Does suffering entail being overwhelmed for the person who is suffering?

Question: Also are there behaviors that all humans do when they suffer? For instance, do all humans try to alleviate suffering when they experience it?
Answer: -- "Does suffering entail being overwhelmed"
Yes, I think it often does...
...In some cases, when a disagreeable experience arises (irrespective of its sensory modality) we have a strong and completely unconscious attachment - and so suffering arises immediately and without any resistance. In this case we can't speak about "overwhelming" (or else we could categorize this as an absolute "overwhelming" that meets zero resistance) This probably happens more often to children and to people with relatively undeveloped Emotional Intelligence...
-- But in most cases, modern people have developed various coping techniques to try and alleviate potentially disagreeable experience and prevent it from turning into suffering.
The main technique I see people using every day, many times a day, is "reinterpretation". This is when a person re-frames a (potentially) disagreeable experience to make it agreeable. For example, someone drives to a supermarket and sees all parking spots near the entrance taken. The spots in the middle of the lot are taken too. The only available spots are on the far end of the parking lot. The person then re-frames the experience by saying (out loud or to oneself): "This is even better. Will make me walk a longer distance, and I can use some exercise."
Most healthy people have very "healthy" but also rather unconscious habit of re-framing everything they encounter as to protect their inner comfort. They re-frame circumstances, objects, people, and events in such a way as to reduce a sense of failure, doom, inadequacy - and ensure inner peace. Because we are intelligent species, many of us (but not all) prefer these re-interpretations to be logically consistent and to add up to some sort of more-or-less cohesive life philosophy. This requirement of logical consistency makes this process exhibit a kind of self-sustaining growth, what I call hardening of the ego. What I mean by that is the fact that for most people, their newly made (re-)interpretations arise from -- and add to -- the existing set of internalized interpretations. In other words, the new interpretations are offered by the ego to ensure its integrity. If a new re-interpretation successfully manages to prevent a disagreeable experience from turning into suffering, and does not meet too much rejection from the external world, it is added to the ego's collection of workable interpretations. Thereby tightening up ego's space of possible interpretations, or "hardening the ego".
For example, if someone's life grew out of a difficult background, and he or she was not taught positive re-interpretation, this person's ego starts framing the difficulties as something normal and expected, using this as its coping mechanism -- suffering getting reduced when experience match expectations. This interpretative style continues to accumulate new interpretations until it hardens into a cohesively negative or pessimistic worldview. Other people harden into an optimist, a villain, a victim - with corresponding worldview to match.
Most people who grow up in a consistent and non-conflicted environment, by the time they reach adulthood end up having a virtually impenetrable ego with no possibility of interpretative ambiguity - and therefore no space for maneuver when a re-interpretation is required to alleviate another piece of disagreeable experience - but no logically consistent interpretation can be offered without breaking the logical network of assertions comprising the ego. When this happens, we end up being helpless in the face of the disagreeable experience, which at that time can be said to "overwhelm" us and arise as full-blown suffering.
As Buddhism developed historically, it developed various techniques for dealing with this entire pattern of suffering, its arising and prevention. These techniques range from primitive, such as simply "enduring"; switching attention; and forcing the thoughts out, to re-framing, such as seeing things "phenomenologically" as mere "stimuli", "notions", "feelings", "energies" etc; to detachment or letting go of deep-lying assumptions&preconceptions that lead to evaluation of experiences as something negative, to methodical deconstruction of ego's existing interpretations, to non-evaluating acceptance of all experiences, and finally to interpretative ambiguity.
What's cool about interpretative ambiguity is that it ends up being rather enduring in the face of disagreeable experiences of all kinds. The complete mastery of interpretative ambiguity prevents any possibility of being overwhelmed with a disagreeable interpretation of any and all experience. In other words, it prevents suffering.
Comment: What is interpretative ambiguity? You introduced the term without explanation
Comment: Sorry. Basically, it's what we casually call "to give someone the benefit of doubt"
Comment: Does "Give someone the benefit of the doubt" mean seeing everyone as manifestation of Buddha or Bodhisattva?
Comment: Not just every-one, I think everything is Dharma-kaya in some sense. So everything is Buddha and our teacher.
Answer: No, it doesn't necessarily mean that one is overwhelmed.
Example: Let's say I like eating ice cream. Am I overwhelmed at the moment of eating ice cream? No, I'm clearly not. And yet, there is suffering involved there. With a lot of unwholesome states people don't even see the suffering. Like with craving, or the delusion states. They are called that way for a reason.
I think it is one of the most difficult things to understand that there is suffering when following ones desires, like listening to music, eating nice things, watching a loved show/series on TV and so on. And I guess, not seeing the suffering there, is one of the reasons people just think everything is fine and don't bother looking deeper into things.
So, no. I would add that most people don't try to get rid of their suffering, simply because they don't realise they are suffering. Yet.
Comment: Does it sometimes entail being overwhelmed? Also, when eating ice cream and after that feeling full and deciding to stop eating it, is that done to avoid suffering?
Comment: Yes to both questions, imho. As I see it, experience of suffering is a spectrum. On the one end suffering is not noticeable at all (ice cream example) and on the other it's clear and unmistakable. As you said in your answer, every organism will avoid suffering when experienced clearly. It's nature. A full tummy usually comes with unpleasant feelings. And to lessen those and avoid further unpleasantness we stop eating.
Less clear is restlessness. When eating ice (without full tummy) we often miss the unpleasantness that comes with the restlessness.
Comment: @YesheTenley Experiences on the end of the spectrum where suffering is clear and unmistakable can be very overwhelming.
Answer: All sentient beings wish to avoid suffering. This is universal. There is no sentient being that wishes to suffer.  However, we do not always understand suffering and sometimes mistake suffering for happiness. Generally speaking we are quite a confused lot!
I like the answer by Medhini quite a bit and the ice cream example is great. There is suffering when eating ice cream, but few understand this. In fact, just existing in samsara is suffering. It is not satisfactory.
Sentient beings are like a dog tied to a pole. We don't wish to be tied to the pole so we struggle to escape it thinking that freedom from the pole is happiness. In so doing we wind ourselves ever closer and tighter around the pole. We are just so ignorant about how to help ourselves that we keep pulling. The pole is unsatisfactory and so is the whole situation. We need to develop wisdom to understand our predicament before we can release ourselves from the yolk of suffering.
Hope this helps!
Answer: In response to cravings and also in response to suffering, people tend to have expressions of the three poisons of greed or lust, aversion and delusion.
For example, if you eat something that you find pleasurable, you would have cravings to get more of it. When you endeavour to get more of it, that would be the expression of greed or lust. If you crave to become a respected person who has the Doctor title, then you would try to obtain this title. That's also an expression of greed.
If someone prematurely takes away something that you're enjoying, or causes you pain, you may become angry or agonized and try to alleviate the source of pain and suffering. That's an expression of aversion.
If you become so consumed by anger when someone hurts you that you vow to take revenge on them, that's delusion. Or if you desire something so much, you cling to it and become addicted to it, affecting your normal life experience. Delusion causes you to not be able to see reality clearly and have your judgment clouded.
In my opinion, the three poisons could overwhelm a person, but I would say that delusion is more overwhelming than greed and aversion. It makes suffering worse, deeper and longer lasting.
In the Magandiya Sutta (MN75), the Buddha speaks of one being overwhelmed by lust and delusion over sensual pleasures:

"Now suppose that there was a leper covered with sores & infections,
  devoured by worms, picking the scabs off the openings of his wounds
  with his nails, cauterizing his body over a pit of glowing embers. The
  more he cauterized his body over the pit of glowing embers, the more
  disgusting, foul-smelling, & putrid the openings of his wounds would
  become, and yet he would feel a modicum of enjoyment & satisfaction
  because of the itchiness of his wounds. In the same way, beings not
  free from passion for sensual pleasures — devoured by sensual craving,
  burning with sensual fever — indulge in sensual pleasures. The more
  they indulge in sensual pleasures, the more their sensual craving
  increases and the more they burn with sensual fever, and yet they feel
  a modicum of enjoyment & satisfaction dependent on the five strings of
  sensuality.


Which attack occurs first: nucleophilic acyl substitution or nucleophilic substitution?

Question: If there is a compound with a site for nucleophilic acyl substitution (i.e. an ester group or the like) as well as a nucleophilic substitution (i.e. a bromine group or the like), will a nucleophile preferentially attack one of them? How do i decide which one a nucleophile would prefer attacking?
Comment: Based on the fact that the pi bond is more reactive, in the sense that it is more easily broken, nucleophilic acyl substitution may be more kinetically favourable and would thus occur first.
Answer: The answer is - it depends. On the conditions, on the solvent, on the nucleophile being used, on which ester is being used. You may get selectivity, you may get attack at both sites which generates a mixture.
In the real world of chemistry you often don't know for certain until you run the experiment unless someone has published an exact procedure for the transormation which you follow.


Epson SureColor P600 printing violet instead of black

Question: The print head on my P600 tests properly, but I get what looks like violet dandruff on the underside of the brim of a black top hat. I saw a question on this site "What is my Epson SureColor P600 suddenly printing weird cyan colors?" A respondent suggested shaking the matte black cartridge even though the nozzle test was clear. Did this work? Why would it work? Thanks.
Answer: I changed the photo black cartridge. The P600 ink level graphic appears to show there is some ink when in fact there is not enough to print, unlike the Epson 3800 and 2400 printers which I used before this one. Simple answer.
Answer: I reported a similar problem to Epson Support. Their test protocol:
1. Print test page.
2. Check for complete registration from each of eight ink cartridges.
3. If registration incomplete or absent, then clean print heads at least three times.
4. Print test page again.
5. If problem not resolved, wait 6 hours then print page again.
6. If problem still not resolved, call Epson Support for further support.


Should a database server be in a different VM instance as an application?

Question: I'm setting up a database server as a separate VM in my server so that I can control resources, and make backups of just that instance. I own a server that will reside in a colo soon. Is this the best way to approach my DB regarding scalability? Are there any security concerns? Do I listen at localhost still, even though it's a separate instance? And, is there any benefit to running your DB (PostgreSQL in my case) in the same machine as your application (web based SAAS application in my case)?
Answer: Scalable systems usually partition the application and the database, so you're on the right track.  Security should be good as long as you use the built-in IP filtering of pgSQL.
As far as benefits of running everything on one server, its definitely easy to backup, but all it takes is one hardware failure and your entire application goes down.
If you're just getting started, money is probably the biggest factor towards not doing this, but I would suggest two physical servers running two VMs each (one application, one DB) and setup to be able to failover to each other.
Comment: Thanks. I never log in on SF (just SO), so I'm a bit late.
Answer: I'd say you start with one machine hosting both application and database. It is still quite easy moving the database to a separate machine or cluster or whatever when you find a need for it.
When setting up the system, just keep in mind that your infrastructure might need to change in the future. Maybe assign a hostname for the database already from the beginning, so you don't need updating the application whenever the database is moved. Just point the hostname to the new location.
Having a lot of hardware (be it physical or virtual) when you don't need just lead to overhead and potential failures. You may or may not ever need more resources, but don't overgrow from the beginning.
Keep it simple!


What does it mean when a block is "kicked"?

Question: While mining on a NOMP mining pool, I noticed that when you add the confirmed blocks and pending blocks together, they rarely add up to the total blocks found. It is my understanding that the missing blocks were "kicked." What does it mean when a block is "kicked"?
Answer: The term seems to have been defined in this GitHub issue: https://github.com/zone117x/node-open-mining-portal/issues/138#issuecomment-42396180.
Kicked basically means orphaned one way or another. Apparently, the creator of this pool software was seeing some strange behavior in the way the daemon would report blocks as being orphaned, and decided to just call them all "kicked" blocks than to differentiate how they were orphaned.
If you are unsure what orphaned blocks are, look at this: What are orphaned and stale blocks?. Essentially they are solved blocks that are not accepted by the network, usually because a different block at the same height was solved at nearly the same time.


Soviets, their war equpment and performance in WWII

Question: If the Soviets excelled in their military equipment, why were the Germans able to inflict such heavy casualties on them through-out the war?
Comment: This isn't a discussion forum but the simple answer is that, unlike a computer game, the outcome in real warfare isn't simply decided by who has the best bit(s) of equipment.
Comment: The German-Soviet war is just an excellent example that having (some) good weapons and  superiority in numbers is no guarantee of good military performance.  Finnish-Soviet war is even more striking example.
Comment: I would ask folks to hold closing this question. It is one that I can answer well and a lot of other people would wonder the same thing. I've taken the liberty of cutting down the text to a simpler question which can be answered.
Comment: @Schwern, go ahead :) and you most welcome to make the question as condensed as possible (as you already did)
Comment: Surprise attack.
Comment: Duplicate of http://history.stackexchange.com/q/1239/1979
Answer: Having good equipment doesn't mean you're using it effectively.  And the side that wins is not necessarily the side that takes the least casualties.
First, how could they take so many casualties with superior equipment?
When the Germans invaded the Soviet Union they had a lot going for them. Surprise, superior tactics, good communication, and independently thinking officers.  The Soviets had none of that.  What they had was numbers, some superior equipment, and room to retreat.  But it wasn't always that way, and it wouldn't last after the first year of the war.
Between WWI and WWII, the Soviets were on the cutting edge of military technology and thought. Germans and Soviets, both pariah states, worked together on developing new military equipment and tactics.
 What we know as Blitzkrieg was conceived by the Soviets as Глубокая операция aka Deep Operation.  They'd invested early in tanks and aircraft, new technology at the time, and concentrated them into Mechanized Corps for rapid, deep thrusts behind enemy lines.
Then in the late 1930s came the Great Purge. Much of the Soviet military leadership was executed or exiled.  What was left were mediocre party hacks, incapable and unwilling to do anything but follow orders to the letter.  Division commanders had to answer to political officers.  Deep Operation, being the idea of purged officers, was discredited.  Their tanks were dispersed to support the more ideologically acceptable infantry.
The disaster of the Winter War of 1939/40 humiliated the Soviets and made their military the laughing stock of the world.  As a result some reforms were begun.  Commanders were called back from exile.  New units were formed.  But it wasn't enough and they were out of time.  They thought they'd bought themselves more time with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of non-aggression, but the Germans did not honor it.
Although the Soviets were able to mobilize, Operation Barbarossa was a surprise attack.  By concentrating their forces the Germans achieved numerical superiority in manpower over the Soviets in the opening attack.  WWII was fought at a pace never before seen and only the Germans had the experience and training to fight it. They had by this point successfully invaded Poland, Norway, France, and the Balkans all with a speed and ferocity no one else could yet match.
Just as the Allies could not keep up with the Germans in the Battle Of France, the Soviets could not match the pace of the German attack.  It could take hours for information to work its way up command, for the commanders to make their decisions, and for new orders to work their way back down. By that time the situation would have changed and the orders would be woefully out of date.  The Soviets, like everyone else, could not keep up with the pace of Blitzkrieg.  As a result their armies were encircled and wiped out.  Hundreds of thousands of troops were captured in the opening weeks.
On a tactical level, the Soviet army was very poorly trained.  Soldiers who had never seen a car before might be driving a tank after a few hours training.  The lack of training meant infantry could mostly manage frontal wave attacks instead of outflanking or advancing with fire and movement.
It was a great German innovation to give every tank a radio (keep in mind in 1941 radios were bulky and expensive and unreliable) allowing coordinated maneuvers even in the heat of battle.  Most Allied tanks of the period had no radio and communicated with flags allowing only the simplest of tactics and almost no control during battle.
The T-34 and KV-1 were equal or superior in the important areas (firepower, protection, mobility) over any German tank of 1941, but they were relatively few (only a few thousand).  Individual actions lead to heroic stories and often threw off tight German timetables, they were more often very poorly used.  The vast majority of the 23,000 Soviet tanks were outdated light tanks such as the BT-7 and T-26.  While a qualitative match for the still numerous German Panzer II, their poor tactics meant they were cut to ribbons.
Fortunately for the Soviets (and everyone) a combination of German overconfidence, stubborn resistance by the Soviets, and Hitler's amateurish meddling diffused the German armies' striking power.  They fell just short of Moscow before winter set in.  Long supply lines, a dilapidated transportation system, a lack of logistical preparation for a long war, and surprising continued Soviet resistance further hampered the Germans
As the war drew on the Soviets recovered from their initial shock.  The outdated equipment had been destroyed.  New equipment equal to the Germans was pouring off the production lines.  More men and equipment were being shifted east.  The Moscow and Leningrad were holding.  Most importantly, they were learning from the Germans how to fight.  In late 1942 this all culminated at Stalingrad when the overstretched Germans were halted and surrounded in an enormous envelopment called Operation Uranus that clawed the guts out of the German army.

Why did the Soviets take so many more casualties than the Germans? To put it simply: because they could and the Germans couldn't and that was how they were going to win the war.  It was a cold calculus that the Soviets could not match the Germans in tactics and training, but they could replace men and machines faster than the Germans could and they were going to use that to win.
In 1941 that was not nearly enough.  Soviet tactics and training were just too inferior, and there were too few of their modern equipment.  Even then the sheer size of the Soviet army and scale of the Soviet Union slowed the Germans enough to survive, plus some stubborn resistance.  With Soviet tactics and equipment always improving by late 1942 they had sufficiently closed the gap with the Germans to overmatch them.
While at the Battle Of Kursk the Soviets lost tanks and guns at a rate of 3-to-1, but because they held the field they could recover and repair their vehicles while the German loses were gone forever.  Through repairs and manufacturing the Soviets were back up to strength in a month, but for the Germans this was their final throw of the dice on the Eastern Front.  The Germans could not replace the lost equipment fast enough to concentrate enough firepower for an offensive campaign on the scale needed on the Eastern Front and hold off the Allies in Italy and guard against an expected invasion somewhere between Southern France and Norway.  The Soviets knew it.  From now on the Germans would be fighting on the defensive.
Note: the casualties of the Battle Of Kursk are often mixed in with the follow up Soviet counter-offensives Operation Polkovodets Rumyantsev and Operation Kutuzov wherein the Soviets took very heavy casualties, particularly in armor.

There is a simple reality of war that you fight with the army you have.  The Soviets did just that.  They had a very large but under-trained army.  They had a range of equipment from some of the best to some of the worst.  All of which could be replaced.  They had poor communication and coordination, but lots of room to fall back.  They eventually learned how to avoid being surrounded by the Germans and how to use their superior numbers and effective equipment to concentrate force and land hammer blows of their own, blows from which they knew the Germans could not recover.
Comment: `Operation Barbarossa was a surprise attack` Not tactically, as Soviet intelligence service got all info about it. But the Red Army still needed a couple of years to finish the reforms, that's true.
Answer:
The Soviet Union purged their military leadership prior to the war and crippled it with the commissar system. When they finally allowed the military professionals to fight, they became much more effective.
German weaponry was superior in a few specific aspects. Many of their tanks had worse guns and better radios, while Soviet tank platoon commanders had to use signal flags.
At the beginning of the war, Germany achieved surprise and inflicted massive casualties.

It took the Soviets some time to regain their balance. Then they won.
Comment: @kreuzerkrieg It's important to note that [the original question](http://history.stackexchange.com/questions/27416/did-the-soviets-excel-in-one-area-of-weaponry-during-world-war-ii) was about whether the Soviets had any areas of military equipment which they excelled at. Here we answer the question that's asked, the more focused and factual the better. The Soviets did, so they got their answers. We avoiding judging why they want to know. We avoid broadening the question. We definitely don't turn it into cheering for a particular side. You did the right thing by asking your own question.
Comment: main bulk of German tanks during the invasion to SU were pzkpfw III which were inadequate for penetrating frontal armor of T-34. BUT, T-34 wasnt the mass soviet tank as of 1941, and panzer III was facing mainly bt-26 and it has adequate armament to destroy these, as of 1942 when number of t-43 increased the pzkpfw III was upgraded with 50mm gun to deal with T-34. And by the way does Germans have gun stabilization? dont remember, Soviets doesnt, for sure.
Comment: @kreuzerkrieg, I seem to remember that *all* German tanks were supposed to have a radio. That's a lethal weapon. Shoot - Move - Communicate.
Comment: that's it, weapons, or any other military materiel does not wage the war, people do, Germans knew how to use their advantages in the equipment (radios for example) and how to escape catastrophic fails knowing their weaknesses (like thin armor and weak guns), so, what is the point of the original question, does Soviets excel in any weapon system? they won, so for sure they had superior weapons, or maybe, Germans killed Soviets at 5 to 1 ratio, meaning German weapons were superior. weapons are nothing, training, tactics and logistics is everything


How to check whether the invention is already patented

Question: Suppose i have invented something useful. before applying for a patent is there any way which will help me in identifying whether the invention is already patented or not.
Answer: Patentability is determined based on whether your idea is new and non-obvious over prior art. Prior art does includes patents and published patent applications, but can also include non-patent literature such as webpages, journal articles, physical products, catalogs, photographs, and the like. Accordingly, determining patentability involves a search of all prior art, not a determination of whether the invention is already patented. Stated another way, an invention that is not be patented, or was never patented, might still not be patentable because it is not new and non-obvious in light of available prior art.
On the other hand, something is "patented" when there is a valid and enforceable issued patent that covers the given invention.
To do a prior art search, a good place to start is Google Patents. Also consider doing a general internet search.


Measure latency and other statistics by comparing PCAPs

Question: I need to measure certain statistics, such as latency, packet delay, and jitter. Would it be possible to measure these statistics between 2 nodes by sniffing traffic on both ends and then comparing times between when the packets were captured? BTW It is likely the two nodes won't be able to see each other, but they could later down the road.
Comment: There are things like IP SLA to do this specifically, and depending on the network equipment vendor, it may already be built into your network devices.
Comment: Depending on the precision of the capturing system's timer, chances are very high that you can't really capture such small periods of time.

Latencies of switches and hardware routers are in the microsecond range and usually too small to measure without special hardware or a very tricky setup.
Comment: Just curious, what do you mean with " It is likely the two nodes won't be able to *see* each other" ? That they are not in the same L2 broadcast domain (LAN/VLAN)?
Comment: Correct they are not in same LAN.
Comment: Did any answer help you? If so, you should accept the answer so that the question doesn't keep popping up forever, looking for an answer. Alternatively, you could provide and accept your own answer.
Answer: You can't measure these statistics by sniffing traffic because most of packets would normally pass thru OSI layer 7 and response could be delayed due to application responding slowly and many other factors.
As Ron mentioned you can use IP SLA and draw graphs for example in Cacti or nProbe, NTOP could be as well used to collect jitter statistics. Netflow would be good source of information. For very simple measurments you can use tools like mtr.
Comment: Not sure if I understand the 1st paragraph. Note that OP asks about taking 2 simultaneous captures (on the 2 nodes that are sending packets to each other, or maybe just one to the other) and comparing them to one another, so there is no L7 involved IMHO. I think that the 2 captures would indeed provide enough information to determine jitter and (round-trip) delay, to some extent. Don't know if any tools exist to do that tho.
Comment: Thank you all for your input. I think I will go with hertitu and Ron Maupin. Thank you for your suggestions Datargram.Network
Answer: You can't guarantee that the two hosts where the traffic were captured had their clocks synced. There could be 10s of ms of deviations between the two hosts even with NTP enabled on them. Now, if the two hosts were synced to the same NTP source (stratum0) and are on the same LAN network, we can ensure that they are precise to within a few ms. If they are synced to WAN based NTP sources available on the internet (like pool.ntp) which usually have stratum1/2 and different NTP sources. the deviations could be in 10s of ms. So your latency packet-delay and jitter will be quite off
Answer: You can use tshark (or wireshark) which has some options to get latency, jitter and other metrics:
<code>       -z icmp,srt[,filter]
           Compute total ICMP echo requests, replies, loss, and percent loss, as well as minimum, maximum, mean, median and sample standard deviation SRT statistics typical of what ping provides.

       -z rtp,streams
           Collect statistics for all RTP streams and calculate max. delta, max. and mean jitter and packet loss percentages.
</code>
Note that for the above 2 options to work, you will need to respectively have ICMP and RTP packets in your network capture.
Example using ICMP and RTP sample captures from Wireshark Sample Captures:
<code>$ tshark -qr nflog.pcap -z icmp,srt
==========================================================================
ICMP Service Response Time (SRT) Statistics (all times in ms):
Filter: <none>

Requests  Replies   Lost      % Loss
6         4         2          33.3%

Minimum   Maximum   Mean      Median    SDeviation     Min Frame Max Frame
0.000     1116.657  279.166   0.003     558.328        29        37
==========================================================================

$ tshark -qr aaa.pcap -z rtp,streams
========================= RTP Streams ========================
    Src IP addr  Port    Dest IP addr  Port       SSRC          Payload  Pkts         Lost   Max Delta(ms)  Max Jitter(ms) Mean Jitter(ms) Problems?
    192.168.1.2 30000   22.214.171.124 40392 0x3796CB71 ITU-T G.711 PCMA     9     0 (0.0%)           69.95            7.80           18.02
==============================================================
</code>


How to recover coins from a wallet that uses BIP32 Deterministic Keys?

Question: Say I am using an online wallet that uses BIP32 deterministic keys and the site goes down. I have a backup of my seed (passphrase). Is there a github repo that I can download, run on an offline computer, present it with my seed, present it with the BIP32 Path: m/44'/0'/0'/0/2 and recover the private key associated with that seed/path so that I can transfer the funds out of it?
Answer: Here's a web tool for BIP32 key derivation.
The only problem is the hardcoded 50k rounds of HMAC-SHA256. You do need to know how your wallet software exactly derived the master private key from the mnemonic or you'll get totally different keys. Unfortunately there's no standard convention for the HD wallet backup/restore process and I'm afraid this ranks quite high among the biggest downsides against Bitcoin adoption.
Comment: I like your answer, but I don't agree that this is a barrier to adoption. It is up to the hardware wallet makers to put forward standards for discussion on the developers forum.


How do you deal with legitimate questions from a troll?

Question: What do you do about legitimate questions from the Python Newbie guy (for those who don't know)? Should I flag them as spam and downvote them, or should I leave them alone?
Answer: If it's a legitimate question, it shouldn't matter who asked it. Don't worry about who's asking the question, judge the question on its own merits.
As such, if the post isn't spam, I say it shouldn't be flagged as spam. If it's a good question, it probably shouldn't be downvoted (Of course, your votes are yours to do with as you will). As others have stated, however, flagging the post for moderator attention to let them know that the troll is circumventing post bans is perfectly legitimate. I just don't believe that a good post from a bad user should suffer for the actions of the asker.
Comment: This ^^^^^^^^^^^
Comment: I generally would agree to this. However for this type of user, leaving "legitimate questions" like this will only cause more problems down the line. What if there is an [explosion of activity](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/178277/how-do-some-questions-get-so-many-votes) for this question? That will provide the user rep which grants privileges which could lead to even more headaches. If he gets 50, he'd be able to comment anywhere making tracking all the more difficult. If he gets 100, he could associate accounts on other sites and wreak havoc there.
Comment: @JeffMercado Deleting the user's account, or otherwise applying punishments to it, as a result of bad activity unrelated to this post would be fine.  Banning the account because it's ban evading, for example, is fine.  Flagging the post because it's ban evading, or because it's simply the first question you found when you wanted to report behavior that can't be flagged, would be fine.  None of that would justify downvoting the post, voting to close, etc.
Comment: I sense a Reversal badge coming, and it's only been 20 minutes! +1
Comment: Every saint has a past; every sinner has a future.  (but on SE, the past is tracked, so really only the second part of that applies!)
Comment: @Servy: The wording of this answer suggests that nothing should be done about it which I would strongly disagree with which is what I'm addressing. Flagging this sort of question when the problem user has been identified should be the only _necessary_ action here. Other actions to do is up to the flagger's discretion. It's their votes to cast and they don't need to justify their reasoning to anyone.
Comment: @JeffMercado That's fair. I'll edit the answer to reflect my stance on that.
Answer: I've dealt with many of this user's accounts, and tried to figure out a way to handle them, so I can explain my approach so far. First, I should comment that this user has been an ongoing nuisance since the start of the year, and we've probably deleted something like 100+ of their accounts since then. They've worked around IP bans and other extreme measures to continue to post here, and have posted some rather odd content. I seriously think this is a person who needs real psychological help, from other things I've found out there by them.
They generally follow a pattern of posting decent or borderline questions for a little bit, then flipping out and posting diatribes about the FBI or a Google robots.txt conspiracy (among the more tame things they've posted). Because they aren't here to contribute positively, and show no signs of improving, I typically delete their accounts on sight.
However, I leave any good questions alone. I do not destroy their accounts (which automatically removes everything posted by a user) and instead simply delete them. Unfortunately, even the latter has the consequence of triggering a deletion of downvoted content by that user, so sometimes acceptable but downvoted questions get removed at that point.
Comment: Oh yeah, we have a deletion reason for accounts created to circumvent bans now. I forgot about that. http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/192820/recent-mass-football-spam/192847#192847
Comment: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/08/changing-ip-address-to-access-public-website-ruled-violation-of-us-law/ "Changing your IP address or using proxy servers to access public websites you've been forbidden to visit is a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), a judge ruled Friday"
Comment: @BoltClock'saUnicorn - I hope that will come in handy for cases like this, where I'm now tagging the deleted accounts with the person's name. I can imagine SE setting up an easy query for their deleted accounts and patterns they exhibit for designing more interesting countermeasures.
Answer: In general, judging a question only on its own merits, as StephenTG answered, seems the right thing to do.
An argument against that, though, would be for extreme cases of a troll playing a long game and posting good questions in order to ultimately cause more damage.
Someone with a set of good questions could decide to use the power of their ownership of those questions to delete them (temporarily damaging SE, at least until someone restores them), or to maliciously alter them so that their answers no longer match (causing confusion and damaged SE while it is figured out).
Not judging the user is probably the best policy, and sticking to it might be good just for consistency, but we should keep in mind what could be done by a troll owning a set of good questions (or answers).  Their questions might end up being more trouble than they are worth.
Comment: And yet trying to punish them for posting good content in anticipation of them trying to use it maliciously later would still be wrong.  If the user needs to be banned for malicious actions that they've performed, then that's fine.  If a user is ban evading then you could flag a legitimate post to indicate that to a moderator, who will take the appropriate action.
Comment: In fairness, I am really describing a kind of incorrigible, patient super-troll that may not even exist in the wild.  I agree with you, though I would like to know how well positive reinforcement fares with even garden-variety trolls.  By the way, might making long-time trolls' good questions community wiki be a way to protect against the worst future damage while not losing out on having their good questions?
Comment: If the account has performed highly improper actions outside of the scope of this one question (clearly the case here) then deletion of their account is appropriate.  The account can be deleted without deleting all of their questions.  The questions are then disassociated from the account (which is still different from being CW).
Comment: Actually that sounds perfect...even better than CW.  The only thing to worry about would be someone pulling the trigger on their long-term troll plan before being detected.  At this point, though, I am pretty sure I am giving trolls too much credit!
Answer: The answer: Don't help them. Questions about keyboard automation and logging into a remote server without needing to type a password? He must have been laughing his head off every time someone wrote his trolling tools for him.
Comment: I doubt any of this is stuff he's actually used. He's been trolling in the same manner since at least January here, and he's been a persistent troll on other communities since 2007 or so. I don't think people have handed him anything that he didn't already have. His patterns haven't changed much over time.


Product release process in Agile?

Question: Can anyone please explain the product release process in agile methodology? I have a bit idea about the release plan. Are both same? If any difference are there then kindly speak.
Comment: Hi Ansuman, welcome to PM.SE! The Q&A format we have in StackExchange is modeled to address specific questions rather than open debates. Because of it, could you frame your question focused on an actual problem you have? As it stands, it's unclear what kind of answer you'd expect. Take a look at [help] for more details.
Answer: Release process means the steps you have to go through to get a product or product change into the marketplace or being used in its intended context. It is usually independent of the methods used to develop the product but is very dependent on the type of product, the technologies used and the organisation you work in.
Release planning is something different. Typically that means putting product features on a timeline or into a sequence to indicate when they will be available.
There is really no such thing as "agile methodology". Agile refers to an approach - a set of ideas, techniques and principles that can be used to solve complex, adaptive problems.
Answer: This is a large topic to answer so I'll just add some general information. If you have other questions or things are still unclear, you should open more specific questions.

In more traditional software projects that employ sequential phases for building software (like the Waterfall model for ex.) releasing software (i.e. making it available to users) usually happens in the final phases of the project. A release means to package and deploy the application, usually in a production environment, although it can be also in other environments for testing, validation, etc. The release could be done manually or automatically. It was usually a manual process since it was happening only once. Sometimes, intermediary releases could also be created (like for important milestones) which could be deployed to various environments. These tended to include many functionalities or sometimes the complete application but not 100% functional or with bugs, often denominated as Alpha versions, Beta, Gamma, etc, and then the Live release.
With the advert of Agile methods, the more traditional release model changed because one of the ideas behind Agile is to deliver software often. Each sprint creates a potentially releasable product increment. You no longer have big releases full of features, you have smaller ones that incrementally add more and more functionality to the application. Having this idea in mind now involves some sort of automation of builds/releases because it will be a pain to do them manually so often.
There are Agile teams that release software even sooner than after each sprint using techniques like continuous delivery and continuous deployment.
Since you deploy small functionalities very often, you might not think about those increments as releases, because they are small. Traditionally, a release was something feature packed, something of considerable size. So Agile also has this notion of releases.
A release in Agile means to wait before making features available to the user and packing them into one big package. Instead of delivering each sprint, you might decide to deliver once every quarter, for example, or for important events. You still develop working software each sprint, but you just wait until you have more features and then release them. This is a business decision and depends on the organization, the domain, the application, etc.
So, in Agile, a release is a combination of features from multiple sprints. You can of course decide to release every, say, 6 sprints, or you can do a release planning before hand. This is probably the thing you mention in your question. Release planning is a longer term, higher level planning to decide what each release should contain, get a feel of when the whole product might be finished (with what's currently in the backlog), what features it will contain, how much they will cost, and how to set the priorities for working in each sprint to make those things happen.
As with many other things in Agile, the release planning is something that happens more or less continuously (or at least in an iterative manner), it's not just something you do at the beginning of the project. A product backlog in Agile is not a full set of requirements and specifications, it's a living artifact that will evolve as you learn more about the product. So a release planning is a large level forecast that will change in time, it's not a bunch of deadlines that must be hit spot on or else...
Answer: This is a big topic, but I can talk about the release process in the organisation I work in.
The development teams continually deliver working code to the production environment, but they hide the new functionality behind feature toggles. The idea being that while releases are frequent, it is a business decision as to when the new features are made visible to the customers.
The benefit of this is that it combines the agile approach of delivering working software frequency with the flexibility that marketing, sales and other business teams need.
Comment: And other benefits like low risks of something very bad happening (because not a lot of changes are released), additional speed (e.g. when it comes to data migrations that need to be run before feature can be introduced), ability to introduce bug fixes quickly, stressless releases, etc.
Answer: Agile isn't a methodology and it doesn't prescribe how you build your process and how you release. Though it does suggest a short delivery cycle.
There are 3 common approaches to releases*:

Scheduled-based releases. E.g. in Scrum you deliver your increment at the end of the sprint. Usually Waterfall is also based on the delivery schedule, but it may as well fall under the next category.
Scope-based releases. You finish a scope of work - then you release. Just-in-time (Kanban) and Theory of Constraints are modern approaches that follow this ideology. Ideally each time you complete a task - you release.
Continuous Delivery (CD). Suggests that we release even the work that's not yet finish (we hide it with Feature Toggles or Branching by Abstraction). Unless something's broken - you can deliver.

#3 is the fastest approach, #2 achieves the highest level of quality. Note that at the beginning of the project there's probably nothing to release, so don't follow these (or any other) rules blindly.
*This is my personal terminology, I don't know if some well-known classification exists.

Product release process in Agile?


Why did Japan not withdraw from China as its pacific front was crumbling and the threat of US invasion imminent?

Question: Even in August, Japan still kept garrisons in China totalling around 3 million men. They were second-line troops and poorly equipped, yes, but why did Japan not recall everyone to defend the home islands as the US invasion draws near?
Comment: @LennartRegebro: If the atomic bomb hadn't been dropped, the U.S. would have launched an invasion of [Shikoku](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shikoku) (one of the small southern islands) in November, 1945.
Comment: Actually, Operation Olympic was planned for that date to occupy Kyushu, the large southern island.
Comment: Was it really "drawing near"? I was under the impression that they would have needed to take several more islands before they were in a situation where they could launch an invasion.
Answer: I can think of a number of reasons, but they fall under two categories: 1) Logistics and 2) Morale
Logistics.
With the Japanese islands cut off from the outside world, the Japanese islands could not produce enough food to feed its population and the soldiers already on the islands. Pulling another 2-3 million troops from China would have only aggravated that problem. Whereas the soldiers in China could feed themselves and "smuggle" some food to the home islands past the naval blockade. Finally, as Pieter pointed out, holding China (and its food-producing areas) prevented the Allies from easily capturing them, and using the food and other supplies for the invasion (instead of bringing them thousands of miles from the United States).
Morale.
With the Allied blockade, not all of the Japanese forces would have been successfully repatriated. Perhaps half of them might have been sunk by Allied ships. Having half the China army at the bottom of the sea would have probably done more damage to morale than the (shell-shocked) survivors would have contributed to the defense. And oddly enough, when a country is threatened with invasion, having an overseas "colony" may be a consolation; at least someone else is worse off than you are.
Comment: I had forgotten that Japan was short of food; good pick-up.
Comment: This seems sensical in and of itself, but I think you forgot 2 things: Manchuria had tons of iron and other metals needed for the factories, whereas Japan had very limited metal resources. And I believe the population of Japan was around 70 million in 1945, and they were training civilians in basic combat to stop invasions, so talking about a 2 to 3 million "reinforcement" is proportionally not very significant.
Answer: How many troop transports did the Japanese retain at that point in time? What success would they have had by then in protecting such a cargo from US submarines, surface vessels and air craft while it shuttled across?
The East China Sea is a far cry from the Straights of Dover after all, and that wasn't called The Miracle of Dunkirk for no reason. The North Sea was amazingly calm for three days, and the Germans were caught unprepared by having out-run their supplies again.
Also the economic and geographic resources that Japan continued to occupy in China would have simplified the US logistics for an invasion considerably.
Update:
It's called a collapsing bag defence, intended to hold out as long as possible. Contract too slowly, and some of your forces will be isolated and captured unnecessarily; too quickly and you have failed your objective. Urquhart performed it masterly at Arnhem, with the aid of his immovable wounded.
In every battle there is a correct strength to  devote to each objective, according to the plan adopted. Any serious criticism of the adopted plan would require detailed knowledge of, and analysis of, the Japanese intentions for defence of the home islands. Certainly US casualty estimates for the invasion do not recognize any major flaw.
Comment: @SchwitJanwityanujit Consider aerial attack - if a ship with their own soldiers is sunk, they've lost soldiers. But if a ship with POWs is sunk - well, they have less mouths to feed...
Comment: @SchwitJanwityanujit It's not comparable. Didn't ferry troops, they treated the prisoners of war as cargo, and cared as much for them. Many died.
Comment: @SchwitJanwityanujit Of course they can ferry troops. And they did. This does not mean that they could ferry troops in an amount that would be significant in an invasion. And once again, the hell ships were not troop ships. Most of them were cargo ships, with the POW's held in the cargo bay. This would not have been acceptable for troops.
Comment: According to this wiki article on hell ships - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell_ship#cite_note-9 - the Japanese were ferrying POWs from the Philippines as late as 1945 and some were even relocated to Korea afterwards. Surely if they can ferry POWs from the Philippines, they could've ferried an army corps across the tsushima strait?
Comment: @LennartRegebro Of course, but it still implies that they CAN ferry troops if they wanted to. Instead they ferried POW's...why?
Answer: Another issue was that the China War was run by the Japanese Army.  The war against America was run by the Japanese Navy.
These two groups did not cooperate much if at all with each other during the war.
Source: Wikipedia on "Interservice Rivalries". Virtually any history of the development of the IJN will also give some information

Japan
The long-term discord between the Imperial Japanese Army and Imperial Japanese Navy was one of the most notorious examples of interservice rivalry. The situation, with its origin traced back to Meiji period, came with geo-political consequences leading to Japan's involvement in World War II. The IJA/IJN rivalry expressed itself in the early 1930s as the "strike north" and "strike south" factions. The strike north faction advocated the conquest of China a scenario in which the prime role would be taken by the Army, the strike south faction advocated the taking of Indonesia a scenario in which the Navy would predominate. In order to further their own faction relatively junior officers resorted to the assassinations of members of the rival faction and their supporters in government. Initially the strike north plan was deemed the more prudent course leading first to the occupation of Manchuria and then the fullscale invasion of China, however, a number of the powerful industrial Zaibatsus were convinced that their interests would be best served fulfilling the needs of the Navy and with their the support the Pacific War was initiated.
The IJA and IJN rivalry also saw both services developing air arms, the Army creating its own amphibious infantry units and running ships and submarines including submarine chasers, the Navy meanwhile would create its own paratroop force.
Other examples of this rivalry include, it is said, the Japanese Navy taking several weeks to inform the Army of the disastrous results of the Battle of Midway.
In his 1991 statement Shōwa Tennō dokuhakuroku (昭和天皇独白録), Emperor Shōwa (Hirohito) made a connection between the Army-Navy rivalry and the defeat of Japan.
Comment: A source could help here...
Answer: It was also partially due to their fundamental beliefs about the war and their pride. They didn't just view taking China and other islands as "land grabbing". They genuinely wanted to create a unified East Asian dominion under the Japanese flag because they believed at their core that they were superior to everyone else around them and in the world. Even if they knew of invasion plans, they would never admit to the people of Japan (whom they routinely lied to) or their own soldiers that the U.S. was capable of actually invading them by withdrawing from China to help defend the homefront. That would lead to recognizing failure and an inadequacy to defend their land.
Answer: The Kwantung Army in Manchuria was largely made up from a Division of Indian soldiers who had defected from the British Army in Burma. They were considered unreliable soldiers by both sides.
Control of Manchuria ("Manchukuo") denied America the ability to forward base aircraft in China within easy striking range of the home islands, however that was just one consideration.
It also safeguarded sources of coal and iron-ore, protecting Korea ("Choesul") where a large ammonia nitrate factory at Hamhung ("Konan") produced two thirds of Japan's explosives requirements.
There was also a large Tachikawa aircraft factory at Shenyang ("Mukden") which still manufactures aircraft [Mig jet fighters] for modern China to this day. In January 1945 the Mukden Arsenal also began manufacturing V-2 rockets under the leadership of Dr Yamada who had returned from Germany, which were intended for the defence of China and the home islands. Indeed U-219 arrived at Djakarta from France in November 1944 carrying 12 dismantled V-2 rockets for Japan.

More controversially, the USN made Magic intercepts of signals between Berlin and Tokyo discussing Japan's requirement for shipments of uranium for a secret atomic bomb project based in Korea (Imperial 8th Army Laboratory). Irrespective of whether one agrees, or disagrees that Japan completed an atomic bomb, Allies were aware from July 1943 of such a project in Korea. If japan had an Atomic Bomb project in Korea it needed to protect that project and give it time for fruition.
Japan's secret War, Robert K Wilcox
Comment: Sorry, -1, too, many inaccuracies, starting with the 1st sentence (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwantung_Army)


How bright are auroras (aurorae)?

Question: Digital cameras are making the recent auroras look magnificent, but what are they like to the naked eye? Are they comparable in surface brightness to the Milky Way?
Answer: They are much brighter than the Milky Way - I have once seen one bright enough to read by, think it was back in '76 or '77 and it was so powerful it was also audible in Orkney (59 degrees north.) Unfortunately haven't seen this week's one as it has been overcast here.
A full moon will drown out a lot of the detail to the naked eye, but if you are used to photographing night scenes, you should find it remarkably easy. Either go for a relatively high ISO to fix the movement, or allow for the blurring and get some of the longer timeframe effects along with a lot of bright colours.
Whether or not you see one will depend mostly on your latitude, but in any case, get out of the city and head for dark countryside - take a deck chair, blankets and a flask of soup and enjoy the show.
Comment: I live in Hawaii, so it's unlikely that I will have a chance to see for myself this year... You take the bad with the good ;-)
Comment: sadly, at 21 N, I don't think you're ever going to see one...unless something really big happens on the Sun
Comment: Do you really mean ["audible"](http://www.damninteresting.com/the-sound-of-the-aurora/)?
Comment: @KeithThompson Yup - lovely crackling and fuzzing noise!
Comment: I saw a solar storm in 2001 or so at 38 N (Charlottesville, Virginia). It started as a red blot by the horizon and swelled to fill a full quadrant of the sky. Pretty amazing. Didn't hear it, though.
Answer: Your eye can see them without having doubts about what it is. Is different than clouds and they are as magnificent as in the pictures. Usually the pictures are made with long exposures but not very long, between 2-30 seconds. The photo that I am posting is made with a 4 seconds exposure in a zone with a lot of light pollution. You could see this with the naked eye and it was actually more impressive as your eye has a larger field of view  and higher sensibility.  You can see the stars near the aurora, but usually aurora outshines them if is directly on top. The moon on the other hand is much brighter than aurora and even if it outshines it I saw full moon and aurora together (pic2).

With the full moon.

EXIF data.

How bright are auroras (aurorae)?


good responses to 1. Nf3

Question: So I am a decent player, rated by my estimate at around 1000, even though my actual rating is 5 years and thousands of games out of date. In playing the chess engine in chess free on android, I quickly stopped playing 1. e4 because the center counter/scandinavian became very annoying. I switched to d4, and later to nf3 so that people playing against me wouldn't know how to react (most are sub 1000). I, however, don't know myself what the best response is. The two main lines are 1. Nf3 d5 and 1. Nf3 Nf6. I think that I prefer Nf6 for black, but how should I continue from there? Of course, it depends on what my opponent does, but what should be a position I aim for with black?
Comment: " I quickly stopped playing 1. e4 because the center counter/scandinavian became very annoying." - As someone who played the Scandinavian for years, and still once in a while... I'm surprised. Black is pretty much just trying to equalize and get an okay game. I guess you get white out of book relatively quickly, but in my study of the black side, you're pretty much just trying to find the least bad option. I'm happy to see it as white.
Comment: What do you play against 1.d4 ?
Answer: Until you reach 14-1500 strength, opening theory is not very important.
One of the best coaches in the world for beginners, National Master Dan Heisman, said:

It does not matter who gets the advantage out of the opening if one of
  the players is likely to lose a piece to a simple tactic in the
  middlegame. Losing a piece from an advantageous position will almost
  always result in a lost position. So study tactics, not openings,
  until you almost never lose pieces to simple tactical motifs.

However it is good to know the ideas behind opening moves, such as controlling the center, developing, etc.
So 1...Nf6 and 1...d5 are both good moves. They both control the d5 and e4 squares and aid development.
Answer: Try to answer 1. Nf3 with the King's Indian Defense setup.  This involves a move order such as 1... Nf6, 2... g6, 3... Bg7, 4... 0-0, 5... d6, etc., aiming for the pawn thrust e5.
Comment: Why would anyone downvote this?
Comment: This is an option, but there are many good setups.
Answer: When White plays 1. Nf3, this is an invitation to Black to occupy the center. In most cases White hopes that he will be able to counter-attack on Black's central pawns.
Against this move, you have two choices:

accepting the challenge with Black: you play moves like 1... d5. If White is consistent with his plan, he could play 2. c4, to which you can (but are not forced to) answer with 2... d4 to grab some space and the fight begins

Or, completely different idea, considering that White is not taking the responsibility to claim for an advantage and that you don't want to do so either, you choose to play a quiet symmetrical line. The game could go on with 1. Nf3 Nf6 2. g3 g6 3. Bg2 Bg7 etc.

If you are interested to know a bit more about this opening, I encourage you to have a look to my introduction video to 1. Nf3: https://youtu.be/kfyB1W0ObyY
Answer: 1.Nf3 Nc6 is also playable depending if you like 1.d4 d5 2.c4 Nc6 3.Nf3 which it can transpose into and 1.e4 Nc6 2.Nf3 Nf6 which it can also transpose into.
Comment: Or 1.Nf3 Nc6 2.g3 e5 2.Bg2 d5 3.0-0 f6 and Black castles Q-side attack on the K-side with Be6 Qd7 0-0-0 Bh3 h5 etc

good responses to 1. Nf3


Writing in 6/8 time for piano

Question: I'm taking a beginner online piano class. When writing a song in 6/8 time for the piano, do all the notes in each measure both in the treble clef and bass clef have to add up to 6 beats and use eighth notes or combinations of note durations as long as it all equals to 6 beats in each measure?
Answer: In 6/8 time, the eighth note gets the beat, so you need an equivalent of 6 eighth notes in each measure, in both the treble and bass clefs.
6/8 is normally fast and "feels" like there are two beats per measure, so it is divided into two groups, each equivalent to three eighth notes. (It would be unusual to have three quarter notes in the measure, for example. It would more likely be written as a quarter note, eighth note tied to eighth note, quarter note to show the two distinct groupings.)
Comment: Nope.  In 6/8 the dotted quarter gets the beat.
Comment: If you are counting 1-and-a, 2-and-a, how do you count the subdivisions?
Answer: When writing for any instrument, or combination of instruments, the duration of the notes and rests on each stave must add up to the total duration specified in the time signature.
So, in your case of 6/8 time, the total duration in each bar/measure must be 6 8th notes (that could be taken up by 6 8ths, 2 dotted quarter notes, 1 dotted half note etc.)
The rules for writing for piano in this case are essentially the same as any other instrument, except that piano, while being only 1 instrument, takes up 2 staves.
Each stave must independently fit the time signature, you essentially think of each hand as a separate instrument if you like.  So if only 1 hand is playing, the other stave needs rests to complete the bar.
The only exception is that sometimes, when the piano is doing nothing, you see rests written between the staves instead of duplicated on each stave, but this isn't universal and it's equally correct to write the rests on each stave.
I'll find some pictures of this for an example to add to this answer in a bit :)
Generally speaking though, you have to fill out the measures on both staves, not just 1.
Answer: Yes, that's what 6/8 time means.  Each bar contains enough time for six 8th notes.
But that's a bit obvious.  Maybe you've come across something like this, where a single voice uses both staves? That's allowed.  The two staves are being treated as one big stave.
(BTW, 6/8 is two in a bar, with a dotted quarter beat.  Not six.  We count "One-and-a-Two-and-a", not "One-Two-Three-Four-Five-Six")

Comment: Conductors (at least in the concert bands I was in) often conduct 6/8 time as if it has 6 beats, not 2.
Comment: With simple rhythm, thinking 1-and-a, 2-and-a is sufficient, but when subdivisions occur, it is necessary to think of the 8th note getting the beat when first learning them. *Then* one can speed up and "think in 2."  Some other pieces, like a Bach sarabande with the 16th note as the beat are quite slow, and it is not possible to think of the dotted eighth as the beat because the subdivision is so complicated.
Comment: @Dekkadeci, I have also had the same experience. It often depends on tempo.
Answer: 6/8 time will have 2 beats in a measure, each beat will have 3 8th notes length.
6/8,9/8,12/8 times are considered as compound meters and each beat will have 3 8th notes length, however this 3 8th notes can be written in different forms,
examples)
one dotted quarter note
or three 8th notes
or one quarter note and one 8th note
or one quarter note and 2 16th notes
This rule is applicable to all instruments and clefs.

Writing in 6/8 time for piano


Is there a way to check if you have connection/access to p2 repository form an rcp application in Eclipse 3.7

Question: I have RCP application that uses headless update with p2 repository, written in eclipse 3.6. After decission to be migrated to Eclipse 3.7 it turned out my workarround would not work, as some classes are no more there in 3.7. What was the issue in 3.6?
The issue in Eclipse 3.6: The application is checking for updates before the start of the core plugin. It tries to connect to the p2 repository. If there is connection to it, it searches for updates, if there are such, updates, if not it says nothing for update and continue. If there is no connection, there was exception that is deep in equinox/eclipse framework, that has been handled by the framework and it never appear to us, thus the application cannot say wheter there is connection or not, as result it says there is nothing to update.
The solution: After some days speding in solutions for this i found a workarround for this. Solution was creating a class for validating the "Status" of the repository, e.g. do i have connection to it or not. Here is my class:
<code>public class RepositoryValidator {

private final static String urlExtension = "artifacts.jar"; //$NON-NLS-1$

private static RepositoryValidator instance;

private RepositoryValidator() {

}

public static RepositoryValidator sharedInstance() {
if (instance == null) {
instance = new RepositoryValidator();
}
return instance;
}

public IStatus checkRepositoryStatus(URI repoURI) {
try {
URI checkURI = new URI(repoURI.toString() + urlExtension);
ILog logger = Activator.getDefault().getLog();
logger.log(new Status(IStatus.INFO, Activator.PLUGIN_ID,
"CHECK REPOSITORY \"artifacts.jar\" - " //$NON-NLS-1$
+ checkURI.toString()));
long result = RepositoryTransport.getInstance().getLastModified(
checkURI, new NullProgressMonitor());
if (result == 0) {
logger.log(new Status(IStatus.INFO, Activator.PLUGIN_ID,
"RESULT FROM CHECK - " + result)); //$NON-NLS-1$
return new Status(IStatus.ERROR, Activator.PLUGIN_ID,
"WRONG SERVER RESPONCE!!!"); //$NON-NLS-1$
}
} catch (Exception e) {
return new Status(IStatus.ERROR, Activator.PLUGIN_ID,
"CONNECTION EXCEPTION", e); //$NON-NLS-1$
}
return new Status(IStatus.OK, Activator.PLUGIN_ID,
"REPOSITORY IS REACHABLE AND OK!!!"); //$NON-NLS-1$

}
}
</code>
What i basically do here is checking when the artifacts.jar has been modified, if i can access it i have connection, if not i dont.
The Issue in Eclipse 3.7: In the solution for Eclipse 3.6 i was using RepositoryTransport class, which is no more available in 3.7. I was trying to find out whether this class have been replaced by other, or is there a method in the available class i could reach similar functionality. I could not find anything related to the subject, nor for the class, neither for the solution for the issue in 3.6.
Deos anybody know anything related to this issue? Is there fix for the solution in 3.6 itself, or does they decide to replace this class with any similar funcionality? Or if anybody has an idea for other workarround for this issue?
Thanks in advace.
Answer: First of all, RepositoryTransport is moved to package org.eclipse.equinox.internal.p2.transport.ecf in a newly introduced bundle after code refactoring in 3.7.
Secondly, I don't think your workaround is a good way to check whether it has updates or not. You should use p2 API to load your repository, then query whether it contains updates for your installation.


Why was Beca's riff-off considered invalid?

Question: In Pitch Perfect, why was Beca's riff-off considered invalid? What "it" did they need to match and how? I've watched this particular scene, like, 50 times and I still have no clue. Maybe there's something in the book that they forgot to include in the movie?
Answer: Jesse's song used the word "it" in its lyrics. Beca's rap riffed off this word. However, her song began with the word "it's" and was therefore deemed invalid on a technicality.
Comment: Ah, I see now. Yeah, unexpected rule :)
Comment: @coleopterist, Is there actually such a rule or did the movie just made that up?
Comment: But before that Jesse starts off "I guess it's just the woman in you..." after Stacy is singing "and I'll hold you tight" so wouldn't I'll/I break that same rule first?
Comment: @caitlyn I thought the same thing Caitlyn but The lyrics are: I'll make love to you
Like you want me to AND
I'll... I thought Jesse came in on "I guess that's just the woman in you..." but he actually started singing "AND I guess that's just the woman in you..." So Jesse cut Stacy off on the word "And" and started singing the word "And". Had he come in on the word "I'll" with "I", then they would be disqualified. What made it confusing is that Stacy actually got the words "And I'll" out making it seem like Jesse made a mistake. But if you re-watch the scene, you'll hear that Stacy and Jesse
Comment: It kinda _is_ the same word, though :)
Answer: Jesse sang "it feels like the first time" and Beca's song started off with "it's going down...", deeming it invalid.
Answer: Beca sang "it's going down," and not it from "it feels like the first time," therefore causing them to lose the competition.


Can I ask Kubuntu related questions here as well?

Question: Or Xubuntu as well?  Is this *buntu independent?
Answer: Of course you can.
Answer: Ubuntu is Kubuntu. The flavors are just different sets of starting packages.
Answer: I think you should start a separate Kubuntu StackExchange, or use another more general site. This site was created very specifically to address Ubuntu questions; allowing questions about Ubuntu derivatives will make the site harder to use.
Also, if this site is successful, we will create an Ubuntu-specific design for it, which might make Kubuntu questions feel out of place(?).
Comment: Why? What separates a Kubuntu system from a regular Ubuntu sytem, except the list of installed packages?
Comment: I support andol: you can get "Kubuntu" just by installing kubuntu-desktop besides ubuntu-desktop and then decide between "Kubuntu" and "Ubuntu" during login (or login into both sessions at the same time).
Comment: Well, while I do see your point, I would argue that Kubuntu isn't really separate from Ubuntu. Apart from using the same packages from the same repositories it is also one of the predefined Ubuntu tasksel installs.
Comment: What separates an apple from an orange?

Human beings do not differentiate Ubuntu from Kubuntu in their minds by a list of packages. As far as normal users are concerned, Ubuntu is not Kubuntu, end of story. This is a site for Ubuntu users to ask and answer questions about Ubuntu; it's completely free to create another site where Kubuntu users can ask and answer questions about Kubuntu. Mixing the two will confuse some users; separating the two will lead to less confusion. What is objectionable?
Comment: David, your sarcasm was inadequately tagged. Then again, with the Code of Conduct, people have gotten used to getting straight answers.
Comment: Broam, I am not being sarcastic. Do you mean my question about apples and oranges? It was rhetorical, but not sarcastic.
Comment: I do feel that David is correct, even if partially. Most newbies depend on the UI and switching between various *buntu flavours changes a lot.


am I good enough to apply for a junior job?

Question: I studied programming as a c# developer, we were using ADO.NET and SQL-Server also we studied ASP.NET, I took my degree with a very honorable mark
I wrote many freelancing software by my own(all hand coded) but I don't feel like it's so professional and errors free, for that i don't really apply for  jobs here since i never worked in a real company
how can i know in which level am I? because compared to engineers here I'm really almost nothing
Comment: I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because We cannot judge your qualifications from a blurb you posted here.
Comment: We all start somewhere. I'm self  taught and have had 3 development jobs. I've no degree, no development qualifications (just the standard GCSE ones that they dish out for free at high school) but I've now 10 years experience and I still learn something new every day.
Comment: Career advice questions are off topic here, voting to close.
Comment: That's point of a junior position--its really entry level out of college. Junior implies you are still in the learning stages.
Comment: As an occasional interviewer, I constantly see university graduates that cannot code anything, so I think you should absolutely not worry about it, given your practical experience and knowledge.
Comment: How can you measure your level of knowledge if you do not come to an interview?
Comment: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/111883/1996
Comment: Fear nothing, jr are supposed to not know everything and do a lot of errors. That's why they are underpaid (a lot more than seniors)
Answer: You can definitely apply for a junior position, they will not expect your code to be perfect. The most important thing is that you get out there and work in different positions so you can see where your ability is at.
I was in a similar position, I thought I would be terrible at my job being a graduate with no work experience, but it turns out I am much better than I thought. It is common for high achievers to have 'Impostor Syndrome' where you don't think you are good enough and that when you do do well it is a fluke.
Comment: maybe you're right, I always try to compare myself with the best out there which makes me think I'm so bad for even a normal level, I even got 1st prize of a software competition but I thought I only won it because I live in a country with bad competitors
thank you man..
Answer: Yes, at the right company. A junior job can mean different things at a company with 40 people than one with 1000 people. For some places it is the same as entry level.
For any job you're applying for, carefully read the description and decide if you can do that work. If you can, you are a good fit for application. If you can't, but feel that you would be able to with some additional work, perhaps apply anyway and say so in your cover letter.
Or, if you find there is a set of skills that often disqualifies you from applying, perhaps obtain those skills.
Comment: I wouldn't decide based on a job specification. Most of them are highly speculative and even those that aren't are asking for more than most candidates have. If you think you've got 60-70% then go for it and unless you think you're missing a  major skill there's no point in mentioning it in the cover letter.
Comment: Right. That is what I meant by job description and not requirements. The requirements are often ridiculous. "Janitor: must have 10 years experience and a Masters degree."


What does "Flat Field Focus" mean?

Question: Looking at lenses, specifically sigma macro lenses, I noticed that it had a ""Flat Field" front lens element". What does this mean? And how is it different to the norm?
Comment: I'm not going to try and pretend this is my answer, but this article has a lot of detail: http://www.microscopyu.com/tutorials/java/aberrations/curvatureoffield/index.html (it's the basis of the planer lenses from Zeiss)
Answer: The norm is a curved field.
When a lens is focused on a flat subject, the light rays from the subject will converge some distance behind the lens, at the focal point.
Rays from different points on the subject - top, bottom, left, right - will converge at different points on the other side of the lens, these focal points together make up the focal plane.
The point is that the focal plane for a normal lens is curved, like in this illustration from wikipedia:

The vertical black line to the right represents a flat sensor, the arc is the focus plane. Source.
Combining a curved focus plane and a flat sensor, the net effect is that you can't get the edges and the center in focus at the same time.
A "flat field" lens tries to compensate so that the focal plane becomes flat rather than the normal fishbowl shape.
For normal lenses, subjects and working distances the curved field may not matter much, since we have enough DOF to cover the difference.
But at macro distances the DOF is very shallow, so the difference becomes visible. Compounding the problem, macro lenses were historically used in large part for reproduction of flat subjects like stamps or documents, so having the whole image in focus was critical.
And that's why you will mostly see flat field focus on macro lenses, because it is primarily at macro distances that the benefits start to outweigh the costs.
Answer: If you have a flat piece of paper with gridlines on it, position it so that it is parallel with the sensor (perpendicular to the lens), and focus at the center of the image, most lenses will show "soft" corners. The degree to which they are soft, or sharp, is a measure of quality, but most will be soft to some degree.
Macro lenses tend to be prime and because the focal length is fixed it gives manufacturers the ability to create a "flat" field. It's probably not perfectly flat, but merely perceptively flat. There may be some other reason, specifically related to the macro-ness of a lens, for why macro-primes are flatter than other primes, but I wouldn't know about that. The article linked by Joanne C may have an answer to that:

Field curvature is very seldom totally eliminated, but it is often difficult to detect edge curvature with most plan-corrected objectives and it does not show up in photomicrographs. This artifact is more severe at low magnifications and can be a serious problem with stereomicroscopes, where an apparent east-west curvature is caused primarily by the stereo angle or tilt of the twin beam paths in relation to a flat object.

I understand the first part (more prominent at low magnification), but the explanation for it is beyond me.
Comment: Field curvature is not only correctable, but overcorrectable. One of my favourite lenses from the dark recesses of my past was the Minolta 24mm/2.8 VFC (variable field curvature), which would allow you to adjust the concavity/convexity of the focus field to match the subject plane—sort of like a "spherical tilt" lens. Great for landscapes with a distant central subject, clear sky and closer foreground details to the bottom and sides of the frame or for shooting large groups of people.
Comment: @Jrista I think the whole explanation is about microscopes. This answer does help though.
Comment: I think the rest of the explanation is related to the alignment of each optical tube in a sterio (two eyepiece) microscope that has two separate optical paths for each eye. There is still a single objective lens at the subject, but past that there are separate sets of optical lenses for each eye. In a high-end microscope, the optical path for each eye can usually be tuned independently. Because there are separate optical paths for each eye, they may not be perfectly flat relative to each other *and* the subject...there may be a tilt between them.
Comment: Maybe Canon will bring the VFC type lens back. They seem to have every other specialty lens. ;) (Here's to hoping!)

What does "Flat Field Focus" mean?


XDEBUG/PHP doesn't dump profile even when set up properly?

Question: I installed xdebug from source, but also tried my package manager (separately) and they both are loaded correctly (verified by restarting Apache and seeing the xdebug copyright info in phpinfo()) but they do not dump profiling information.
Out of the 40 different attempts of configuration it logged once or twice but I lost what I did, I tried with first only loading the module in php.ini with no settings, but it didn't log to /tmp/. I tried many different settings but my current is now:
xdebug.profiler_enable = Off
xdebug.profiler_enable_trigger = 1
xdebug.profiler_output_dir = "/tmp/"
xdebug.profiler_output_name = "profiler.%t"

Of course I call my script through 127.0.0.1/test.php?XDEBUG_PROFILE, which is for enable_trigger.
Do you know why it would not dump profiler information? nobody (Arch Linux) can write to /tmp/ as it has before, so I'm sure it is not a permissions error. Apache's error_log does not tell me anything about xdebug either, as it has loaded correctly. It just does not "work"!
EDIT: I made a subfolder "xdebug_profiles" in /tmp/ and chown'ed it to nobody, and now it works flawlessly. I'm not sure why it couldn't write before, I guess it's just a caveat with nobody on Arch.
I answered my own question , not enough points to answer it or comment, so consider this answered.
Answer: Make a subfolder "xdebug_profiles" in /tmp/ and chown it to nobody, it will now work flawlessly. I'm not sure why it didn't write before, I guess it's just a caveat with nobody on Arch.


Does meditation improve working memory more than exercise?

Question: I have noticed that I feel much more mentally sharp after doing an hour of moderate exercise in the morning. On the contrary, when I meditate, I feel no such difference in my mental alertness. Isn't meditation supposed to improve working memory?
Comment: I badly want to answer this question with just, "No." Because it's that simple. Exercise is like the wonder drug to end all wonder drugs. Not really an 'SE answer,' though.
Comment: My intuition tells me that it really depends on several factors, specifically as it relates to the *cause* of poor working memory in a particular case. If your working memory is impaired by mental *distraction*, then yes, meditation could help significantly; but if you are not distracted or impulsive, then exercise would probably help more. The relative effect of exercise surely hinges on your current physiological health as well, such as your current circulation and cerebral oxygen supply.
Answer: Focused attention meditation practices improve focus in the long term. So the improvement is difficult to asses and could probably only be found in a standardized test setting. Physical exercise however has been demonstrated to improve mental abilities in the short term (after recovery of physical exercise) levels of circulating neurotransmitter stay elevated for approx. 48h.
http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/acm.2007.7022 (Meditation and focused attention)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0001691802001348 (Physical exercise and cognition)
Comment: For a good summary about the potential effects of meditation of brain structure I might suggest: "Is meditation associated with altered brain structure? A systematic review and meta-analysis of morphometric neuroimaging in meditation practitioners."
Kieran C.R. Fox et al. (2014) (The whole paper is a milestone and worth reading and not just the abstract)
Comment: You can't tell whether an effect is imaginary or difficult to measure in some situation until someone measures it with great difficulty. ;)
Comment: After studying the literature about the potential health effects of meditation for years my impression was that although many studies have been published, the majority lacks a proper study design. Publication bias is a major concern. Furthermore the broad field of meditation techniques can be classified as open monitoring and focused attention based techniques. Results are therefore difficult to reproduce / compare.


How to quickly and safely defrost chicken?

Question: What is the safest, quick way to defrost chicken? Microwave? Running water over it?
Answer: I suppose that depends on what you're defrosting it for.
The microwave (on low power) is safe and quick.  The downside is that you're using a microwave, which means there's a good chance you'll actually cook the outside slightly in the process, and you're killing enzymes that are normally part of the flavour.  The lower the heat, the less the impact of this, but it's still a problem.  If I'm preparing the meat for marinating, stir-fry, etc., something with a powerful or thick sauce, then I wouldn't worry about it, but if it's going onto a grill with just a little bit of seasoning, you might want to avoid this.
Running it under warm water would seem to work, but I've found that it takes forever to defrost this way (the exterior will loosen up but the interior stays stubbornly frozen), and you're soaking it in the process.  This really isn't suitable if you need to pound or fold the meat or do anything complicated with it.
I would use the microwave if desperate, but it's really best to thaw the meat in the refrigerator or, if you're in a bit of a hurry, the sink.  It takes longer, but it'll turn out much better than the microwave in terms of flavour and tenderness.
P.S. One other word of advice: If you're making a dish that requires the chicken to be cut or sliced, it's best not to defrost it all the way.  It's easier to cut when frozen, and will defrost very quickly once it's in pieces.  I'm mainly talking about the breast here, this doesn't work so well with meat stuck to bones.

Update: I'm noticing a lot of recent hubbub about the dangers of defrosting in the sink / on the countertop or using warm water and I wanted to clarify something.  Please note that that the advice above applies to chicken that will be immediately cooked after defrosting and that the defrosting is done over a period shorter than 2 hours.
Raw chicken must not be kept at any temperature above 40° F (4.4° C) for more than an hour or so.  Do not defrost a chicken breast in the sink and then toss it back in the fridge.  Definitely don't try to defrost a whole bird this way - stick to the refrigerator or very cold running water.
As long as you follow the above precautions and cook the chicken thoroughly (up to an internal temperature of 165° F), you're not in any serious danger of salmonella poisoning, even if the original piece of meat was contaminated - and most chicken sold today is contaminated, for the record.
If the meat is going back in the refrigerator for marinating or you plan to delay cooking for any other reason, then you need to either thaw it very fast (using the microwave) or at a very low temperature (using the refrigerator or cold running water).
Comment: "Do not defrost a chicken breast in the sink and then toss it back in the fridge." - out of interest, why?  If the sink is thoroughly cleaned afterwards?
Answer: A microwave is fine for pieces of chicken, particularly it's a newer one which automatically sets the time for you based on the weight of the chicken pieces.  (and don't stop just 'cause you think you're done ... that frozen core in the breast won't cook and might ruin your dish.
For whole birds, I go with the running water method -- mostly because my microwave won't fit a whole bird.  You want to use cold water for safety, so you don't warm up the poultry too much to make it unsafe.  You can put it in a container so there's better contact with the chicken, but you'll want to change it out every few minutes, as the chicken will leech heat from the water (which is what we want).
Comment: "food safety" is erring on the side of over-caution in a lot of cases.  If you keep a clean kitchen, and you're cooking the food thoroughly, and don't cross-contaminate, it's not *that* big of a risk, but "safest" was the question, and cold water in this case is safer, and it doesn't adversely affect the meat as much.
Comment: I've used warm (not hot) water in the past and haven't gotten sick.  Maybe I've just been lucky...
Answer: If you're defrosting in a microwave, put the chicken in a semi-enclosed package (lid on but not sealed shut), this way the steam will help to defrost: Use Low Power or it will cook!!
Answer: Screw the microwave. The only thing it's useful for is crappy frozen food and hot water for tea (and even for tea an electric kettle is better).
What you want to do is put your chicken parts in a zip-lock bag if they're not already packaged, and drop that in a container that will hold it. Place said container under a slow-running tap of cold or lukewarm (NOT HOT) water. Depending on the size of the piece(s) you'll have thoroughly defrosted chicken in under an hour, well within the safety zone.
Convection is your friend.
-><-
Comment: That advice is questionable.  "The food must be in a leak-proof package or plastic bag. If the bag leaks, bacteria from the air or surrounding environment could be introduced into the food."  Yeah, and if it weren't for the fact that I was about to cook the meat and wash the sink thoroughly, that might be a problem.
Comment: Check the following question for some safety concerns for defrosting with warm water. It is not recommended as safe by the USDA. http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/3472/is-there-a-problem-with-defrosting-meat-on-the-counter/3474#3474
Answer: Using a microwave is probably the quickest way, but you must make absolutely sure the bird is defrosted. Every microwave is different, so check the guide that came with yours for timings. Even then, once you believe it to be defrosted, check the inside of the cavity for ice crystals.
If possible, rest for 10 minutes at room temperature before starting the preparation process. Once defrosted, don't refrigerate.
Comment: @Smashery: You're about to cook it anyway, right?  Most meat you buy in supermarkets is already contaminated with various types of food-poisoning bacteria (esp. salmonella with respect to chicken); you cook it to kill that bacteria.
Comment: I had heard that microwave-defrosting could increase the likelihood of food poisoning - wasn't sure whether that's an old wive's tale or not, though.
Answer: I usually fill a pot with hot water from the sink and drop the chicken in there (assuming it is vacuum sealed or in a tightly sealed ziplock bag with as much air as possible removed).  This seems to work relatively quickly.
This works nicely for just about anything, as long as it's sealed.
Comment: Check the following question for some safety concerns for defrosting with warm water. It is not recommended as safe by the USDA. http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/3472/is-there-a-problem-with-defrosting-meat-on-the-counter/3474#3474
Answer: A simple way to defrost meat in a relatively short amount of time is to place the meat in a zip-locked baggie and submerge in a large bowl or sink full of slightly cool water. It isn't as quick as a microwave, of course, but it is faster and safer than just leaving out on a counter top. Speed up the process by using warmer water.
Comment: This method may be unsafe; warmer water is certainly unsafe.  The acceptable method is cool *running* water, as convection transfers heat energy much more efficiently than conduction.
Answer: Never ever use hot or warm water! That will have a much greater chance of having bacteria. Always use cold or cool water. I myself run it under cold water in my sink continuously while in a tight package instead of submerging it.
Answer: The safest way to defrost a chicken is to take it out of the freezer at least two days before and let it defrost naturally while refrigerated. The second way I use is to put the chicken in a microwave safe bowl, fill with water and then follow oven suggestions on time per pound. If you use the water/microwave method it does not cook any parts of the chicken and turning is not necessary. But I definitely take it out of the plastic wrap.
Answer: Depends what you are doing with it. From time to time I buy raw stuffed frozen chicken breast. It specifies not thawing, not microwaving. Straight out of the freezer and into the (conventional) oven, cook until safe interior temperature reached (they include a time/temperature guide since the product is of a consistent weight/size which might not apply for a random chunk of frozen chicken.)
It works.
Answer: I always buy organic chicken from a registered organic local farm.
I put the chicken in a large tie-handle plastic bag and remove the air before tying a very tight knot so no water can enter or leave the bag. Then I leave the chicken in a large container of cold water if I need it soon rather than later. If you can chop it into smaller pieces this hurries things along.
If I have time, however, I prefer to put the bag in a bowl in the fridge for at least 24 hours to defrost.
Answer: Put the frozen bagged chicken in a bucket then fill it with cold water.
Comment: This is possibly unsafe, as mentioned in comments on other answers suggesting basically the same thing.
Answer: I've been using the hot water soak method to quickly defrost and then cook my chickens for YEARS without any problems or sickness. I always thoroughly cook my birds; no pinkness. I then proceed to make chicken soup with the carcass and left over meat the next day. I think they just want to lean on the side of caution when they advice you NOT to do it this way. Some cooks don't know what they're doing so you have to say this. c
Comment: You can ride a motorcycle for YEARS without a helmet and have no accidents.  That doesn't make it a good idea.
Comment: Leaning on the side of caution isn't just for people who don't know what they're doing, it's for people who don't want a small chance of getting sick.
Answer: I really think everyone whining about food safety should use some common sense. ALL poultry is infected with salmonella and some other gross things that naturally live in their intestines, hence the stringent 'cook to this temp' guidelines. Cooking to 165°F internally kills all the bacteria; don't use 'pinkness' as a guideline, as bone-in chicken always has pink parts.
It isn't recommended to defrost in some ways because of the cross-contamination possible with chicken just hanging out in the open.
TL;DR defrost your chicken however you like, but wash your hands and ALL kitchen work surfaces thoroughly and often.
Comment: No, defrost it in a safe way, not however you like. It's not just about cross-contamination.


What does the missing symbol on Quaid's arm symbolize?

Question: Near the end of Total Recall (2012), does the missing symbol on Quaid's arm symbolize that it is all a dream/fake memory? And, if so, why does he just accept it?
Comment: can you provide more description of symbol and how it went missing? a still from the movie, maybe?
Comment: He asks about the sign that was left on his arm when he went at the REKALL center in the begining of the movie. The sign appeared on his arm after an injection was done by a woman at rekall before starting the procedure of inserting memories.
In the end of the movie the sign wasnt there anymore.
Comment: +1 for above comment, please explain which/what symbol is missing. The scar on Quaid's hand is still present at the end
Comment: @louis - are you talking about the missing scar on __"Melina's" hand__ near the end of the movie?
Comment: @nr4 - thanks, I used your clarification to write an answer.
Answer: Here is a detailed comparison between the Theatrical and Extended Director's Cut. One of the differences is an additional scene at the end:

Doug looks down and removes the bandage from the spot where the injection tattoo was burned in at Rekall – it cannot be seen anymore.

One could interpret this as a hint that Quaid is still in a dream world. Although, that 'tattoo' might have been just a stamp mark that had rubbed off.
Comment: Wow, how could they cut such a crucial element from the movie? IMHO the film would have benefited greatly if there was a more-in-depth exploration of the dream/reality question. Instead, it feels like this element of the story is barely touched.
Comment: __Note:__ I noticed that the [Wikipedia page](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Recall_(2012_film)) no longer mentions the _alternate ending_, so I edited my answer to refer to another source.
Comment: @ShaneF. The book upon which both movies were based also left it intentionally ambiguous and up to the audience
Comment: The extended version is much better in keeping the ambiguity. There's more to this. You have Henry mentioning "you are living a dream" to Doug during the bar scene and a fact of plastic surgery of Doug that took place before he was given new identity witch matches a face of a turned terrorist shown in the news coverage before the rekall visit. Adds some flavor.
Answer: These set of dialogues has to be especially revised while he is being injected with the Chemicals from the chinese guy.

You could be working for the Resistance. Maybe you work for Cohaagen.
  Or why limit yourself? Why not both?
You're going to have such a good time, you're not going to want to
  come back. Look at that. Looks like your wife does have a man who
  appreciates her. No conflict there. Sorry. Still the best way to get
  chemicals into the human body.
Let's get this show on the road. Get ready to save the world. Happy
  trails, man.

And from there on he goes on exactly does that, saving the world.
Answer: Everything indicates that he is not dreaming, except for the symbol, but if it's all a dream Quaid´s should never would have dreamt about Melina before he goes to RECALL and that entire first scene doesn´t make sense.
Now assuming that is all real there is no explanation for the symbol. So in my opinion it has the ending wrong.
There is no reference that the symbol is permanent. it could be as simple as an ink stamp and can be erased easily, so imho everything is real or as you say the first scene would make absolutely no sense.
Answer: My theory is that Quaid never actually went to the Rekall lounge (where the Asian guy injected him). Cohaagen and his group just implanted that memory into him that he went there. So that's why he doesn't have a scar.