Was there a single ancient religion that all others sprang from?

Question: Many religions share same stories, Christianity, Judaism and Islam for example (the ones I know of at least). Some of those stories could even be traced to earlier civilizations in the Middle East region, like the belief in resurrection, God (gods) intervention in the worldly affairs, heaven, hell etc. My question is could we trace these ideas to one ancient religion? That is was their a religion to have been a focal point of all religion of which basic religious ideas came up and been absorbed and modified by other religions? Or were they generally the product of many stories of many unrelated not connected religions which developed separately?
Comment: Question can't be answered as a history question: refers to human culture prior to the documentary record of the past; meanings imputed to pre-documentary culture by archaeologists are too speculative to provide answers to questions at this level of specificity.
Comment: Buddhism grew out of Hinduism, and as such there is significant overlap
Answer: Religions are cultural concepts, they evolve through the time, adapting some ideas from others, providing some new ones, etc. For example, having Christianity of 500 AD, you'd be able to point out some concepts taken (directly or not quite so) from Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Neoplatonism, etc. Then, Christianity itself influenced Islam, Manicheism, lots of Gnostic denominations. Putting these influences graphically, the graph would be in my opinion pretty dense.
The answer to the question would be, that yes, we'd be able to point out some religions, like Judaism, Zoroastrianism, hypothetical Proto-Indo-European cult, etc., which had greater influence than others, and developed concepts used later by many others through the time. But, whose influence was greater, more inspirational, etc., that's highly speculative and controversional, hence - there will be no concrete answer.
Comment: References would be very helpful here.
Answer: No I dont think we could trace it all back to one religion. Religion is a big part of the human experience the need to create a mythical realm where we go after death, seems to be a part of just about every culture. The major religions of today are likely derived from several older religions.
Comment: Hinduism and Buddhism don't have a great deal in common with each other outside of having a similar location of origin.
Comment: *Judaism, Islam, Christianity (with the possible shortest summary "love")* I don't think this interpretation holds up under even a casual reading of these religions' holy books.
Comment: By way of (very) crude summary I think of the major religions of today as forming two big families: Judaism, Islam, Christianity (with the possible shortest summary "love") and Hinduism, Buddhism (with the possible shortest summary "contentment").
Answer: Well, the obvious answer is that both Christianity and Islam emerged from Judaism. Christianity is pretty easy to see, since most of us in the West have at least a passing familiarity with the documents (particularly the New Testament) which note the early consolidation of a particular apocalyptic Jewish death cult into what we now know as the Christian religion.
The direct link between Judaism and Islam is a bit more tenuous and, given the poor relationship between the adherents of those religions right now, controversial. However, Wikipedia notes that there was at the very least a bit of tolerance between Mohammed and the earlier religions:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic%E2%80%93Jewish_relations#Religious_figures

In the course of Muhammad's proselytizing in Makkah/Mecca, he initially viewed Christians and Jews (both of whom he referred to as "People of the Book") as natural allies, sharing the core principles of his teachings, and anticipated their acceptance and support.

I read a narrative a few years ago whose name completely escapes me that hid a fairly plausible explanation for this camaraderie: that Islam itself arose from a coalition of Arabs and messianic Jews, and that while Muhammed himself may or may not have been born Jewish, he based much of Islam on Jewish teaching. It was an interesting book, wrapped up in the narrative format because it was aimed at the general public rather than academia.
Otherwise, I've heard people (not all of them evangelists) insist that LDS is not a Christian religion, and if you believe this to be the case, then that is most certainly an example of a large religion which has its basis in another one. There is no question that Joseph Smith drew heavily on the Old and New Testaments for inspiration.
Comment: [Hagarism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagarism) by Crone and Cook may be the book you're thinking of.
Comment: Maybe... I see that the issues people have with it are the same ones I had with this book. I think it was more contemporary than 1977 though (late 90s to early 2000s).
Answer: If you read the Old Testament, you will see hints of polytheism being at the roots of Judaism. Comparing the different names you see this as well.
The story of Abraham choosing one god above the others is a case in point. El, a Canaanite god name etymologically related to Allah, is generally the original word for God in Judaism. After Moses, however, you have that and YHWH. It was written this way to hide the true name. One theory I read is that Moses actually picked up this name from his father-in-law when he was in exile and combined it with the Hebrew El. It is my opinion that Elyah sounds a lot like Allah.
As the nations develop, there are lots of references to other gods getting in the way and causing El's anger against a king. Even later in the Old Testament when they were in exile in Persia (practicing monotheistic Zoroastrianism) you see the leaders of Persia and the Hebrews talking about God as if it's the same one as their own. Persia's religion is derived from the Indo-European religions where Zoroaster also chose one god above the others, Ahura Mazda over the Devas.
Note in Hinduism it's the reverse, the Devas beat the Asura.  The Hindu Asura, being composed of gods like Dyaus Pita (sky father) which is etymologically equivalent to Zeus Pitar (Greek), Jupiter (Roman), and Tiu (Norse/German) which Tuesday is named for. Asura is etymologically related to Aesir and Asgard from Norse.
Buddhism is an offshoot of Hinduism.  It is fairly clear Hinduism/Buddhism is derived from the the same roots ultimately as Greek, Roman, Norse, and Zoroastrianism.
Christianity and Islam are derived from Judaism. Less clear is the influence of Zoroasterianism on the Judaism/Christian/Islam monotheism.  The Persian connection is interesting.  One possibility is monotheism didn't actually exist in Isra-El and Judah until the Persians influenced them.
In that case it's possible that all of these major religions are partially derived from the base Indo-European pantheon with heavy influence from Semitic polytheism (Canaan, Egypt, and Babylon).  Another possibility is Abraham, Moses, and Zoroaster independently came up with monotheism. Even later people such as King Josiah may have.  It's probably a big jumble of influences with one group of people deciding there is only one God.
My sources are reading the English Bible, Wikipedia, and Online Etymology.
Comment: Some formatting please? My eyes! My eyes!
Answer: There are lots of religions that was inspired by others.
Roman mythology is in fact almost fully taken from the Greeks. There are some differences, like gods' names and heroes (Ulysses vs Oddyseus), and the main difference is the legend of foundation of Rome (Romulus, Remus and she-wolf).
In the Acts of Apostles chapter 17 there is a story about St. Paul in Athens where he finds an altar "to the unknown god" and he uses this to introduce Christian God to people. This altar was made because there where many cultures (Persian, Egyptian etc.) having their own gods, which were not treated as wrong by the Greeks, but some kind of supplement to their pantheon. I think many foreign gods became also Olympian gods, for example there was always a god responsible for some territory or terrain feature (like gods of rivers, forests etc.). They were accepted while visiting new countries.
And of course the idea of one god (God) is an Israeli development, which was then taken (or improved) by Christianity and then by Islam. Combination of many religions led in later times to creation new ones, like eg. Voodoo.
However, answering to your question. Some religions state, that they were revealed by god(s). In fact, the latest sources of the religions are holy books of themselves and there is no written moment "ok, for now we were atheists and we begin to believe that the truth is out there".
We can only imagine what is the reason of "creation" of gods, of course if they had not existed forever. The natural forces which were not to be explained by small brain, were inspiration of gods. There are lots of natural forces that have (good or devastating) impact on the environment (like rain, thunderbolt, grow of flora, large animals, astronomical events etc.), or on the human himself (like fire that is hot, death of old age). I think that primitive man seeing these random events must have thought that there is some kind of supernatural control in this.
I don't know when this happened, but I think this is the answer to your question: the oldest religion of man is the Nature itself. Because it is much stronger than human, not controllable, not explainable and sometimes acting like it was pleased or angry, this can be considered by the oldest god.
In every (I think) religion gods can control the Nature, like an archer controls his arrow, spearman controls his spear, a farmer controls his corn, a shepherd controls his flock. This control seems to be such obvious, that nothing in the world should have not been left without control. The feeling that everything has its controller fulfils one of human basic needs: the need of security.
Comment: And it seems to be a relatively well informed opinion. But [Stack Exchange discourages opinions](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/).  Stack exchange should be about pragmatic questions and researched answers.  As I said, your opinion seems to be well informed; I'm commenting only because I think H:SE must strive to provide answers based on research and sources. (I think the question is flawed; it solicits opinions rather than answers).
Comment: Lots of unsubstantiated opinion.  A stronger answer would have referenced frex, [Bill Moyers](http://billmoyers.com/spotlight/download-joseph-campbell-and-the-power-of-myth-audio/) or the overreferenced [Joseph Campbell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Atlas_of_World_Mythology).
Comment: Well, yes, this is my opinion
Comment: My answer was "there is no source to answer the question". It's difficult to document that there is no source about source. Then I presented my assumptions, trying to however to answer the question, also explaining, why there is no source, and why there is no source about sources.


Estimating a testing project

Question: How do you estimate a testing project? What are the things to be take care of while estimating the time for a testing project ?
Answer: There's an excellent series of articles about test estimation that everybody involved in producing or using test estimates should read:

Project Estimation and Black Swans
(Part 1)
Project Estimation and Black
Swans (Part 2)
Project Estimation and Black Swans
(Part 3)
Project Estimation and Black
Swans (Part 4)
Project Estimation and Black Swans
(Part 5): Test Estimation

It starts by exploring a Monte Carlo simulation for a project, showing how a relatively small number of surprises can have a big impact, carries on to talk about strategies for managing that impact, and finishes up by looking at testing in particular.
Comment: Links are *TRUE* masterpiece! Thanks soooo much!
Answer: Many times you don't have time to create the test plan, I have at times been in project planning meetings where a grand scope has been given and Engineering is then asked then and there - to give an estimate.  Basically then its a sort of guessing game, which is what estimates are, and if you are being asked to give one you can be sure it will be wrong.  That is what an estimate is.  Although this will all depend on what sort of process you are using, but if this was a full-up project starting at the beginning with Dev and Test working in parallel I think of the following:

Is this new technology?  The Development Team will need to learn it, extending their time so you will need to learn it to test
How often will builds come?  Are there milestones?  Is there a new build process that will need to be implemented?  Considering the code coming in to test and how stable it will be, as well as bugfix builds
Does this require new tools to test?  You'll need time to acquire/build as well as setup/train the tools...then take some trial runs to see if things work as expected
How many resources will you be allowed to have?  Will they be shared?  This means context switching and loss of resources (emergencies, vacations, people leaving, new hires), you need to plan properly

These are the ones that I would think of in addition to what glowcoder mentioned, they will be a part of any project, and the more documentation you have to provide the longer things will take as well.
Comment: I think that this is a great list, however, if this is for an enterprise application, don't forget to also look at learning the business logic behind the functional requirements (often forgotten and helps speed up future testing LoE), and time for UAT if it is a part of the QA testing process.
Comment: Very true, although I haven't been in that world.  I've done small companies and start-ups where people are all fired up to get projects going.  Usually from presenting the idea to the group then scheduling all in the same meeting.
Answer: The first thing to look at is similar testing jobs that took place. For a similar change, how effective was the testing job given the time provided? History is the best place to look for estimates in all fields.
A testing project should have a test-plan before doing your time estimate. Each element in the test plan should have an estimated time for completion. The estimate for the project is simply the sum of the time for each element, plus some overhead for things not directly related to the test:

project management
discussion, feedback to developers
preparing results
technical difficulties

If you're coming up with estimates without having a test plan, you're setting yourself up to get the estimate wrong.
Answer: I agree with the points above:
Some things that I faced in my projects and that we need to consider are:

The experience that QA and DEV teams have, in the field, with the technology, etc
Identify the risks
Be clear on what will be tested and what will not be tested, otherwise, people can assume that some features have been tested, and in the last minute the team has to do extra work in order to verify the features that were not tested early in the game
Also, during the estimations need to consider the worst-case if it is possible (if issues are found if it is needed to do researches in order to understand the feature, the possibility of having some blockers)
Answer:
Along with the answers mentioned, this article is also helpful in estimating a testing project.

Estimating a testing project


Mushrooms on crab apple tree trunk

Question: Should I do something about these?  Does it signify something bad?
Comment: Fungi almost exclusively only feed on non-living material. The one you have shown is a slow-growing, woody, example indicating that the trunk of the tree has been at least unwell for some time.
Comment: I purchased the home 4 years ago. They are the most healthy crab apple trees in the neighborhood, but I've been spraying for frog eye spot the entire time. They keep their leaves longer than any crab apple around but the disease is still fighting back.
Answer: Yes, it does signify something bad, if the fungus is actually attached to the trunk of the tree (which it looks to be) and not simply appearing on woody parts of the mulch. This is one of the bracket fungi, and they occur on trees which are dying, or will soon be dead. If it's somewhere it might hit something or someone when it rots through and falls, it might be wise to have it removed now before it does that.
Out of curiosity, is this the same crab apple tree you asked about in March, which had a problem on one of its branches?
Comment: No, different crab apple.  I have three nicely sized ones in the corner of a suburban corner not.  They look very nice but I fear I may lose them over the next ten years, if not sooner.  They were probably planted in the early 80's.
Comment: Not necessarily - they have an anticipated life span between 30 and 70 years,so they could go on a fair bit longer, hopefully

Mushrooms on crab apple tree trunk


Unbranded cranks vs FSA Vero cranks?

Question: What is the difference between the unbranded-cranks found on the Motobecane- USA- Mirage Sport vs the FSA Vero cranks(sometimes LSC) on the Motobecane-Record or Grand Record? Are they basiclly the same thing quality wise?
Comment: The brands you mention do not clearly indicate which precise crank sets you are comparing. Are you comparing this one: http://www.ebay.com/itm/MOTOBECANE-MIRAGE-SPORT-44c-MIXTE-BLUE-ROAD-BIKE-/151267694363. To this one: http://www.bikesdirect.com/products/motobecane/images/record_yellow_2100.jpg.
?
Comment: The Grand Record is almost twice as much money as the Mirage Sport. You can expect higher end components across the board.
Answer: In general, there are several factors that go into a crankset:

Mounting: What kind of bottom bracket do they go on? Square Taper, Octalink, etc. Are they cottered? cotter-less? one piece?
Single/Double/Triple: How many chainrings do they have?
Chainring Shape: Some chainrings like the Biopace are somewhere between a rounded rectangle and a circle rather than circular. Biopace is supposed to be more comfortable than the usual circular rings, for example. You can also design different tooth shapes to improve shifting performance. Other chainrings seem to have slightly different vertical profiles (SRAM X-glide for example).
Chainring Type: How are the chainrings mounted? Are they fixed into the crankset? Are they 110 BCD and replacable?
Chainring Material: Usually Aluminum for the outer two, Steel for the inner for a MTB triple, but other options are possible. This affects durability and weight- just because you're using the same materials doesn't mean the quality is the same.
Crank length: 170 mm is probably most common.
Chainring size: A compact road double is usually 50t/34t, for example - different chainring sizes give you different gearings.
Q-factor/Tread: Width of the crankset. This will affect comfort and is usually narrow to match how we walk.
Crank Profile: The angle of the crank arms leaving the bottom bracket. If you ride with your toes outward, this prevents interference and affects Q-factor.
Crank arm material: Affects durability, strength, weight.
Power Meter: Some high end cranksets have a power meter built into them for measuring riding power which can be sent to your cycling computer.
"Speeds": Often these days, cranksets are marketed with a different number of speeds in the back in mind. Mostly marketing.
Pedal type: Pedals come in 1/2" or 9/16". You need to have the right sized holes for the pedals to screw into, for a given set of pedals.

Between manufacturers of compatible cranksets (i.e. they can be mounted to the same bike and have essentially the same geometry (Q-factor, crank length, number of chainrings and chainring sizes), there are likely to be different durabilities of chainrings, weights of the crankset assembly and aesthetics.
In your particular case, I'd guess the non-name brand one is probably a bit heavier and has softer material for the chainrings so they don't necessarily last as long. The geometry may also be slightly different. Its hard to tell with Motobecane when the parts aren't exactly specified since something just shows up on the bike depending on whats in the factory that day which meets the specs stated online.
Answer: Just copped some FSA Vero's! I Always buy name brand when it comes to bikes. FSA offers high dollar parts, very reputable brand! Unbranded always cuts corners!
Comment: FSA has a reputation for OEM junk sold at premium prices to make the bikes with the OEM parts look like a good deal. I guess that counts as reputable.
Comment: This doesn't attempt to answer the question, which is "what is the difference between the unbranded cranks and a FSA Vero branded crank"  Can you please [edit] this so it answers the question?  Also, "just copped..." means nothing to me.  Can you rephrase that in a more formal English?
Comment: @ojs You left out "shifts like crap" and "uses oversize 24.07 mm spindle so you can't use cheaper, better-performing, longer-lasting Shimano bottom brackets and have to pay extra for crappy, short-lived FSA bottom brackets - every six months".

Unbranded cranks vs FSA Vero cranks?


Writing Guitar Songs

Question: Whenever I write a song on the guitar if I start it on the fifth fret, then all parts of the song start on the fifth fret, The intro riff, the chorus and verse riffs, everything. I'm a self taught guy so I never learned much about theory. Is that "bad practice"?
Answer: It is not necessarily bad - see AC/DC, Iron Maiden or Status Quo as examples of bands using very basic chord structures.
That said, it is very limiting to only compose in one key, or one fret position. It is well worth learning modes, keys, and the different positions you can play in.
Actually, if you are stuck in this one pattern, the single best thing you can do is go to a teacher for a few lessons, and they will help you break out of that rut by showing you new things to learn. If you don't have a teacher available, try one of millions of videos on YouTube, or start playing along to different music styles.
Answer: There are no iron clad rules to composition.  But in my experience what we write is a reflection of what we listen to and copy.  You say "...if I start it on the fifth fret, then all parts of the song start on the fifth fret,...".  So are you also saying that you have written songs starting on the 3rd fret that move up and down the neck?  I think this is important.
It is not a bad practice to stay in one place as long as your ideas fit there.  Perhaps the 5th fret represents a comfort zone on the guitar where the tension is just right and the register is also just right.  I find that if I'm playing (or writing) a song in E I divide my time between the 12th fret and the 7th, using two standard forms, and rhythm parts heavy on the open E.  I don't like just staying on 12.  But songs around the 3rd to 7th fret might be comfortable there.
Like the other answer implies, if you are limiting yourself that is not good in the long run, but if the song sound good don't judge it.  If you are truly stuck in one position try learning a greater variety of songs to get a feel for the different positions and song structures.

Writing Guitar Songs


What impact does a public onion client have on my anonymity?

Question: Sometimes I'm working in a small office. Colleagues asked me to try Tor and I thought about setting up SOCKSListenAddress thus allowing them to use my onion client. Can this harm my anonymity in any way and makes it maybe more sense that everyone install their own client?
Comment: If nothing else, your coworkers could simply go on a public forum and post "I'm using Tor and my actual IP is X from company Y's network". That's an extreme example, but the point that more people using it equals a bigger attack surface is still valid.
Answer: Even though Peter's answer mentioned stream isolation, I believe, you shouldn't do this. Those other client machines might be compromised and may try to attack your Tor client. I am not saying your colleagues do this on purpose, rather it's likely that one of their machines is compromised without them knowing.
Connecting things were is no strong advantage from such connections isn't wise from a security perspective.
Also if they are using your system as a Tor proxy, I doubt they are aware browser fingerprinting and tracking related threats and using Tor Browser re-configured to use your machine. It would make much more sense if they all used their own Tor Browser Bundle (or similar Tor focused project such as Tails etc.).
Not to forget the firewall aspect. When they can access your Tor instance, you necessarily have a listening port open and need a firewall to protect you from connection from the internet. The company firewall (simple NAT router will do) might do this, but what if it's a notebook and you use it for a journey using a foreign WiFi, with no firewall to protect you? Then either the whole internet or (depending on configuration) machines in that LAN can attack you. Also other things such as IPv6 tunnels may weaken firewalling. When providing services for others, you need quite some knowledge to safely do it.
There is also another subtle aspect when using multiple Tor clients versus a single Tor client. The amount of entry guards chosen by Tor. An ISP level adversary may be able to guess the number of individual Tor clients from that connection, due to different sets of entry guards. If that is of concern to you, a single Tor client might be better.
Companies can benefit from Tor, but it needs someone knowing the basics of Tor and proper briefing.
Answer: It should be fine.
Tor, starting with the 0.2.3.x branch, has a feature called stream isolation.
This means that clients in different classes never share the same circuit.  It can be configured with the various Isolate* options for a SocksPort.
By default, the IsolateClientAddr option is enabled.  Accordingly, different hosts using your Tor instance as their Onion Proxy should never use the same circuits.

Further references: proposal171: separate-streams.


Adjoint question in the Category

Question:
If $\langle F,G,φ \rangle : X \to A$ is adjunction with $G$ full and every unit $η_x$ a monic, then every $η_x$ is also epi.

Some similar questions like this, maybe I do not catch the key, who can help me?
Comment: The first sentence of your question is quoted *verbatim* from exercise 3 on p.92 of Mac Lane's *Categories for the working mathematician*. Are you asking how to solve this exercise?
Comment: In Mac Lane's book,it is ,maybe that is a misprinting.
Answer: The general strategy is to postcompose and precompose all possible arrows with units and counits of the adjunction, until the universal property of the adjunction can be applied sufficently many times.
Let $f, g \colon GF(A) \rightarrow B$ be two parallel morphisms and assume that $f \circ \eta_A = g \circ \eta_A = r$. We have to show that $f = g$.
Postcompose $r$ with $\eta_B$ to obtain a morphism $A \rightarrow GF(B)$. By universality of $\eta_A$, we know that there exists exactly one morphism $h \colon F(A) \rightarrow F(B)$ such that $G(h) \circ \eta_A = \eta_B \circ r$. But $G$ is full, so every morphism $GF(A) \rightarrow GF(B)$ is of the form of $G(k)$ and thus there exists exactly one morphism $GF(A) \rightarrow GF(B)$ such that the above condition is satisfied. Obviously, both $\eta_B \circ f$ and $\eta_B \circ g$ make the triangle commute. So,  $\eta_B \circ f = \eta_B \circ g$, what gives $f = g$ beacuse $\eta_B$ is mono.
Answer: Not an answer but you can prove similar sentences in a general setting: see  exercise EQUIII at page 55 of 'Toposes, Triples and Theories' by Barr-Wells here. Hint for the hint: the dual hint proves the dual statement.

Adjoint question in the Category


What's the difference between 곁에 and 곁엔?

Question: so 곁에 and 곁엔  are pronounced differently but is there a difference in meaning? google translate says the first one means 'beside' and the second one is 'by the side' so I'm confused, how is it different?
Comment: 곁엔 is the contraction of 곁에는. 는 has [several roles](https://korean.stackexchange.com/a/5262/2162) in a sentence, and the role of 는 usually depends on its context. If you would like detailed answers, please  provide the context.
Comment: I was doing a reading practice with the 우유송 and I found 2 versions of it with different spellings throughout

ver 1 : 항상 내 곁엔 오 우유

ver 2 : 항상 내 곁에 오 우유
Answer: This version of 우유송 uses 곁에, but another uses 곁엔. Both "항상 내 곁에 우유" and "항상 내 곁엔 우유" translate to "Milk always around me" (Please note that they are incomplete sentences). As the context is ambiguous and too many lines of the lyrics are incomplete sentences, we cannot be sure about the role of ㄴ there. At least I can say that it does not really matter whether you attach ㄴ to 곁에. I will give you some possible interpretations for the roles of ㄴ (는):

ㄴ may be an emphasizer; it emphasizes "always around me," "around me," or "me." The removal of an emphasizer from a complete sentence does not make it incomplete, though the nuance could change.

ㄴ may be a focus maintainer because the previous lines, "공부하다 한잔" and "게임하다 한잔," imply that there is always milk around. You do not attach it to something when you think that the focus is still on something else. You should note that one of these three complete sentences can also follow the lines "공부하다 한잔" and "게임하다 한잔": 1. 항상 내 곁에는 우유가 있어 (Focus: "(always) around me"). 2. 우유는 항상 내 곁에 있어 (Focus: "milk"). 3. 항상 내 곁에 우유가 있어 (Focus: "milk" or something else). I would say that the latter two can both be written as "항상 내 곁에 우유" when 있어 is removed (Of course, they can also be written as "우유는 항상 내 곁에" and "항상 내 곁에 우유가," respectively).

ㄴ may be a marker for implicit comparison/contrast because we know that everyone does not have milk around. If "(항상) 네 곁에는 주스" or something similar to it were somewhere in the same song, it would be explicit comparison, but there is no direct mention of other people's favorite beverages.

From my viewpoint, music videos are bad materials for several reasons:

Verbs and adjectives are often omitted from the lyrics.
Singers may mispronounce some words, deliberately or not.
Writers may misuse some words, deliberately or not.
Subtitle makers can make errors in typing.

Although it is your choice whether to use them, I would recommend reading some textbooks.
Comment: aww thanks for explaining!


What is the difference between *p and p*?

Question: Is p* another way of using pointers?
Is *p, a pointer variable, different from p*?
Comment: `o____o`             * * * * * *
Answer: *p is dereferencing a pointer, p* is multiplying the pointer by something.
Answer: The syntax
*ptr

Means to dereference the pointer to get the object it points at.
The syntax
ptr*

Is not meaningful in C, unless it's the start of a multiplication.  For example:
*ptr*137;

Means "dereference ptr, then multiply the value it points at by 137.". Outside of this context, though, putting a star after a pointer variable is illegal.
Now, what is legal is putting a star after a type, as in
int*

Which describes a type that's a pointer to the type to the left of the star.  Interestingly, this means that you can't put a star before a type (that's not legal) nor a star after a pointer (since the dereference operator goes to the left).  The reason is partly due to the idea that in C, types should mimic how they work.  That is, if you have
int *p;

Then the syntax is a visual cue that to get to the integer pointed at by p, you should put a star in front of it.
Answer: Prefix vs binary vs type expressions
The * is a prefix unary operator for pointers and an infix unary operator for multiplication. There is a special case where a pure type is all that is needed so one will see things like sizeof(int *), or void f(int *, char *),  but it's still a prefix * on an unnamed identifier.
Postfix dereference in an alternate universe
It's interesting to note that * could have been a postfix unary operator and in that case a few things in the language might have worked out slightly better. For one, the -> operator would not have been necessary:
p->field
p*.field // like Pascal's p^.field

Even today, you can use:
p[0].field

Also...
(*x)->y // today
x**.y   // alternate universe

*x->y   // today
x*.y*   // alternate universe

DMR appeared to state1 in one paper that he would have switched to postfix dereference early on but C was already too well established. The expression syntax is reasonably workable either way but it would also have untangled the C declaration syntax and removed most of the need to read them in an inside-out way that people consistently have trouble with:
int *fp();
int fp()*;    // alternate universe

int (*pf)();
int pf*();    // alternate universe

int *(*pfp)();
int pfp*()*;  // alternate universe

1. See The Development of the C Language., Dennis M. Ritchie
Answer: I guess you already know this is a multiply operation:
p * 3;

The other case:
Retrieve the value from where 'p' points to:
int i = 1;
int *p;       // Declare p as an int * (pointer to an int)
p = &i;       // Set the address p points to

printf("The value of p is %d\n", *p);  // fetch value from p

There is another case which you could see p *
typedef int p;

p *aPtr = &i;

In this case we have created another name (a synonym) for type 'int' called 'p'.   So here when we say 'p' it is translated to 'int' by the compiler.  That way we can also say 'p *'.


How often to clean fish tank with bottom feeders

Question: We have a 29 gallon fish tank with 3 snails, 3 shrimp and 3 catfish. We also have moon fish that I read like to eat algae. We have had the tank a couple of weeks and it looks really clean.  I also read I should do a partial water change every two weeks.  With all those bottom feeders, I was wondering how often I should clean my tank?
Answer: How often you need to clean the gravel and the filter material is dependent on the bioload of your tank.
The bioload is the number of animals living in your tank plus the amount of food you feed your animals living in the tank. And the plants will add to this too when leaves die and decompose.
The gravel will accumulate waste over time so you need to clean it at regular intervals. And if you feed your fish a moderate amount each day you will need to clean the gravel once a month.
The cleaning is best done with an aquarium vacuum and you need to push this all the way down until it meets the glass bottom of the tank. You will see when the water gets clear at each point you vacuum in your tank (you do this in a grid pattern in the gravel of your tank).
You need to take a look at the filter media each time you clean the tank and if this starts to get clogged up you use some of the water from your tank to clean it (it is important to use water from your tank when you do this to keep the good bacteria alive).
You normally do not need to clean the filter media more than every 2-3 months, but again, this is dependent of the bioload in your tank.
It is better to change a small amount of water each week than it is to change a lot when you clean the tank. Water changes are mostly to keep the nitrate level down, but it will lower other waste product levels too.
Answer: I think cleaning is a personal choice. But water changes are important for a healthy tank. I once had a 55 gallon tank that I changed 2 gallons each day (for reasons not related to the aquarium). It was likely the healthiest tank I ever had; angels spawned in it every few weeks.
Answer: Partial water changes are enough if your water quality is good. Substrate cleaning and glass cleaning are not necessary if your tank is doing well. It would be only for cosmetic reasons, for example if the glass becomes cloudy you can brush it off to see better inside.
The substrate and water and everything becomes "alive" and rich as the tank ages, with a kind of "biofilm" on the surface, on the bottom, the glass and everywhere else, that's a good thing. If you "sterilize" it too often, you will lose your bacterial cycle. Don't really need to clean the filter cartridges either since a lot of good bacteria lives there. Most "algae" and microscopic life is good for your tank. Green algae spots on the glass mean good. Big volume of slimy squishy green stuff would be too much, for example if you leave your tank in the sun. As well if your stuff is covered in brown algae, it means something is wrong. In such a case, just cleaning it is not enough, you'd need to find the cause.
I've had a few tanks for many years. I change 25% of the water every few days, sometimes one week. Follow your feeling, and if you notice the water becomes cloudy or dirty, do a change today. 2 weeks is a bit long for me, I'm not THAT busy that I need to let it wait for so long.
Basically the snails, shrimps and live plants are your cleaning crew. Keep the water good and the rest will follow.


Is this a site for questions about personal meditation experiences?

Question: Does this site welcome questions about personal meditation experiences? Such as the meaning of certain experiences etc?
Answer: Welcome to the site.
I think those questions are at least permitted if not welcomed: those questions are tagged personal-practice.
The description of this tag says,

Questions containing or motivated by some aspect of personal experience. The experience can be during formal Buddhist practice or during everyday activity however the experience will be related to Buddhist practice or doctrine. The questions will necessarily have a subjective quality however the question or answers will contain references to Buddhist scripture, doctrine or an established teacher.

Beginners questions about personal experience (like "what does this experience mean?") tend to get (I'm not sure how to describe them) fairly "neutral" answers: maybe, most recently, like this one.
You'll probably get better answers if you specify what type of meditation you're practising.
Another type of question that can attract good answers is to ask some detail about "how to meditate?" (for example, most recently, like this one).
Comment: Compared with other sites, this site is relatively [liberal about what questions are permitted](http://meta.buddhism.stackexchange.com/q/1558/254).
Answer: It's very hard to answer questions about personal practice in this format, and I've seen very few quality answers, nor was I able to give many myself. The answerer either has to know enough about questioner's personal history, or has to have watched the questioner's behavior for enough time. Sometimes if you are very specific with your question (instead of the common "what does this mean" and "what can I expect" questions) and your question pertains to experiences common to many practitioners, you may get a good answer.
Answer: Although, the site has no restriction on questions regarding personal experience, I would personally refrain from asking any such questions for the following reasons:

If it is an experience that comes with advanced levels of serious meditation and is not very easily achievable, I will not be able to ask such a question in public forum without generating at least a hint of ego for having achieved this level.
If the experience sounds attractive and pleasurable in the conventional sense, it may create anxiety in the minds of other meditators who have not experienced such a thing. They may start to crave for such an experience and therefore, I will be creating a hindrance to their practice.
I cannot verify the credibility of the person answering my question in this forum and therefore would not rule out the chance of being misguided.

What I would generally do if facing any experience which bothers me or causes hindrance to my practice is:-

Remember that all experiences are changing and ephemeral. By clinging to or paying attention to a particular experience, I'm again repeating what I otherwise do when not meditating and therefore, I'm defeating the purpose of meditation and hampering my progress.
Use my breathing as the steering wheel to drive myself out of the overpowering situation. By focusing on the natural and normal breath, I can effectively divert my attention from the experience, yet not try to suppress it.
Take guidance from an experienced teacher with credibility.


In what ways do our brains use compression?

Question: I am reading a book on information theory and one line in the book states that "Brains are the ultimate compression and communication systems." However, there is no further elaboration on the matter. I am curious to know what specifically this sentence may be referring to. In particular, how does the brain demonstrate compression?
Comment: Sounds like semantic pointer architecture may be relevant (maybe)!
Comment: @mrt I've added an answer relating the to Semantic Pointer Architecture that might interest you
Answer: Say for example, you know what a particular type of flower looks like. You know it has purple petals and a white center. Now, unbeknownst to you, this flower has been slowly changing (evolving) to have a different shape, size, and even shade over the years since you first had seen one of these flowers. All the while, you have been around this flower your whole life. I mean, it grows in your current backyard, and it also grew in the backyard of the house you grew up in. In this scenario, you may have dreams about when you were a kid playing in the backyard. Instead of seeing what the flowers used to look like (when you actually were a kid), you will most likely see them as they appear to you today. Although your brain has memories of the presence of these flowers in the yard when you were a kid, their actual defining details have been rewritten over time with their current appearance. The hypothesis here is that your brain is trying to conserve capacity by linking all recorded encounters with this type of flower so that they all share the same "image file" in your brain. Witness testimonies have a similar problem -- where data received after the fact can change a person's memory of what happened and how things and people actually looked. I recommend you research the problems known about witness testimony.
Comment: Sounds like the brain does lossy compression
Answer: Check out:
1.6. Bayesian Hierarchical predictive coding approach to explanation of the findings
from this thesis:
http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1435549/
There's a comparison between image compression algorithms and what the brain does.
Answer: Horace Barlow was probably the first to elaborate on the idea of compression in sensory systems:
Barlow, Possible principles underlying the transformation of sensory messages. Sensory Communication, 1961.
It is interesting to get his perspective 40 years later from:
Barlow, Redundancy reduction revisited., Network, 2001.
More recently, Bialek and colleagues have done a lot of research on this (again, primarily in sensory systems). For example, here is a recent study where they quantify the amount of predictive information (about the future state of a stimulus) compressed into retinal ganglion signalling (and downstream):
Palmer et al., Predictive information in a sensory population, PNAS, 2015.
In this case, they observe that the retina encodes predictive information about the future state of an external stimulus at a rate that approaches a theoretic limit (according to their model based on the Information Bottleneck principle) thus exhibiting (roughly) maximal compression.
Answer: The Semantic Pointer Architecture (SPA), which was used to built the biologically plausible cognitive-model Spaun, is a demonstration of the utility of compression in the brain.
In Spaun uses compression to relate concepts in a unified and grounded manner.  For example, for number concepts in Spaun's "copying task", Spaun first gets the concept of the number by gradually extracting larger and larger features until from a visual hierarchy. This is analogous to the Deep Learning's Restricted Boltzmann Machines. This compressed representation can than be decompressed into individual motor actions and sent back down the motor hierarchy.
To summarize, the perception problem is the dual of the action problem and they are unified my compression, as visualised in the image below taken from the presentation found here.

This compression has also been used in terms of scalable knowledge representations.
For further information on the concepts behind SPA and Spaun, beyond the context of compression, see "How to Build a Brain" by Chris Eliasmith.


Ignoring a hidden field on event registration form

Question: I have a custom event template on which I hide some fields based on whether someone is registering themselves or an additional participant. There are 2 different price options, one for the main registrant and one for the additional participant. The price set needs to have required fields for each situation. How can I get civi to ignore the required fields if they are hidden?
Answer: AFAIK this cannot be controlled in CiviCRM ATM. However there is an extension(from Allen Shaw) for conditional filtering on profile but I guess this will not work in your case.
I would suggest you to create an extension and use combination of buildForm or ValidateForm hook to achieve.
Cheers
Pradeep


Do followers benefit from gems that do not boost their primary stat?

Question: For my Templar follower, does it improve his stats/damage to equip his weapon with an emerald, for increased critical strike damage? Or should I equip all his slots with rubies? Likewise for the Scoundrel and Enchantress, is there any reason to try gems other than the ones that boost their main stat?
Answer: Yes.
Items equipped on your followers do benefit from socketed gems. The wiki entry on followers doesn't go into detail, but followers do benefit from equipment and gems just like your character does. You can test this by letting your follower attack enemies with and without emeralds, and counting the damage of criticals (which I have done, sadly).
Your play style, and that of your follower, depends on the gear you and your follower use, and vice versa. E.g., rubies will always increase strength (which is useless for say, a wizard), and emeralds will always give critical damage (which is great for everyone, unless you want to focus on something else). In my experience, critical strike chance gives you the highest damage increase, pound for pound, even more than critical damage.  If your follower dies a lot though, maybe go for vitality, life on hit, etc (or opt for a legendary follower accessory with "Your follower cannot die.")
It should be noted however that for followers, the critical hit damage bonus is capped at +100% (beyond that natural bonus), so if you have a follower accessory with high CHD, a ruby in the weapon socket will result in higher damage.
Comment: Your follower should not die on 70 anymore. All it takes is to throw a yellow relic into the cube and upgrade it to legendary. The chance to get the one with "Your follower cannot die" is pretty good.
Comment: This is plain wrong. There is no indication ever that emeralds increase critical hit chance, in any slot.
Comment: @Svj0hn you're right, emeralds is critical damage, I got mixed up. Editing now.
Comment: @Dpeif You still have the _"You can test this by letting your follower attack enemies with and without emeralds, and counting the frequency of criticals (which I have done, sadly)."_ suggesting that emeralds give critical hit chance (and that you tested it)... **Edit:** Fixed!
Comment: Definitely tested this the first time I ever gave a weapon to a follower. Just mixed up the nomenclature.
Answer: Yes... but not very much
First of all, an emerald in a weapon does not increase anybody's critical hit chance, but merely the critical hit damage. This is the same for you and your follower.
For the other slots (shield/jewelry), you should stick the one that gives a bonus to their primary stat, as it is the only one that will increase their damage.
However, it's not strictly true to say that there is no benefit from using the other gems, as strength and dexterity still increases armor for an intelligence-based character, and intelligence increases all resist. But since the primary stat has both the offensive and defensive perks, you should go with that one.
Ideally though...
Apart from the weapon (which is debatable), you shouldn't really be using socketed gear on your followers, since they benefit more from other stats (cooldown reduction, for example), unless this is all you have to give to them. Sockets in jewelry are only good if you can use legendary gems, which followers unfortunately cannot.
Comment: @user1359  I believe that he means that if you are better off using items with five bonuses than four bonuses and a socket.  I.e. that on average, non-socketed items will give better bonuses than a gem in the socket can.  Note that this is end-game thinking.  It assumes that you've seen so many items that you can afford to put best-in-slot equipment on your follower.  Before that, a great socketed item might well be better than a mediocre non-socketed item.  But eventually you should expect to find a great non-socketed item that will be better than your socketed item.
Comment: I may be dense, but I don't follow -- how does giving socketed gear preclude you from benefiting other stats? I guess I should ask, how do you bump their other stats, since I don't know how to do that in the first place.
Comment: @Brythan Correct. What I stated below the _Ideally though..._ is indeed for the _ideal_ case, so only applies when you're min-maxing your follower effectiveness. At first, you should instead just try to make them survive so you can benefit from their skills all the time (also, see [Unity](http://www.diablowiki.net/Unity) with follower immortality)
Answer: I know exactly what you're asking.
And the answer is DO NOT USE EMERALD FOR FOLLOWERS WEAPON. Use a gem for their base stats or pure damage. Templar can use both weapon and shield slot for 2 gem sockets, so use both RUBIES for him.
For your Scoundrel and Enchantress use Ruby inside their weapons. This will increase pure damage stats.
Emeralds do not work very well for the followers because their critical chance is way too low compared to the Nephalem. So the Critical Damage Increment buff goes to waste for them. (But for the Scoundrel you can try Emerald becuase his abilities are build around Crits).
My advice is equip a socketed weapon on your follower and check their stats change with changing gems. Should be pretty clear.


Is Stellar platform a blockchain?

Question: I heard Stellar is a Ripple fork, is that right?
Since Ripple does not uses a blockchain, does Stellar use a blockchain?
Comment: Then my answer here might be of interest, since it discusses how the Stellar ledger headers form a chain:
 https://stellar.stackexchange.com/questions/1310/difference-between-stellar-ledger-and-blocks/1312#1312
Comment: Stellar isn't a ripple fork, though a first generation of the system was.  Moreover, Ripple does use a blockchain.  Two ripple blocks will not be identical unless they share identical histories.  Even minimal amounts of googling would have answered these questions, so if this isn't a troll (which seems like a distinct possibility), please check out the basics from the Stellar and Ripple web pages.
Comment: @user3188445 I'm not a troll, I'm just learning, and it's not clear that information, (I really was reading the docs). Thanks
Answer: From my recent blog post:

Everybody knows that Stellar Network is a blockchain-powered platform, right? However, it's architecture is completely distinctive from, let's say, Bitcoin or Ethereum. There is no mining, no PoW or PoS algorithms, it resembles rather a database with a simplified API than Bitcoin sequence of blocks. So why is it listed on the CoinMarketCap with other "classic" blockchains? Because Stellar is an immutable distributed ledger.
Immutability is one of the key blockchain concepts. All blocks in the ledger are sequential, and each new block is bound to its predecessor. Nobody can modify a block somewhere in the middle of the chain and enjoy one more million on the account balance because the whole chain becomes invalid. So we can safely assume that data on the blockchain is legitimate, having been verified by multiple network validators.

Here is a collection of short explainers that describe how everything works. And advanced guide for developers, which describes the concept of chained ledgers in details.
P.S. Stellar is not just a fork of Ripple (like LTC<>BTC). It shares with Ripple some ideological concepts, however Stellar has its own way, and the codebase is written from the scratch.

Is Stellar platform a blockchain?


Could burning all fossil fuels (available on earth) render the atmosphere unbreathable?

Question: What if humanity burns all fossil fuels it can find? Putting the negative effects of climate change aside, would the enormous amount of $\small\mathsf{CO_2}$ in the atmosphere eventually make it unbreathable?
Comment: in what time span, if they burned it all in a day it would have a strong immediate impact.
Answer: Not directly.  What possibly could happen is that rising temperatures turn the parts of the ocean anoxic, which leads to large releases of hydrogen sulfide, which is toxic: https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/ocean-chemistry-changes-triggered-earths-greatest-extinction-event/2500368.article
Answer: tl,dr: The direct effect of burning most of the fossil fuels (6 to 10°C temperature rise) may be survivable for some. But that does not take into account secondary effects triggered by the warming, like heat waves, ocean deoxygenation, flooding, melting of ice caps, etc.
The study below is already a bit dated, latest research has shown that earlier projections were too optimistic, but here you go (paywalled):
The climate response to five trillion tonnes of carbon
The study assumes a linear response from the temperature rise to carbon emissions, until the end of the next century.
This would heat the earth's atmopshere by 6.5 to 9.5°C. So, this is a theoretical play with numbers (for now), the effects on complex life can only be imagined (anoxic ocean ?).
Pop science discussions of it can be found here:
phys.org, vice.com, NatGeo
It is not possible to say with confidence how much oxygen levels will fall. They did fall in the Pleistocene and today fall faster than CO2 rises. But that still does not account for the loss of ecosystems like forests and parts of the ocean becoming an oxygen sink. It is safe to say that this is not sustainable, it alone will not render the atmopshere unbreathable in the next 200 years, but in the long run it will endanger our species.
Of course, this should all be taken with the proverbial grain of salt (local product :-)).
Comment: I'm fairly sure this question is not about climate change at all. It's very specifically asking whether the atmosphere would become unbreathable.
Comment: @SemidiurnalSimon Edited. Hope it fits better now.
Comment: thanks :-) 12345
Answer:
Although conventional oil, gas and
  coal reserves total between 829 and 1,501 GtC, estimates of the global recoverable fossil fuel resource including oil shales range upwards from about 4,000
  GtC. If exotic resources, especially methane hydrates, are included the total
  may be 15,000-25,000.
Millenial timescale carbon cycle and climate change in an efficient Earth system model

There are 2.12 GTC for 1 PPM of atmospheric CO2 so the high estimate would be ~10,000 ppm, or 1% of the atmosphere, consuming 5% the O2. If the FF are mostly CH4, the hydrogen would consume another 5% of the O2.
Also Elevated CO2 Levels Directly Affect Human Cognition (1400 ppm).
Comment: err ... 10,000ppm are 1% ... ?
Comment: @ebv Thanks. Not nearly as doomy, then.
Comment: Problem is the heating, but that wasn't the question. I recently read that if we continue to burn fossil fuels as we do for the next 100 years, climate might end up 10°C higher than today. We can speculate that most complex life has given up in heatwaves by then ... extremeophiles maybe ...
Comment: @ebv All the fossil fuels came from periods where complex life existed. I really, really doubt that it'd kill everything, even in the worst case.
Answer: No. For a start, humanity will not burn all the fossil fuels it can find. But let's suppose for the sake of argument that humanity recognises no restrictions and fulfils all its energy needs by burning fossil fuels. Only a limited amount of fossil fuels are recoverable; the vast majority will have to stay in the ground.
Oil, for example, won't suddenly run out. What would happen is that it would gradually become scarcer, and increasingly expensive to recover. Eventually it would become too expensive to burn, so humans would have to turn to other fossil fuels, coal being the obvious one. Some would be used to make synthetic oil, and some burned in its natural state. The world has very large recoverable reserves of coal There could be enough to last humanity for a thousand years, but eventually recoverable reserves would become so scarce that it too would become too expensive to burn and, like oil, would be used as a source of chemicals and plastics.
All these fuels together, oil, gas and coal, might conceivably be burned for 2,000 years before becoming too scarce and expensive to be used as fuels. During that time,plants,especially in the oceans, would not be idle. Much of the CO2 generated would be sequestered by natural means, and although there would be a big rise in atmospheric CO2 with consequent climate warming, it wouldn't be nearly enough to make the atmosphere unbreathable.
Comment: Once again, Michael, citation needed. The scientific literature oftentimes runs contrary to your claims.
Comment: Anything is toxic if you take too much of it. Dozens of culinary substances can be fatal if you take too much:  water, salt, sugar, vinegar etc. Arsenic can be fatal if you take either too much or too little. In some circumstances oxygen and nitrogen can be toxic, Your lungs have a lot of CO2 in them at this very moment.
Comment: @Michael Walsby: CO2 is not very toxic?  The people around Lake Nyos might disagree with you, if you had a good medium: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Nyos_disaster  Also the approximately 90 people killed (in the US) by CO2 intoxication: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5380556/
Comment: I have explained that it is impossible to extract all fossil fuels from the ground, and even if mankind said to hell with chemicals and plastics, lets burn it all,it wouldn't make very much difference. CO2 is not very toxic,your longs always contain plenty, and air would still be breathable with1 percent CO2 as opposed to the tiny fraction of one percent we now have. If my tweets were often contradictory to scientific thinking, people would soon let me know about it, but they don't.
Comment: @MichaelWalsby: A pointless remark. Just hold your breath if you don't fear the CO2 in your lungs.
Comment: @jamesqf there is nowhere near enough CO2 in the air to form any direct toxic danger to humans. There has to be multiple orders of magnitude more CO2 in the air we breathe to worry. We're at 400ppm. We're nowhere near 100,000ppm, and I can't imagine we will ever get there.


What's the best method to assign all clients to a single site in a ConfigMgr 2012 environment?

Question: I only have a single site.  Instead of setting each boundary group to assign a site, what's the best way to assign all clients to a single site?
Answer: Based on the clients you can use single boundary group .
Examples :
Client -1
I have 4000 Client i created below in single boundary /group . Subnet based discovery and created collections .Now i split task for each collection and easy to manage .
Client - 2
2000+ client in 4 different locations
I use primary server and created different boundary group and Installed Distribution point/Group each client location .
Answer: I am assuming when you state "assign a site" you are referring to the sites that you see in your Boundaries section located in the Administration workspace under Hierarchy Configuration. If this is the case, then all you have to do is simply create a Site Assignment boundary group under the Boundary Groups section and add all of the sites listed in the Boundaries section. This will tell all of the clients to use that one Site Server. When you create a new Boundary Group, you will click the Add button in the Boundaries: section of the Boundary Group properties box and you will add all of your sites there to assign your one Site Server to those clients.
Now if you have multiple Distribution Points, you want to make sure that you do not overlap any Boundaries, because this can cause some issues especially if you have slow WAN links. You always want to keep your Site Assignment and your Content Location Boundary Groups separate. For instance, if you have a Standalone Primary Site server that also has the DP role installed, I would still create two separate Boundary Groups, one as a Site Assignment Boundary Group and the other as Content Location Boundary Group. You create the Site Assignment Boundary Group to assign clients to the Site Server, then you will create a separate Content Location Boundary Group and assign clients to the Distribution Point that is installed on the Site Server as well. It is best to keep them separate so you don't have overlapping issues occur, because even though you have one Site Server, you may eventually begin setting up remote Distribution Points in remote locations to speed up data transfers to clients in those remote locations. If you just create one Boundary Group and make that Boundary Group both a Site Assignment and a Content Location Boundary Group and then you begin adding remote DPs in your environment and you create separate Content Location Boundary Groups for them, but if you forget that you created that first Boundary Group as a Site Assignment and a Content Location Boundary Group, clients could use both DPs and create an overlap. You don't want remote clients reaching across a slow WAN link to get content from the DP on the Site Server since that will kill the bandwidth and disrupt end user's work. This is the reason for creating separate Boundary Groups, one for Site Assignment (assigns clients to a Site Server) and one for Content Location (assigns clients to a Distribution Point). Most clients will use Active Directory Sites and Services to find which DP has the lowest site link cost (closest to them), but you still do not want to rely on this.


Schedule entire project based on a 5 hr work day

Question: Using MSoft Project 2013. Wanting to schedule entire project based upon a 5 hr work day. I have performed the following steps to do this however it does not seem to be working:
In MS Project; file\schedule\changed 'hours per day' to 5, changed hours per week to 25. When I then schedule a task for 8 hours, start and finish dates should be 2 day span however it only displays a 1 day span.
Answer: The hours per day setting is used to translate durations expressed in 'Days' into 'Number of Hours'.
What you need to do is alter the Working Time in the Calendar. You can either do this in the Project Calendar (i.e. the base calendar) so that every resource calendar that is derived from it inherits the same working day. Or you can do it on a resource-by-resource basis so that only individual resources inherit that working day.
How you achieve this depends on which version of MS-Project you are using since, until MS-P 2010 it was done one way (complicated and counter-intuitive) and since 2010 it was done a different way that is only marginally less complicated and a little bit more intuitive!
But whichever way you do it, do it right at the start, before adding tasks and resources. Applying it retrospectively will work, but it will really screw with your task durations and you will probably need to re-visit each task and reset their values. If you already have actuals that will only make it worse, sorry.
If you are using the older versions of MS-Project, I have provided some detailed instructions about how to set up working times for projects and resources in this article, including a step by step guide. But I have nothing for doing the equivalent in 2010 at the moment. If you are using the later versions, look at Change Working Time, and then edit the 'Default' row (which defines the default working times) to match your actual working times. It works in a similar way for individual resources as well, you just need to pick a specific resource's calendar by accessing it through the resource sheet...
Comment: See:
https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Change-working-days-for-the-project-calendar-323ff403-a676-428c-be11-6942bfb7210c
Comment: Nice one Julie!
Comment: Most of the help topics are fairly well documented online.  Google (ooops Bing) is a wonderful thing :-)
Answer: An alternative to consider:  if what you want to express is that even though your resources work 8 hours per day - they can only generate 5 hours of work per day on tasks in the project, consider lowering the resource's maximum units to 62.5%.  (It will show as 63% in the Resource Sheet).
This allows you to still keep a "day" at 8 hours and a week at 40.  No need to change the project calendar.
If you assign the resource to a "day" task - the amount of work calculated is 5 hours in the 8 hour task duration.  If you enter 8 hours of work, the task duration is calculated to 1.6 days.
Answer: You should level your project hour by hour if you are working in hourly tasks.
This will make the tasks follow each other without gaps.


Re evaluating time based actions when the field value is changed with process builder

Question: Criteria starts: when a record is created or edited.
In order time based actions to appear I selected "Do you want to execute the actions only when specified changes are made to the record?"
Now I want set time based action based on date field, let's say fire a rule 60 days after.
The problem is that if my criteria were already met and when my date field changes I can't reset time based actions (because criteria were already met before and the rule won't be triggered).
Ischanged formula isn't available.
Any options?
Comment: if your criteria already met in past then I think it will trigger in next 1 hour
Answer: If you select "Formula evaluates to true" rather than "Conditions are met" in the Criteria, you can use ISCHANGED(field)


If I am playing lead in G scale, does it mean that I must start with a G note and end with a G note?

Question: If I am playing lead for song on the spot, and I play a solo using a G major scale, can I start with a G and end with some other note (such as a D for example)? Or is it necessary to end on a G to stay in the G major scale?
Comment: Nope! No rules in music, them's just guidelines  :-)
Answer: Short answer: It doesn't have to start or end with anything. The last note ending on a G might end up feeling more resolved, but you can use any note you'd like to end on that you feel sounds like it meets what you want to accomplish the solo. If I know another musician is taking a solo right after me, sometimes I'll deliberately end on the 5th (in this case the D) and let them pick it up from there so I build tension and let them resolve it.
Answer: As long as you play within a G major scale you still are in G major. However it should be noted that starting and ending on a G will have the effect of making the G feel like the home note (known as a tonic) which is what you want if you are playing in G major. It's not a bad thing to end on a different note and it can have interesting effects.
On thing you have to be careful with overall is make sure none of the other notes of the scale feel like the tonic as this will make the solo sound more like a mode based on G major.
Answer: In classical music theory you can sometimes start a piece on the dominant when an upbeat or Anacrusis is used. Seeing as the lead would generally be somewhere in the middle then maybe this should not be the case.
It is good to use cadences in the middle of pieces that do not end on the tonic. The tonic is very unique in the way which it indicates finality. I would try to use this feeling of ending only at the end ( You don't say (-: )
That is at least how classical melody writing would work. I think it is still relevant to solo work,.
Answer: The short answer is no. But what is your intent? Do you want the listener hanging on for something next or do you want to resolve the phrase? You should search for Call and Response and Tension/Resolution in music in your favorite search engine.
Also, listen to other solos in the genre you like and transcribe what their doing. It will help understand how they express the feeling of Tension/Resolution. Blues is a really good start while using a simple Pentatonic Scale and understanding phrasing.


Could the earth have another moon?

Question: First, to clarify: I'm not asking if perhaps there's a moon that we haven't found yet. The question is, theoretically, would the earth be able to have another stable moon in addition to the current one? Or, if the orbit couldn't be stable, why not? How large/small of a moon would it be able to have? And how do we know all this?
Comment: While earth does only have 1 full satellite, the Moon, it does have a number of objects which orbit the sun at about the same interval. Cruithne, for example. These are called quasi-satellites.
Answer: Jupiter has over 60 moons, and the dozens of man-made satellites (along with the thousands of pieces of space-trash) orbiting the Earth could be considered tiny moons.
Earth's main Moon would disrupt the orbit of anything smaller at certain radii. The particular disrupted orbits are called resonances, and occur where the orbital period in question divided by the period of the Moon reduces to a small fraction, like 1/2, 2/3, etc. It comes from the Moon giving a predictable tug on objects at those resonance orbits, similar to pushing a child on a swing higher and higher so that you eventually pitch him right out onto the ground. (Do not try this at home.)
The principle is spectacularly illustrated by Saturn's rings. (Some of*) the dozens of dark tracks indicate where one of the moons has a resonance.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b1/Saturn%27s_rings_dark_side_mosaic.jpg/2200px-Saturn%27s_rings_dark_side_mosaic.jpg
[EDIT: To answer more of your questions, there are lots of stable orbits, and the Moon can also act to stabilize, not just destabilize orbits- see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_(astronomy) . Any stable orbit would have to be above the top of the atmosphere, about 100 km, or else friction with atmospheric gas would drag it down to Earth. Moons could range from specks of dust up to potentially extremely large, even as large as the first Moon, but at great size the options for stability become much more limited. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euler%27s_three-body_problem. All of this arises from classical, Newtonian mechanics. To greatly simplify history, Tycho Brahe took a lot of data on planet positions in the sky, Kepler took those observations and developed his purely empirical laws of orbital motion, and Newton took those empirical laws and developed a theoretical framework to account for them.]
Further reading-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_resonance
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rings_of_Saturn
*Some gaps are due to other or unknown factors, but for the most part...
Comment: Thanks for the info. However, the ISS is usually between 350 and 400 km above the Earth's surface, yet it still needs periodic boosts every few months because of atmospheric drag. 100 km is nowhere near high enough to escape the Earth's atmosphere completely.
Comment: But what about the question of how much mass would it take to move the earth out of orbit of the sun?
Comment: If you gave the new moon sufficient angular momentum to move along properly with the Earth, then it will have no effect on the Earth's bulk orbit, though it will introduce wobbles. If you want the Earth, Moon, and new moon all to share the same amount of angular momentum as the Earth and Moon have right now, then you would need to add a huge moon indeed to crash the whole enchilada into the Sun. That's a sophomore-level Newtonian celestial mechanics problem. I don't have time to work it out, but by intuition, I'd guess probably much more mass than the Earth itself, which wouldn't be a "moon".
Comment: Oh yeah. I was recalling the 100 km figure from the coverage of the X Prize, but I think they just set the bar there to be above _most of the_ atmosphere.
Comment: There is also the roche limit to consider for moons of significant size
Comment: Yes, I should have mentioned that explicitly along with the three-body problem.
Comment: For a proper moon that's just a loose collection of gravitationally bound rocks, you need to be a lot further than just outside the atmosphere. See Roche Limit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roche_limit
Answer: Some studies have suggested that the Earth may have had a second tiny moon, which later crashed into and merged with the bigger current Moon. This might explain the lopsided back and front faces of the Moon. The second moon may have orbited the Earth for between 10 million and 100 million years. This little moon was likely about 750 miles wide, which would've made it larger than the dwarf planet Ceres in the Asteroid Belt.

Earth Had 2 Moons That Crashed to Form 1, Study Suggests | Moon Formation, Facts & Figures | How Earth's Moon Formed

http://www.space.com/12529-earth-2-moons-collision-moon-formation.html
Secondly, currently there may be an asteroid in resonant orbit of Earth, called 3753 Cruithne. Now whether this could be considered a Moon or something else is hard to decide. It does orbit around the Sun in exactly one year like the Earth and the Moon do. It follows a strange horseshoe type orbit around the Earth.

How Many Moons Does Earth Have?

http://www.universetoday.com/15019/how-many-moons-does-earth-have/

Could the earth have another moon?


Are the words in Japanese quotes 「」 always literally what is being said?

Question: When 「」 is used to quote, are the words contained always literally what they say, or are they paraphrasing? For example, in a sentence such as 「助けて」と叫びながら走っていた人が多かった, does it exclude people from saying variations such as 「誰か助けて」 and imply that 「助けて」 is the only thing that they said, or are they just giving the general idea of what was saying? Another example sentence I'm having trouble with is 「これって何」と思いながらプレゼントを開封した. The time it takes to think a phrase is short compared to the time it takes to open something, so is 「これって何」 the only thing they think or is it just given as a general idea of what is being thought?
Comment: I think you're saying something something like "Do quotation marks always indicate a literal direct quote."
Answer: No, they are not.  The content inside 「  」 is often not the exact same as what was actually said.  There exist a few patterns when it is not.

1) Summarized statement:

When the author thinks that the actual statement is too long and/or it contains unnecessary parts for the reader, the author may trim it a little without changing the meaning or nuance of the original statement.

2) Translated dialectal statement:

When the original statement was made in a dialect and the author feels it would be better to "translate" it to standard Japanese for easier comprehension for the readers, the author would sometimes make the alterations.
I would not include translating from another language in this category because that is a totally different phenomenon.

3) Emphasis:

Native speakers quite often place words and phrases in 「 」 for the simple purpose of emphasizing them or making them stand out "physically" to catch the reader's attention (even if no one actually said those words).
Technically speaking, this use of 「 」 is rather questionable, but many people do it including myself.
Finally, I did not mention placing titles in 「 」 because that is only "legal" officially.
Answer: The simple answer is yes.
Of course, it can sometimes depend on the situation being described, or the author's intent, or on the reader's imagination. But consider the「」quotes as being analogous to the "" quotes in English.

There were lots of people running and shouting, "Help!"

Read the passage in English and ask yourself the same question. Does "Help!" just mean everyone was saying "Help" or could it mean that maybe some people said "Help me"? That could be up to the reader's imagination, and surely we can imagine that some people might have shouted "Help me" or some similar variation.
Same with your other example. We know that the person opening the present certainly thought 「これって何」because the sentence explicitly told us to. But as readers, we can imagine that there may also be other thoughts running through the person's head. Maybe they are guessing what the present might be even as they open it.
So just like in English, we have to assume that things in quotes are literally what is being said. Sure, we can imagine that the character might be also thinking something else. Or that in a crowd of people shouting 「助けて」some of them may be shouting 「誰か助けて」or「逃げろ」or something similar. As readers, we are usually free to guess or imagine whatever we want. But if you have to look at things in terms of black-and-white, then in that situation we can't allow ourselves to imagine anything other than what is written. And so we must conclude that what is being thought or said is only what is literally written in the 「」quotes.
Comment: What do you think of the quotation marks used in this song kasi-time.com/item-54447.html, specifically 「好き」っていうチカラ? I don't think 「好き」 is literally all that is being said because the person's name or object of desire is missing. Also, the problem with using English quotes as an example is that, while "" always mean a direct quote, that doesn't really have anything to do if 「」 are always mean a direct quote. For example, "there were a lot of people screaming for help while running" also works, but Japanese requires 「」 to be used in a quote and cannot just leave them out to create ambiguity.
Comment: Also, ながら usually indicates an action done over a period of time, so if literal, 「これって何」 is the only thing he is thinking while opening the present. Your example of "there may also be other thoughts running through the person's head. Maybe they are guessing what the present might be even as they open it." would be best suited with 「これって何」と思って and doesn't reflect ながら if 「」 is always a direct quote. Also, if 「」 always mean direct quotes, then there would be a massive difference between 「これって何」と思いながらプレゼントを開封した and 「これって何」とか思いながらプレゼントを開封した and I am not sure if that is the case.
Comment: It's hard to give a definitive answer to a very subjective question. The real answer is, "it depends". I could give you a dozen examples of when the words in quotes do not indicate exactly what the speaker is thinking/saying. But you seemed to be looking for a decisive answer. In that case I like to play it safe and say that in most cases it is safer to assume nothing outside of what is written. This is a good idea for a student whose test questions are often looking for a yes/no answer and do not invite speculation. Or for a traveller looking at posted signs, which are best to take literally.


Is using URL rewritting instead of multiple parameters the only way to make sure all pages are indexed by Google?

Question: If I keep the pattern (index.php?module=test&param=1) will pages be less likely to be indexed then if I use the pattern (test_param_1.html) ?
Answer: I do not believe Google says. It used to be true that test_param_1.html was better than index.php?module=test&param=1 but I do not believe that is the case anymore for Google.
However, if your 2 examples pages are very similar in content then you will want to use a rel="canonical" on them so Google knows which one is the master. Otherwise your pagerank will be split between the 2.
Comment: Just whatever you do, make sure you get the canonical right; one of our production apps had an error in the canonical tag, targeting the index page instead of the details page, and it took us a while to figure out why we were getting such odd SERPs :)
Answer: No, URL rewriting has no positive influence on crawling or indexing; oftentimes it can even have a negative effect. For instance, many websites embed all parameters as well as plain text (eg the "title") in the URL when rewriting them, creating pages with many possible URLs (we often even see session-IDs rewritten in URLs...).
We did a blog post on this at http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/09/dynamic-urls-vs-static-urls.html
Personally, unless you are absolutely certain that you are able to set it up absolutely correct and that it has a measurable impact on user satisfaction (ignore the search engines for this!), then I would strongly recommend not rewriting URLs at all. We see so many big problems with sites that use URL rewriting that you should really think quite a lot about this before going down that road -- and certainly never do it just for an assumed search engine advantage.
Comment: Would the typical (rewritten) Wordpress URL fall into the 'correct' category?
Comment: Tim, in the ones I've looked at, the WordPress URLs were set up properly. WordPress is generally pretty good with URLs :)


Are there any fancy options for the "plain (unwound) strings"?

Question: Guitar strings come in myriad variations of wrapping shapes and materials. But I'm always surprised to find the top ones (without windings) are just "plain steel"? Are there any other options there?
Answer: As you have observed, most of the string brands differentiate their offerings by varying the way they make the wound strings.  But regardless of how creative and different they get with the wound strings, the unwound strings are all the same.  Plain steel.
The wound strings for electric guitars can be wound with pure nickel (for a warmer tone and softer feel) or more commonly a nickel alloy (usually 8% nickel 92% steel).  Acoustic strings can be wound with "phosphor bronze" or "80/20 Bronze" (these are alloys made from copper and zinc).  Windings can be round, flat, or half round and can be wrapped around a round or hex steel core.  You can even find "hybrid" strings for acoustic electric guitars with magnetic pickups that alternate windings between a nickel plated winding and "bronze" windings (one string maker calls these "zebra" strings).
But the plain unwound treble strings are always made of steel.  The reason for this is that steel has the high tensile strength that can withstand the tension required for tuning without breaking.  Thus even the core of the wound strings is steel.  The windings do absolutely nothing to add strength to the strings so they can be made of virtually anything.  The windings affect the tone and feel and plain steel windings would be very hard on fingers and frets.
The only differences offered in the plain steel strings is that some manufactures use a stainless steel formula to make them last longer or apply a plating or coating to inhibit corrosion. None of this really affects the tone but the stainless steel formulas tend to be harder and stiffer (I don't like them personally).
Elixir claims to use an "anti-rust" plating on their plain steel strings and Cleartone claims their steel strings are protected by "Enhanced Molecular Protection (EMP)".
From a review of Cleartone Strings on LonePhantom.com it says:

Enhanced Molecular Protection (EMP) treatment  is typically used on hard disk platters, which require an extremely thin and durable protective coating. The treatment measures less than one micron. The EMP coating actually bonds to the metal, rather than coat in the traditional sense. This also means that it doesn't flake off like many coatings. Most manufacturers only coat the wound strings, whereas Cleartone coat all strings to ensure maximum string life.

In my opinion all of these claims are more about marketing a theoretical point of difference to get you to choose one brand over another.  I have never found any major advantage in any of the specially treated plain steel strings.  But I don't leave a set on long enough to rust anyway.  I am guessing anyone who cares about good tone would be the same way about not leaving strings on their guitar until they all become dull and lifeless and begin to corrode.
For my purposes, the plain "plain steel" strings work just fine!
Answer: For electric guitar, there are also nickel strings that have a warmer tone. Pure nickel will have the warmest tone, but even the 8% nickel wound string will be less bright than the steel strings.
There are also a variety of ways for strings to be wound/wrapped. The way the wrap string is wound around the core string also affects tone:

The profile of the wrap wire also effects tone and feel with:
   Round wound being the brightest and roughest.
  Half round being warmer and smoother.
  Flat wound being the most mellow and smoothest.

On the other hand, acoustic guitars use either brass wound strings (often incorrectly labeled as "80/20 bronze"), which are composed of %80 copper, %20 zinc, or phosphor bronze wound strings which are %92 copper, %8 tin which give a warmer sound.
I have often seen rubber strings on a ukulele, particularly bass ukuleles, and even seen a bass that uses rubber strings.
You can go to this website here for more information on string types: http://www.stringsandbeyond.com/what-strings.html
Comment: All the metals in your answe refer to the wound strings only, not the plain strings, which are solid steel for both electric and acoustic plain strings. The other metals are not strong enough to handle the tension that guitar strings must withstand. The asker is specifically asking about plain strings, which are always steel.


How to use nodes in scene graph for game logic

Question: I am working on a 3D 2048-game using Java with LWJGL to gain some 3D math and OpenGL experience. I built a small scene-graph (GroupNode and Box). My problem is that the tree structure of my scene-graph is not very convenient for the game-logic. For the game-logic I would use a 2D-array to store the tile-values, merge tiles and calculate points and so on. I think it would be a good approach to separate the view (SceneNodes) from the game-logic-type (Tile). What is best practice to link them, update views, and how to care about animations? If I merge two tiles and present this by move the source tile into the target tile, I need to know when the animation finished to do the next merge-move.
Answer: Im not sure, what the "best practice" would be, but maybe what a good approach would be.
If you want to keep your seperation for view and game logic like that, consider adding sort of 'events' ir 'states' that do sort of their thing.
Somethinglike "Start Animation" that blocks any input and starts the anmation of given tiles to merge. As the animation takes place, a certain time frame is given, after that the state is set back, whice should corrrespond to the time for the animation.
If you have an overarching game class with the game loop, this could keep the state, so neither your game logic nor your view need to be linked.
So, first your game logic detects a merge and sets the state with additional information of the two merger. Your view checks the state and draws like normal in addition to do the animation. After everything is done, in the last frame of animations, your view sets back the state, so inputs are processed again.
What is important to realise is, that neither your game logic nor your view are the sole owner of the tile information. Both of them need access to the data to draw and process.


How to play YouTube videos faster without affecting the audio pitch in a similar manner to VLC?

Question: VLC has a nice feature which allows to play videos faster/slower without affecting the audio pitch. Can this be somehow achieved for YouTube videos as well?
Answer: VLC Media Player (v1.1 on-wards) can play YouTube videos without affecting the sound pitch and without having to download the video separately.
Here are the steps:

Go to File -> Open Network Stream menu option.
Paste in the main YouTube video URL (Example URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ew_tdY0V4Zo).
Hit the Play button. Change the video playback speed of the video using
keyboard shortcuts [ to decrease or ] to increase speed.

UPDATE: You can have more control over YouTube's default HTML5 speed settings (without the audio pitch issue). Speed up YouTube Playback?
Answer: You can change the speed of the video if you are in the HTML5 beta program. I am not sure about the audio pitch.
For example, here is a non-scientific (opinionated) breakdown of the video
Outland Series Trailer | Premieres Wednesday, 8 February 2012, 9:30pm | ABC1

At 2x speed: There sounds like there is a bit of pitch change but I cannot tell for sure based on the accents.
At 1.5x speed: No audible change of pitch (at least to me)
At 1/2x speed: The voices don't seem to drop to the lower pitch you would expect
At 1/4x speed: The audio drops completely
Comment: Where is that option? I'm afraid I cannot find it...
Comment: @TobiasKienzler See edit
Comment: Thanks for the screenshot. This does not show up for me I'm afraid (activated HTML5, using Firefox 14.0.1). What browser are you using? Maybe this feature is only available North America...
Comment: @TobiasKienzler Google Chrome Mac 21.0.1180.79. There are restrictions for Firefox (On Firefox and Opera, only videos with WebM transcodes will play in HTML5) I doubt it is location dependent
Comment: I see, so I'd have to use Chrome. My current workaround is downloading the videos and then using VLC's speed-up which also adjusts the pitch...
Comment: So far I think I've encountered this feature only once...
Answer: If you're using Windows 8, check out Media Player Plus (available in the App Store). It allows you to open YouTube videos (or your own local music/video files), then slow them down or speed them up without altering pitch.
Answer: You can use this Chrome extension, it has more precise control to change the speed: Transpose - Pitch - Loop for videos
It can also pitch shift the audio and loop.
Answer: You can do that now with HTML5 player on Chrome (not sure about other browsers). Here is a webapp that allows you to do that as well (https://www.youtube-pitchin.me) but it only limited to short videos.


Does it make sense to enumerate the comments to a question?

Question: When there are many comments to a question and they get to be almost a mini-thread it might help to have an enumeration system. So you could respond to comment say 15 when you are at say 42. Not a major issue though as usually there are few comments.
Comment: If this were to made sense, it ought to be done by the software.
Comment: This sounds as if we'd be making each comment thread more like chat, where each comment can refer back to a previous comment. Currently, the Q&A comment renderer seems to be similar to the chat comment renderer, so perhaps this is possible. However the question is: do we want to make Q&A comment threads into chats? I have seen some Q&A comment threads that have gotten ridiculously long. I would worry that this feature might promote long comment threads.
Comment: You can refer to a specific comment by adding a [link](http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/questions/7164/does-it-make-sense-to-enumerate-the-comments-to-a-question#comment26391_7164) to that comment. See [How to link to a comment?](http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/questions/1816/how-to-link-to-a-comment) and [How to format links in comments](http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/questions/4621/how-to-format-links-in-comments).
Comment: @MartinSleziak Thanks. There are always nooks and crannies for me to discover here. However there is something to be said for a third person to be able to visually link two comments without actually going off comment page.
Comment: @MarianoSuárez-Alvarez Yes, that is what I meant. So it is a feature request. One problem is that comments may be edited, which creates a version number. For Answers editing makes location of answer to become different than the original but for comments I think their display is fixed unless deleted.
Comment: Aside from my aforementioned worries, this would make it easier to tell which comment one is replying to, without having to quote part of the previous comment. This might reduce confusion and keep the comment threads from getting long simply due to confusion.
Comment: @robjohn I see your point. So I 'sort of' withdraw my suggestion! I have noticed that the software itself discourages a back-and-forth type of chat in the comment area.
Comment: And next someone will propose threading and we'll reinvent USENET :-)
Comment: @Mariano: Despite having online access at the days of USENET, I never really used it. And now it's dead. Perhaps like the 19th century saw the neo-gothic and neo-classical; maybe we can see the neo-usenet era!
Answer: The comment section has never been intended for extended discussions. If you find yourself in a situation where you need complicated systems to keep track of the discussion, you should have it in chat instead. (You can even create chatrooms to address a specific question/post!) (In fact, for long comment threads the software will nag you to "let us continue this discussion in chat".)
For all else Martin's suggestion should be more than sufficient.


Why does it make sense that $S$ and $e^{rt}$ are solutions to the Black-Scholes PDE?

Question: It's readily verified mathematically that $V=S$ and $V=e^{rt}$ are solutions to the Black-Scholes PDE $\frac{\partial V}{\partial t}
+ \frac{\sigma^2 S^2}{2} \frac{\partial^2 V}{\partial S^2}
+ r S \frac{\partial V}{\partial S} - rV = 0$. How can we motivate/explain this from a financial perspective?
Answer: Under the standard assumptions, generally speaking,  any contract that depends on the current values of t and S, and which are paid for at the start satisfy this PDE. In the financial context, the boundary conditions would be different for the different contracts, so the solutions of the PDE would be different for the different contracts. Thus different contracts would be identified by different boundary conditions, and these conditions would determine the solution.
In summary, different payoffs, same PDE, different prices.
Re-comment, your commentary is correct; however for deterministic function of t only, the PDE reduces to $\frac{\partial V}{\partial t}=rV$ and this has the solution that you mentioned in your question. Anything deterministic must have this form, otherwise there is an arbitrage. In other words, risk free or deterministic must grow at this rate.
Comment: Added text to the answer! Hope it is clearer now
Comment: Thanks for your reply, it makes more sense now, after all the only requirement for $V$ in the derivation of the BS PDE is that it depends on $t$ and $S(t)$ (as you pointed out), this requirement is met when constructing the Taylorseries to give an expression for $V(S(t),t)$. However, $V=t$ is not a solution, would this have to do with the fact that when we construct our delta hedged portfolio, it increases continuously with interest rate $r$, so it is dependent on $e^{rt}$ rather than $t$?
Answer: These are well known trivial solutions to the Black-Scholes PDE. The first one is just the price of the underlying stock and the second is interest bearing money in a bank. These are trivially true because there is no optionality involved (which is expressed in the boundary and terminal condition of the respective contract to price).


How to add vpn connections while using connman

Question: I was trying out Connman yesterday. My wireless Internet connected fine, however, I was not able to find any option for VPNs. Is there not option to connect to VPNs through Connman GUI? The website says, it supports VPN.
Answer: OK. Found the answer. All protocols are supported but none has a GUI. I was able to to connect successfully to cisco vpn using vpnc-connect while running connman.
Answer: There is an open bug titled VPN is not supported on Connman on Launchpad, so I guess the short answer is yes, but limited to openconnect. At least when the bug was fild in may yesteryear. However, patches for more broader support has appeared on the mailing lists since the bug was filed, so you may have more luck with a newer version of connman. (The version in maverick is 0.55 from July yesteryear  while the upstream one is 0.73 a couple of days ago.