What is the oldest movie theater in the US that has been in continuous use as a movie theater?

Question: It appears from Wikipedia that the oldest theater in continuous use is in Denmark, but since so much of the film industry is dominated by Hollywood, I was wondering what is the oldest movie theater in the United States.
Comment: Actually according to Wikipedia, the Korsør Biograf Teater in Denmark is the oldest still operating theatre.
Comment: Do theatres that have moved count? The Iris theatre (http://sites.google.com/site/hollywoodtheatres/iris) opened in 1913 but then moved to a different location. Don't know if it's the oldest though.
Comment: @Sid any idea on US theaters?
Comment: @Sid moved theaters count, sure. Add a little more information and put it as an answer.
Comment: Actually investigating further, Fox Theatre closed in '91.
Answer: The Scenic Theatre in North Dakota claims to be the oldest continually operating theatre on its website. From their website footnote

The oldest continually operating theatre in America*
  * Based on Box Office Magazine's published article on what they credited as the oldest in America & it was 17 years newer than the Scenic Theatre.

They claim they opened in 1911.
The Newtown Theatre also claims to be the oldest.

The Newtown Theatre has an extensive history dating back to 1831. It is, in fact, the oldest movie theater in the United States with it's first movie being shown in 1906. Originally built to be a hall for town gatherings and a "non sectarian" church for traveling ministers, it soon became a center of entertainment in Newtown.

If true this would make it older than the Scenic Theatre.
Both of these however, don't say whether they regularly showed movies to the public in the early days or not.
The Nickelodeon Theatre in Pittsburgh was the first genuine movie theatre in the US. It opened in June, 1905 so you're not going to get any earlier than that. It shut down in the 1910s, I think.
Answer: The Park Theatre in Estes Park, CO is the oldest continually operating theatre west of the Mississippi that was originally built as a motion picture theatre. Its owners now believe that all theaters east of the Mississippi that were older and originally built to be motion picture theaters have closed down in recent years
It started playing first run pictures in June of 1913 and just upgraded to digital this year for its 100th year anniversary
Sorce: former employee
Additional source: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Park_Theatre_(Estes_Park,_Colorado)
Also see the theatre's website: http://www.historicparktheatre.com
Answer: The Graham Opera House, now known as the State Theater, in Washington, IA has been showing movies since 1894. At that time a local couple (Frank & Indiana Brinton) toured 35mm nitrate cellulose films and magic lantern slides around the Midwest in what were called 'Tab Shows'. The movie industry at that time was not taken seriously and was sometimes considered questionable entertainment. The couple were part owners of the Graham Opera House.
The Graham Opera House showed both movies and live plays/operas up through the depression. Sorry, I do not know the exact date it switched to only showing motion pictures or when it became known as the State Theater.
The State Theater still maintains it's opera house look as it did when it was first built in the 1890's.
I am not claiming this is the oldest continuously run movie theater in the US, but I would say that it is at least in the running.
Very little is mentioned about Frank Brinton's Tab Shows online. Here is a link from the Washington County Historical Society that mentions his "moving pictures" in the second to last paragraph--the rest of the article tells about a flying machine he made. http://washingtoncountyhistoricalsociety-iowa.org/feature4_aug_09.html
Here is another link from the Kalona News (Washington County, IA) in July 2013 mentioning the current owner of the Brinton films (which survived the past century) and how Brintons toured the Midwest. http://www.kalonanews.com/articles/2013/07/24/news/doc51efed904b0b0238005517.txt
I hope this information helps determine the oldest continuously operating movie theater in the US!
Answer: In the San Francisco bay area, California - the Roxie Cinema built in 1909 is the oldest continiously operating theater, changed it's name 7 times starting with the name of C. H. Brown Theater in 1933 the name changed to the Roxie to this day.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roxie_Theater
Another theater in the bay area in the town of Vallejo (V-Town), Ca. as it is known is the Empress Theater. Opened in 1911 with the Empress name and today it has the same name.
http://www.empresstheatre.org/empress-history.aspx
Answer: The Ruby Theatre in Chelan, Washington was built as a movie theatre by the Kingman brothers and opened in 1914.  It has operated as a movie theatre since than.  It is privately owned and continues to shown first run films.  It has recently installed digital equipment in anticipation of its 100th birthday next year.  Its auditorium is essentially the same as when it was constructed.  It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in about 1990. The Ruby is believed to be the oldest continuously running movie theatre in the Northwest. Source: Rubytheatre.com
Answer: Yes, It was originally thought that the building housing the Priest Theatre, and built in 1910, was a storage facility for automobiles and not used as a theatre until 1926. However, during a campaign to do a required upgrade to digital projection, it was discovered during a history search of the building (via artifacts and articles found) that the theatre building has been used a a theatre since it's construction in 1910. A link to the kickstarter campaign they used for the building fundraising is included below. It has the complete updated history of the building.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/909996519/save-the-priest
Answer:
The Minor Theater, located at 1015 H Street in Arcata, California, is one of the oldest buildings in the United States built for feature films that is still open and showing movies. It was the first building in Humboldt County to be built as a "true movie theater."

From Wikipedia
Answer: I had worked at the Newtown Theatre for a bit and yes it has shown movies since 1906. A couple years back for our 100th year anniversary we actually went back and found all the newspaper clippings of the movies we showed.
Comment: any citations for this? local news story covering the anniversary maybe?
Comment: I found a couple of references to theaters of that name online, but one wasn't built until the 20's, and the other is now a CVS pharmacy.
Answer: The oldest OPERATING cinema is in Ottawa, Kansas. The Plaza showed its first movie in 1905 and is still running today. I would know, I live here and watch movies here almost every weekend. They also have a museum that was opened in 2013 to show the history behind it.
Comment: The Plaza's owner has already posted an answer to that effect. However, while there seems some evidence that the site opened in 1905, There doesn't seem much supporting evidence for its continued use as a cinema since it opened.
Answer: The Ohmann Theatre (1915) in Lyons, NY has been owned by the same family, Ohmann, since its opening and is currently still showing films...owner Bob Ohmann.
Comment: The page linked to seems to cast doubt on the venue being in continuous use as a movie theater.
Answer: The Elks Theatre in Middletown, Pennsylvania has been open since October 1911. There actually was a movie theatre at this location before 1911 but had burned down in the great fire of Middletown in 1910. I am not sure when that theatre was built.  The Elks Theatre has continuously run movies however in the early 1900' to the 1940's it also offered stage performances. It is the goal of the current owners; non-profit Greater Middletown Economic Development Corporation to restore the theatre and eventually bring back stage performances as well as continue to show movies.
Comment: Do you have sources for this answer?
Comment: The Middletown,Pa Dauphin County Historical Society has this information.
Answer: Funny, the oldest still operating cinema (nickelodeon) is in KANSAS!  Can you believe it!   Once called "the Bijou". Opened in 1905.  It is now called the Plaza Grill and Cinema.  It is a twin, but you can see the original stage where the piano played to silent films. It is located in Ottawa, Kansas.
Comment: This is an assertion without evidence; the answer would be vastly better if it included a citation of some kind. As it stands, I find the Nickelodeon's claim of 1905 more credible because it includes evidence.
Answer: Not quite as old as some of the others mentioned, but the Strand Theater in Brockport, NY has been in continuous operation as a movie theater in the same building since 1916. They have a display of their history in the lobby.
Comment: A reference would make this answer better.
Answer: The Lund theater in Viborg, South Dakota, started showing movies in 1911 and is still in operation today! Not bad for a town of 800.
Comment: Welcome to History.SE. A reference to the theater would improve the answer.
Answer: The oldest continually operating movie theatr is in Ottawa Kansas. They opened in 1905(not sure what month) and is still operating today.
Comment: Hello and welcome to History Stackexchange. Please take a moment to visit the [help] and familiarize yourself with the rules. Your answer would be interesting if true but it needs some kind of reference to back it up.


Meaning/Usage of "outstanding"

Question: I was with some colleagues and an English native today. We talked about the work we still have to do, and he mentioned kind of "tracking the outstanding items".
I was taught at school that "outstanding" means something like "extraordinary", so I asked him and he explained that both ("extraordinary" as well as "something to be done") is correct and commonly used.

This seemed acceptable, but I'm in doubt about how one can distinguish what is meant. Imagine sentences like these:
"Let's talk about your outstanding work"
-> Can I expect to be complimented or should I better be afraid?

"He's keen on delivering outstanding work products"
-> Is he just keen on getting work done, or is he keen on doing the very best one can do?

Or would the perfect English speaker never use the above constructions?
Or are they just wrong?
Would the perfect English speaker have an eye on the context and possibly decide to better use a different word than "outstanding"?
Answer: In one meaning of outstanding you could say it is describing things that stand out compared to other things.
As I read your examples, this is the meaning I get from them. This is sense 2 in the definition linked below.
When you use the phrase:

tracking the outstanding items

outstanding has a different meaning. Here outstanding means things that have not been completed or settled. See this definition outstanding sense 3.

I will finish the outstanding tasks next week.
Answer: As your friend explained, 'outstanding' can have either of those meanings, depending on context. As such, their meaning usually relies entirely on the situation in which they are said - the sentence itself, without the surrounding facts, won't tell you much.
I suppose the hypothetical 'perfect' English speaker would avoid such words, but most of us just grab for whichever word is closest, relying on the context of the sentence to convey the meaning. In your first example, whether you should be happy or afraid depends entirely on the tone of the person speaking (and whether you're late in delivering any work!).

Meaning/Usage of "outstanding"


How important are chord inversions as an intermediate guitar player and what are their applications?

Question: I've been on a run to get a lot of theory down after realizing how amazing music theory is.
As a guitar player going through a intermediate-advanced theory journey, I would like to know where 'Chord-inversion' learning comes in. Is it something that is like a collateral learning? Or does it require an allocated plan/time to get it all down? And what are the applications?
Answer: Knowing chord inversions is very important because it will allow you to play any chord in almost any position. This will increase (left-hand) efficiency while playing chord changes, and, more importantly, it will make your changes sound more smoothly due to the more natural voice leading.
You could combine learning chords and their inversions with learning scales and modes. Start with triads and play all triads of a given scale/mode on all possible sets of 3 adjacent strings up and down the neck. You should try to realize that you can see the chords as subsets of the scale patterns, so combining learning chords and scales should feel very natural.
E.g., if you're practicing the C major scale and if you happen to choose the strings d-g-b for finding all possible triads, you would play

1  3  5  6  8  10  12  13
0  2  4  5  7   9  10  12
2  3  5  7  9  10  12  14

which corresponds to playing all triads of C major in their first inversion. You should also do this with the root position (starting with F in this case)

1  3
2  4  ...
3  5

and with the second inversion (starting with Am)

1  3
2  4  ...
2  3

Then try to see how these shapes change when played on other combinations of 3 adjacent strings. Finally, find all open voicings by using non-adjacent strings, such as e.g.

g  5
d  2
A  X
E  3

for a C major triad.
After having figured out all possible triads in this way (and if you're still hungry for more), you could do the same for seventh chords. Here you obviously need combinations of 4 strings. Adjacent strings will give you drop-2 voicings (or the few playable close voicings), and other choices will give you either drop-3 or drop-2-4 voicings.
Comment: @Komal-SkyNET: Yes, if you practice the chords in such a way that you understand on which string the different chord tones are placed, you will definitely be able to play chords and melody in the same areas of the neck.
Comment: Thanks Matt. I dig what you've shared here. I feel like this might also help in unblocking something that has bothered me recently. I see keyboardist instantly play along to a song(they don't know) just after a few seconds of listening. I've tried to the same on guitar, but I take so much time, coz I play the melody at one place(on the neck) and I think..OK! The melody has C-D-G-E, now where is my C-chord to play for the vocal-line..I go on like that. So is my understanding right that if get this down I will be able to see the chords as I play the melody faster and much more efficiently?
Answer: Inversions are pretty easy once you understand what is happening conceptually. The majority of your time will be spent applying what you have learned to the guitar.
Contrary to other answers, I would say application for guitar is very important. Inversions will help you identify more comfortable chord voicings.  They will also help you create smoother voice-leading between chords in a progression.  This is important for soloing, jazz comping, fingerstyle, or if you are a singer-songwriter.
Comment: I think you misunderstood the intention of my answer ("Contrary to the other answers ..."). I added an initial paragraph to my answer for more clarity. I totally agree with you that a guitar player should know all inversions of all chords. For me this is one thing that makes the difference between a mediocre and a good guitarist.
Answer: They are very important indeed, particularly for playing chord melodies in jazz, contemporary, and any song where you want to combine the melody and accompaniment.  It benefits a player in so many ways to learn four different inversions for maj7, min7, and dom7 chords on four-string groups.  To clarify, here's an example of maj7 chords in root, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd inversions (not nec. in that order in the diagram) on string 1234 and 2345:

You can find more diagrams like this on the web, or buy a book that has them.
Learn these!  Some are easier than others, but learn all of them, because you can use all of them to alter chords (such as b5 or #4, 9ths, etc.), and some of the hard ones are easy to play when altered as such, and thus very useful and beautiful sounding.
A good player can use these to take many songs and play them with both melody and accompaniment solo style.  Also, learning inversions will help you become better acquainted with the fretboard, open your ears to new sounds, and make you a better-rounded musician.
Answer: It also helps in that it makes you think of chords in non stereotypical ways. For a great many guitar players power chords, bar chords and open chords are the only ones in existence but it does not need to be like this.
Too often chords are just thought of as background noise to full the air while some sort of lead playing goes on but it needs not be like this. You can easily use the full breadth of chords to give shape and substance to your musical endeavors.
Answer: Chord inversions don't come in all that much in guitar playing from a theoretic level.
For the guitar, you usually have several chord shapings for what is named the same chord.  If some note is shared by two chords in sequence, you tend to play it on the same string.  If you do chord changes mainly staying in the same position (if necessary, by judicious application of a capo), you'll tend to pick sequences of inversions that have reasonable voice leading.
Contrast this with chord play using barré chords where you basically use the same shape while shifting positions.  That does not really involve noticeable voice leading unless very consciously changing rhythmic picking patterns to keep related notes in a related rhythmic position (even if they are played on a different string).
The usual use of "chord inversions" is for picking out the bass notes to strike in a picking pattern while the melody notes more often than not tend to be whatever shape happens to occur in the upper three notes.
It is just for the final chord/picking pattern that you usually want to end in a position where the last note again corresponds to the bass note of the non-inverted chord.
So in a nutshell: there are applications, but they are very much reined in and constrained by the realities of the guitar and its string layout and playing style.  The limited degrees of freedom as compared to a keyboard instrument give much less leeway to give theoretical frameworks a nice workout: practical considerations dominate the choices of inversions.
Basically, you get to pick out bass note and alternate bass note for patterned accompaniment.  That's actually what happens with accordions as well, and accordions indeed have two button rows for basses, four button rows for chords, and the assemble the chords from the same basic octave of notes, never mind inversions as you cannot change chord shapes anyway.
The guitar, in contrast, has at least a bit of leeway for touching up progressions in the three to four chord strings that don't make musical sense.  But overall, the principle "get the bass notes right and put any old inversion on top" holds pretty much for guitar play as well.


Can I take a glass baking dish from the fridge and put it in a hot oven?

Question: I have a glass baking dish my husband put together a meatloaf in it last night and put it in the fridge. Can I put it right in the hot oven? I think no so I have had it sitting on the kitchen table most of the dish is warmer but the bottom is still a little cold not as cold as it was but cold. I'm scared to put it in there. I have no idea who it's made by.
Answer: It would depend on the type of glass.
If the oven is say 300 F then starting from 40 F (fridge) versus 70 F (room) is not a big difference.
If the glass is oven safe then that 30 F difference should not cause failure.
70 F to 375 F is a bigger difference than 40 F to 300 F.
Comment: Thermal breakage of glass and similar bake ware normally is far more common with cooling rather than heating as the applied temperature stress is much faster.  That is dumping a hot dish into cold water is much more likely to be an issue that putting a cold one into the oven.  The oven is a more gradual heating even when pre-heated.  As long as it is an oven safe dish, this answer should be accurate.  It is not as if you are putting onto a pizza stone or iron heated to 550+, I hope.
Comment: Thanks for running the numbers. I didn't have time and would have done it in Celsius anyway. +1
Answer: Mine are (British/European) PYREX, which is borosilicate and has better thermal properties than US soda-lime pyrex.
It would almost certainly be OK, but to be on the safe side I'd put it on a room temperature baking sheet (ideally quite a thick one) before putting it in the oven.  This will avoid the thermal stress caused by the bars of the shelf.  Note that the difference between room temperature and fridge temperature is smaller than the difference between the coolest and hottest ovens you'd cook in.
Comment: @NuclearWang my reading of the Q is that the OP is worried about the dish cracking due to thermal stress (which MaxW has described). The baking sheet won't just act as a heat spreader but will slow the rise in temperature a little.
Comment: (1) The rack and dish are not going to be absolutely flat. So there will be stresses in the dish due to uneven contact. The pan will just even that out some since it has a thermal mass which will slow the heating of the dish. (2) Also a larger flat surface minimizes local hot spots since metal is a much better heat conductor than glass.
Comment: Also have to remember that used glass dishes have scratches. Such scratches will weaker the glass. // My notion is that a baking sheet isn't going to make a *gigantic* difference. But it is something and it would be at least slightly helpful. It is all that one could reasonably do to lessen the stress on the glass dish.
Comment: I've [moved a lot of discussion to chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/71610/discussion-on-answer-by-chris-h-can-i-take-a-glass-baking-dish-from-the-fridge-a). If you'd like to continue discussing, please focus on the subject at hand.
Comment: A google search reveals claims (e.g., on Wikipedia) that not all kitchen Pyrex-brand glassware is borosilicate anymore.  So if you really want the borosilicate performance you might have to move to laboratory equipment - perhaps [these petri dishes](https://www.amazon.com/Corning-Pyrex-Borosilicate-Diameter-Height/dp/B009EGTJB2/ref=sr_1_9?s=industrial&ie=UTF8&qid=1515825526&sr=1-9&keywords=borosilicate%2Bglass%2Bpetri%2Bdish&th=1) would suffice for baking or roasting something small.  Covers are available too.  But they're rather pricey ...
Comment: Why a thick baking sheet? Unless the food is directly in contact with the oven rack, I would expect almost any receptacle to even out hot spots. I've never seen rack lines on my meal unless it was put directly on the rack.
Comment: Another point missed is that a glass dish shouldn't be put on the bottom rack of an electric oven. That would put electric coils much closer to some parts of the dish and cause stress due to uneven heating.
Comment: @davidbak PYREX (sold in Europe) is still all borosilicate. pyrex (sold in the US) is not, it's soda-lime.
Answer: It is impossible to answer this question without knowledge of the exact material and temperatures. Perhaps it is made of Pyrex.
The glass will break, if the thermal expansion is not homogeneous and causes high stress. Modern glass and glass ceramics minimize the thermal expansion coefficient a(T). This coefficient changes with the temperature so you can not assume that the effect is the same, if the temperature difference is the same.
The stress is maximized at the fill line, if your glass is heated up on the top, but still cold on the bottom, where the wet food with high heat capacity is.
Say the temperatures are
fridge T_f =   7 °C = 266 K
room   T_r =  17 °C = 290 K
oven   T_o = 350 °C = 625 K

Q: If the glass can resist the stress of dT_1 = T_o - T_r = 335 K, will it likely resist dT_2 = T_o - T_f = 345 K?
The data sheets of glass ceramics show usually little difference for 10 K variation. You want to lookup a(T_f) and a(T_r).
I expect, that the glass ceramic will withstand heating up from T_f to T_o. A nearly full or nearly empty dish has a constant inner temperature and will withstand a higher temperature difference than a half filled dish.
Bonus: Schott is one manufacturer of glass ceramics and you can look up data sheets on their website, but also view this impressive movie about NEXTREMA glass ceramics while you are waiting for the meal.
Thermal shock resistance of SCHOTT NEXTREMA® glass-ceramics
Some discussed °C/°F here, but in this question neither Fahrenheit nor Celsius but Kelvin is the correct temperature unit if you want to do any calculations.
Comment: Very complicated and error prone?  C and F work fine for me.
Comment: C and K difference is the same.  What makes F an invalid temperature for calculation?
Comment: @Paparazzi Kelvin describes the temperature in a physical sense and it is a bad advice to use a different unit for physical properties. But you are of course right that the Kelvin unit is just a Celsius with an offset. It is very complicate and error prone to use F or C for calculations.
Answer: How about placing your meatloaf in a 'bain marie' - another larger dish, containing warm water? That way, your glass dish can gently adjust to a warmer temperature. I would let it sit til the glass dish no longer feels cold, (change the water to warm again, a few times if necessary - til your glass dish is slightly warmed) then why not put the whole thing in the oven, like that, bain marie and all? I think this will protect your dish quite well. Good luck!
Comment: Er what's with marking down my perfectly helpful comment without saying why? So obsessed measuring temperature that you can't even try a practical suggestion? That works - I use this a lot in both directions cold to hot and hot to cold. If I want to put something still warm in the fridge (as I cant just leave it out because I live in a hot climate and it will go off right away) I put it in a bain marie of ice water, chill it quickly and put in the fridge. Works well.


What is the ideal amount of salt intake (daily)?

Question: What amount of daily salt intake is ideal for a person? Does increased consumption cause any adverse effects on the health of the person?
Comment: Also, I think this should be two questions.  They are not the same at all, as "ideal" also needs to consider the lower end of the intake scale.
Comment: Let's be careful and remember that the original poster asked about amount of salt, not the amount of sodium.  People who look at Nutrition Facts labels in the USA see the amount of sodium, not the amount of salt.  A molecule of salt is more than twice the weight of a sodium atom.
Answer: The recommended daily intake of salt varies, but Nutrition Australia recommends 1.15-2.00 grams per day.
When you consume more salt than this, your blood pressure increases as a result of the body's compensatory mechanism for controlling the increase in plasma sodium.  The body prefers to have higher blood pressure than to have a higher sodium concentration, as a high sodium concentration can be catastrophic and can lead to seizures and coma.
The mechanism behind the increase in blood pressure in order to control sodium concentration is as follows:

The increase in plasma osmolarity due to the increased plasma sodium causes the osmoreceptor cells located in the anterior hypothalamus near the supra-optic nuclei to shrink.  This shrinkage of the osmoreceptor cells causes them to fire, sending nerve signals to nerve cells in the supra-optic nuclei, which eventually transmit signals to the posterior pituitary.
This results in increased release of the hormone ADH (anti-diuretic hormone) from the posterior pituitary.  This ADH hormone then enters the blood stream, moves to the kidneys and increases the permeability of the collecting tubules to water, resulting in increased water resorption in the kidneys, leading to urine being more concentrated.
The net result is an increase in water resorption and an increase in blood volume and blood pressure.

High blood pressure is associated with many adverse health effects, particularly cardiovascular disease, including stroke and myocardial infarction.
Comment: @DaveL, not they aren't but most people never remove downvotes.  I think  this is fine but you should probably state that you will remove the downvote when fixed.
Comment: Hi there Ninja Doc, there seems to be some great information here, but we encourage citing reputable sources. If you could provide some, that'd be great, thanks!
Comment: @DaveL - weren't you talking in the chat the other night with me about how to encourage more users to this site.  While references may be appropriate, your downvote only deters me from making more contributions.
Comment: The mechanism description is off-topic, and can be safely ignored.
Comment: @NinjaDoc I'll mainly downvote things that I think can be easily fixed, but that I don't have time to edit myself. Otherwise I don't think the person will care about fixing the answer. I do believe that voting to close things too fast would be discouraging, but downvotes that potentially turn back into upvotes are more of a "stimulant", if you will. :) The downvote also serves as a placeholder to help me check those items. So yes, I believe in encouraging more users, but also motivating them to improve quality, as I wish upon myself. I don't think Downvotes are permanent rep loss, I hope?


Why does Russell prohibit judgments based on knowledge by description?

Question: I'm new to philosophy and have picked up Bertrand Russell's 'The Problems of Philosophy'. I have a question relating to the end of the chapter on 'Acquaintance and Description'. Russell states that we can make no judgements concerning a man, identified by the description of 'the most long-lived of men', which involve knowledge beyond what the description gives. Why can't the same be said about 'the first Chancellor of the German Empire'? We can only make the judgement that he 'was an astute diplomatist' based on something with which we are acquainted, outside of the original description. Conversely, if we knew that 'the most long-lived of men' was sufficient to identify a man about whom we knew a lot more based on things we were acquainted with, would it be wrong to state a judgement involving this extra knowledge?
Answer: Here is the relevant passage from Russell's Problems of Philosophy:"It will be seen that there are various stages in the removal from acquaintance with particulars: there is Bismarck to people who knew him; Bismarck to those who only know of him through history; the man with the iron mask; the longest-lived of men. These are progressively further removed from acquaintance with particulars; the first comes as near to acquaintance as is possible in regard to another person; in the second, we shall still be said to know 'who Bismarck was'; in the third, we do not know who was the man with the iron mask, though we can know many propositions about him which are not logically deducible from the fact that he wore an iron mask; in the fourth, finally, we know nothing beyond what is logically deducible from the definition of the man".
Russell gives examples in which he assumes various degrees of external (outside of the description) knowledge about the objects described, more or less based on colloquial understanding of these descriptions. If we change the assumptions on this score then of course his analysis will change accordingly. For instance, if we assume that we were able to survey all men that lived and identify "the longest-lived of men", let's say it was Adam, then we would be in a position to "know of him through history", and perhaps even attach biographical details based on the biblical account. Correspondingly, a person who knows little of history may well be in a position to infer nothing about "the first Chancellor of the German Empire" than what is forthcoming from the description itself.
In other words, while different people may use the same description, the scope of judgements that can be made based on this description depends on the knowledge of the person who is using the description, and is specific to that person. Moreover, it may expand as the person gains new knowledge, e.g. that the first Chancellor of the German Empire was one Otto von Bismarck, and gets acquainted with his biography. As Russell says, "knowledge concerning what is known by description is ultimately reducible to knowledge concerning what is known by acquaintance".
Comment: Thanks for your comment. 'In other words, while different people may use the same description, the scope of judgements that can be made based on this description depends on the knowledge of the person who is using the description, and is specific to that person.' So does Russell assume that inclusion of particular-references in a description used by a person to refer to an abject is an indicator of 'external knowledge about the object described'? Do you think it's justified to find this a bit presumptuous?
Comment: @user2582713 Russell was actually criticized for not being externalist enough, and making his notion of "ultimate" acquaintance too narrow. It only includes that of which we are "directly aware".  http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/knowledge-acquaindescrip/#Dis In these examples we technically only have descriptions with different degrees of mediation between the person and the particular, so external knowledge here is only about other knowledge about... rather than about the object itself.
Answer: Russell differentiates in the whole chapter between knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description. Near the end of the chapter Russell emphasizes that knowledge by description must be reducible to knowledge by acquaintance,
Your question refers to his two examples of knowledge by description:

'the most long-lived of men' is a description of a unique person. Exactly one person fullfills that description. Nevertheless we do not know who this person is. The description is given by the two universals "man" and "most long-lived". The listener of this description is unable to link it to any knowledge he has about a possible candidate.
'the first Chancellor of the German Empire' is a description too. Also this description refers to a unique person. But besides the abstract "Chancellor" the description contains the particular term "German". This particular "German" facilitates that the listener links the description to a certain country. And via this link he further connects the description to the person of Bismark and to some historical knowledge by acquaintance which he has about Bismark.

Russell assumes that nobody is able to link the description 'the most long-lived of men' to a distinct person. You consider at the end of your post the different case that the listener is able to link the description to a distinct person, at all. On the basis of the listener's knowledge by acquaintance. I agree with you, for such listeners the example would fall under the Bismark-case.
Comment: To your first comment: Apparently the particular "German" narrows down the set of candidates to a high degree. In Russell's time it was no restriction of candidates to speak about the  'the most long-lived of men'. Nobody knew the name of this person - today you can search the internet and find Jiroemon Kimura. -To your second comment: I think the particular may help to link the description to the final person or object, but it is no guarantee.
Comment: Thanks for your answer. Do you think Russell's argument here is uncharacteristically unclear in comparison with the rest of the chapter? Can he justifiably assume that 'German' facilitates a listener linking the latter description to a specific person, i.e. Bismarck, any more effectively than 'long-lived' facilitates the linkage of the other description to the specific person to whom that description applies? (1/2)
Comment: Why should acquaintance with a particular, referenced in a description known to be applicable to some object, necessarily mean we can link this description to an object? Or is Russell describing the general tendency for this to be the case? (2/2)
Comment: I see. I can imagine how Russell, in his pre-Internet era, would have used 'the most long-lived of men' as an example of an object we have little knowledge of, hence the restriction of this description to purely universals.


How to fold sheets after ironing?

Question: My mother always would ask for another person in order to fold sheets after ironing them. Now that I live alone, I have great difficulty in doing that and usually I end up with terrible results. Is there a way that I can do it alone and have nicely folded sheets?
Comment: What do you mean by "terrible results"?
Comment: Flat sheets, I presume?
Comment: @MatthewRock I mean that they look more like this https://laineymcblog.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/martha-after.jpg :P
Comment: @Stephie yes, flat
Answer: After the sheet is ironed flat, gather the four corners in one hand while using your free hand to pull the folds with a bit of tension. This makes the sheet 1/4 its spread size. Grip the sheet in this way and shake to set the folds. Place the quartered sheet on your bed and continue to fold it gathering the sides until you have the desired folded size.

< —————— >

Most all sheets have a trim or different treatment for the head-end and for the foot of the bed-end.
One way to start is by putting the two corners of the head-end together, overlapping them precisely and holding them together with your strong hand.
Work you way along the length of the sheet until you get to the other end and do the same thing without letting go of the two corners you have.
Match the four corners as shown in the diagram or if the sheet has become twisted straighten it out at this point and gather the four corners. Hold them tightly.
With your free hand, pull the folds out, straightening them. Let the sheet hang so that you can grip along the top to shake it, setting the folds.
In the diagram, I'd be holding the corners with my right hand and using my left to pull the top of the sheet taught in the direction of the arrows.
It will look similar to the diagram only more carefully aligned.
Comment: This seems like a good idea. I don't understand how exactly to gather the four corners in one hand. All the corners should touch each other?
Comment: @papakias All the corners and sides should be carefully aligned and matched. I had to distort the drawing so that you could see the "folds" or it would simply look like a square.
Answer: You can spread a sheet out flat on the bed, and fold it over itself at your own pace, using the bed as your "helper" in lieu of another person.
Answer: I am 79 and live alone.Wash the sheets in machine. When it stops take it out, position the lines of the sheet and carefully fold and match into a rectangular shape. Keep like that and lay it on chair or frame still damp (shake well before doing this). If not needed for a while leave it to dry, then put away. It will not need ironing. It may take several days to dry.
Comment: Hi Carole, Welcome to lifehacks.stackexchange. If I left something damp for more than a day or two, it would start to acquire a mildew odour. A used towel must be completely dry before I put it into the 'dirty' laundry to avoid the issue.
Answer: This way is for if you have no horizontal surface, or if the floor is dirty or wet.
Stand on a stool or chair. Grab two corners of your sheet and hold them over your head. Shake and stretch till it's flat. Now quickly put the two corners together, hold them in one hand and grab the fold in the other hand, shake again. Repeat. Now hold the sheet up with one hand, quickly put the other hand in the middle and let it fold down over it. Adjust, shake, repeat.

How to fold sheets after ironing?


How to remove notification on lock screen?

Question: I have a notification (as shown in the screenshot) on the lower right corner of my lock screen regarding two messages, but I am unable to sort out which app this notification belongs to. How to check this? I have restarted my phone and changed the lock screen image, but the notification is still there.

(Click image to enlarge)
Answer: Go to  Settings -> Lockscreen.
Here you can choose an app to show detailed status i.e) in the line next to time. By default it is calender.
Also there are apps which show quick status , one of them is the mail icon in your screenshot.

You can change them in your settings.


Is physics very dependent on equipment?

Question: I always had the impression that physics depends a lot on particle accelerators and heavy machines for experimentation of new theories, I know there's the field called theoretical physics but until now I have no idea on how TF relies on these machines. Does theoretical physics rely a lot on this machinery?
Answer: There is no simple answer to this question. Physics, and the Natural Science, are basically based on the practice of distinguishing between hypotheses by empirical evidence, which implies experiments, so yes, in that sense we do need our equipment (and we need it well documented).
This is, however, not what you are asking, as I perceive it; what you want to know seems to be to what extent the large scale experiments are necessary.
The answer to this is that, yes, some branches of theoretical physics need large scale experiments if they are to be based in an empirical setting (which is what we desire, since this is how we evaluate scientific content).
The fields in question, cosmology and particle physics for instance, deal with questions of scales far removed from our everyday experience. In order to test the hypothesis of, for instance, the Higgs' boson, access to those scales is necessary, and for that case (and much of particle physics), the key obstacle that needs to be overcome is binding energy: the very small (hypothesised) building blocks of matter are very tightly bound (if they were not, the world we live in would not appear as solid to us, as it does), so in order to study them, we need large scale machines to break them apart.
Likewise, in astrophysics, larger (radio and other) telescopes allow us to probe deeper into the cosmos, which allows us to distinguish between more and more fundamental models of the early universe, for instance. (Incidentally, this brings us back to particle physics, but that is another story.)
Answer: Yes, physics is absolutely dependent on equipment which is needed so an observer can observe and register data so that they can be logically analyzed and the analysis used for predicting future behavior.
Actually there are many levels of instrumentation.
The first one is the observer's brain.
What we observe in nature exists in several scales and physics describes and makes predictions for all scales : from the distances of stars and galaxies and clusters of galaxies to the sizes of atoms and elementary particles.
Observing in human size scale means what our ears hear, what our eyes see, what our hands feel, our nose smells , our mouth tastes. That was the first classification and the level of "proxy", i.e. intermediate between fact and our understanding and classification, which is biological. (the term proxy is widely used in climate researches)
A second level of observing comes when we use proxies, like meters, thermometers, telescopes and microscopes etc. which register on our biological proxies and we accumulate knowledge. These are simple instruments, and with these instruments scientists gathered observations that were used by physicists to construct theories that would describe and predict further observations. At this level we overcome the limits of the human scale and find and study the enormous scales of the galaxies and the tiny scales of the bacteria and microbes. A level of microns and milimeters. We observe waves in liquids with such size wavelengths.
Presently we are studying experimentally dimensions that go from 10^-10 meters and smaller and have hit the basic building blocks of nature, the quantum mechanical level of nature. These experiments need accelerators and the theories describing the results and predicting new ones are at the frontier of physics . Theoretical physicists formulate mathematical models to this effect.
Yes theoretical physics does rely on the data given by large expensive accelerator experiments that need thousands of physicists and engineers to operate and analyze the results. Theoretical physics uses advanced mathematical methods but it is not enough to construct self consistent mathematical models. These models should be validated against the data in order to be called physics theoretical models.
Answer: Theoretical physics relies on experimental physics which relies on advanced experimental setups. Theoretical physics on its own is (in general) not any more demanding than mathematics. The help of computers is often needed for complex simulations, but you could argue that this is more computational physics.

Is physics very dependent on equipment?


About forwarding email to professors

Question: I have two advisors for phd from differnt countries. I recieved an email  from first professor. I just forwarded his email to second professor for his information. I used the native language of the second professor when I forwarded the email including one  general statement. Is forwarding with the native of second person is mistake?
Comment: I would be concerned with the accuracy of the translation...
Comment: What is the point of forwarding something that the receiver will not understand? I would prefer to just write an email telling the important things your supervisor said.
Comment: Sorry, it is not clear to me what you mean with the fourth sentence. ("I used the native language... ")
Comment: I mean that I used language B wich second advisor speaks with it but the first advisor does not speak with la gauge B.
Comment: So, you translate the message from Prof. 1 and sent the translation to Prof 2?
Answer: tl;dr Agree with your advisors on how you communicate
You've certainly not made a "mistake". But what you're realizing is that your assumptions about:

Which language to use?
What information should be shared?
How verbose should you be?
Whose responsibility is it, and who has permission, to update the 3rd person of the triangle about communication between the other two?

and so on. In your place I would talk to both my advisors, separately or together if you ever meet, about your "email routine" - what they expect and what, and what you expect and want. Then none of you will surprise/annoy the others with undersirable email practices.
And this is basically true about most kinds of collaborations in groups of people which don't all communicate together in a common forum.
Answer: It is OK and totally normal to forward the 'raw' email from Professor A. Include any additional comments or summary of your own interpretation of what Professor A was suggesting or agreeing to.  (Make sure that additional comments are clear to a reader as being your own 'side notes' -  particularly if you are actually making them inside the original text).
It is appropriate to go ahead and try to explain any aspects that might be unclear due to the language issues. (If a student had to translate email into a language I understood, I'd still strongly prefer to have a clean (unaltered) copy of the original email attached in case there were any aspects that I wanted to ask about in greater detail.
The worst thing to do would be to 'rewrite' the original language in the email and send it as if it were the original text as sent from Prof A. (What if in your own enthusiasm, you misinterpreted what she was actually trying to say or propose or implied?)
The other thing that forwarding will do will make sure that everyone has everyone else's email addresses in case there need to be some other side-conversations.
However, it is in the OP's best interest to make sure there is some summary email at end of flurry of discussions that helps everyone know how the information was interpreted and acted upon by all parties.
Last line above has been added in response to @DeboraWeber-Wulff: The original (and current) answer is under the assumption that both Professor A and B are advisors/mentors to the OP and that they know each other but may have language issues - ("two advisors for PhD from different countries"). In that case, I don't agree that it is necessary to cc or ask permission before getting advice from one advisor about something communicated from the other advisor.
But, I agree with her totally - if this were a correspondence between a different set of scientists, the OP should ask permission, or at least cc the initial scientist, so that she knows that her private email is being forwarded to someone else.
Comment: Actually, I don't think it is okay to forward any mail from A to B when B is not on the to: or cc: list, unless you have specifically asked A for permission to do so. Sending an email is a private correspondence and should be respected as such.
Comment: Thanks @DeboraWeber-Wulff, I'll add that - (I was assuming from the OPs description that the initial emails were assumed to be eventually going to the second faculty but that isn't always the case). Although, I do imagine some situations where the 'exchange' is more like calling and asking advice/talking to advisor (which I personally wouldn't cc the initial person on). The emails with the cc's would be final flurry of official emails between A and B and student on which everyone gets CC'd on.

About forwarding email to professors


What is Al Jarh Wa at-Ta'dil ( الجرح و التعديل )?

Question: What is Al Jarh Wa at-Ta'dil ( الجرح و التعديل )? and what is it's purpose?
Answer: It is part of Hadith sciences and anytime you read a classification of a Hadith someone has made checks on the narrators etc. (one known having done that is Imam Hanbal for example).
A narrator must be righteous/upright and accurate (in memory or in writing)... any narrator lacking in one or both of these areas is considered having deficiency as a narrator.
Which means that one has to check a narrator for anything that might discredit him/her like being known to have a poor memory or to lie etc.  If such deficiency than it is stated , and this is known as Al Jarh.  Al Jarh is stating a deficiency in the narrators righteousness or accurateness.
This involves trying to find out facts about his/her behavior etc. in respect of the above mentioned aspects (righteousness/accuracy).
Saying something bad about a person which is not present is considered backbiting and is a severe sin.
But this is done not to hurt others, but to keep safe the Deen of Islam.
The above is a short summary of these 2 sources:

http://www.alsadiqa.com/en/topic-details.php?id=142
http://www.islamic-life.com/forums/tafsir-sciences-hadith/al-jarh-wa-al-tadil-742
Answer: Ajarhu Wa Ata'deel ( الجرح و التعديل ) is a science of the sciences of Hadith, dealing with identifying the narrators whether they are reliable or not.  Ajarh/الجرح is finding a deficiency whether it is in his righteousness (عدالته) or in his accurateness (ضبطه), or in both.  Of the deficiency is in his righteousness then the Hadith would fall under Mawdu' (موضوع) and Matrook (متروك).  If the deficiency is in his accurateness, then the Hadith will fall under Da'eef, Munkar, Mttarab (مضطرب), Mushaf, Maqloob, and Mudraj (المدرج).
Atta'deel, is describing the narrator in His righteousness and accurateness with what is required for accepting his narration.  The acceptance of the narration would fall under, Hadith Mutawatir, Saheeh, Hasan, and their types.
It's purpose is to keep Islam safe.  Ajarh Wa Atta'deel is Fardh Kifayah, which means it is required only on some not all, Fardh Ayn means it is required on all Muslim.
Sources: Manzoomat fi Qawa'id Ajarhu wa Ata'deel منظومة في قواعد الجرح و التعديل, Kitabul Ilal lilimam Ahmad , Muqadima fi Ajarhu Wa Ata'deel كتاب العلل للإمام أحمد -مقدمة في الجرح و التعديل, Qawa'id Ajarhu Wa Atta'deel (قواعد الجرح و التعديل)


Sql Server - How many files in a database

Question: Is there a rule of thumb on how many data files (mdf, ndf) I should have for a database?
Answer: Tempdb seems to be a special animal as they address is specifically.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee377054%28BTS.10%29.aspx

Splitting the TempDB files across
  multiple files may resolve performance
  issues related to I/O operations. As a
  general guideline, create one file
  data file per processor and use the
  same size for all files created.

Most other databases should have their data and logs on different drives.  These drives will most likely be a RAID configuration, so you are in fact using more than one drive behind the scenes.
If you have a hot table, you can move that to another filegroup and put that on a separate disk group.
A certain performance monitoring tool I have been using makes recommendations to split databases into files that equal the number of processors on the machine.  I don't remember reading that in any MS documentation though.
Answer: Generally, 1. The one-file-per-processor thing, aside from TempDB, I think is a myth with modern versions of SQL Server.
There are only a few very unique scenarios where multiple files give any real advantage (partitioned tables in a very large data warehouse using piecemeal backup is one example).
In terms of disk performance, it's usually better to have more disks striped in a single logical unit, and one big data file spanning all of them, because you get the performance advantage of all the disks for all the activity in the DB. If you had the same number of physical disks, but instead broke them into smaller groups, and put the data in specific files in each, then in most cases you've reduced net performance, not increased it.
Answer: as a rule of thumb you should use at maximum 50% of your disks (or disk-systems) capacity otherwise you are at the point to split your mdf file following the rule of the 50% limit.
hope this simple rule guides you.
Ice


Is there a legal deadline for when your bank/brokerage has to send your tax forms to you?

Question: It is mid February and I still haven't received my 1099-div forms from my stock broker. Should I be concerned yet? Is there any regulatory requirement for them to send tax forms out to account holders by a specific date in the US?
Comment: I am using Schwab too and although I don't remember getting this letter, I did see it when I logged into my online account and sure enough my forms were available for download. Thanks everyone.
Answer: Many of the custodians (ie. Schwab) file for an extension on 1099s.  They file for an extension as many of their accounts have positions with foreign income which creates tax reporting issues.  If they did not file for extension they would have to send out 1099s at the end of January and then send out corrected forms.  Obviously sending out one 1099 is cheaper and less confusing to all.

Hope that helps,
Comment: +1.  This is exactly what the emails from Schwab said to me.
Answer: I got notice from Charles Schwab that the forms weren't being mailed out until the middle of February because, for some reason, the forms were likely to change and rather than mail them out twice, they mailed them out once.
Perhaps some state tax laws took effect (such as two Oregon bills regarding tax rates for higher incomes) and they waited on that.
While I haven't gotten my forms mailed to me yet, I did go online and get the electronic copies that allowed me to finish my taxes already.
Answer: I can't find specific information for Form 1099-DIV for this tax year.  However, I found this quote for next tax season that talks about Form 1099-B:

Due date for certain statements sent to recipients.
  The due date for furnishing statements to recipients for
  Forms 1099-B, 1099-S, and 1099-MISC (if amounts are
  reported in box 8 or 14) is February 15, 2018. [emphasis added]

I know many brokerages bundle the 1099-DIV with the 1099-B, so one might assume that the deadlines are the same.  February 15 seems consistent with the messages I got from my brokerages that said the forms will be mailed by mid-February.
Comment: My broker even states that for 2018 1099 will be provied on Febr 18th!


Get e-mail addresses from Gmail messages received

Question: How can I export a list containing e-mail addresses for everyone that has sent me an e-mail?  I have all of the messages archived.
Comment: https://deep-email-extractor.com is your friend. Paid for but safe, secure and uses two step passwords. I bought it a few years ago and still use it, quite handy
Comment: I can't post an answer yet (not enough rep), but this [Jerry Neumann's answer here](https://www.quora.com/Is-there-a-way-to-extract-email-addresses-from-all-emails-in-my-Gmail-account) in Python works wonderfully!
Comment: I'd suggest checking out SigParser. It does it without all the coding and they don't sell your data like some other products out there.
Answer: This is where the power of Google Apps Script kicks in. If you paste the following script in a new Google Spreadsheet (Tools, Script editor, press the bug icon to authenticate the script), then new sheets will be automatically created based on the number of labels present. After that, the e-mail addresses will be added.
function getEmails() {
  // set spreadsheet and retrieve labels
  var ss = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet();
  var labels = GmailApp.getUserLabels(), emptyLabels = [];

  // itterate through the labels
  for (var i=0; i<labels.length; i++) {

    try {
      // create sheets and clear content
      var sh = ss.getSheetByName(labels[i].getName()) ||
      ss.insertSheet(labels[i].getName(), ss.getSheets().length);
      sh.clear();

      // get all messages
      var eMails = GmailApp.getMessagesForThreads(
        GmailApp.search("label:" + labels[i].getName()))
          .reduce(function(a, b) {return a.concat(b);})
          .map(function(eMails) {
        return eMails.getFrom()
      });

      // sort and filter for unique entries
      var aEmails = eMails.sort().filter(function(el,j,a)
        {if(j==a.indexOf(el))return 1;return 0});

      // create 2D-array
      var aUnique = new Array();
      for(var k in aEmails) {
        aUnique.push([aEmails[k]]);
      }

      // add data to corresponding sheet
      sh.getRange(1, 1, aUnique.length, 1).setValues(aUnique);
    } catch (e) {
      emptyLabels.push(labels[i].getName());
    }
   }
   ss.toast("These sheets are empty: " + emptyLabels);
}

Use the SPLIT function to extract names to find duplicates. System folders are ignored, like INBOX or All Items.
Note: script might take some time to execute, which is, of course, dependent upon the number of e-mails
Comment: @MG1 checked the script and it fails on empty labels. Revised code so that a message will appear, mentioning the empty labels.
Answer: I am quite surprised by all the complicated answers implying some extra tools!
Every email you receive has its address added to "All contacts" (as opposed to "My Contacts") in the Contacts part of Gmail.
Export that one and you're done (or I missed something in your question).
Comment: This is only true if you have that setting turned on. While it's the default, you can easily turn it off. See: [Stop Gmail from automatically creating contacts](http://webapps.stackexchange.com/q/1987/354)
Comment: That would work great, assuming the person still has access to the Gmail account rather than a simple archive of the messages.  Good solution!
Comment: Yes agreed but there is one caveat to using contacts over extract tools, you may have messed with your contacts, a lot of us do when we 'tidy up' as the OP suggests as his messages are archived. At this point you are now not sure if you have 'all' your email addresses? I was in this situation and having looked at all answers here the starbanana one was quite simply the most elegant and trustworthy (it uses two step auth and app specific passwords) and a direct connection from my PC to gmail so no man in the middle listening.
Comment: Where is the "Contacts area of gmail"?
Comment: Problem: though that list does "contain all addresses for everyone that has sent me an email", it also contains other kinds of addresses. So for each address in the list, you don't know if that person has sent you an email.
Answer: Update 2017
Starbanana has changed their name to deep-email-extractor and it also looks like revamped the App UI and made it work on multiple accounts (discovered having just logged in to my app), changed link below to reflect this.
Original Answer
If you need a fast desktop app (not a script) then consider this.
I did quite a bit of searching for an app that works at label level and found Gmail Email Exporter from deep-email-extractor.
It's a paid app (I have nothing to do with them) but it's cheap and you get to export email addresses from specific labels or all your Gmail account.
So in your case put all your email received into a label using a filter and use the above to export to a CSV file.
Comment: A cheaper alternative for Mac users is Email Contacts Extractor (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/email-contacts-extractor/id590358209?mt=12). Full-disclosure: I developed it myself because I felt other offerings were too expensive or required online access to my email.
Comment: It would be awesome if you could do a version for 20 addresses or fewer, like they do.
Comment: http://www.starbanana.com now extracts emails out of the body too, I just tried it and the multi-threading also (does 15 labels at the same time) incredibly fast well impressed.
Answer: Based off of @jacob-jan-tuinstra's answer. Made some minor modifications to suit my needs perhaps others would find it useful.
Uses search, doesn't break up by labels and also does chunking for large inboxes.
The part that says 'YOUR GMAIL SEARCH QUERY GOES HERE' can be filled with any query you would use in your inbox.
function getEmails() {
  // set spreadsheet and retrieve labels
  var query = 'YOUR GMAIL SEARCH QUERY GOES HERE',
    ss = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet(),
    sh = ss.getSheetByName(query) || ss.insertSheet(query, ss.getSheets().length),
    uniqueEmails = {},
    errors = [],
    // max chunk size
    chunkSize = 500,
    currentChunk = 0,
    threads,
    messages,
    i,
    j,
    k,
    msg,
    tos;
  sh.clear();
  while (currentChunk === 0 || threads.length === chunkSize) {
    try {
      // grab threads that match the query one chunk at a time
      threads = GmailApp.search(query, chunkSize * currentChunk, chunkSize);
      // grab corresponding messages from the threads
      messages = GmailApp.getMessagesForThreads(threads);
      for (i = 0; i < messages.length; i++) {
        msg = messages[i];
        for (j = 0; j < msg.length; j++) {
          // get the from
          uniqueEmails[msg[j].getFrom()] = true;
          // get the reply to
          uniqueEmails[msg[j].getReplyTo()] = true;
          // grab from the to field as well
          // this has a bug for people with commas in their names
          // tos = msg[j].getTo().split(',');
          // for (k = 0; k < tos.length; k++) {
          //  uniqueEmails[tos[k]] = true;
          // }
        }
      }
      currentChunk += 1;
    } catch (e) {
      errors.push(e);
    }
  }
  // create 2D-array
  var aUnique = [];
  for (k in uniqueEmails) {
    aUnique.push([k]);
  }

  // add data to corresponding sheet
  sh.getRange(1, 1, aUnique.length, 1).setValues(aUnique);
}

Comment: your scrpit works perfectly for me, thanks! can you add the option to retrieve email addresses from the body of the email as well, much appreciated. thanks.
Comment: `getFrom()` method return the sender of the message in the format `Some Person `. If you need just the email address portion of the string, you can add this regular expression like this `getFrom().replace(/^.+<([^>]+)>$/, "$1")`. Same for .getReplyTo()
Answer: Confused / Non-Technical / No Idea what to do?
Try the following step by step, and thanks to https://webapps.stackexchange.com/a/47930/6329
step 1.
drive.google.com
step 2.
new spreadsheet
step 3.
tools > script editor
step 4.
close the introduction pop up with the close button
step 5.
paste in the code
function getEmails() {
  // http://stackoverflow.com/a/12029701/1536038
  // get all messages
  var eMails = GmailApp.getMessagesForThreads(
    GmailApp.search('after:2012/1/14 before:2013/8/15'))
      .reduce(function(a, b) {return a.concat(b);})
      .map(function(eMails) {
    return eMails.getFrom()
  });

  // sort and filter for unique entries
  var aEmails = eMails.sort().filter(function(el,j,a)
    {if(j==a.indexOf(el))return 1;return 0});

  // create 2D-array
  var aUnique = new Array();
  for(var k in aEmails) {
    aUnique.push([aEmails[k]]);
  }

  // add data to sheet
  SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSheet().getRange(1, 1, aUnique.length, 1)
    .setValues(aUnique);
}

step 6.
position your cursor on within the word "getEmails" in the first line
step 7.
click the play triangle button above in the menu bar
step 8.
It asks you to authenticate, do that
step 9.
click the play button again if it didn't already run
step 10.
check your original spreadsheet and it will have the emails.
Answer: The only way to do this is

Export all as .txt (see: Export Gmail messages to text or HTML files)
Loop through all of it and grep "From: " lines in a separate database.

Note: if you use imapsize (free) for step 1 then save the backups as "%FROM - The sender of the email" and you have them in plain sight in your directory.
Comment: I was afraid of that.  Thanks though!
Answer:
Navigate to the list. Choose the checkbox option dropdown, and select all.
[At the top you will get a hyperlink option to choose all conversations in your list. Click it.] Update: This step doesn't work, it will only let you do 25 at a time, bummer!
Then go under the More dropdown and choose filter messages like these.
In the filter dialogue, the From textbox will be highlighted. These are all the from addresses.
Copy it.
Paste it into an HTML editor like Notepad++ or Visual Studio.
Now you just need to do a search and replace the word OR, replace with ; or , .
Recopy the list and paste into your message.
Comment: Better to just give the answer.  No need for the story behind it. :-)
Answer: I figured out a way to do this for Mac users using Mac Mail and address book without needing to download extra software. This works with Mac Mail 4.6 and Address Book 5.0.3. Not sure if it works for other vers or not. This may work similarly for other IMAP Email programs like Thunderbird, but I can't vouch for that.
Here are the steps:

Set up your Gmail account in Mac Mail. Make sure the incoming mail server is "imap.gmail.com" You can find this under the toolbar>Mail>Preferences>Accounts.
In Gmail, create a Label for the emails for which you want to extract email addresses.
In Gmail, label all the emails you want per Label above.
In Gmail, go to Settings>Labels and tick off the box for the new Label you created that says "Show in IMAP."
Restart Mac Mail so the new Gmail Label syncs.
Open Address Book. If you use Address Book for your contacts you'll need to back up your contacts because you need to delete all contacts in Address Book. I believe you can do this with File>Export>Address Book Archive. I don't use Address Book other than for exporting Gmail emails so I can't give good advice on this. Delete Address Book contacts at your own risk.
In Address Book, delete all your contacts. You should be able to do this by selecting one contact, pressing Command+a and pressing the delete key.
In Mac Mail, find your IMAP folder. There should be a column on the left side of the window with all your Mailboxes. If not go to the top toolbar, select View>Show Mailboxes or press Command+Shift+M. The IMAP folder will be toward the bottom of the column below "Reminders", "RSS", "On My Mac" etc. You should see the Name of your Gmail account you set up earlier with a dropdown arrow on the left.
In Mac Mail, click the dropdown arrow next to your mailbox. This will show you a list of folders and should show the Label you created in Gmail as a folder. Select this folder by clicking it.
In Mac Mail in the Messages window, which should now display all your emails for you Gmail Label), select all the emails in the list. Go to the top toolbar, select Messages>Add Senders to Address Book or press Shift+Command+Y. All the senders for your Gmail Label should now be in Address Book.
In Address Book you can now export contacts as vCards to use in whatever program you like by going to the toolbar and selecting File>Export>Export vCards. You can even import back into Google Contacts. If you need a CSV file, unfortunately you will need to import the vCards into another program (Google Contacts works) and re-export because you cannot export CSV from Mac Mail.

Hope this helps! It's a bit cumbersome, but works for me and is pretty easy after you do it a couple of times.
Answer: MineMyMail fetches all of your messages via IMAP and then extracts the email addresses from it.
You can choose which folders it searches by selecting the "Sent Mail" folder/label.
Comment: Is MineMyMail trustworthy? I went to their site and Chrome warned me that the certificate has expired. Not having a proper HTTPS certificate and asking users to enter their Gmail username and password is definitely scary. It leads me to suspect that the site might extract the emails and use it for their own spamming or selling to other spammers.
Answer: IMAP Addresses Exporter is a Mac App that connects to any IMAP email account and extracts every sender address, also from folders/label you set previously. In all fairness, I have to highlight that it is developed by my company.


Is it possible to deduce the value of a string when given its hash and multiples hashes of the string + other known strings?

Question: To be clear, I have access to $H(S)$ and as many $H(S||K)$ as I want. Every string $K$ is known. Can I use the extra information to my advantage and try to deduce $S$, without requiring bruteforce? Or do you still have to bruteforce but try less combinations since you have more information?
Answer: Assuming the hash is strong, you will not be able to find a preimage any more easily when you know multiple hashes (whether they use the same function or another). In fact, with some hashes you will be able to derive $H(S||K)$ from just $H(S)$ and $K$ (known as the length extension attack), so it can't give you more information.
Unless the hash is broken, the only way to find $S$ in either case is to guess, hash and compare.
However, if your hash was short enough to have collisions, you could need multiple hash values to verify a guess. As an extreme example, consider the first byte truncation of a strong hash. Any guess you make will match it one 256th the time. In that case, knowing more hashes would allow you to verify your guess with higher confidence.


How does a miner put his vote for certain BIP?

Question: I understand that a miner is the only one who can vote for a certain BIP, but I'm wondering, how do they technically do that? How do they submit their vote? I found out that they  are doing it through the coinbase transaction, but I couldn't find any details on it.
Thanks!
Answer: See my answer here to address some of your misconceptions. TL;DR: miners signal support in blocks for certain rule changes in order to coordinate activation, not to determine whether it is accepted or not.
As for the actual mechanism used to signal, a number have been used in the past:
Time based: BIP16, BIP30
Early softforks (up to mid 2012) used a simple time based activation mechanism: node software that implements these proposals enforced the new rules on all blocks with a timestamp after a certain date. In the case of BIP16, this date was determined (and modified) in response to miner signalling, but this signalling was just for human interpretation; nodes took no automatic actions in response to it.
Specifically, the signalling used here was to put a string with a support message in the coinbase transaction's scriptSig field, which is otherwise free for miners to put anything in.
Block-version signalling: BIP34, BIP65, BIP66
A later generation of softforks used the block header's nVersion field for signalling (up to the year 2015). Each of those used a subsequent version numbers (BIP34 used version 2; BIP66 used version 3; BIP65 used version 4).
Whenever 750 out blocks number N-1000..N-1 (so 75%) had the proposal's version number or higher, block N would be subject to the proposal's rules. Whenever 950 out of blocks number N-1000..N-1 (so 95%) did, the next block would be required to also signal for it - resulting in a final lock-in.
Versionbits-based signalling: BIP68/112/113, BIP141/143/144, BIP91, BIP341/342
The rollout of relative locktimes (BIP68/112/113) and Segregated Witness (BIP141/143/144) used a different mechanism, which had its own document, BIP9. It specifies using one specific bit of the block header's nVersion field for each proposal, and a finite state machine to determine when to signal and when to activate. Its purpose is/was to permit multiple concurrent proposals to activate, without needing to have one completed before the next one can roll out. This was a downside of the previous mechanism, as it would be impossible to activate the proposal with version 4 without also signalling for activation of the proposal with version 3.
Due to various reasons, segwit was not entirely uncontroversial, and eventual activation happened through a meta-proposal, BIP91. BIP91 itself used BIP9 to activate, which then on its turn made signalling for BIP141/143/144 mandatory, resulting in its activation in August 2017.
BIP341/342 activated in November 2021, using a modified versionbits-based activation mechanism with lower activation threshold, and minimum activation height, in what has been called the "speedy trial" approach.
Disclaimer: I am a (co-)author of several of the listed documents in this post (BIP9, BIP30, BIP66, BIP141/143/144, BIP340/341/342).
Comment: Thank you for your answer. Good luck in your future work on BIPs
Answer: For 100 blocks, a miner will include its yes or no, number of votes is proportional to the percentage of the hashing power of the network. If you have 20%, you'll likely be able to vote approx 20 times. Developers make a proposal and miners vote on it. If the majority vote yes, the miners implement the code. Majority in this case is when over 55% of the miners vote for a specific change.
BIPs and this kind of infrastructure for cryptocurrencies in general, has sparked some interesting debates within the community. Some developers fear miners will vote based on vested interest rather than the good of the network.
Additionally there is a growing fear in the community towards the concentration of hashpower (which translates into voting power) as mining pools and big scale mining operations continue to grow. This system is still relatively new, so it will be interesting to see how BIPs progress and ultimately how they affect the development of other cryptos as a result of its successes and failures.
Comment: I downvoted. I think this answer misses the point: what miners do in typical softforks is not voting, it is *signalling readiness*. If the community wants proposal to happen, they can demand it from miners (see BIP148 for example), but things go smoother if miners deploy faster rather than later. See BIP8, BIP9, for modern activation mechanisms.
Comment: Thank you for your answer, but I edited the question and added "technically" word. I'm interesting in how do they technically vote? Where they add their "yes" or "no"?
Comment: They put yes or no (a piece of code) inside the `coinbase transaction`
Comment: As part of the scriptSig?
Comment: take a look at the third point of this site and it wil explain it for you [https://email@example.com/bitcoin-7-coinbase-and-priority-f5e9f47f1c9b]
Comment: Sorry but link is 404
Comment: It works fine, use a VPN, and if it will not work, let me know and  i will hyperlink a screenshot of the site
Comment: @PieterWuille i Upvoted your comment beacuse it will help the community, thank you


What is the signifigance of a fillfactor of 20?

Question: I have a database for our ticket system in SQL Server express.  I was poking around and noticed that a lot of the indexes have a fillfactor set to 20.  What is the signifigance of it being set to 20?  Why would you set it so low?
Answer: @ 20 % you're consuming 5 times the disk actually needed for the index. I'm sure there's some business case where that might make sense, but I've never seen it. If you aren't rebuilding these regularly (rebuild returns to original fill factor level, in this case 20%), I'd be interested to see how full the indexes are after a month of operation. General ref: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms177459.aspx
Comment: I'm willing to bet someone was confused and was wanting to specify 80% full.
Comment: Agreed, whoops :)
Answer: In SQL Server data is stored in to pages. And each page is of size 8K. And in simple terms fillfactor indicates % fullness of any page when index is created or rebuild operation is done.
Fillfactor plays important role if data in tables is modified very frequently. Having a fillfactor other than 0 or 100 actually leaves some free space in that page and it improves speed of insert operation, by avoiding an effect called "page splits".
But downside of having very small fillfactor is, it slows down read operations. And as @Eric mentioned it is very strange that someone has set it up to 20%. May be you want to change it between 70-90% with some trials.


What is a cost and cost function in path planning?

Question: Surfing through websites and videos, I interpreted that cost refers to parameters such as time taken to go from start position to the goal position or distance traveled in every possible path and cost functions refers to the functions of these parameters with some condition such as shortest time taken or shortest distance traveled.
So is this interpretation, right?
Answer: The term cost function in path planning is borrowed from optimization. Rightfully so, since path planning in most cases is, in fact, an optimization problem.
The cost function in optimization expresses the function which should be minimized (as optimization is a synonym for minimization). Optimizing a cost function translates to finding its minimum. So if your function is $$f(x,y) = \sqrt{x^2+y^2}$$ by minimizing this function as:
$$ \begin{align}
\underset{x,y}{\min}&\quad f(x,y)\end{align} $$
you will get $f=0$. If we attribute meaning to this you could say that we are looking to minimize a distance and here cost becomes the distance. In this trivial example, the minimum cost is 0, i.e. you cannot be closer than distance 0.
If we look at path planning the cost function gets more complicated. If we look to minimize the travelled distance the cost function is the travelled distance, which is dependent on all the waypoints which you travel through. Let's denote the list (or vector) of waypoints with
$$\Theta =[\theta_1 \dots \theta_n ] $$
So the distance you travel can be calculated from these waypoints as $$f(\Theta)=\sum{\theta_i} $$
(If all $\theta$ are adjacent points on a uniform grid.) Minimizing this alone as
$$ \begin{align}
\underset{\Theta}{\min}&\quad f(\Theta)
\end{align} $$
does not bring much since we can already know, that the minimum amount of travel we can do is 0. What makes this interesting are additional constraints, in other words, the function is subject to (s.t.) constraints. Setting the first point $\theta_1$ to be the starting point, forcing the last one $\theta_n$ to be the last one and forcing the all neighbouring $\theta_i$ to be adjacent. Loosly describing these as contraints gives:
\begin{align}
\underset{\Theta}{\min}&\quad f(\Theta)\\
\text{s.t.}&\quad \theta_1 = \theta_{start}\\
&\quad \theta_n = \theta_{end}\\
&\quad \text{adjacent}(\theta_i, \theta_{i+1}) = 1\end{align}
This way, by minimizing the function, the minimum length of the path which connects the starting point with the target point can be found. However, finding the length is in many cases not what we are looking for. Finding the waypoints themself is in many cases of interest. This is also minimization (or optimization) of the same function, but we are not interested in the output of the function, but in the argument of the function, $\Theta$.
$$ \begin{align}
\underset{\Theta}{\text{argmin}} &\quad f(\Theta) \end{align} $$
Distance is just one example of cost. It can also be the fastest route (minimum time), minimum energy, a combination of more factors (e.g time and distance) expressed as a weighted sum.


Widgets in JFace TableViewer cells?

Question: I am developing an application using JFace on Eclipse 3.6 and I would like to have actual widgets - mostly checkboxes and buttons - in a TableViewer. Everything I have found seems to suggest that this is not possible at the moment.
My current workaround involves having a MouseListener for the wrapped Table control, where the mouseDown event coordinates are translated to cells using the getCell() method and acted upon. I then use the content provider to supply images and formatted text that somewhat approach the look of the respective widgets.
The problem is that the result is not native-looking at all. There are some workarounds involving taking screenshots of the actual native widgets, but this has a few problems:

It's a hack
The captured widgets ocassionally become visible, creating a flickering artifact on the screen
It requires image handling tricks to make the captured image blend with the table colours
It does not scale well when e.g. buttons with different contents are required

Is there a way to embed widgets in TableViewer cells without using such cumbersome methods? The underlying SWT Table can certainly do that, but the TableViewer interface does not seem to support this...
Answer: You can use celleditors for this. It is not exactly what you want, as the widgets are only displayed during editing, but I think, it is quite close.
See http://wiki.eclipse.org/JFaceSnippets#Snippet027ComboBoxCellEditors or the other CellEditor examples on the wiki page.

Widgets in JFace TableViewer cells?


How big will the block chain become?

Question: How big can the block chain become? It's already 7 GB after a couple years!
Comment: possible duplicate of [Are there any studies into the size of the blockchain scaling over time?](http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/2798/are-there-any-studies-into-the-size-of-the-blockchain-scaling-over-time)
Comment: Also possibly answered here: Upper limit on the blockchain file size with pruning?  http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/4650/upper-limit-on-the-blockchain-file-size-with-pruning
Answer: The block chain length in number of blocks will grow indefinitely with one block being created for 10 minutes on average.
The actual size of the whole chain will strongly depend on the following two aspects:

the number of transactions

The number of transactions in a block determine the size of the block. So, the more transactions are made in the network, the more information there has to be stored.

how the block chain will be stored across clients

Since the speed with which the block chain grows has been slightly increasing since the beginning of Bitcoin and the block chain is already significantly big, some of the Bitcoin developers have been considering to implement a solution for this that would make it unnecessary to keep a history since the beginning of time.
Currently already the standard Bitcoin client compresses the block chain for storage. The older blocks become, the more they are compressed. This means that you required less disk space to store the block chain, but also that it takes longer to start building it from scratch. Other clients have to decompress it to share it with you and you will have to compress everything you receive. This results in the fact that new clients often need multiple days to get in sync with the network.
Answer: The blockchain will continue to grow over the years. It depends on how much data people put into it. There is some upper limits set right now, but they will likely be changed once Bitcoin grows so popular we need more space.
Therefore it stands to reason that eventually users will not download the blockchain themselves, but collectively do that. Via Bitcoin wallets for example. Or use light clients that have no copy of the chain themselves.
It is expected to remain "affordable but ineffective" for the time to come. Also given an extensive form of blockchain-pruning can reduce the blockchain's size, but hasn't been implemented for a lack of priority.
Answer: I know two things for sure:  1)  The blockchain will continue to grow.  and 2) when I installed the Bitcoin core yesterday, on a fresh new computer, it told me to allow for the initial amount to be 80GB.  For me, the only reason that matters is because I get charged extra by the cable company.  And it also tells me how long to expect it to take before that original load is finished.
The OP said it was 7GB in 2013.
So yes, #1 is true - it will grow.
So the wild card appears to be the work factor doubling this summer.  The last time it doubled was 2012.  But that was before the big guns started mining.
As it becomes more expensive to mine for the same earnings, it should be obvious that there will be fewer miners, which translates into longer clearance times.  In fact, we're seeing it already as people position themselves for the new reality to come.
The good change is that the powers that be are also considering doubling the block sizes.  That will translate to longer times before transactions get posted and verified.
Yet the blockchain size may continue to grow at a linear rate.
So I am curious about the basis for this question.  The OP didn't explain why the size of the blockchain was of interest.
Speaking for myself, I believe the longer clearance times will totally devastate the nascent BTC economy.  We'll never see transaction rates like VISA (thousands per second).  6 months ago the blockchain wasn't even quite at 100 tps.
Face it, dealing directly with the blockchain at the point of sale will never work - your coffee would get cold long before the store could be sure you had the ability to pay.  This is why third party card issuers can work to keep blockchain issues from spilling over to customer service issues.
Cheers, all
Answer: Even if there are no rewards paid for finding/calculating a block in the blockchain, miners still get the transaction-fees.
That is needed because without blocks, no transactions would be possible.
Because of that, there is no limit on the blockchains size.

How big will the block chain become?


FTP issue uploading a file that does not appear live

Question: I am successfully uploading my files via FTP to my server. My client is showing it is there. When I try an access the URL i get a 404. Not sure why. I entered in the correct URL (my client also offers the option to open the file)
Comment: DId you compare permissions with other files which are accessible via url and ftp?
Answer: Have you uploaded your file to the correct IIS virtual directory? I assume you are using IIS because you've tagged "windows-server-2008" to this post.
Answer: Without knowing your IIS version for sure I'm going to take a stab in the dark.  If you're certain your path is correct and that your files are actually there... then my spidey senses tell me that you are uploading a file extension that's an unknown MIME type to your IIS.
If you try and host a static file that IIS doesn't have in it's list of known mime types you're going to get a 404.3 response.  I've run into this with .mp4 .m4v and various other extensions.  From here it's not too complicated to solve.
If you're running IIS7: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc725608%28WS.10%29.aspx
If you're running IIS6: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/326965
Note that you'll have to restart the app pool.


How can I modify a user's PATH environment variable without logging out?

Question: The question pretty much says it all; I have users who do not have permission to edit their own PATH environment variable and if they need to have it modified for some reason, they need to log out so an Admin can log in and change the PATH for them, before the user logs back in again. This isn't ideal. Can it be done in a better way?
Comment: Just curious - but how exactly are you preventing users from changing their own default environment?  Are you just denying them access to My Computer / Properties / Advanced / Environment Variable?  They could still modify HKCU/Environment through a variety of methods.
Comment: See also http://superuser.com/questions/189654/how-to-get-access-to-environment-variables-in-windows/189755
Comment: Group policy preferences? Just a thought.
Answer: For accounts without admin privileges:
Open "User Accounts" and choose "Change my environment variables" (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/931715).
This dialog will show you your current user variables as well as the system variables. You may need to add a local PATH variable if you haven't already.
To update your Path to include the Python 3.3 directory, for instance, click New:
Variable Name: PATH
Variable Value: %PATH%;C:\Python33
This creates a local PATH by taking the current system PATH and adding to it.
Comment: I've got to think this answers, "*I have users who do not have permission to edit their own PATH*...", and does so *permanently*, better than the rest. Very nicely done. Wonder why clicking that from the My Computer is admin protected if this isn't? Just protect non-local fields the same way the UI does when accessed this way.
Comment: Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to work.  When my users attempt this, it prompts them for the admin password.  As I enter the admin password, it ends up opening the dialog for MY path statement.
Comment: The instructions in the linked article are tailored for Windows Vista. In Windows 10, it's easier to just open Control Panel, and go to "User Accounts" from there.
Answer: My Computer / Properties / Advanced / Environment Variables. Changes there take effect immediately except for already open command prompt windows. No need to log out and back in.
NOTE: If you don't have access to that window, you might be able to get it by running rundll32 sysdm.cpl,EditEnvironmentVariables from the Run window or command-line.
Comment: regular users on my network are not able to change their own environment variables like this, unless I can open that screen with elevated privs via "run as..." or something similar, this won't work for me
Answer: You can always invoke a cmd shell with administrator rights (or any other runas method), and use a tool such as SETX to modify the path permanently. Existing shells and/or running programs will probably be using the old path, but any new shell/program will use the new settings.
Answer: In addition to the answers above, you can also update the registry (which has the advantage of being scriptable):
The PATH variable is stored in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Environment.
To read the current path:
reg query HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Environment /v PATH

To append a value c:\somedir to the path:
reg add HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Environment /v PATH /d "%PATH%;c:\somedir"

Note that processes read the environment when being launched, so you would have to restart the process for it to get the new path.
Update: Another way I found is to run:
rundll32 sysdm.cpl,EditEnvironmentVariables

Again, this applet edits the registry and has the same effect as the above.
Answer: In a command prompt you can do:
set PATH=C:\somedir;%PATH%

but this only changes it for the command prompt (and any apps launched from the command prompt). Assuming you want this to apply to everything the user does you change the users environment variables. Right click My Computer, Properties, Advanced, Environment variables and in the "User variables for  add a variable:
PATH = C:\whatever

When the user logs in this gets added to the system wide path.
Comment: I need to change the order of entries already in the PATH, so adding removing from the User Variables doesn't work for me in this case
Comment: `setx`, as @Berzemus mentioned, can edit the system PATH variable (the `/m` switch) permanently.
Answer: The user can set a PATH variable at a command-prompt that will override the system-wide PATH variable, even if the user doesn't have "Administrator" rights. The change will take effect for new processes the user starts from that command prompt. (The existing Explorer process, and any other processes the user is running when the change is made, will not "see" the change.)
Answer: On Windows 10, a user without administrator privileges can edit their own path variable by going to Settings and searching for "Edit environment variables for your account" which will pull up all of your environment variables. Then just highlighting "Path" in the top user variables box, you can click edit and set the path. Okay to save and the path should be set for any new console that's opened.

How can I modify a user’s PATH environment variable without logging out?


How can I harvest my own grass seed?

Question: I have a kind of perennial evergreen grass that I would like to spread around the yard. How can I save seeds from the plants efficiently ?
Comment: Can you please post a photo of your "perennial evergreen grass" (so we can try to identify it)? Though I believe you will find ["xpda" below answer](http://gardening.stackexchange.com/questions/2140/how-can-i-harvest-my-own-grass-seed/2141#2141) to be a good one (IMHO).
Answer: I think it's a worthwhile experiment, but there are a few issues with trying to collect seed from your lawn.

As mentioned in xpda's answer, stop mowing, let the grass grow tall and make seed. Collect them when they're fully dry. Depending on the type of grass you have, it may get tall before it sets seed. Some types actually form seed while they're still fairly low.
To collect, I would probably walk around with a big paper bag and clip the seed heads (tops of the grass) into the bag. When it's all collected, close up the bag, shake well to separate the seed, and pour it through a screen to separate the debris. Store in a cool, dark, dry place until you're ready to plant it.
While your desirable grass is going to seed, weeds may have a chance to go to seed. If your lawn is not a pure stand of the desirable grass, the seed you collect may be contaminated with weed seed.
Depending on the type of grass you have, and the types of grasses that are growing nearby, you run the risk of cross pollination. If cross pollination occurs, the seed you collect will not be a pure strain of the desirable grass. (It could be "better" or "worse" depending on what traits come in via random cross pollination with nearby weeds.)

Some types of perennial grass will spread vegetatively (not via seed). If you have this type, you may be able to take plugs from your existing lawn instead of collecting seed. As long as your lawn is a pure stand and you're not taking weeds up with the plugs, this will ensure that you're propagating a true genetic copy instead of risking cross-pollination.
Answer: It's probably easier to buy it than get the seeds from the grass. To harvest the grass seed you need to stop mowing it and let it "go to seed", or let seeds form when the grass gets tall. After they've dried out and turned brown (depending on the grass), you can shake the tops of the grass stalks and the seeds will fall off.
Answer: I simply used a shop vac. Just clean it out really good then turn it on and walk across your lawn in a sweeping motion accumulating the seeds.
Answer: Let your desired grass grow to seed, let it stand for 2 months and strip it by hand.  You need not separate out any of the chaff if you have a light touch.
Answer: how about using a bagger on a lawn mower ?   set at max height.
Answer: I pick grass seeds by hand some grasses produce big seed spikes that are easy to harvest from however the grass pennisetum cladestinum produces seed in the turf in clusters where the seeds are covered by leaf like bracts whitch can be found near the flowers whitch are easily visible due to their yellow tipped  bluish white anthers
Answer: couldn't you just wait until seeds are "ripe" and then mow to drop the seed?  Or bag to distribute somewhere else?

How can I harvest my own grass seed?