only be able to get back one Keeper when a dragon is sent to the graveyard, even though they're separate cards.


Is it possible to make multiple function calls in a single transaction?

Question: Say I want to make a transaction that calls foo() and the calls bar() afterwards. I could make a contract that calls them both in sequence, but that's kind of a pain. Is there a way to just call both without prompting the user for multiple signatures? And if so will foo() revert if bar() reverts and vice versa?
Answer: There is no way to do this without using a contract.
In general, due to Ethereum's "no features" design principle, anything more complex than a simple transaction will require a smart contract. In this case the contract would be very small, and you can simply deploy it once and reuse it.
Comment: That simply batches requests from the web3 insurance to the backing node/provider. The requests are still sent to the network separately and are not atomic
Comment: So even the BatchRequest is not atomic? https://web3js.readthedocs.io/en/v1.2.11/web3-eth.html#batchrequest
Answer: You may call all in one transaction by deploying contract looking like this:
contract Target {
    function foo () public;
    function bar () public;
}

contract Batch {
  constructor (Target target) public {
    target.foo ();
    target.bar ();
    selfdestruct (msg.sender);
  }
}

This will revert foo() in case bar() will fail.
Though, this will call foo() and bar() from temporary smart contract address rather than from your real address.
Answer: The user signs one transaction. It can involve many contracts and functions, according to design. It will also be atomic - completing or reverting entirely.
There is no way to have the user sign two such transactions or receive the same assurances about two separately signed transactions.
Hope it helps.


C# open source projects

Question: What C# project(s) would you consider contributing to if you were a beginner trying to sharpen your skills in C# and .NET framework ? The project should be (besides all) active and not something less active and/or stagnant.
Answer: I'd advise you to get a couple projects under your belt first.  Think of a simple program idea which might help you in some small way, such as a calendar or organizer.  You can decide all the functionality you'd like, but have a basic basic functionality program that you can aim for first before adding new features.  Trying to do too much at once can easily overwhelm you.
Once you feel comfortable with the general feel for C#, you can hope to help others on sourceforge.net et al.  Most people don't have problems helping you understand the project, though they do expect you to know to do basic things in C#, meaning you can't ask them for help in that regard.  That's why I would say that it would be better to have some basic experience first.
Answer: There are some interesting applications developed around the Stack Exchange API that could use some help. I think everything in that tag is actively maintained, but I'm not sure if the developer base is as large as you would prefer.
Still, you'd be dealing with Stack Overflow users, who tend to be helpful and (usually) patient with beginners.
Answer: BlogEngine.NET is a high-quality project, and what might make it even better to contribute to is that is has an extension framework so you could get started writing an extension to implement some interesting bit of functionality, rather than having to dive head-first into a complex codebase.

C# open source projects


Could we get a [forum] shortlink?

Question: We get a lot of questions that are better suited to a forum, and it's customary when closing them to provide a link to that post. Since I've started doing moderation, though, I've noticed that we don't have a shortlink the way we do for [tour], [edit], etc. Could we make that happen to save a bit of time?
Comment: related: [pro forma comments](http://meta.rpg.stackexchange.com/q/3519/23970)
Comment: and likewise related: [premade comment workshopping](http://meta.rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/6168/pre-made-comments-a-resource-gathering-workshopping-thread)
Answer: Magic links are hardcoded into the site software itself and as a result are network-wide, not per-site, so although technically possible in theory, the likelihood that Staff would add a magic link to every SE in the network that leads to RPG.se's meta about RPG forum alternatives is unsurprisingly very low. ;)
Comment: Ah, fair enough. At least now I know!
Answer: Although, as SSD explained, network-wide changes for an RPG.SE-specific code won't happen, there's still a labour-saving work-around available: add a premade comment with the forums link to the auto-comment script.
Answer: Based on our current roadmap, this isn't work that we will take on, as it doesn't coincide with functional areas that we plan to improve in the near future. We recognize that there's community support for this, but unfortunately, we can't prioritize it at this time.

Could we get a [forum] shortlink?


How to enable access to LAN?

Question: I don't have a domain name.
And I browse my site by "http://localhost"
How to enable visit my site by guys not in LAN?
Comment: http://serverfault.com/questions/54443/accessing-localhost
Answer: Step 1: If you don't want to purchase a domain use a free service such as NoIP or DynDNS. If you can purchase a domain, you can use the free service EveryDNS to link up your IP address (I will assume it is dynamic) with a hostname on your domain.
Step 2: Forward the port at your router to your machine (server). If you want web access, forward port 80 to the IP address your local machine is on (you will have to check the network settings, and also be sure that this IP address doesn't change). But, be forewarned that some ISPs block port 80 as running a web server on a residential connection is a violation of their Terms of Service.
Note that running a server bypasses your firewall and allows outside folks (and hackers) possible access to your machine. Do not choose to do this lightly, and make sure your software and web server are constantly updated with the latest security patches.
Answer: You should give out your IP address to your clients.
Then they can access ypur site using URL: http://x.x.x.x, x.x.x.x is your IP.
Answer: Alternatively, you can sign up to a dynamic DNS service provider such as dyndns.org service. This will allow your machine to have a user-readable domain name (xxx.dyndns.org) that you can give to people outside your LAN.
Then, you need to ensure that your Internet gateway/router/firewall is configured to forward port 80 (http) port connections into your web-server machine.
Answer: What type of IP do you have? Static or dynamic? If you want to allow access from the internet, you will have to forward the particular port (example 80) from your router to the computer that hosts the website.

How to enable access to LAN?


Good resources explaining Domain Controllers and Active Directory

Question: I'm coming from a mainly Linux background, and need to get to grips with the Windows environment: Active Directory, Domain Controllers etc. Can anyone recommend some good resources for an absoloute beginner on these subjects?
Answer: I would try Technet at microsoft.com, and do a search on Active Directory to get some good basics.  I also found the Active Directory book by O'Reilly very useful early in my Windows administration career.
Comment: +1 for the Active Directory book, I still use it occasionally today.
Answer: You can get started right from Microsoft:
https://www.microsoft.com/events/series/adaug.aspx
Microsoft's Technet forums are also a great place for quesions - http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/categories
Other then those AD has gone through a few big improvements since Windows 2000, I would suggest any AD/Windows server books based around what your AD is built for (2000,2003,2003R2,2008,2008R2).
Comment: +1 for the virtual labs
Answer: Also I think it depends on if you want book knowledge or practical knowledge.  Here are some good resources you might not find on just googling around.  You'll notice a lot of them are from technet, but technet I find generally too large for browsing.
Also if you are familiar with linux ldap - AD will come a lot easier to you.  A good place to start might be learning about the different roles of AD.
AD
AD Blog: blogs.technet.com/b/ad/
AD powershell blog: blogs.msdn.com/b/adpowershell/
AD services team: blogs.technet.com/b/askds/
Brian Desmond: briandesmond.com/
AD tools: blog.joeware.net/
Jose Barretto: blogs.technet.com/b/josebda/
Open a socket: www.open-a-socket.com/
The life of Brian: msmvps.com/blogs/ad/default.aspx
Comment: Very comprehensive list. Hope you don't mind me making your links active for you.


Can you instantly sell intraday/day-stocks at a bit higher price?

Question: I'm new to trading, and I can't figure out whether or not you can buy and sell stocks instantly. For instance, if I buy a number of stocks of a particular corporation, whose current trading price is 46.8, can I sell it at 46.9? If you take a deeper look into trading market depth, you'll find that there are multiple buy and sell prices. As far as I understand, those are the prices at which people are trading, right? And if there's even a minute difference between the highest and lowest price, I can make some decent profit by buying at the lowest buy price and selling at the highest sell price, right?
I'm very new in this field, so I don't know much about it.
Thanks in advance!
Comment: You can immediately **offer** to sell the stocks you just bought. It **might** sell a minute later. You don't have to wait until the market closes to receive the shares you bought. But you cannot know how long you have to wait until someone buys those stocks from you at 46.9. Could take a minute, could take a year.
Comment: The basic misunderstanding here is that those multiple prices are not where trades are *happening*, but rather the opposite. Those are trades that are *not happening*; if they had already happened, they'd be gone! If there are sellers who want to sell for 100, 110 and 120, and buyers who want to buy for 90, 80 and 70, then no one has made a deal. The buyers are hoping to find a more desperate seller, the sellers are hoping to find a more desperate buyer.
Comment: I'm afraid the accepted answer is not really correct. Your proposal refers to the market depth which are actually quotes on the order book; people submit prices at which people are willing to buy or sell.. they are strictly sided so that 'sell' offers are always greater than 'buy' offers. The other option is taking an offer already on the book. You're free to do that instantly, buy and sell, but you will never be selling for a higher price than you are buying at.
Comment: The strategy you are suggesting is called *arbitrage* and you are not the first person to think of it; there are whole companies whose entire business model is identifying arbitrage opportunities and making trades at advantage in sub-millisecond time.
Comment: @Zac: I completely agree. I just wanted to specifically mention high-frequency trading because it's a bit related to what OP has in mind. It wasn't meant as a complete answer since there already was one : nanoman's [answer](https://money.stackexchange.com/a/123583/51394) for example.
Comment: @MSalters, it could be that 46.8 is the absolute peak price for that stock before the company goes into decline and your reposted shares at 46.9 never sell. Then you're really in trouble.
Comment: @EricLippert You should make an Answer of your comment.
Answer: No, because the lower prices are prices at which you can sell (offers by others to buy), and the higher prices are prices at which you can buy (offers by others to sell). Any trader who offers to sell at a price lower than where someone has offered to buy, or vice versa, will be immediately matched by the exchange to execute the order; the prices will not sit there for you to make money by acting as a go-between for the exchange. And even if something like this happened (orders for the same stock on separate exchanges are not immediately matched), a professional arbitrage trader with lightning-fast computers would grab those pennies before you can blink.
Comment: @aaaaa That's close to the entire purpose of the exchange.
Comment: so part of exchange functionality is to "fulfill" orders? like if I offer to buy AAPL for $5 and there is already offer to sell for $4.50, my offer will be automatically fulfilled immediately after placing?
Comment: @aaaaa Yes, that's right.
Comment: This whole comment may be completely unnecessary, but... I think a hard "No" is technically an incorrect answer to the question (in the title at least) - although "instantly" makes the whole thing physically impossible. My point is, you could put in a limit buy at 46.8 and as it executes, put in a limit sell order at 46.9. You can't know it'll sell, and it most likely won't at anything close to instantaneous, but it is possible.
Answer: The basic premise of you question is incorrect.
The bid price is the lower price and that is the price that  traders are bidding to buy the security.
The ask price is the higher price and that is the price that traders are offering to sell the security at.
You cannot buy at the bid (the lower price) and sell at the ask (the higher price).  It is the reverse (you buy at the ask and sell at the bid).
You can become the best bid and/or the best offer but that means that in order to get an execution you will sit there waiting until a counter party accepts your price.  Otherwise, you get nothing.
The only guaranteed fills are at market prices, assuming you hit the bid or the ask before someone else.  You will only get a fill for the number of shares available unless additional shares come in at the same price after you take out the NBBO quote.
Comment: In other words, if you repeatedly send market orders at the inside bid/ask price, you end up *losing* the cost of the spread, not gaining it.
Comment: @nick012000 - You can try anything that you want but attempting to buy at the bid (the lower price) and sell at the ask (the higher price) amounts to placing a limit order that is queued behind all orders placed at those prices prior to your order (price and time priority).  Yes, buying at the inflated price or selling at the deflated price is the basic mechanism that causes changes in stock prices but that is not what has been discussed in this entire convo.
Comment: A market order means trading at the current bid or ask.  An order inside the bid/ask price would be a limit order and would have to wait for a counter party for a fill.  See if my answer here makes this clearer:
https://money.stackexchange.com/questions/123601/do-market-makers-equities-equity-options-continually-adjust-bid-ask-quotes
Comment: "You cannot buy at the bid (the lower price) and sell at the ask (the higher price)." Well, you could try, but the question is if anyone else would be willing to sell it to you for the deflated price and then buy it from you for the inflated price. I mean, that's the basic mechanism that causes changes in stock prices, right?
Answer: What you propose is a bit related to High-Frequency trading, more specifically low-latency strategies:

In these strategies, computer scientists rely on speed to gain
  minuscule advantages in arbitraging price discrepancies in some
  particular security trading simultaneously on disparate markets

or flash trading:

This order type was available to all participants but since HFT's
  adapted to the changes in market structure more quickly than others,
  they were able to use it to "jump the queue" and place their orders
  before other order types were allowed to trade at the given price.

In order to do this, you need to have large servers that are physically close to stock exchanges.
The use of high-frequency trading is controversial.
Comment: "A distinct lack of moral compass" - I disagree that there is anything wrong or unfair. Independent markets need to be arbitraged; it makes then overall more fair to all parties.
Comment: Controversial? Maybe. But HFT does provide a lot of liquidity for the markets, which is great for everyone involved.
Comment: +1, Thanks for the informative link. How to word a follow-up question that doesn't take a book to answer, I wonder ...
Comment: @BitChaser: edited.
Answer: Just to illustrate what others have said in their answers...
Here is the order book for a randomly picked stock:

(this is from a French site, because order books are public on many french sites, when they are often reserved to subscribers on US sites, but you probably have access to that with your trading account, and it works the same everywhere).
The three columns on the left are the orders to buy, which list the number of orders, the number of shares, and the price the buyer is willing to pay (highest first).
The three columns on the right are the orders to sell, which list the price the wants (lowest first), the number of shares, and the number of orders.
You can see that the highest buying price (9.534) is lower than the lowest selling price (9.556). This is the bid-ask spread. If nothing changes, no sale can occur, as people who want to buy are not willing to pay the price the people who want to sell ask for.
For a sale to occur, there needs to be a new order coming in which "matches" an order in the opposite direction (it could be a change to an existing order, of course).
So, if you want to sell your stock immediately, you need to sell it for 9.534 or less. At that price, you can sell 26 shares. If you want to sell more than that, you would need to sell for 9.526 or less. And so on.
Conversely, if you want to buy immediately, you need to pay at least 9.556 (for up to 260 shares), or 9.558 if you want more, and so on.
There's always a difference between the highest selling price and the lowest buying price (with the latter higher than the former). As soon as the two match (or the lowest buying price is lower than the highest selling price), the exchange will match the orders, the shares will be transferred, and the orders will either be removed from the order book (for the existing one) or just not added at all (for the new one) if the numbers of shares match.
If there is a mismatch in numbers of shares, then one of the two (the one with the lowest number of shares) will be completely fulfilled and be removed from the order book and the other will see its number of shares adjusted, but again, only one of the two will remain, and you still won't have two orders (in opposite directions) with the same price.
Other orders will just stay there until either someone makes a matching order (for instance someone really really wants to sell this stock right now, and is willing to go down to 9.5 rather than wait, then all the orders show here will be matched if the quantities allow), or they get changed (the people trying to buy at 9.5 realise they won't be able to do so at that price, so they change their limit to match current sell orders).
Here you can see how the order book for a given share evolves over time:

Source: By Kjerish - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0
Buy orders are in green, sell orders are in red. As you see, green prices are always lower than red.
Comment: Thanks a lot @jcaron, your answer made it more clear
Answer: Market Makers
On exchanges with market makers (as opposed to auctions/specialists), the agent which actually executes the trades ensures a positive bid/ask spread, because that is their compensation.  Obviously, if you were a market maker for such an exchange, you would never offer to sell a security for less than the price you are willing to buy it, because then you would incur a cost to yourself for providing liquidity to the market.
Order Book
It helps to understand how a transaction normally completes.  The exchange maintains a list of bids and asks by price point and security.  This is called the order book.  When you go to buy a security, you name a limit price (I want to buy 10 shares of XYZ for no more than $35.00) or specify a "market order" (I want to buy 10 shares of XYZ for the current best available price).  If a sell order exists which matches the criteria for your limit (Alice offers 50 shares of XYZ for $34.85), then the trade executes immediately.  Otherwise, the order goes into the book and waits for a matching bid (until it expires).  Note that market orders are most likely to get filled immediately, because their constraint is only for a number of shares, and does not limit the price.
As you can see, if Alice places a sell order for 50 shares of XYZ at $48.80, and Bob places a buy order for 25 shares of XYZ at $48.90, you will never see that bid/ask spread on the order book, except in retrospect.  That's because the exchange will see that these orders match, and the trade will execute for 25 shares@$48.80 as soon as the second order is received.  You will literally have 0 time to insert yourself between Alice and Bob and arbitrage the difference.  The exchange does that automatically by the very definition of a limit order.
Arbitrage
Eric Duminil mentions a scenario where the above can happen, and that is when the same security is listed on multiple exchanges (e.g., NYSE + LSE + TSE).  Because buy orders on one exchange cannot be filled by sell orders on another, the price matching across exchanges must occur via external market participants.  It might seem like this is easy money, and it is, in a sense, which means that it will almost never happen (over a duration that a human can notice).  Because this opportunity can be identified algorithmically, automated traders will execute these trades long before a human gets a chance at them.  Of course, anyone, including you, can set up your own automated trading system to get a piece of this pie.  But if another trader always beats you to the trade, then you just wasted money investing in your system.  Because it's the closest thing to a sure bet, HFTs can essentially spend their profits ensuring that their trades are the fastest, by locating their servers closest to the exchanges and using dedicated, proprietary low-latency networks to move data between their servers faster than you or competitors.


Green card processing time

Question: If a person applied for a green card from a certain visa type, but he had family members who have long term B1/B2 visa now staying outside US, Are they permitted to come, not questioned on the border? Because there's another family member staying inside US applying for Green Card?
Comment: How is the title of your question related to the body?
Answer: First of all, everybody gets questioned at the border.
A green card holder may petition for family members to immigrate, but this procedure is limited to immediate family (spouse or unmarried children). This kind of family member visa is limited in number per year. There will be a period of time to wait, possibly many years. See Visa Availability and Priority Dates.
Comment: The green card *applicant,* however, about whom the question has been asked, is not able to petition for family members until after the application is approved and he becomes a permanent resident.
Comment: @phoog: True, good point, I had misread the question and thought the OP was a green card holder. Regardless, it will still take many years. :)
Answer: The family members can come to the US in B-1 or B-2 status, as appropriate, but they will be subject to a normal interview like any other temporary visitor.  In fact, they might have a harder time: the fact that they have a relative applying for a green card may make it more likely for the immigration officer to suspect immigrant intent on the part of the family member who is seeking entry.
 If the officer finds immigrant intent, the traveler will be unable to enter in B-1 or B-2 status.

Green card processing time


Breakfast vegetable

Question: Culture exchange Dinner party tomorrow night with Japanese exchange students. I have been asked to bring a vegetable dish to this "Breakfast For Dinner" theme. Outside of potatoes, I cannot think of a thing. I don't need a recipe, I need a category suggestion.
What is a breakfast vegetable? Help.
Comment: The closest thing I can think of in western culture might be a fritata with lots of vegetables ... but I wouldn't think of it as a vegetable dish, per se.
Comment: Do they mean vegetable, or vegetarian? That would open up a lot of egg dishes and bakery goods.
Comment: Thank you slim for your suggestion. I do not believe the criteria was vegetarian or vegan. I didn't want to struggle with keeping eggs hot in a potluck scenario, or risk that the other participants had done egg and potato bakes. I was trying to be a bit more creative. Were I entertaining in my home Joe, I would certainly try the fritata idea.
Answer: A tomato comes to mind as a classic breakfast vegetable (even if science says it's a fruit :)  As a fried side or sliced garnish, either is tasty.
Comment: Pat, I like this idea a great deal, but it is a bad time of year of 'good' tomatoes. I appreciate you help.
Comment: Or halved and broiled
Comment: When I was a kid we would have stewed tomatoes with our bacon and eggs, was definitely my favorite. We'd also have rhubarb compote which is technically a vegetable.
Answer: Well, we often have asparagus for breakfast.  They make really good soldiers to go with poached eggs.
Another suggestion is baked beans.  In the region where I grew up (Ottawa valley) a lot of restaurants serve them with eggs and bacon for breakfast.
Comment: It's not typical breakfast in the regions I've lived in the US, but I've seen it on brunch menus ... usually with a runny poached egg on top, to make a sort of sauce for 'em.  (or with hollandaise) ... unfortunately, it's a bad time of year around here to get asparagus.
Comment: Fantastic idea. I may use this for a Mother's Day brunch menu come spring when I can get fresh asparagus again. Good thinking.
Answer: Grilled mushrooms.
While not technically a vegetable, or even a plant for that matter, it's certainly appropriate for the occasion.
A full English breakfast, as eaten in Notting Hill last year, is bacon/sausage and fried egg with baked beans and grilled mushrooms. It also has toast with butter and jam, and a grilled tomato.
Comment: Carmi, I hadn't even thought of mushrooms. I think that is a good choice for transport and rounding out what other participants may bring to this potluck event. I am going to sauté mushrooms with bacon bits, and marinate some as well to serve at room temp. Thank you for helping think outside the box.
Comment: @Carmi: For the sake of accuracy, Full English Breakfasts tend to vary a fair bit in composition.  Usually a selection from the following (the closer to the beginning, the more common, mostly fried): bacon (not like American bacon), eggs (fried, scrambled or sometimes poached), sausages, mushrooms, tomatoes, baked beans, fried bread, hash browns, black pudding, bubble & squeak.  Bacon is occasionally grilled.  Also, technically the term also refers to the other courses, which are juice and cereal before, and toast afterwards.
Comment: The baked beans will also count as a vegetable.
Comment: @Carmi: Mushrooms are usually fried in butter in my experience, usually chopped up - but for a more prominent role, certainly if on their own, then portabellos whole.
Comment: @Orbling: You're absolutely right about the varying composition of breakfast. I was specifically describing a breakfast I had that struck me as being "typical". As for the mushrooms, they were very definitely whole and grilled, as they had grill "char lines" on them. They do fry them a lot though.
Comment: @Carmi: Yes, I have seen then grilled on occasion, I would say that was uncommon within a breakfast mind.  Grilled mushrooms are quite a different beast to those fried in butter.  Your specific breakfast was quite a reasonable example of a typical breakfast, yes.  Just the phrasing could have led to someone thinking it was definitive, so just in case later readers came by, I thought I would expand on the definition.
Answer: As another option, not everyone eats hot food for breakfast.
In warmer parts of the world, we tend to prefer salads for breakfast.
Perhaps a Greek salad (tomatoes, black olives, feta cheese, olive oil), or an Israeli salad (finely chopped cucumber, tomato, red pepper, oil, lemon juice) would work.
Comment: If the dinner weren't so 'AMERICAN' in it's theme, this would be my runner up choice. I am going to make it for my own family dinner next week though. You really teased my taste buds with this idea.
Answer: Few ideas (the ones further down tend more to be dishes with vegetables than vegetable dishes)
Eggs: Not sure if you consider this cheating... but you start with eggs, and you have a whole lot of choices... Leafy Greens like Kale and Spinach go great with eggs. As a matter of fact, it's what I just ate today. Cook the Kale, add in scrambled eggs, paprika, salt, Pepper, done. Other choices, poached egg or fried egg on a bed of sauteed greens, omelet,
Salad: There are numerous choices for a salad, but you can add some fruit to a some greens to make a light salad.
Beans: Also sorts of bean dishes work great for a nice hearty breakfast. Baked Beans, etc...
Smoothie: Also not sure if this would appealing or appropriate, but often people put vegetables in their smoothies.
Savoury Oatmeal: Oatmeal can be made savoury by adding vegetables. Not a fan of oatmeal, but I've heard it done. Not sure if you'd call this a vegetable dish though.
A couple useful links:

FoodNetork search for Vegetables as the main dish & Breakfast
thekitchn.com: Greens & breakfast
Comment: Talon8, Thank you so much for your through answers and suggestions. I think the most 'breakfast ideas
Comment: KEYBOARD ERROR. I sent the last note before finished. I think the most 'breakfast' like ideas for a typical AMERICAN breakfast seem to rule these ideas out, but frankly they sound delicious to me. I don't know that my choice of sauteed onion, bacon and mushrooms could be called typical either having said that. As Americans, we just don't do veggies in the morning outside of potatos where I come from. Maybe southern dishes that include corn fritters or grits is about al
Comment: Though I am Canadian... Those are American websites. Does that count? :-)
Comment: +1 for smoothies. We've started eating a lot of veggie + fruit smoothies for b'fast since getting a vitamix (well, we were when it was warm). Things like melon and spinach or fruit and lettuce turn out really well.
Comment: +1. Green smoothies (smoothies with greens like spinach, kale, or lettuce) are delicious. For the savory oatmeal suggestion, I find adding pumpkin works great. And subbing in sweet potatoes wherever you would use regular white potatoes (e.g., a sweet potato hash) is another option.
Answer: Hmmmm... Japanese breakfasts are a lot different, but it sounds like this is a "western" breakfast for dinner, like eggs, bacon, and pancakes?  I'd say you can't go wrong with potatoes.  I have a book of recipes of Japanese pub food, which borrows from a lot of different cultures.  One of them basically has you peel and cut a couple russet potatoes into ½ x 2 inch sticks, deep fry them and then mix them with sauteed onion and two strips worth of sauteed bacon and just a little bit (½ tsp) of soy sauce.  If you wanted, you could easily add some bell pepper and mushroom to the onion and bacon.  It'd be like a Denver omlette minus the omlette with the home fries mixed in.  That'd be a good, easy western breakfast appropriate vegetable dish.
If you're looking for something appropriate to a Japanese breakfast, I'd recommend Japanese-style pickles, but it doesn't sound like that's what you're looking for.
Comment: I like your suggestion and if I were not trying to stay away from the obvious answer of 'potato' for the side dish, I would go this route. Sounds like a great brunch/dinner for the weekend. I am interested in finding out more about Japanese-style pickles. That might just be a good conversation starter with the students. Thanks for the idea.
Comment: Definitely ask them about tsukemono (soo-kay-moh-no). They're different from the western notion of pickles and a fascinating part of Japanese cuisine.
Comment: Darn Cold Oatmeal, I forgot to ask tonight. I will see a couple of these students again and make it a point to explore that with them. Thanks again for the conversation starter and the helpful pronunciation guide.
Answer: It might be too late, but to expand on the fritatta comment --
It doesn't have to be served warm.  It can be served like a spanish tortilla or a quiche -- either warm, or at room temperature.  If you make it the day before (doubtful in this case), you can chill it in the fridge, then bring it out before serving to warm back up to room temperature.
Common vegetable ingredients include:

bell peppers
onion, leeks or similar
mushrooms
asparagus
broccoli
potato
spinich or other dark greens
zucchini or other summer squash
pumpkin or winter squash
tomato (diced or sliced, no need to pre-cook)
sun-dried tomatoes
artichoke hearts
peas
Comment: Joe, that was an insightful and helpful answer. I must admit I have been cooking for years and NEVER thought once of room temp eggs being not only acceptable, but good. I might add to the list a crisply tangy and mild goat cheese. You have given me a new freedom I am going to happily explore. I am right with you on your yummy ideas for ingredients. Thank you for taking the time and effort to expand my horizons.
Comment: @Plain Ol'Common Sense : I was just listing vegetables ... almost any cheese works (blue cheeses might be a bit strong in large amounts, though), and of course meats like ham, salami, sausages, etc, if you want to hit almost all food groups at once ... then just serve with some good bread.
Answer: For the sake of all the helpful folks who gave me fantastic idea for this event I want to share the results. I cooked up 5 pounds of sliced mushrooms 3 onions and a 1/2 pound of peppered bacon. As they all crip up nicely in the pan I threw some Merlot in the pan to deglaze it and add a little tang, cut the heaviness of the bacon and add richness.  Out of a full over sized 12" pie plate, not one mushroom was left, and I think I would have had the same results had I doubled the recipe. Thank you all so much. I now have several new dishes to try out and learn new techniques.
Answer: I love corn cakes.  I make mine with lots of fresh (or frozen) kernels and onion - mixed into corn bread batter and fried on a griddle.  I often serve with pureed red pepper sauce.
You could also do a corn casserole - would be a bit more "brunchy" than breakfast.

Breakfast vegetable


What are the writers trying to convey with the whole blanks/Network angle?

Question: In The World's End, is the whole "blanks" and "The Network" angle a gibe by the writers at technology and the Internet and what it is doing to people? The Network states that it is responsible for all technological advances made in the last few decades.
Answer: To a degree, yes. The film is dealing with the nature of our addiction to the internet and our devices, but this is just part of a larger picture.
There are a number of references made to the 'homogenization' of England (read 'the world'), depicted by the identical pub interiors, the 'Starbucks' references and the the beehive mentality of the antagonists. This homogenization is aided and spread using the network and, in a sense, harkens back to the anti-communism films of the 50's such as Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Invaders from Mars. One of mankind's greatest fears is loss of identity, and this film deals with the consequences of making choices through free will.
As an aside, there is a great article here about the use of cars in the film - not just about Gary's stubborn reluctance to give up his old Ford Granada, but the fact that the town is populated with identical Vauxhall Amperas (Chevy Volts in the US) - further evidence of the insidiousness of homogenization.
Comment: That is fantastic. This film is worth at least a couple of rewatches. Thanks :)


Non-literal applications of "Shortest Path" algorithm?

Question: It's obvious that it's used in stuff like Google Maps, but what are some more metaphorical applications where you're minimizing the path between nodes (which can represent anything)
Comment: Maybe even something like the Facebook "friends" algorithm is a good example.  You may know this person if the path is under 2 lengths.
Answer: I'm not sure this is "non-obvious", but you can use a shortest path algorithm to numerically solve calculus of variations boundary value problems (i.e. where you know the starting and ending values).  This can be done, for example, by creating a 2D grid of points, for example:

The integral you want to minimize is a path integral which takes the form:
$$
S = \int g(f, \dot{f}, t)dt
$$
You can approximate this integral using edges that connect two grid points.  The weight of the edge is the approximate value of this piece of the integral.  That is, you estimate the $\dot{f} \approx \frac{\Delta f}{\Delta t}$, then plug into $g$ and approximate the integral as $\int_t^{t + \Delta t} gdt \approx g\Delta t$.  You have to introduce a lot of extra nodes to create edges in many different directions (from each node) to accurately solve the problem.  Once you have the graph setup (the nodes and edges with their edge weight), you simply solve the shortest path problem to find the solution from a starting node to an end node (or you could do an all-pairs shortest path algorithm to find a more general solution).
Here's an actual example of using this to find an optimum path to take between two polygonal lines using something very similar to dynamic time warping (this actually is an invariant DTW scheme).  The first solution requires monotonicity and the second doesn't.  If you don't know anything about free space diagrams, the white regions represent points (from both lines) that are less than a certain distance from each other.  You can see that the non-monotonic solution sort of tends towards the middle of the free space:

If you want more information, you can read Curve Matching, Time Warping, and Light Fields:
New Algorithms for Computing Similarity between Curves (it's a PDF).  They explain all of this in more detail (and present a translation invariant measure).
Caveat
It's worth pointing out that this algorithm fails for some problems.  Specifically, it fails for problems where the solution is a sinusoid.  If you try to apply this problem to a harmonic problem (specifically one where the solution should be a sinusoid) it fails miserably.  Now part of this is that periodic solutions are not that amenable to boundary value problems.  The problem with those is that the boundaries often can result in many different solutions.
...and this is the rejected (and I think for good reason actually) paper where I discussed this in more detail...
Comment: Nice! $\bf{} \bf{}$
Answer: Th line-breaking algorithm in TeX works by considering a graph with each potential line break in a paragraph as a node and an edge between two nodes if there's an appropriate amount of text (and glue, etc.) between them to fill a line, weighted by an aesthetic "demerit" score for the potential line.
For each paragraph TeX will then compute the path from an implicit break point at the beginning to a break point at the end of the paragraph that incurs a minimal total amount of "demerits".
Answer: I once implemented a printer driver that would accept different formats of input. The printer itself was a Hewlett-Packard and required input in their proprietary "PCL" format.  The printer driver had a configuration file that contained lines like this one:

   png -> pnm   0.8   pngtopnm %I > %O

This meant that an input in png format could be turned into a pnm format input by using the command pngtopnm %I > %O, and such a conversion has a quality score of 0.8.
The printer driver viewed this as an edge with length 0.8 in a directed graph.  Given an input in any format it would then compute the shortest path to the pcl node, apply the appropriate commands to convert the input to PCL format, and send the result to the printer.
Answer: This is a specific instance of JackofAll's answer above: I've seen it used in a data dictionary context, where data models have a version number: it was used to find the shortest path from version x to version y, so that an automatic script could be generated to bundle up the data model changes to move a datamodel at version x to version y.
Answer: We can somewhat simplified describe a racing car's position on track as a 2D coordinate set, a facing and a speed. These combine to a 4D vector.
Given some finite resolution for each parameter we can describe all of the car's possible routes as a directed graph between such 4D vectors where each node point towards the nodes that are reachable depending on driver input.
The shortest route on this graph is the fastest route on track.
For practical use you'd probably want to include more variables in the position in order to describe physics more accurately, and then you would need to apply some heavy optimisation in order to get a graph that is small enough to work with.
It doesn't automatically solve the problem, but I think it is still beneficial to consider the fastest racing line problem to be just another shortest route problem that happen to take place in a vector space of assorted properties.
Answer: ISOMAP algorithm relates a collection of observations in a high-dimensional space to a lower-dimensional equivalent, thus performing dimension reduction. The algorithm calculates the "low-dimensional embedding" using a graph that connects the closest neighbors with a link, and the distance between all other points is calculated using a shortest path on that graph.
For details, see
   http://isomap.stanford.edu/


Semen Stains Remaining On Clothes Even After thoroughly Washing The Garment

Question: My question is about remnants of semen stain that can be clearly seen even after thoroughly washing the garment. There are many times when the semen stains are still visible after washing the garment thoroughly. Are these kinds of garment pure or impure and is it permissible to offer Salah or perform religious duties while wearing such garments?
Comment: The tag self-purification seems a bit misleading, as you are asking about clothes. Moreover I don't really get the purpose of this tag.
Comment: @Medi1Saif - Okay. Remove that Tag. I considered clothes to be part of one's self, so I added it, anyways.
Answer: Some common mistakes on the topic of taharah/najasah
Many people seem to exaggerate and misinterpret on the topic of purification of najasah, this often comes from a false understanding of the term, najasah in Islam is not dirth or uncleanness by default. Najasah is fixed to specific items among them are alcohol, excrement, urine etc. some of which are quoted in What items are considered najis in fiqh?.
Another misunderstanding is the transfer (or contamination) of najasah for which there's a rule of thomb for the case of dried najasah:
How to purify a carpet if I don't remember were the impurity is?
What is necessarily to achieve the task of taharah and get things (ritually) pure
Please note taharah or purification means doing all necessary efforts to remove najasah (it's color, odor and taste from the najis object) with water, once you have done this it is fine. Neither our prophet () nor his shabah had a washing machine, so once your clothes are washed this way this requirement is fulfilled. The sahabah and the prophet () only used water at least once for this purpose, why should we need multiple washings?
Further note that the impurity (najasah) of semen has no scholarly consensus.
Consequently there's a difference in whether and how one should remove semen based on the state, is it "dry" -> "scratch out" or still "liquid" -> "wash (out)" are the most recommended ways.
Nevertheless as water is regard as pure purifier and the main tool to achieve taharah once washed an object is regarded as pure.
Stains are not neceassirly an evidence for a remaining najasah
Further little of najasah is equal to no najasah and this would apply to traces or staines of a former najasah too (See for example
is pus and blood najis)
As you see if you washed some garments with water or a washing machine, but found some stains of the impurity on them you have two options:

Either try to remove these stains by another (final) attempt to remove the impurity (more safe option, but do not let it lead to 3rd, 4th etc. attempt) or
accept that this is no more an impurity on them as you did your best to remove the impurity (this is the option of choice if you don't count among the many people who have waswasa issues posting on our site, as if you did your best, you've done your duty and can reagrd the impurity as removed).

And note that stains don't necessarily must be related to an impurity, they could have other origins (quality or colour change of the garment etc.).
Conditions for validity of the prayer from the taharah perspective
In order to pray you ensure that you are in a tahir state: depending on the najasah you must either perform wudu' or ghusl prior to praying.
Further you must ensure that you, what you wear and the piece of earth on which you are praying has no visible, snifflable or tastable impurity on it: This means your body (by ghusl/wudu'), your clothes (being washed) and the piece of earth or carpet you pray on must be clean from any najasah.
If this is satisfied the tahrah conditions for a valid prayer are fulfilled.
Also somewhat relevant:

How can I clean bathroom tiles which may have semen on them?
What are the consequences of offering obligatory prayer while unaware of being in a state of impurity?
Do i have to wash the undergarment?


Why did rendezvous on Gemini 4 fail so badly?

Question: I can't for the life of me understand why commander Jim McDivitt thought he could eyeball a rendezvous - point the nose and thrust. The futility of that technique is one of the first things even amateurs like me learn about orbital dynamics. They had plenty of trajectory experts - Bill Tindall and his team plus Buzz Aldrin was an expert on rendezvous.
Comment: Last year, I asked Buzz Aldrin this very question.  His answer was vague, something along the lines that he was too new, when the Gemini IV crew began training, to have an impact.  However, he did tell me that he was more involved in the planning of Gemini 6A, the first mission to accomplish a successful space rendezvous.  Maybe I'll drill Buzz about this again the next time I see him...
Comment: You're an amateur who learned about it by studying information that had to be gathered somehow.
Comment: Another thing to keep in mind was that the Gemini program had four main objectives, three of which [to demonstrate long duration (by their standards) spaceflight, spacewalking, and space rendezvous] were to be investigated, for the very first time, by the crew of Gemini IV.  One wonders how much time was spent training for the rendezvous task during what must have been a very compressed training timetable...
Comment: I think @chrylis is saying that it only seems obvious even to amateurs today because of hindsight, and that this hindsight is based, among other things, on the experience gained by Gemini 4.
Comment: The "point the nose and thrust" technique _isn't_ always futile - it's a perfectly valid option if you're fairly close to the target.
Comment: @chrylis4 - I don't understand what you are trying to say. Can you help?
Comment: The mathematics of the mechanics may have been known, but that's a very different thing than being able to actually maneuver a craft in flight.
Comment: @Digger - re time spent training - well I know they didn't have a rendezvous trainer at the time and I'm sure the EVA was the big one they we're concentrating on.Buzz is cool - still going strong I think..
Comment: @David Richerby - Ah, I see, well that bit of knowledge wasn't gained off the back of Gemini , the mechanics have been known for a long time and that was the point of the question .
Comment: Buzz wrote the book on orbital rendezvous and that is why he succeeded so spectacularly using just a sextant and a piece of paper when docking with the Agena target vehicle. It is a matter of McDivitt probably not having read the book by Buzz.
Comment: I think it also works if you're flying a torchship with powerful divert thrusters.
Answer: Gemini 4 was the first unsuccessful try of a rendezvous. They sought at that times it should be possible to rendezvous from a short distance by simply thrusting towards the docking object. They had to learn it the hard way that this strategy works only on very, very short distances and in a short time.
The circumference of a low Earth circular orbit with a height of 200 km is 41,286 km. A distance of 100 m is only 2.4 parts per million of the full orbit. Hard to believe at that times that about 100 m is still too far away for "point the nose and thrust". How  close is neccessary for a successful "point the nose and thrust" rendezvous would be another good question.
If we look at the orbit period of about 90 minutes, 1 minute seems to be too long for such a "point the nose and thrust" maneuver. But how short is short enough, some seconds?
An exact digital simulation of such a rendezvous maneuver may be done using a simple single personal computer these days but could not be done in real time using the largest available computers in 1965 lacking a sophisticated and fast graphic display.
But they were successful with Gemini 6A only a half year later.
For more information see this very similar question.
Comment: @Joshua, KSP also has much higher delta-V budgets than NASA.
Comment: "500 feet"; as a longtime KSP player I say that's a pretty bad failure of point and burn; anything less than 2km suffices and KSP's planet is smaller yielding much faster diversion. On the other hand, no docking radar is annoying.
Comment: @Joshua Also, docking in KSP is often done at much higher speeds. When the space shuttle docked with the ISS, it would approach at 0.03 m/s (https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/593865main_AP_ST_Phys_ShuttleODS.pdf), while, in my KSP playing, I usually approach the rendez-vous at around 20+m/s, depending on the situation, and even make the final approach for docking 50x faster than the shuttle.
Comment: @Mark: Will 15 m/s do? That's about what I'd use.
Comment: @Joshua, the total delta-V expenditure during rendezvous for Gemini 6A was about 80 m/s, including the plane change, phase change, and establishing an intersecting orbit.  The portion corresponding to your "15 m/s" is probably the "braking maneuver", at 19.8 m/s, although it might be the "terminal phase" maneuvers, at 38 m/s.  (Terminal-phase maneuvers were initiated at a distance of 320 km.)
Answer: The long comment chain below this answer highlights the mis-conception that NASA astronauts as a whole did not understand the orbital mechanics of docking.
As this comment points out, the mechanics was well understood at the time, and at least one astronaut had written a thesis on the topic a few years earlier:

... Aldrins thesis about orbital rendezvous - which turned out to be an important cornerstone for NASA - is from 1963, just two years prior. So I think its at least probably that not everyone was familiar with it. I think they were knowledgeable about orbital mechanics, but the quote is about rendezvous - which can be very counter-intuitive. Aldrins thesis is about exactly that factor ;) I think its more that they didn't have the proper procedures, not that they couldn't figure it out in theory. They would probably have absolutely loved a simulator like KSP just to learn procedures ;)

My emphasis added above.

See Line-of-sight guidance techniques for manned orbital rendezvous

Author: Aldrin, Buzz
Citable URI: http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/12652
Department: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Publisher: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Date Issued: 1963
Description:
Thesis (Sc. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 1963.; Vita.; Includes bibliographical references (leaves 305-309).
URI: http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/12652
http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/12652
Keywords: Aeronautics and Astronautics
Comment: @Uwe people were much better then than they are now at getting very good results with small computing power. I will not have the discussion in comments here, but to do this simulation in order to understand these effects, you can just use one-body orbits in a spherical potential using very simple math. You do not need the kind of numerical power you are suggesting. These are practically circulular orbits and 10 second timesteps with 4th order Runge-Kutta is all you need, if that. You can even throw in J2 without much extra crunching.
Comment: @Uwe but if you are concerned, why not ask a new question about the calculations in Aldrin's thesis? That would make more space for this very interesting topic!
Comment: I searched the pdf of Aldrins thesis for the time interval used for computer simulations of orbital maneuvers and found only a 15 seconds interval. 15 seconds is adequate to simulate a maneuver of 15 or 30 minutes length. But to simulate the very last phase of a rendezvous with a duration of some few minutes, a much shorter computing interval should be used, about a second or even less. May be the numerical errors were too big when using so short intervals. In 1963 there were no computers doing megaflops with double precision available. I found no occurences of the words "floating point".
Answer: First, the Gemini IV maneuver was station-keeping, not rendezvous.  Since the target was the just-separated upper stage, the two spacecraft were already rendezvoused, and point-and-burn would have worked if they'd done it properly.
According to the Gemini IV mission report, the main causes of station-keeping failure were a mix of procedural mistakes and inadequately-aggressive maneuvering:

Review of these figures shows that the velocity increments applied through 00:09:21 g.e.t. succeeded in reducing the separation rate, but left a residual rate of 1.5 ft/sec away from the launch vehicle. As a result, the range from spacecraft to launch vehicle increased to 0.84 nautical mile and the range rate increased to 6.5 ft/sec by 00:30:25 g.e.t. when corrective action was initiated...

At this point (00:52:00 g.e.t.) a relative velocity of 8 ft/sec normal to the line of sight existed. This velocity propagated into a separation distance of 1.6 nautical miles and a separation rate of 17 ft/sec by the time corrective action was initiated at 01:05:30 g.e.t. The corrective thrust applied was insufficient...

It appears that if a procedure had been followed that required the crew (1) to initially establish a clearly perceptible closing rate with the target at all times and (2) to again establish a perceptible closing rate any time the range became larger than several stage II lengths, then the closeup station-keeping goal could perhaps have been achieved.

During the station-keeping exercise, the critical nature of rate determination was demonstrated. After separation, following the four thrusts back toward the launch vehicle, a rate of 1.5 ft/sec away from the stage II existed, whereas, a rate toward it should have been established. The range was approximately 1800 feet at this time. Later, at the point of closest approach, an 8-ft/sec rate existed, normal to the line of sight, which should have been removed.

The ability of a flight crew member to determine rates of the target even in daylight is considerably impaired without a stable background or familiar objects in the foreground. At night, the ability to determine rates depends on the relative distance between two reference lights if they are both visible. If only one light is visible, the flight crew member's judgement depends on his ability to measure the intensity of the light, and, if this one light is flashing, the task becomes very difficult.

In short, by the time the crew established a trajectory towards the target, a considerable lateral velocity had built up, and they had no reference point to judge that velocity against.  If they'd established a closing trajectory immediately after separation, they would have been able to use the upper stage as a reference; if they'd approached from a different direction, they would have been able to use the Earth or the background star field as a reference.
(And for you KSP players, the Gemini FDI doesn't come with target and anti-target markers.)
Answer: The technical and organizational causes of the Gemini IV station-keeping failure are discussed in this conference paper.  John Goodman, "A Cautionary Tale of a Secret, a Small Team, an Accelerated Schedule, and the Gemini IV Station-Keeping Failure," 43rd Annual AAS Guidance and Control Conference, Breckenridge, CO, January 30 to February 5, 2020.
paywalled here
Below is a summary, the paper has a lot more detail.
Expertise resident in Project Gemini in relative motion and mission planning that could have resulted in a successful station-keeping attempt was not applied to the mission due to the secrecy surrounding the EVA and station-keeping activity and the very short schedule to prepare for the flight. Personnel in the NASA MPAD and the NASA Crew Safety and Procedures Branch that developed relative motion control techniques for the Gemini VI rendezvous mission were not involved in the planning for the Gemini IV station-keeping exercise.
Knowledge of the station-keeping exercise was limited to a small team of crew support personnel who were apparently not knowledgeable in the control of relative motion. The Gemini engineering simulator at the McDonnell plant in St. Louis had not yet been modified to support Gemini procedure development and crew training for relative motion. The lack of a station-keeping capability in the engineering simulator meant that engineers could not verify the station-keeping concept of operations before it was presented to the crew. This prevented the crew support personnel (and the crew) from testing their mental model of what station-keeping would require. Simulator execution of the proposed procedures might have revealed the technical causes of the station-keeping failure, and the need for inertial line-of-sight control and a collimated reticle. The first time the station-keeping procedure was tested was during the flight of Gemini IV. This violated a cardinal rule of spaceflight operations: never train a crew on an unverified procedure.
The crew understood that inertial line-of-sight control was required to establish and maintain an intercept trajectory with the second stage so that station-keeping could be established, but that technique required a star field or collimated reticle to serve as a reference to an inertial frame.  The crew did not perform inertial line-of-sight control since they did not have a cue for thrusting orthogonal to the line-of-sight. They did have a cue for thrusting along the line-of-sight based on visual observation of the opening or closing rate. Therefore, they attempted to overcome orbital mechanics by brute force, by thrusting along the line-of-sight, until they became concerned about propellant consumption. This was the only option the crew had to attempt to establish station-keeping, given the limited information available (a window view of the second stage).
Comments about the "non-intuitive" nature of orbital mechanics, "trying to fly it like an airplane," or "ingrained instincts" do not explain the crew's actions. These simplistic explanations sound reasonable to people not familiar with the control of relative motion in orbit, but are misleading and not correct. The crew had a better understanding of orbital mechanics than writers have assumed.
There is no evidence that the Gemini IV station-keeping failure was a major learning incident that influenced the development of rendezvous techniques that were flown on Gemini VI-A, or on later Gemini and Apollo missions. It was a learning experience for the small team of crew support personnel that planned the station-keeping exercise, but it was not a learning experience for NASA MPAD and NASA Crew Safety and Procedures Branch rendezvous personnel who were planning the Gemini VI rendezvous mission.
The real "discovery" of Gemini IV was that it is easy to underestimate the risks and complexity of a task that has not been done before, particularly when a small team of support personnel is under schedule pressure and does not possess the right knowledge and simulation tools, and the personnel with the right knowledge are not included in mission planning.
Comment: Can you summarize? Otherwise this is fairly useless to those who don't have access.
Comment: Wonderful edit, *thank you!* Just fyi if some of these are direct quotes from the paper you can just add a `>` at the beginning of each paragraph; that indents it and let's us know it's a quote from your source and not your own words. If these are your own summaries in your own words, then this is fine as-is.


How to root a Samsung Spica

Question: How do I go about rooting my Samsung Spica?
Answer: The main reference resource site for modders and "cookers" of Samsung Spica aka i5700 is at Samdroid forum board, here.
It contains all information you need to upgrade your firmware version, root your phone, etc.
Comment: Interesting... forum.samdroid.net came up in the Google search but I wouldn't have known it's the main resource. Good answer.
Answer: This rooting tutorial is much easier to follow than Samdroid's (it still uses Samdroid's method, but the tutorial is much less terse and have pictures): http://www.addictivetips.com/mobile/root-samsung-galaxy-spica-i5700-with-leshaks-kernel/

How to root a Samsung Spica


Dual boot Ubuntu 13.10 & Windows 8.1

Question: I have Windows 8.1 and I tried to dual boot Ubuntu 13.10 with a USB drive. The installation seemed to work fine (I installed Ubuntu on my third hard drive). Now how do I boot to Ubuntu?
Comment: do you see a different screen on booting up?
Answer: If your computer came with Windows 8 or 8.1 installed, there will be an option in your BIOS settings to boot into legacy or UEFI mode. (You can access your BIOS settings by pressing F2 or F8 or a different key depending on your motherboard, Google it and it should be easy.)
While on your Windows partition, create a bootable USB stick using the software called Rufus, because Rufus gives you the choice to create a USB stick that can be used on UEFI or legacy boot. Chose and create your USB for MBR bios (legacy).
Access your bios and change it from UEFI to legacy mode.
Once you boot your computer with your USB stick plugged in, install it in a partition of your choice. The only downside to that is that your every time that you want to boot to your other operating system you will have to change your bios settings (to UEFI if you want to boot to your windows 8.1 and to Legacy if you want to boot to your ubuntu).
I have done the same thing and my dual boot works like a charm with Windows 8.1 and Ubuntu 14.04
Link to download Rufus for Windows: http://rufus.akeo.ie/
(Get the latest version for best results)

Dual boot Ubuntu 13.10 & Windows 8.1