Our 2 year old refuses to poop anywhere

Question: I have a two year old (Oct. 5 2013) that started holding his poop in about October of 2015. Up to now, he has allowed himself to go on average once every seven days in a 6 month span. Our family doctor put it this way- "give him as much of whatever kind of oil that makes him go every day." In a 6 day period, we had 14 teaspoons of mineral oil and 3 ex-lax squares in this little guy!!!!!!!! before he finally did go. And no, he IS NOT constipated. This is our seventh child, and I don't think we have ever encountered anything so frustrating and helpless.
Likewise we have tried seemingly everything, the stern approach, bribing, candy, celebrating when he finally goes, ect. ect. Still, just walking toward the potty gets him bawling every single time. (By the way, we were never even attempting to train, he just quit going in his pamper, so we thought maybe he doesn't like the feel and would rather go potty)_We have resorted to castor oil, which used to get the best response in the fifth or sixth day. Now, even that seems to have no effect anymore, and I am worried sick that he is damaging his colon. What is our next move?
Comment: As well as the answers below, please read the very similar questions in the **Related** sidebar to the right.
Answer: Your frustration and concern are evident, and it doesn't sound like the advice given by your family physician was very helpful. If they can't do better, time for another opinion. Your next move is to get a consult for a pediatrician who has some experience in managing chronic constipation.
While voluntary stool holding might not sound like constipation, technically, it is, even if you're doing everything you can to avoid it.

Constipation generally is defined by the hard nature of the stool, the pain associated with its passage, or the failure to pass three stools per week.

Encopresis is the fecal soiling that often occurs with constipation. You don't mention this, and it's early for this diagnosis, but entertaining it would do no harm.
There is some reason your child refuses to go to the bathroom. It could be medical (a bowel innervation problem), physical (he had/has painful bowel movements - due to an anal fissure or other - and wants to avoid them as much as possible), psychological (he's a bit young, one would think, but they do have psyches), or a combination of things. This is the beginning of an investigation and training period (for both the child and the parents) that will take many months, so please know that you're in for this problem for the long haul. The good news is, it's early yet, and getting proper diagnosis and treatment can save you years of dealing with this.
In the meantime, the basic approach is elimination of pain with defecation, increasing fluids including osmotically active ones (pear and prune juice), fiber (with fluids; some fiber without fluids can bind people instead of help), and, if the child has a lot of dairy intake, e.g. cheese (which can be constipating), decreasing dairy intake may be helpful.
Constipation in children
Constipation and Encopresis in Childhood
Answer: Note: I am not a psychologist. But, this sounds fear motivated. Maybe at some point in the past he had a painful constipation / stool. Maybe sitting over the yawning void of a toilet scares him. Maybe cold water splashed him once and that startled him. Who knows.
But the best way to overcome fear is practice. As stated in user1751825's excellent breakdown, fiber and fruit are your friends. Miralax is good. Over time, as nature forces him to eventually go again and again, he will (probably) get over it.
Again: not a medical or psychiatric professional. Consult your doctor, and don't be afraid to consult a child psychologist if issue persists.
Answer: Waiting 6 days I know seems awful, but they do tend to get over it, and it doesn't seem to cause any lasting harm.
I would steer clear of harsh chemical laxatives if you can possibly avoid them. These should really be a last resort.
For ours we did on occasions use Parachoc, which is a chocolate flavoured paraffin based laxative, but we were careful to avoid giving it too often.
Avoid the stern approach. This just makes things worse. For whatever reason he has apparently decided he's frightened of the potty, so you don't want to do anything that will make him more anxious.
Try to make sure he's well hydrated, with water only. Give him plenty of fruit, and also you can try adding some psyllium husk to his meals.
Hydration is super-important. Particularly if you increase the fibre in his diet. Fibre can absorb more water, so you kind of need to over-compensate, or excess fibre can actually make things worse.
Comment: This answer has too much "home remedy, just do these and it will be fine" kind of approach.  Please don't exclusively use home remedies, and get a doctor involved.
Comment: That's not accurate.  That's called a bad doctor and you find another one.
Comment: Yes, it is important to first rule out a specific medical problem which may be contributing. However doctors tend to try to find pharmaceutical solution to most problems, often without even inquiring about the child's diet.
Comment: "doctors tend to try to find pharmaceutical solution to most problems" I was referring to your comment. Pediatricians that do this should stay away from children. Children do not have developed organs and a pharma solution can have severe consequences.

Our 2 year old refuses to poop anywhere


Who are the Kutim, and what happened to them?

Question: In the Yerushalmi Pesachim on daf Bet amud Bet, it talks about the "Kutim" and how whenever they keep a mitzvah, they are more exacting/cautious about it than the Jews. Who are these Kutim, why does it say this about them, and what happened to them over time?
Comment: Kusim are generally assumed to be Samaritans today.
Answer: The Shomronim/Samaritans were populating the area of Samaria in Israel by Sancherev and were originally from several places included Kutta hence they are referred to by their original names in the Gemara Chullin 6a as the "Kuttim". See Melachim 2 17,24:
וַיָּבֵא מֶלֶךְ אַשּׁוּר מִבָּבֶל וּמִכּוּתָה וּמֵעַוָּא וּמֵחֲמָת וּסְפַרְוַיִם וַיֹּשֶׁב בְּעָרֵי שֹׁמְרוֹן תַּחַת בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל
According to Gittin 9b https://www.sefaria.org/Gittin.10a.7?lang=bi&with=all&lang2=en There are 3 opinions that hold Cuttim are true converts like Rebbi Meir Nidda 56b who argues with Chachomim who say they are not true converts:
1.Tanna Kamma (R' Meir) holds they are no different from regular Jews
2.R' Elazar holds they don't keep the Mitzvos probably so we cannot rely on there Matza
3.Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel says that if they are known to keep Mitzvos they keep them very carefully, but Mitzvos that they are not known to keep e.g Mitvos derabanan, This is the view of the Yerushalmi Pesachim.
Even though there is a Machlokes Rabbi Meir and Rabbanan (Nidda 56b) whether Kutim were true converts or not, even Rabbi Meir accepted in the end that since they found a graven idol of a Dove that they were not Jewish see Chullin 6b.
Read this fascinating passage about Ezra and the Excomunication of the Kuttim quoted in Tosfos Gittin 9b From Pirkei derabbi Eliezer Ch37 https://www.sefaria.org/Pirkei_DeRabbi_Eliezer.38.23?lang=bi&with=all&lang2=en
According to Rabbanan that the Kutim were Geirei Arayot i.e. they weren't genuine and converted because they were eaten by lions, the Kuttim were banned from the people of Israel in the time of Ezra, even though initially they were thought to be Jewish:
The Shulchan aruch Orach Chaim 215,2 says:

אם היה המברך אפיקורוס או כותי או תינוק, או היה גדול ושנה ממטבע הברכות, אין עונין אחריו אמן
I.e a Kutti is not Jewish so we Don't say "amen" to his Brochos.

The Mishna Berura says:

ואע"ג דבגמרא אמרינן שאף בכותי עונין אם שמע כל הברכה מפיו היינו קודם שמצאו להן דמות יונה בהר גרזים שהיו עובדין לה אבל אח"כ לא דכונתן להר גרזים
Even though the Gemora talks about Theoretical cases of Kutim this was before an idol of a dove was found on Mount Gerizim which they were worshipping but after (e.g nowadays) they are idol worshippers and not Jewish.

So we can't pray in their temples as we consider them idolitors nowadays.


Natty broke my system! I think I know how to fix it but

Question: I've just upgraded to Natty, having patiently waited for the final release date and for Ubuntu to nag me about it every minute. Now, whenever I log into anything other than Ubuntu Safe Mode, the system hangs. The mouse doesn't work, the clock freezes, the ssh connexion is broken. This happens AFTER THE LOGIN, on ALL desktops, except for safe mode, including Unity, Classic and, my standard desktop, KDE.
I can't find any error in any log. All seems to work fine. Sometimes the system starts for a couple of seconds and then freezes, sometimes it freezes while the desktop is still loading. But the computer is completely unusable outside of the safe mode.
I'm thinking, if there is a list somewhere of what Safe Mode does NOT start, I could start all of these things one by one and see what makes my system freeze that way. Is there such a list somewhere?
Or even better: does anyone have an idea of what it might be? The problem does not come from the 3D or Compiz or anything of the kind. That works. I've tried it and disabled it from KDE. Plus, "Classic no effects" has the same problem as the rest.
What could it be? And what does Classic Safe Mode not do?
Thanks.
Comment: This question should instead be filed as a bug report, thanks! [Instructions here](http://askubuntu.com/questions/5121/how-do-i-report-a-bug).
Answer: Most desktop environments load the .desktop files in <code>~/config/autostart</code>. I try moving all of those files to another folder and seeing if the desktop environments load. If not, then I'm not sure what else is shared between all the DE's that would make then crash the whole system.


Can wallet created from Bitcoin core be transferred to an Android device?

Question: I worry that if I install a wallet in my Phone, it would have a different wallet from the one I created in PC.
Answer: Even if it is NOT recommended (especially if you want to store a considerably amount of funds), it is possible to share a "wallet", or more specifically a Private Key, from one wallet app to the other. Bitcoin wallets are just keychains, they only contain keys, you can have the same private key in both apps.
It is not recommended because it's more likely that you can get your phone stolen than your computer, especially if it's not a laptop but a desktop computer, also mobile wallet code and mode (light wallet or SPV vs full-node) can be weaker. Sharing private keys means that who first gets the access to the wallet or the key directly can spend the funds.

Here's how to share it anyway:
You can easily export your private key using the dumpprivatekey command from Bitcoin Core (here's how to export it on Bitcoin Core GUI, or bitcoin-qt, if you don't have the qt version you need to launch the command via bitcoin-cli and enter the same commands)
Then you can take any Mobile wallet with import private key capability like Mycelium (Android) or BreadWallet (iOS) and import it via their "import private key" feature.
In Mycelium, to import a private key, you have to click the hamburger button, then select "Cold storage" and then Clipboard (you need to securely send your private key from your computer to your phone, this usually means no email and no standard IMs, the safest way is to transcribe it manually). Also note that you need to password protect your wallet (preferably with a strong password) or users that can access your phone will be able to spend your funds, Mycelium will warn you if you don't do it.

Also note that bitcoin-qt and Bitcoin Core don't use HD or BIP32, this means that you get less anonymity if you reuse the same address or if you don't import a large number of keys, to have multiple "change" addresses available in both wallets.
Comment: Your answer is very helpful. I appreciate.  Your analogy of key is to private keys as keychains is to wallet, was the perfect explanation.  Your first paragraph on "how to share" was very informative, but I lose my interest on succeeding paragraphs, maybe because I'm not familiar with the wallets you mentioned and I am just so lazy to look and try them.  Finally, the terms HD and BIP32 seems too techy already for me so I guess have to do some googling.  Anyway, overall its been helpful, so I'll give you the "Nike" mark for your answer. =)
Comment: Thanks, I added the links to the wallet I mentioned, trying it/them should be easier than just reading my paragraphs :D  Also for HD (hierarchical) keys as for many bitcoin concepts, it takes time to understand, don't worry. Also it's better to understand basic concepts first, to try some wallets and do some small test transactions with someone to see how everything works.


Implications of using many USB web cameras

Question: I'm looking into connecting multiple low resolution USB webcams to a single computer. What implications might this have on performance? How does, for example, four 320x240 cameras fare against a single 640x480 camera? I'm not well versed in the architecture of the USB interface, what are the performance caveats? By performance I mean how would it affect the time to read the image data from multiple cameras compared to a single one.
Comment: good question...
Answer: In general, ecomomies of scale mean a single high res camera, will affect your system less than 4 smaller cameras of quarter of the resolution.  The easiest way to measure performance is to look in task manager with one or two cameras connected, and look at the CPU loading for that camera. Ensure it doesn't exceed a few percent or otherwise you could start to see slowdowns. I would recommend you use identical cameras to reduce the number of device drivers you need loaded.
There are though, possibly much better ways to solve your problem than using 4 USB cameras (depending on what you're trying to do). You can for example, get dedicated PCI cards which can take from 4-16 cameras and all the hard work is done in hardware. This means CPU loading is negligable. Most take normal composite inputs which makes the cameras much cheaper. You can probably buy 4 cameras plus the card, for the same price as a couple of decent webcams from eBay - including security software.
Comment: Thanks for the tip. The solution I'm looking for involves many (preferably) low latency, low resolution IR cameras/sensors. And hopefully not too expensive. I don't care about night vision, but I want to be able to "see" only reflective tape, I do not care about the rest, RGB etc.
Comment: And I need to be able to grab the frames in real time using some kind of API. Yeah, I'm asking for alot :)
Comment: Well if you're looking for a low cost solution I'd go with a PCI capture card and analogue cameras. You'll be able to access all 4 cams the same way and take advantage of the fact that the hard work is all done by the card. To see what I mean, search eBay for item numbers, 260477912704 (PCI) or 290417512411 for USB (they're just the first two I found).
Answer: One thing that you should bear in mind is that while a QVGA needs very little bandwidth, many cheap webcams only run at 'full-speed' (12Mbit/s) even if they say they are "USB 2.0" devices (only USB 2.0 'Hi-speed' devices run at 480Mbit/s).
Not only that, but if you plug multiple 'full-speed' devices into a standard single-TT USB hub (which is most of them) then all 4 will have to share that 12Mbit/s of a single 'full-speed' link.
That is why, if you want to run multiple 'full-speed' devices as quickly as possibly, make sure you buy a multi-TT hub. The easiest to find is the Belkin Tetra-hub, but you will probably have to get these from the net, they are unlikely to be stocked by your local computer shop.
A 4-port multi-TT hub should be able to run 4 'full-speed' devices with 12Mbit/s for each camera however.
There was a nice article on Tom's Hardware Guide about multi-TT back in 2003.
Also note that if you get true Hi-speed USB 2.0 webcams, you won't have this problem. 480Mbit/s should be enough for lots of QVGA cameras, all simultaneously streaming, if the software that comes with them supports it.
Edit: If this is for a machine vision application, the choice of interface could be guided by the image library you use. Personally, for home applications USB is fine, for industrial use I would always go for Firewire over USB. It has much finer grained bandwidth control and you can decide exactly which cameras get what bandwidth by defining their resolutions and framerates. The firewire DCAM protocol gives you lots of flexibility in windowing your sensor (selecting a subset of the image to be transmitted, potentially giving you much higher frame rates for a given bandwidth). Obviously if you don't need the extra flexibility then the extra expense is not warranted, but if you don't have tight budget requirements, it gives you many more engineering options.


Will merge mining patch make Bitcoin network mining power available to anyone?

Question: I think Namecoin has a good value, but while I think Vladimir overestimates the inflation effect of merged mining, I still mostly agree with his post, which is negative towards uncontrolled merged mining. It requires small patch for bitcoind to make it "parent" for Namecoin blockchain, is the patch exclusive for Namecoin? If yes, what makes it exclusive, and if not, is there a way to design a merge mining patch, so it would be exclusive for a particular blockchain? That way bitcoin community would have a choice, when downloading a new version of bitcoin, if it wants to adopt a new blockchain.
Comment: I almost voted to close your question as speculative, it is a bit too vague for my taste.
Comment: @ripper234, the question is about the exclusiveness of the patch, it's not about discussing bitcoin inflation.
Comment: are you referring to a specific patch? To patches in general? Can you edit the question a bit to clarify this?
Comment: @ripper234, first in my question i referred to specific patch that will make Namecoin merge mining possible and then I also asked about merge mining patch in general.
Answer: The patch has no effect on the parent blockchain, it just allows the patched bitcoind to be used for mining on both chains simultaneously.  Only the child blockchain needs to be modified in order to support merged mining.  There's no way for the Bitcoin network to prevent merged mining, even if doing so were desirable.
Merged mining does have to potential to allow alternate chains access to greater hash power (and thus security against double-spend attacks) than they would have had otherwise.  However, this alone will not give them value as currency.
Bitcoin is able to sustain value because of its network effect.  The more active users it has, the more useful it is to each user.  The alternate blockchains have userbases that are a a few orders of magnitude smaller than Bitcoin's.  Newcomers to the cryptocurrency world will tend to choose the more useful and popular chain, further increasing Bitcoin's lead.
Comment: Thank you for the answer, here I just wanted to know technical details about merge mining, but you are also welcome to discuss it's effect on bitcion economy at https://bitcoin.org.uk/forums/topic/63-merged-mining-is-not-the-end-of-the-world/page__view__findpost__p__1520 , where I made another post, because I think it is a fine line between competing blockchain and money supply manipulation.
Comment: @Serith - Hashpower is not the only measure of a coin. If everybody uses Bitcoin, and you fork it to FooCoin with equivalent hash power, but nobody values FooCoin (it is traded at 1/10,000 a BTC), then you have not inflated the supply of money.
Comment: For reference is the merged mining concept not exactly the same thing described at https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Alternative_Chains ? It sounds more or less the same to me. The issue seems to be that 'Namecoin' oddly chose to make things more complicated by creating a currency and attaching names to coins rather than using the system solely for distributed consensus.
Answer: AFAIK the upcoming patch is for merged mining between Namecoin and Bitcoin only. In the future it might be able to modify the patch to allow more generalized merged mining between any number of coins.
This is not a bad thing
Quote from Gavin in the thread you linked to:

I don't see how shared mining dilutes bitcoins.
That's like saying "real-world miners find lots of other minerals when
  they search for gold; that dilutes the value of gold!"

Think of it as the bitcoin family of coins/blockchains. Eventually you might want to diverge your holding between the different coins, but the entire family just becomes stronger by universal merged mining.
Comment: @Serith: what about silver? It is also used as a "store of value" and is found in gold veins (e.g. the [Kolar Gold Fields](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolar_Gold_Fields) had gold with a 11% "silver impurity"). It's even extracted from rock in the same way with cyanide. As far as analogies go, Gavin's is a good one.
Comment: Gold in real world has unique quality that no other mineral posses, it was used as "store of value" for hundreds of years, that's why other minerals can't compete with it.
Comment: @Wim Coenen, analogy is a bad way to explain things, I shouldn't have used it. Made a better post at https://bitcoin.org.uk/forums/topic/63-merged-mining-is-not-the-end-of-the-world/page__view__findpost__p__1520
Answer: Your question seems to be based on a misunderstanding. The patch simply allows you to do merged mining. It doesn't add support for other people to do merged mining to Bitcoin, as that is not necessary.
Anything placed in the Bitcoin hash chain will be secured by the Bitcoin mining process. If I put "HAVE A NICE DAY" into a transaction, as Eligius puts prayers, they will become a permanent part of the hash chain and will be secured by all the miners currently mining the Bitcoin hash chain whether they intend to secure it or not.
All that is required is that it not be illegal according to Bitcoin rules. (Otherwise, the block would be rejected.)
Comment: as far as I understand a pool operator or anyone who wants to do solo merge mining has to apply small patch to bitcoind file, is that correct?
Comment: They need to generate the transaction set that includes the merged mining information, build work units based on that set, and then if they solve the work unit, assemble and publish the block with the transaction set. The most common way to do that is to modify bitcoind to do it.
Answer: Keep in mind that whenever an alternative chain enables merged mining it is centralizing a huge amount of trust in the bitcoin ("Nakamoto chain") mining pool operators.
When people join a bitcoin mining pool, it's generally because they want bitcoins.  Sure, a few people will ask their pool operator to add thischain or thatchain mining, and some pools will.  But plenty of pools won't.
Anybody running a pool who has not told its miners "hey we are mining blartzcoin and I will split the reward with you" basically has a gigantic pile of blartzcoin hashpower to direct as he/she pleases.  They're totally unaccountable in how they use that power.  If they use it to screw up the alternative blockchain, and in doing so they sacrifice the altchain mining rewards, none of their miners will get upset and jump ship because they weren't expecting those rewards in the first place.
Merged mining is risky for altchains unless you can be reasonably sure that miners will demand that their pools mine that chain.  Right now I think Namecoin is the only case where that's even close to being true.  It's also the only chain with a coherent answer to the question "wait, doesn't bitcoin already serve this purpose?"
Answer: The patch allows many chains to be mined at once. It does not let them automatically get mined though.   A miner or pool has to still choose to run that chain and add it to its merged mining proxy.  So the chain still has to get support to get access to that power and get installed.  No one can make a chain and force it to be mined (unless they are a large pool operator).


Is there a style guide for German similar to The Elements of Style for English?

Question: Is there a German style guide similar to "The Elements of Style" by Strunk and White or "Style: The Basics of Clarity and Grace" which are well known for English?
Answer: One style guide I can absolutely recommend is Deutsch für Kenner by Wolf Schneider, a German journalist and language critic. The book is both witty and clearly structured. (Note that it takes a firm stand and is by no means a neutral guide; some even call it arrogant.) Important to know: You'll need a good knowledge of German to really enjoy the book.
If you've already read Deutsch für Profis or Deutsch fürs Leben, then you already saw a lot of the contents of Deutsch für Kenner.
Comment: The answer is much appreciated. The reason I have not accepted so far is that based on the reviews this book is a very opinionated, very critical review of actual German language misuse. This could be alright but it seems a bit wearisome. I'll give it a bit more time and then accept your answer.
Comment: Oh, it's not wearisome. At some points I find it slightly repetetive (but this gets bad only if you _also_ read _Deutsch für Profis_), but it's really fun to read. I learned of the book from someone sitting next to me in a local train who was laughing from time to time. There are lots of (opinionated) great and funny examples from which you can learn a lot.


Partitioning the Rigid Disc to install Ubuntu alongside with Windows 7

Question: I want to install Ubuntu alongside with Windows, partitioning the system. I readed some tutorials online and it was said that I can have only 4 primary partitions. My windows 7 system shows me 3 partitions already: OEM partition, Recovery partition and OS(C:) partition. Is it still possible to install ubuntu satisfactorily?
Answer: Yes it is. Although you can only have 4 primary partitions you can have as many logical partitions as you want. Logical partitions are basically the same as primary you can install Ubuntu on those.
Just create logical partitions for your Ubuntu.
Primary Partitions
When Microsoft developed it's 'new' partition table type around the 1980s it restricted the number of partitions a hard-drive could have to only 4. These have become known as "Primary Partitions". It would be inaccurate to think of this as the main episodes on a Dvd because these could be shorter than the bonus features.
Extended Partitions
Some clever people managed to make one of these a new type of partition that could hold a large number of other sub-partitions. This new type of partition became known as an "Extended Partition" (it should have been "Extending" not "Extended" but nevermind). Perhaps think of this as the bonus features menu on a Dvd. When you select "bonus features" it doesn't play anything, it just gives you another menu.
Logical Partitions
The sub-partitions became known as "Logical Partitions". When people quote the number of partitions on a drive they usually exclude the Extended Partition. Perhaps think of these as the the bonus features on a Dvd. However, the bonus features could be a lot longer than the movie or the episodes.
Also more relevant information can be found here and here


Does the height of a CPU's heatsink affect the cooling?

Question: The CPU of my computer has a quite tall (about 1.5in I think) heatsink compared to the one my friend's computer had, and this question has been in my mind for a while. Does the height of a CPU's heatsink affect the cooling of the processor? That is to say, if the heatsink is short, will the processor's heat be lower compared to that of the tall one?
Answer:
That is to say, if the heatsink is short, will the processor's heat be lower compared to that of the tall one?

Actually it's the other way round.
What affects the cooling is the overall surface, the material of the cooler and the airflow around it.
Thus said, a bigger cooler is better, at least to some extent. As long as it is not just a solid block, more cooling fins help spreading the heat to the surrounding air. It has to be a good heat conductor (copper is better than aluminium). And the attached fan, if there is any, should provide good airflow through the cooler. Dust hindering the airflow is bad as well.
I should add that there is no point in purchasing a bigger heatsink if the one you are using is sufficient. Meaning, unless you actually think the specific compontent has a heat-problem or you want to start overclocking, there is no need to switch.
Comment: How would you define "sufficient"? Wouldn't cooler always be better, at least as far as component longevity goes?
Answer: A heat sink should be made of a material which is an excellent good conductor of heat, so the extra distance due to the height not matter much.
I.e. this is like asking if you will get better sound from your speakers using three feet of 6 AWG speaker wire versus four feet.
The key factor in a heat sink itself is the surface area.
(And then of course other factors: the contact patch between the heat sink and the component, which is why we use thermal grease, and the air flow to convect away heat.)
To get a decent area with access to air flow, a heat sink is going to be large/tall.


Why would the villain involve Sherlock Holmes?

Question: In the first installment of the Sherlock Holmes franchisee, i.e. in Sherlock Holmes movie, Lord Blackwood asks for an audience with Sherlock Holmes, as his 'last' request for no other purpose than to toy with him. But why would he risk Sherlock potentially foiling his plot? Does it relate to when he told Sherlock 'that you made all of this possible'?
Answer: To answer your question you must understand the way a criminal thinks. It is a known fact about criminal psychology that "Every criminal thinks he is the best and that nobody other than him is as good as him and he would not make a single mistake like others did earlier". This is a wrong self-esteem which often leads criminals the most to their danger. Pride for oneself makes one more vulnerable in one's planning. Often the best brains of Criminals repeat this same mistake. Lord Blackwood no doubt was one of the best brains in his time. But he was no different from other criminals. He too had too much confidence in himself and considered himself undefeatable. In short, this false pride about himself made him challenge Sherlock to catch him.
If you observe carefully, Sherlock has been the only nail in Blackwood's road to success. He was literally the only one who caught Blackwood's tricks. When everybody was calling him Satan or black magician, Sherlock was the only one who revealed his tricks to everyone in the light of logic. So it is a fun for criminals like Blackwood to toy with a tough contender like Sherlock and make him perplexed. As a game does not seem good if the competition is not tough, the same way criminals don't get fun if the Police is not up-to-the-mark. This is the reason Blackwood wanted to involve Sherlock so that he can make Sherlock defeated to him.
Answer: By overwhelming even the sceptic Holmes, Blackwood 'proves' his sorcerous power
Blackwood's plans throughout the movie rely on creating an illusion that Blackwood is a powerful sorceror who has risen from the dead, and can visit either blessing or damnation upon the country and its politicans.
Holmes is known to Blackwood and Holmes' involvement gives Blackwood a dilemma. Blackwood chooses to use Holmes' bafflement as 'evidence' of his own power - by overwhelming him with 'evidence' of the supernatural account of events that serves Blackwood's plot.
Blackwood helpfully narrates this at the prison:

BLACKWOOD: Steel your mind, Holmes. I need you.
HOLMES: I'd say you've come a long way down from the House of Lords.
BLACKWOOD: I will rise again. [...] Pay attention! Three more will die and there is nothing you can do to save them. You must accept that this
  is beyond your control. By the time you realize you made all of this possible it will be the last sane thought in your head.

And later, at the warehouse:

BLACKWOOD: I warned you, Holmes to accept that this was beyond your control. Beyond what your rational mind could comprehend.
HOLMES: What a busy afterlife you are having.
BLACKWOOD: I want you to bear witness. Tomorrow, at midday, the
  world as you know it will end.


Are there any regulations preventing one from converting an originally cargo aircraft to ferry passengers?

Question: Are there any regulations preventing one from converting the cargo version of the Airbus A380 for passenger use?
Comment: Airbus would have to build one first - https://www.flexport.com/blog/airbus-a380-no-cargo-equivalent/
Comment: Which country's regulations are you asking about? And see [this question](https://aviation.stackexchange.com/q/17120/62) for the point about screens instead of windows.
Comment: I removed your background commentary on screens because it seems irrelevant to your question (and as I already commented, we have an existing question on that topic anyway). But if you think it really is important for the question then of course please just roll back or edit again.
Answer: Converting a freighter to an airliner would require lots of work:

you have to install an HVAC system capable of supporting hundreds of passengers, which means installing air ducts from the engines to the cabin, etc. Major surgery to the wing and fuselage.
you have to install a sufficient number of doors and emergency exits (with associated systems). Major surgery to the fuselage.
big changes to the electrical system to support e.g. entertainment for the passengers.

So the conversion would require taking most of the aircraft apart.
Answer: There is no cargo version of the A380, but for other types:
There are no regulations prohibiting converting a cargo aircraft to a passenger one. It will just need to meet all of the passenger certification requirements, such as evacuation times, seat and structure crashworthiness, oxygen systems, and so on.
I don't think this has ever been done because it is extraordinarily expensive. It is cheaper to convert a passenger aircraft to cargo because for the most part you are removing items instead of installing them. Passengers also prefer new aircraft, so after going through the cost of converting the aircraft you'll struggle to fill it with people.
Can cameras replace windows? From a legal standpoint I'm not sure, I think yes as I recall a patent for it, but that would be an interesting question to ask here.
Comment: For the windows it is preferable to be able to see the outside before opening a door (in case there is an obstacle such as a fire preventing from evacuating from that side), even if all systems, including camera and screens, have failed (as expected in an emergency situation).
Answer: Normally the retrofitting path is from passenger service to freight service. In my experience, many freight operations already have the necessary airpacs, as certain cargo (zoo animals, livestock, biologicals and chemicals) may require environmental control.
The cost comes in outfitting the aircraft for people, with the accouterments of modern air travel.
There are options for convertible interiors which will handle freight and can be rapidly converted to passenger use, and these are particularly popular with operators in under served areas which have lower volumes.  The convertible interiors can be switched out in very short times (less than 30 minutes) and are suited for operations where people are moved by day, and freight by night.
One larger effort will be in electrical needs for the cabin and associated lighting and electronics.
Without checking the US regulations, it is not clear to me that windows are a requirement, except for certain stations.  Some configurations, such as medvac, may use few windows.  Some prison transports are done with windowless (or nearly so) passenger aircraft.
Different freight has different risks.  For example one carrier found that giraffes tended to munch on cables and wiring in the ceiling, requiring protective coverings on subsequent carriage of those animals.  Those freight mitigations could increase some costs.
Generally, cargo aircraft have adequate doors, as well as larger doors to the upper decks.  The bulk of the retrofit is seating, bins, environmentals (lighting, O2, air distribution) and seat rails.  It will depend upon the aircraft, but the retrofits do not usually involve major airframe work, although the cost may be high.
To answer the specifics on an A380 conversion, one would have to study the type certification and the delivery configuration of a given aircraft, and then analyze the requirements to move to dedicated passenger service.


How do I delete an edited sound from a video using audacity?

Question: I have a video that has had a voice edited to be much different in pitch, how do i fix this using audacity?
Answer: If the voice is all that is going on, you can use a pitch shift to attempt to reverse it.  If there are other sounds mixed with it however, then there isn't really anything you can do without also shifting the sounds that are behind it.
If it is really really different, you might be able to try to isolate it by cuting out frequencies of background noises and run the pitch correct on the stripped down set of frequencies, but it's a long shot.


Be aware if someone other is writing an answer to the same question while you're doing so

Question: Sometimes it happens that after being writing an answer to a question for some time, the question is answered by another user providing the same information one has written (i.e. the right answer...)
It could be useful to see if somebody else is writing while you're doing so, because you could then focus on look for another unanswered question instead of wasting time.
Comment: @Bill: Of course I only remember the cases, when I lost by 'a handful of seconds'. And was surprised to later find out that the difference in time stamps was like 20-30 seconds. So my personal statistics have a built in bias. I don't know what a typical roundtrip time here might be?
Comment: While typing an answer, we do get a notification, when somebody else **posts** an answer. I think that is enough. I don't think that the server will even know about, when you start **writing** an answer. The messages come within seconds. OTOH, the following has happened to me a couple of times: I have posted a comment. I don't see any answers. I go check out another question, and come back. To my horror a couple of answers have been posted. With time stamps **earlier** than my post. May be posting a comment initially happens only at *my end*? No biggie, really. As long as I know about this :-)
Comment: @Jyr It seems that one cannot always depend on rapid new answer notifications. Not too infrequently I receive the new answer notification a few minutes or more after the answer was posted. I don't think I've ever seen the notification occur "within seconds". I wonder what sort of delays others typically see.
Comment: It is worth mentioning that [similar feature request](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/35291/when-answering-could-we-be-informed-that-the-following-people-are-already-answ) on meta.stackexchange is [meta-tag:status-declined]. And there are many related discussions linked there, for example [this one](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/11263/user-x-is-writing-an-answer-banner-to-appear-when-another-user-is-writing-to).
Answer: I am slow and I get beat to an answer very often. I like getting points. They're fun. But I love mathematics. If someone beats me to an answer and his/hers is better than mine, I discard or delete mine. Of course there is a grey area there, and someone may object to my decision to post my answer too. To bad. I will gladly tell you why I disagree with you. My goal is that good mathematics gets done. I will, unhappily, back off if I think some has beaten me to it. Placeholder posts are just one more level of noise. I can't tell what I should do until I read the others post.
Answer: Mathematicians could leave a placeholder answer while they are completing a fuller answer.  This would allow others to answer other questions.
Be aware that this is sometimes seen as an annoying way to "game the system" - first posts are listed, and thus read, first, and thus tend to get more upvotes.
I suppose that could be avoided by an agreed convention - {{PLACEHOLDER POST}} or somesuch.
Comment: I would be inclined to downvote every obvious placeholder post.
Comment: Answers with the same vote score seem to be sorted randomly each time I load a page. I'm not seeing any indication of the oldest one getting any preferred treatment.
Comment: I would say that some users already do use kind of placeholder posts (although I am too lazy to try to find examples right now). I have seen several times the following situation (and I have also done this): At first, a brief answer containing a few sentences is posted; then the user edits the answer to expand on some points worth expanding.\\ However, this still leads to possibility that another user will try to answer. He might think that the two sentences in your post is all you want to say. And if he thinks that it is worth expanding, he starts doing so on his own.
Comment: "first posts are listed, and thus read, first, and thus tend to get more upvotes." - i.e., people are gorram lazy, and this is what FGITWs profit on. ;)


Can the Hanbury-Brown and Twiss effect be used to measure the size of composite objects like galaxies?

Question: I know that the Hanbury-Brown and Twiss effect can be used to measure the size of stars.  Can it also be used to measure the size of galaxies?
Answer: I assume you mean measure the apparent angular diameter of a galaxy too distant to be resolved, in which case I would say yes. (If you can resolve it, the HBT effect is unnecessary, of course!) First of all, stars are extended objects, just like galaxies, so there should be no fundamental difference. Secondly, the Wiki article discusses summing over different photon sources within an overall object, with the net result being that your detectors have to be sufficiently close together... "for a given angular diameter desired to be detected," I assume.
I don't know off the top of my head how stellar apparent angular diameters compare with very distant galaxies, but if anything, I would guess stars would be smaller.
The only wrinkle I can think of is that a star's image ought to be very nearly perfectly circular while a galaxy's need not be, but I think you should probably still get an average or effective diameter, even when your source is non-circular.
Answer: In theory, yes, In practice its a lot trickier...
Within a simple interferometric measurement (1 baseline) You are only measuring the spatial frequencies parallel to that baseline, with a nice symmetric star you can assume a simple physical model of a circle and whatever angular diameter you recover that would be your 'stellar'diameter.  With extended sources such as galaxies the physical model you assume for image reconstruction is fairly arbritrary and would therefore take a lot of processing time.
Also several orientations of the baseline (or simultaneous over $>1$ baselines) would be required to find the angular extent in different directions...
Comment: For objects significantly off the ecliptic plane, do you not have two independent baselines? (i.e. measure every three months)
Answer: (2) & (3) are both generally correct. The HBT effect is in essence a property of detection, not emission (the sources are incoherent). H&B observed Sirius, which at 8.6 light years (ly) distance and 1.7 times bigger than the sun, is 6 milli-arcseconds (mas). A 140,000 ly diameter galaxy (like Andromeda) at 10 billion ly has an angular size of 2900 mas. The original Sirius observation had a 6m baseline, so the galactic observation's HBT correlations would occur over a baseline of 1.2 cm--a much more difficult experiment to do-- not to mention the sparsity of photons. At 10Bly, the Andromeda galaxy would be magnitude 21.4, compared to Sirius's -1.46; that is, 1.4 billion times dimmer, and hence, 1.4 billion fewer photons.


How do increase the amount of links shown down the left in the admin menu?

Question: I've inherited a Wordpress site that uses http://podsframework.org/ CMSframework plugin. unfortunately the previous admin created so many pods, which in turn created a lot of custom post types that have now hidden all the adminmenu link like options, themes, users etc aren't displayed anymore. So how do I get them to display?
Answer: This is a known limitation by the WordPress menu functions, you would need to rekey all of the  menus ahead of time to be +100 or whatever you need, before Pods adds the menus to fix this. Previous versions of WordPress had a bigger problem with this, but they recently increased it in the past year or so.
Also, in the Pods setup area, you can specify per content type, whether to show the menu item in the admin menu or not. That could help resolve some of those issues, and any content types not shown in the admin menu top-level, will be added to the "Pods" top level menu as sub menu items so you can still get to them.
Answer: Not saying this is your solution, but it may be a good place to start looking...
Wordpress has it's functions.php as I'm sure you know of. Well, I just recently added a Admin Dashboard widget through my custom theme's functions.php. The call to add it was simple enough and even if you're foreign to touching this file, you could check for the Wordpress hook names and get a good enough idea as to what they do:
function custom_dashboard_widget() {
global $wp_meta_boxes;

wp_add_dashboard_widget('custom_help_widget', 'Widget Title', 'custom_dashboard_help');
}

function custom_dashboard_help() {
echo '
Your widget text here.
';
}

add_action('wp_dashboard_setup', 'custom_dashboard_widget');

Again, that is to add a Wordpress Admin Dashboard widget, mostly used to pass along important information about the theme or something found within it. Developers use them for their Plug-Ins as well from time to time. The "Your widget text here." section is surrounded by a paragraph tag, HTML can be placed there to mark it up nicely for the Front End user.
Again, not sure if that helped or if I'm totally off but I believe the logic is the same. Just need to find that hook that calls to add those side links methinks... But, I might be totally wrong. Sorry!!
Comment: It worth a go, my thought was similar, in that i find the hook that displays menu items, and list them all. We'll i try it out and see it that works
Comment: Hope is works out for you!
Answer: If you are referring to the side menu in the admin becoming filled with custom types, take a look at the Hierarchy plugin. I've used it on some sites where there are multiple content types present; it takes the various type-specific groups and combines them into a single section. Really useful for keeping the menu tidy.


'history' and 'church-history' tags

Question: There are currently two tags that have the same exact meaning and usage: history and church-history. History has 224 questions and church history has 38.
Shouldn't these be merged?
Answer: I think in principle they have different meanings, though "Church history" is certainly a subset of all history. But if we can't rely on people to know the difference - it's certainly not obvious, when asking a question, that these separate options are available - then we should just merge them.
Our history questions are generally about finding out what happened in the past, and why. It is a bit of a broad tag but it makes sense, in that some questions engage historical scholarship and some don't. For this reason, I argue that the history tag should be retained.
Church history "should" mean the history of the Church as such - with a focus on her  institutions, corporate activity, and self-understanding - as opposed to other historical topics, even if they have a Christian slant, like:

What specific people in the past thought and did.
How certain historical events (wars, plagues, ...) and conditions (social, economic, ...) affected Christian practice.
When particular things happened for the first time.
Whether conjectured events really happened at all.

But this usage may be specialized enough, and the relationship between the two tags so obscure, that we may as well just have "history" and be done with it.
Answer: So, I have this philosophy about tags.  What they should mean is irrelevant. How the majority of people are going to use them - whether correctly or not - is what matters.
I use a tag to stem the flow of information.  If I'm interested in church-history, then, I need to recognize that others are going to probably forget and just use history.  So, if I really don't care about bibilical-basis and eschatalogy, I'll ignore those, and maybe favorite 'history' and 'church-history' knowing that the both tags represent the sum of what I need.
As such, I don't see any benefit in separating the two- semantically or logistically.
Therefore I would argue we should just merge the two.

'history' and 'church-history' tags


Is is stupid to store large amounts of images in a database?

Question: I'm having a dilemma with allowing users to upload images to my application. My host allows unlimited storage space, but only allows 250k individual files. I'm at 125k, and I'm planning on releasing a feature that will allow users to upload images. If I start getting a large amounts of images uploaded, I could quickly fill that quota up. I thought about storing them in a database such as MySQL. Is this a feasible solution, or just plain stupid? If it's just stupid, what would be some free/cheap alternatives?
Answer: Using database is obviously more slow than using the filesystem. If you already have 125k maybe it will be a good idea to use VPS instead of hosting. It's about 5-10$/mon.
Comment: http://www.hetzner.de/hosting/produkte_vserver/vq7 (i use this one for my little needs)
Comment: Holy crap that is awesome. I may end up using that for some side projects.
Answer: Yeah, putting the image data in a db would be kind of silly.
I'd look at using something like Amazon S3 for storage.
Here's a CodingHorror post from years ago where Jeff discusses it.
Comment: That looks like my best option. And it's uber cheap. I don't think the bandwith cost will be as much of a problem as my storage. :P. Thanks so much!
Answer: There are a lot of good reasons to store images (or any bulky media files) outside the database.
The reasons you would store images in the database are if you need image data to work with SQL ACID semantics.
For example, if you insert a row in a database, but rollback, you would want the image data to also be discarded.  If you store the image data externally to the database, you have to clean up orphaned images.
Likewise if you DELETE rows from the database, you also have to remember to delete them from the disk or S3 or whatever.
Likewise if you UPDATE rows, you lose transaction isolation, so you have race conditions.
Also creating database backups is more complex if you store images outside the database.  Not only because now your backup is a multi-step process (backup database and then backup image collection), but also you can't create hot backups.  Your image collection might be changing during the minutes while the backup is copying data from the database.
Comment: +1 For some really useful information. Since this isn't a major enterprise project, I don't think I have to worry about needing to store the images in a database. Thanks for sharing!
Answer: I personally wouldn't do that. It will end up causing you more problems later on.
Why don't you sign up to http://www.000webhost.com/ (or similar) and create a script to upload images there instead of your server? It's what I would do.
Or, you could start setting limits on how long images are kept for? and delete them after x days?
Answer: Is it an option for you to store the images on a CDN, or something like s3?  Get the images off your server and get the benefits of the fast infrastructure.  More here: http://aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/
Gets more complicated if you need to secure images but all doable.


Thunderbird layout dangerously hides potential recipients of a "Reply All" response

Question: When we chose REPLY ALL for an email that has multiple recipients, Thunderbird only displays the first four addresses, which may result in the email going out to unintended recipients if the sender does not notice nor take the initiative to drag down the divider or slide the scroll bar on the right side to see the other 'hidden' recipients.
Having made the unfortunate mistake of sending that was intended for SOME but not ALL of the recipients, an add-on that enables the user to set the divider that separates the email msg window from the address fields above, to expand and show ALL potential recipient addresses, when the REPLY ALL option is select would be very much appreciated.
The user can of course still drag the divider up once they've verified the recipient list.
Answer: Submit a bug report to Mozilla.


Will model resolution have an effect on model spin-up time?

Question: In terms of uncoupled AGCM studies, I've seen people use periods within a decade (say, 5 years) as spin-up time, but I also see some people take tens of year as spin-up in some recent studies. So I'm thinking if it's related to the model resolution in different simulations. So does GCM spin-up time affected by the resolution they use? For example if the same model is run in different resolution, would the spin-up time be any different? Thanks!
Comment: Are these all global models? I'm not sure about resolution, but it would certainly be affected by the size of the domain. (I guess they must be global if climate models... I usually model a couple of hundred km at most...)
Comment: @SimonW Climate models can be regional too (typically embedded in a larger global model imposing boundary conditions).
Comment: @gerrit ah, makes sense :-)
Answer: Without spin-up time, our initial conditions would be blank or generic.
I guess the simple answer is "NO" spin-up time is not really affected by the resolution, unless the model resolution changes are so great that it takes much longer for diffusion / advection between cells to flush out. Though that wouldn't explain a 5 year change in spin up time unless you made drastic changes to a model with very large time steps. Increased model resolution could theoretically increase the necessary spin-up time by a small amount, if the changes in resolution were very large and the time steps used were coarse.   However, in a reputable research setting the spin up time is chosen based on how long (in model time) it takes for things to get to an acceptable initial condition, and changes in resolution are usually not so extreme.
Complexities in the model can increase desirable spin-up time if they have long time-horizons before an acceptable initial condition is achieved.  The spin-up time you choose for your model will influence the degree to which the initial conditions actually represent a realistic distribution of numerics across all parameters, assuming the model is adequately developed.
Comment: Hi Simon, as for complexities in the model increasing spin-up time, that is really only true if those complexities have longer time-horizons before they even out into a nice value or cycle.  The whole point of spin-up time is to get your model to an initial condition that best represents reality.  Without spin-up time, our initial conditions would be blank.  So, the longer the phenomena are that influence your study, the longer spin-up time might be needed.  Hope that answers the question better!
Comment: Hi farrenthorpe, welcome to ES.SE! I'm not entirely sure how this answers the question... "more complex your model is, the more spin-up time you need to reach a realistic starting point" is the only part that seems relevant, but I'd be interested in the reasons for this.
Comment: Hi Simon, what I was trying to get at is that increased model resolution may increase the necessary spin-up time by a small amount... but spin up time is really a function of what question you are trying to answer and how long (in model time) it takes for things to get to an acceptable initial condition.  I guess the simple answer is "NO" spin-up time is not affected by the resolution, unless the model resolution changes are so great that it takes that much longer for diffusion / advection between cells to flush out.  Though that wouldn't explain a 5 year change in spin up time.
Answer: I would say that the biggest factor influencing spin-up time is whether the model includes a dynamically-coupled ocean component. A regional or even global atmosphere-only model, with a realistic initial state and forced by realistic boundary conditions, will reach equilibrium pretty quickly; certainly a decade or less. An ocean model may not reach equilibrium even after a thousand years, and in fact this can be seen in many of the CMIP5 model control runs.
It's probably also worth pointing out that while model drift is often attributed to incomplete spin-up in coupled models, often drift is more due to some kind of spurious energy 'leakage' in the model's energy balance, which the ocean component acts to restore. In this case, the model will never reach an equilibrium, 'drift free' state.


Connect 2 motor controllers

Question: i have programmed for my two wheeled robot 2 separate controller for each wheel so that afer approx. 1 second both motors reach my desired speed. But my problem is that one of those motors is faster at the desired speed than the other one, so if i turn it on my robot doesnt stay on a straight line but an angle of the desired position.
I wanted to ask how can i realize that both reach the desired speed at the same time so my robot will go straigt.
Comment: no i have one pid controller for each wheel so it drives at my desired speed. I use feedback of the wheel encoders for the control loop. Or do you mean something else by feedback?
Answer: If going completely straight is the goal then you'll need more feedback than just the wheel speeds. Even if you could guarantee the wheels turned at exact same speed (say for instance they were attached together on the same axle) then it still wouldn't go in a straight line. Any tiny difference in wheel circumference or bump, crumb or surface change will move it off course.
A common approach to this problem is to use an IMU gyro. This gives you a reference for your heading and allows you to change motors speeds to correct.
Answer: You should use the individual wheel velocities at all times to compute the robot's heading and angular and linear velocity and super-impose another controller that works to correct the same. This could be a PID that works on the desired changed in angular velocity of the robot which you could reduce down to each individual wheels.
Making both the wheels reach the desired speed at the same time would not be possible because, they are two different wheels with different performance. You should rather aim to solve the larger problem and obtain its dependency on each individual wheel. I believe this picture could be of some reference.

Connect 2 motor controllers


How does one write a misanthropic character likeable?

Question: Let's say the character has over the years grown to dislike humans because he had many negative experiences with them, and is disappointed in humanity itself. How does one write such a character without making him too edgy or unlikeable?
Comment: Characters aren't static, so is the idea to "redeem" him by bringing him back from the negative brink (Ebenezer Scrooge)..., or do you want a character that we like in spite of all his bad traits (Dr House)?
Comment: I don't think this deserves to be an answer. Read books about misanthropes. I'll start you off with one of my favorites, [The Epicure's Lament](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/148216.The_Epicure_s_Lament). Maybe [A Confederacy of Dunces](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/310612.A_Confederacy_of_Dunces) will do too.
Answer: Often what makes a misanthropic character likable to the audience is their sympathetic behavior or expertise in worldly matters. If the structure of your story does not have the time for (or does not aesthetically permit) that the misanthrope in question have an extensive backstory in which their lost hope, shattered dreams, and gradual metamorphosis into misanthrope is conveyed, then a good alternative might be to show how their misanthropy informs their expertise, and allows them to deal with the world in a more realistic and savvy way than other characters, who are are still weighed down by their sentimentality towards humanity.
Dr. House comes to mind. His misanthropy often makes him a better doctor, at the expense of his human relationships. It is hyperbole and might not translate into real life, but mental instability in exchange for heightened technical ability is a very old trope. It can be downplayed, played straight, or exaggerated.
Downplayed: An unsociable, grumpy man is a good car mechanic due to his extensive time alone.
Exaggerated: A sociopath's complete detachment from humanity, lack of empathy, and talent for manipulating the emotions of others make him the perfect political candidate.
Comment: "mental instability in exchange for heightened technical ability is a very old trope" - Yes, but note that many people interpret characters like these as being on the spectrum. Overexaggerating this trope can verge on being ableist
Comment: @R.. Yes, House is everyone's favorite grouch with a heart of gold. :)
Answer: You'll find a lot of good answers here:
How do you make a story succeed in spite of an unsympathetic main character?
On top of that: If your character is a misanthrope out of disappointment, that's your hook. Disappointment means that the person once had hope. So you play on that past hope.
Was he an optimist? A starry-eyed idealist? A romantic? A decent man who was taken advantage of? An ordinary bloke in an abusive relationship? A middle manager keeping his head down who watched fellow citizens vote a tyrant into power?
Figure out what broke his heart. Find a way to convey that backstory to your audience (not immediately — somewhere between one-third and two-thirds of the way). A cabbagehead, newbie, or Watson are some traditional vehicles for this kind of exposition; you can also do it via a third character or a flashback.
Additionally, if he can retain some of that hope, even in flashes (think the grouch with a heart of gold), the reader can see that the misanthropy was situational, or earned, and that there's some good underneath which just needs uncovering.
Answer: A likeable misanthropic character is not necessarily a misanthrope at heart: he only needs to act like one. He is misunderstood. Perhaps just different. They could even be a good character who turned sour as a reaction to a bad break, and you could add a growth/redemption arc, in which to play this reveal.
Some great misanthrope characters in TV and literature are: House MD, Sherlock Holmes, Ebenezer Scrooge. All these characters are perceived as misanthropic, but their story arcs reveals that, in truth, they are not.
Comment: I edited your post trying to keep the same concepts that you wrote. If you do not like the edit, or if I messed up, worry not, it can be reverted to your original post anytime.


What, if any, differences are there between composition and layout?

Question: What if any differences are there between the terms layout and composition when talking about graphic design?
Comment: "When talking about graphic design" seems a bit broad to me. Which aspect of graphic design, exactly? If you're talking about setting books, that's one answer: composition is setting _type_, fiddling around with kerning, spacing, justification, flowing text, margins, etc.; while layout is the broader act of placing all the required elements on to pages so that they look good (including composition, but also image positioning and cropping, colour schemes, choosing page sizes, etc.). If you're talking about UIs or logo design, the answer will be completely different. Which is your focus on?
Comment: @JanusBahsJacquet it stemmed from this meta post - https://graphicdesign.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3258/merge-suggestion-layout-and-page-layout -- so really all aspects of Graphic Design. If you think different parts have different connotative meanings please post it as an answer, I would be very interested in it.
Answer: Layout is position, composition takes in to consideration stuff like color etc.
Imagine if this site decided to use a black background with white text instead of black text on white. It'd be the same layout, but a very different composition.
An example:
Click for full size
Comment: I actually use a dark reader extension, so I _am_ seeing a black background with white text. So I added a screenshot for you to illustrate your point.
Comment: I've been thinking lots and lots about this and I'm inclined to agree. Would you say then if you likewise change the font from sans-serif to serif you're changing the composition not the layout? What if you make the text much bigger, then would you be changing composition and layout?
Comment: @Ryan To me, the font change would be mostly composition but it could also affect the layout depending on if anything is moved around. For the text size change, that's probably changing both
Comment: @ryan - if you change the size of the text block (point size, font, amount of words) then that affects the layout, yes. Layout is a subset of composition, but it's not isolated; it has ties to other aspects. Generally content dictates layout, but sometimes layout dictates content a bit: javascript/php that cut off text paragraphs for preview pages, and of course CSS image scaling.
Answer: There is a difference that I think is best summed up by Robert Lane as seen on the Elements of Visual Design website:

Composition is the manner pieces or components are combined and
  arranged visually to tell a story. Proper composition considers
  alignment, grouping, placement, space, and visual flow within a
  layout. This layout can be any medium. Once a proper audience and
  purpose have been determined then composition, components, and concept
  can encompass that identified purpose allowing a successful design.

In other words, Composition can be seen as the elements that make up the design:

Composition  • the nature of something's ingredients or constituents; the way in which a whole or mixture is made up.

Whereas layout is the organization of said elements:

Layout
 • the way in which the parts of something are arranged or laid out.
Comment: Your quote seems to use layout and composition interchangeably, or, confusingly, refer to layout as a medium. I'm having a difficult time learning anything from this quote. This person discusses their idea of the meaning of composition.
Comment: Makes sense to me, but I can see how that quote is a bit confusing. Edited to include a more concise explanation of how I interpreted it.


What can I do about excessive lime flavor in a pork roast?

Question: I marinated a pork roast in lime, garlic, oregano and a little olive oil.  The flavor of lime is over-bearing.  Is there anything I can do to counter the lime taste?
Comment: You've heard of margarita chicken? Add salt around the edges and call it "Margarita Pork"?
Answer: Since I assume it is too late to do anything to take the lime away, undermine excess flavor of lime with roasted peppers. They will bear a pleasant complement to the tartness while adding rich, smoky notes. Hotter peppers will further distract from the excess lime. A sweet corn salsa would also add sweetness to anchor the lime.
Comment: Yes, too late -- it is fully cooked now.  I had already thought of corn as a side dish, will just turn it into a salsa and will roast some peppers as well.  Thanks for the help
Answer: Salt balances with sour flavors really well.  There's still an upper limit on how much salt or lime can be considered enjoyable by most people.  I'd start with salt, ideally in a marinade, to take advantage of the acidity unless it's already pretty salty.
If that approach is taken to its limit and it's still too sour, the only route I see is dilution--reduce the amount of pork going into anyone's mouth...shredded pork in soft tacos or wraps comes to mind.  Thin slices would also work in a sandwich.


When does a Scrum Team assign story points to the stories in the Scrum methodology?

Question: I am in the process of learning Scrum. I got stuck with a question: on which stage does the Scrum Team assign story points to the user stories?
Comment: For the record: while the answers below are all fine, it should be noted that story points are __not__ a part of Scrum, so their use is not required. This is also the reason you can't simply answer this question by reading the scrum guide.
Comment: Good to know that @Erik
Answer: The only certain answer is: sometime before the story is added into the sprint. After that the story point estimate doesn't add much value.
Common times that Scrum teams estimate stories:

Backlog Refinement: In backlog refinement the team looks one or two sprints out to see what is coming up and prepares these stories to be brought into a sprint. Estimation is a common thing to happen here because the act of trying to estimate the story often brings out details about the story.
Release Planning: This is a planning that takes a high-level look at the next few months and I've worked with many teams that take a first-guess estimate at all stories in the release planning. It is understood in these teams that these estimates are rough guesses used for general planning purposes and they usually revisit the estimates in a Backlog Refinement closer to actually working the item.
Sprint Planning: It isn't common practice anymore to estimate right at sprint planning, but it still happens sometimes. Usually, this happens with stories that emerge right before the sprint (maybe a gap discovered in the last Sprint Review). This estimate is usually done at this time in order to weigh the cost/value benefit before deciding to bring it into the sprint.
Answer: User Stories aren't part of Scrum
User Stories are an Extreme Programming (XP) practice. (see this question)
However, every Scrum team I've worked with so far has used Extreme Programming practices alongside scrum.
This blog on scrum.org has a pretty good explanation:

Scrum does not mandate the usage of Planning Poker and Story Points.
  That is right. Planning Poker and Story points are actually not part
  of Scrum. This is the common misconception people have about Scrum
  that I have found in the community. Scrum Team is free to choose how
  they want to estimate. In fact, Scrum team is allowed to estimate in
  hours if they wish. Scrum Team who is practicing XP will do Planning
  Poker with Story Points every Sprint Planning. Many Scrum Team found
  this Planning Poker practice with Story Points is helpful.

While the blog seems to imply that XP wants you to play Planning Poker each Sprint Planning, the XP rules don't talk about Planning Poker at all. They do describe making a time estimate at the moment a User Story is written.
There are no strict rules. Feel free to chose what works best for your team. In my personal experience, it works best to assign story points when creating the backlog, and reviewing them at the start of each sprint.
Comment: @slebetman the term is "Product Backlog Item" and they're not really the same thing; stories are a specific implementation of a PBI, but a PBI can look completely different. They also don't need to contain tasks; many of mine just contain the description of a problem that we're supposed to tackle.
Comment: User stories/tasks/cards/tickets ARE part of Scrum. However the **Story points != hours** is not part of Scrum.
Comment: Do you have a source on that? The Scrum Guide only talks about product backlog items. If you do have a source, please answer [the question I linked](https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/23782/to-what-framework-do-user-stories-belong), because the accepted answer there says User Stories are not part of scrum.
Comment: You can call it "items" if you don't want to call it product backlog stories - but they're still tasks broken down such that a developer can pick it up and work on it. Different names - same thing. The cards/tasks/items/stories may have different feature sets depending on how the team work but they're a core part of Scrum. I've worked on teams where "tasks" must be in the form of "As a  I want ". I've worked on teams where "stories" are just bullet points of feature requirements etc.
Answer: A story point number is the outcome of an estimation of a user story, so story points are assigned when the team estimates the stories.
The latest point in time where estimation can/should be done is when a story is being considered for inclusion in the current or upcoming sprint. This is normally during the planning session.
A more common point to do the estimation is during a backlog refinement session once the team feels that the story is clear enough and small enough that they can start working on it and complete the story within one sprint.
For long-term planning, it can be useful to already assign a tentative estimation to stories and/or epics that need further refinement. Even such a tentative estimation should come from the team.
Answer: This answer is structured in the following way:

Example of a cycle for a two-week sprint.
Why story points?
When to assign story points to the user-stories?

The following image, taken from How to Kill the Scrum Monster: Quick Start to Agile Scrum Methodology and the Scrum Master Role shows an example of a meeting cycle for a two-week Sprint (Of course, all those meetings are not set in stone and can be adjusted based on need):

Planning (mandatory) meeting: The team plans what user stories (backlogs) it will execute during the Sprint and breaks them into tasks. The team commits to completing those during the Sprint according to the Definition of Done (DoD).
Backlog grooming (optional) during execution of the Sprint N: The PO will introduce new backlogs if required and this meeting will be an opportunity for the team to ask questions about backlogs for the next Sprint (N+1).
Sprint review (mandatory): The ScMa and the team present to the PO all the backlogs that were committed this Sprint, and status according to the DoD.
Retrospective (mandatory) team meeting: Team members discuss what went wrong, what went well, and if anything should be changed to improve team performance—also used as a meeting to release some steam. (Can be executed every second Sprint in case of short Sprints.)
Scrum meeting or Stand-up (mandatory): a short daily meeting where team developers answer three questions: What was done since the last meeting? What are the blocks? What will I be doing next?
Now, Story points are estimates of effort assigned to user stories based on the amount of work, complexity, uncertainty, and risk.
Eventually, the team will learn how many story points it can take during a Sprint and it will be considered as team velocity. To measure the velocity, the average of the last three Sprints can be used.
From my experience, the story points were always given in the first day of the sprint, the planning meeting. Of course, sometimes developers realize the story would actually be worth more / less story points (that is mentioned in the retrospective meeting) but generally speaking, because that's a group decision and these conversations increase the team's knowledge about each story, which will help to make the estimates more accurate.


WYSIWYG for math formulas?

Question: Is there any website or tool that allows you to create math formulas visually which can then be pasted on this website?
I'm looking for something like the equation editor in Microsoft Word or Google Docs.
Comment: Have you seen [this](http://codecogs.com/latex/eqneditor.php)?
Comment: @J.M.: nope, that's a pretty useful website. Still not entirely WYSIWYG, but it's a step in the right direction.
Comment: I'm working on a project that does exactly this. It's not ready yet but I'll report back when it is. If you want a preview, check out http://hristo.oskov.com/Kamma (I recommend using Chrome)
Comment: Maybe [this comparison](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formula_editors) at Wikipedia might be useful for you.
Comment: We need a [WYSIHYD editor](http://www.xkcd.com/1341/) for copy-pasted homework.
Comment: Same question on TeX.SE → https://tex.stackexchange.com/q/57068/250119
Answer:
LyX is almost a WYSIWYG editor to generate document parsed by TeX engine. You can create a math environment with Ctrl+M, type the formula with help of a GUI, and then copy the whole environment. This place the TeX code of the formula into the clipboard.
MathType also support copy-as-TeX when you have enabled it.
Mathematica has the TeXForm[] function to convert its expression into TeX code, but it will have nonstandard commands.
Answer: Almost all my questions, answers and comments here have been created in version 4.10 of MacKichan Software's Scientific WorkPlace (SWP). The latest version is 5.5.
Here is an example

which generates the following code
\frac{1}{4}<\left( x-\frac{5}{2}\right) ^{2}<\frac{9}{4}\Leftrightarrow
\frac{1}{2}<\left\vert x-\frac{5}{2}\right\vert <\frac{3}{2}
enclosed in $$
$$\frac{1}{4}<\left( x-\frac{5}{2}\right) ^{2}<\frac{9}{4}\Leftrightarrow
\frac{1}{2}<\left\vert x-\frac{5}{2}\right\vert <\frac{3}{2}$$
and a quote from the site:

You can create, edit, and typeset mathematical and scientific text
  more easily than ever before. The software is based on an easy-to-use
  word processor that completely integrates writing mathematics and text
  in the same environment. With the built-in computer algebra system,
  you can perform computations right on the screen.
Answer: These are some free version I found on the web that works well enough.
I found another one here
http://camdenre.github.io/src/app/html/EquationEditor
I found an okay one here http://visualmatheditor.equatheque.net/
This one is free but I haven't tried that
http://visualmatheditor.equatheque.net/site/download.html
I was hoping that I can find an even better one where we can work on the actual equation. Something like Microsoft Equation editor but with text version that we can debug too.
I think the note should be useful for many I just don't know a more appropriate place to put it.
I will add more list.
Don't just type text and see some result like savage

Note: I am a programmer. So if I like GUI rather than writing some code to produce something you should be.

WYSIWYG for math formulas?


How long does it take to forge a Maester's chain?

Question: How many links are needed to forge a chain? Are more links prestigious than others? How long does it typically take to earn a full chain?
Comment: There's no such thing as a "full chain". There is always more to learn.
Answer: How long it typically takes to earn a full chain...
The most obvious canon quotes are from "A Feast for Crows";

"Alleras would make a maester. He had only been at the Citadel for a
  year, yet already he had forged three links of his maester's chain.
  Armen might have more, but each of his had taken him a year to earn.
  Still, he would make a maester too. Roone and Mollander remained
  pink-necked novices, but Roone was very young and Mollander preferred
  drinking to reading."
A Feast for Crows, Prologue

and "A Game of Thrones";

"He told me that a maester's collar is made of chain to remind him
  that he is sworn to serve ....A maester forges his chain with study,
  he told me. The different metals are each a different kind of
  learning, gold for the study of money and accounts, silver for
  healing, iron for warcraft"
A Game of Thrones, Jon V

In order to earn sufficient links to call oneself a 'maester', it seems likely that you would need to study as an apprentice for around 10 years but potentially up to 20 before you are awarded the title. This is borne out by the advanced ages of the vast majority of maesters seen as well as our own contemporary understanding of the time needed to achieve multiple doctorates.
How many links are needed...
From the TV series, we can see that the chains seem to contain approximately 20 links and from a quote from GRRM we know that maesters can be awarded multiple links of the same metal if they are especially proficient in a particular area of knowledge. This suggests that a maester never finishes learning or earning links.

[Can a maester's chain include multiple links of the same metal?]
  Mulitple links are possible, and signify that the maester is especially accomplished in that area.

Certain links, such as ravenry can only be awarded by an "Archmaester" whereas other links can be granted by the mutual assent of other maesters or presumably even be self-awarded.
Whether some are more prestigious than others...
Some links such as Black Steel (Ravenry), Copper (History), Silver (Medicine), Pewter (unknown) and Bronze (Astronomy) seem common and relatively easy to attain since they're held by first and second-year students. Others such as Gold (Economics), Iron (Warfare) and Electrum (unknown) are particularly rare and seem to mark the passage into becoming a full-fledged Maester.
Valyrian Steel links (for the study of Magic + the Occult) are exceedingly rare and held by less than one Maester in a hundred. Ironically, they aren't seen as especially prestigious but rather viewed with suspicion.

Luwin slid a finger up under his collar and began to turn it, inch by inch. He had a thick neck for a small man, and the chain was tight, but a few pulls had it all the way around. "This is Valyrian steel," he said when the link of dark grey metal lay against the apple of his throat. "Only one maester in a hundred wears such a link. This signifies that I have studied what the Citadel calls the higher mysteries—magic, for want of a better word. A fascinating pursuit, but of small use, which is why so few maesters trouble themselves with it.
A Clash of Kings, Bran IV
Comment: @TylerH In the books Maester Luwin says that few maesters trouble themselves with studying the higher mysteries so that sounds like show heresay. I added the quote to Valorums answer because it's relevant. Feel free to reverse if you feel otherwise though :)
Comment: I agree with your assessment, however my personal impression is that it would typically take longer than 10 years, and more likely 20-30 years. If a chain contains ~20 links, that's roughly one link per year.
Comment: If you can be awarded them at a rate of 1-2 a year (if gifted) then 10-15 years isn't an unreasonable goal.
Comment: True, but I suspect that a feat of three in one year, being in and of itself unusual as per your first quote, probably implies that they were three of the *easier* links to obtain, thus subsequent links would probably be much harder, many possibly taking several years each.
Comment: @chaiguy - There's also a reference to an overseas Maester wearing a chain so tight it practically chokes him.
Comment: In the books chains are worn tight around the neck so using show images compared to book quotes is probably a bad idea.
Comment: @TheLethalCarrot - The question does not specify that they want a book-only answer.
Comment: @Valorum I'm not saying that, I'm saying that using book quotes in comparison with show images is a bad idea to come to an answer as the chains differ between the two. By the way I have upvoted your answer just wanted to let you know about the difference :)
Comment: @Valorum I thought at one point Maester Luwin gestured to his magic link and said "I studied magic and attempted to use it, like all maesters", which would indicate that all maesters have the magic link, rather than less than one in a hundred. Granted that is from the show...
Comment: @TylerH - "*Like all maesters [...have attempted to use magic]"* - That doesn't imply that they've all gained their magic link, just that they've all tried to use magic at some point.
Comment: @TheLethalCarrot Show heresay or show heresy? ;-)
Answer: Presumably it would take a few years, although I do not recall a specific time being mentioned at any point in the series. The actual length of time seems to depend upon each individual student.
For what it's worth, it is mentioned in the AFFC Prologue that Pate has been at the Citadel for five years but has failed to earn a link. On the other hand, Alleras has been there for a year and has already forged three links.
Comment: Oberyn studied for a few years and forged 6 chains.
Comment: six _chains_ or six _links_?
Comment: @mooingduck - he means *links*
Answer: It might not take as long as you think in a Feast For Crows when Sam, Gilly, and Aemon set sail from the wall Ameon says "I was five-and-thirty and had been a maester of the chain for sixteen years" that means he became a maester by age 19. When the second part of Fire and Blood is released will have a definitive answer, because GRRM will have tell hs at what age Aemon attended the citadel.
Comment: This is a good answer but would be better if you added in the initial quote completely.
Answer: I have to add that Cressen's replacement is stated to only be 25 years old and was very recently sent to Dragonstone as of Clash. Training probably usually starts when a boy is a man grown at 16 (give or take a few years). So I'd say an average of between 10-15 years.
Comment: I don't think this actually answers the question.


How do I disable the middle click in Loki?

Question: Im am using Elementary OS on a laptop and clicking in the middle of the trackpad's buttons would trigger a middle click. I would like to disable that.
Comment: This [answer](http://askubuntu.com/questions/620964/disable-middle-click-emulation) on askubuntu worked for me.
Answer: Running the following command in the terminal could solve this:
xmodmap -e "pointer = 1 25 3 4 5 6 7 8 9"

To make this persistent, edit your ~/.Xmodmap with a text editor either from the terminal:
nano ~/.Xmodmap

or with a graphical text editor:

open files --> go to your home directory --> open .Xmodmap (a hidden
  file) with a right click in "Scratch" or another text editor. If the
  file doesn't exist, create a new file with the name .Xmodmap

and add this line
pointer = 1 25 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Comment: Be great if I could remap middle click to left click instead of disabling it.


highest weight representation and electromagnetic fields

Question: An electromagnetic field is given by 6 components (Ex,Ey,Ez,Bx,By,Bz).
Now this is a 6-dimensional irreducible representation of so(1,3) which
is a highest weight representation. So there should be a single function
S(t,x,y,z) (a "superpotential") corresponding to the highest weight and
such that all the other components are derived from it through lowering
operators. A similar question can be asked for the electromagnetic 4-potential,
(\rho,Ax,Ay,Az); there should be a single function and lowering operators
to derive all components. Can someone provide a reference where this is is
discussed
Comment: There is something not quite right in this question.  The  value of the electromagnetic field *at a point* defines a vector in a six-dimensional real irrep of the Lorentz group, but the electromagnetic field itself defines a section through a homogeneous bundle over Minkowski spacetime associated to that irrep, and the space of sections is an infinite-dimensional representation which is not highest weight and hence I don't see how to arrive at this "superpotential".
Answer: The 6-dimensional representation corresponding to the electromagnetic field is the realification of the symmetric square of the defining representation of $\mathrm{SL}(2,\mathbb{C})$, whose Lie algebra is isomorphic to that of $\mathrm{SO}(1,3)$.  The highest weight vector is the square of the highest weight vector of the defining representation.
Any book which treats electromagnetism in the "spinorial" language should discuss this: perhaps Penrose and Rindler "Spinors and spacetime"?
Answer: I think I see the discrepancy. The 6 components of the field then do NOT transform as
a 6 dimensional rep, even for a fixed spacetime point. The action is :
F(x) -> M(g) * F(g' x)    (F=field, M : 6x6 matrix)
which is an infinite dimensional rep. I don't see any finite reps here at all; so the
common statement "the electromagnetic field transforms as a 6 dimensional rep..." really
isn't true. That being said, is there any way to adapt the well structured theory of
highest weight representation to this infinite representation....


Will it be explained what is going on in the "Kara no Kyoukai" anime movie series?

Question: So I recently watched the first movie in the Kara no Kyoukai series, but it just started without any explanation whatsoever. For the people that have seen the whole movie series, will they explain what is going on and why stuff is happening?
Answer: Well, yes (...mostly). It wouldn't be a particularly good series if it didn't.
The big thing to note is that the movies aren't in chronological order - movie #1 is set after some of the later ones. It starts in medias res, in other words.
If you really want to find out what the chronological order is, see the answers to this question: How do I watch Kara no Kyoukai?. But I wouldn't recommend it - each movie tells you where in the timeline it falls, so you can piece it together yourself as you watch.
In the spoiler block below, I list some mysterious aspects of movie #1 that are explained later. I do not list the actual explanations, so this is only lightly spoilery.

 What's the deal with Shiki's left arm? Who is the girl with Touko at the end? Why can Shiki kill ghosts? How do Shiki, Touko, and Kokutou all know each other? Why does Fujou Kirie have those supernatural abilities? What's all that magico-babble about "records"?

There are, however, some things that won't make sense even after you've seen the entire series (7 movies + epilogue). This is a mostly because Kara no Kyoukai is set in the so-called "Nasuverse", a near-legendarium written primarily by Nasu Kinoko (the author of Kara no Kyoukai). There are some details in Kara no Kyoukai that only make sense in the context of other works in the Nasuverse. That's a whole 'nother rabbit hole for you to delve into if you like what you see in Kara no Kyoukai.


Characteristics of bloch electron in a priodic potential

Question: Effective mass of a Bloch electron in a periodic potential is negative why ?
Answer: It's negative because the effective mass is given by
$$ \left(\frac{1}{m_{\rm eff}}\right)_{ij} = \frac{1}{\hbar^2} \frac{\partial^2 {\mathcal E}}{\partial k_i\,\partial k_j}  $$
It's the second derivative of the energy with respect to the wave number (i.e. momentum). Near the minima, the second derivative is positive, near the maxima, it's negative. It's the same relationship as one knows from quantum field theory except that in a QFT, we differentiate the potential energy of the field $V$ and the second derivative is the squared mass and not just mass.
Click the first link in this answer if you need some justification of the formula above. In effect, one "fits" the shape of the energy as a function of $p$ to the usual form of the kinetic energy, $p^2/2m_{\rm eff}$. Near a minimum, the required effective mass is positive, near the maximum, it's negative.


Water in power steering fluid

Question: My power steering is making noise when turning, checked the fluid and it is a milky color. Was told that it has water in it. Should I do a flush and replace? Can I drive it this way?
Comment: my only experience with this is with my golf 4, I thought the fluid level was good but adding a small amount (like 1cm more height) totally fixed the noise.
Answer: A noisy PS pump is one of 2 things: Wear or low fluid.
It sounds like you have enough fluid, so there's a good chance your pump is on the way out, but it is highly unlikely to fail in such as way that it is unsafe to drive for a while (they tend to get louder and louder and steering gets heavier over time)
As for the fluid, it will need changing yes - its possible that the water/fluid emulsion has actually accelerated the wear rate of your pump, leading to the noise.
Where the water has come from... is hard to say as we don't know the car make/model. but if it's not been changed for a long time (ever?) then general condensation will cause this over time, as per brake fluid.
Edited to add:
Another cause of "milky" fluid is aeration (often due to low fluid level drawing air in from the reservoir), but that will settle out after leaving for a while.

Water in power steering fluid


Is it normal to list contractors on a corporate website?

Question: A company that I previously worked for (full/part-time) is wanting to list me as a contractor on their website.  I built the website originally and they wanted to have an area with a name and picture of all of their contract employees.  I find this a bit uncomfortable and strange... is that just me?  I feel as though if you're a contractor or freelance then the whole point is to avoid being tied to a business.  Am I wrong in feeling this/not wanting myself to be listed?
Comment: This is free marketing. This is so much more effective than a little lame, barely visible credit in the footer of their website.  Take advantage of it! :)
Comment: While the company might use it as marketing, too "look at this huge team we have" while most of the listed people already left already.
Comment: If you have a problem with it, don't give them permission, just be prepared not to work with them in the future if you do.
Answer: Isn't that why they're asking you? Or is it more of a demand? You have every right not to be listed there. The choice is completely up to you whether or not you want to be associated with them or not (unless you signed a contract saying they could list you, in which case you should have read the contract).
Honestly, if I ever hired anyone to do something for me concerning my website, I would ask them if they wanted to be mention in the credits in some way. It's just polite. There's nothing wrong with them wanting to recognize you. If you don't want to be listed, politely tell them that. If the person refused, I'd probably just fill it in with something anonymous like "He Who Shall Not Be Named" just to tell people someone helped with this but didn't want to be mentioned.
Comment: You have a good point, I didn't really think about that.  They are asking, but I figured that quitting and moving to freelance was enough of an attempt to disassociate myself.  Good answer!
Comment: @cereallarceny - They cannot read your mind.  If you don't tell them exactly where you stand, they will assume something that, most likely won't even be in the same ballpark as you.
Answer: For a lot of large corporates it is absolutely normal - it can work in your favour as well as theirs. Assuming the contractor and company have good reputations it is a win-win situation.
They can associate themselves with known good contractors - helping their shareholders gain confidence in the company.
As a quid pro quo you get a free reference (after all, why would the company want your name up there unless they were happy with your work) so you may be able to use this in future.
Answer: To answer the question: No it is not 'normal'.
It indicates that they want to maximise their marketing, advertising and public image through such efforts.
Most companies (in my experience) focus on their products and on contributions by current employees.
So it's not normal.  As to my 'opinions' about it (what most other people are giving), I think it is fine if you are proud of the work and happily putting on your own resume and talking about it.
If you actually have no need for it yourself and no need for the visual reference for future work I would tend to be a little wary and maybe question that a bit more to see exactly where they are coming from.  If you don't want your personal information their (and a photo counts as that), let them know and they'll probably comply.  If it was a real issue you could potentially take legal action but for your situation that's unlikely to be wanted, warranted or needed.