How did people get apps on their computer before the Internet?

Question: The Internet has existed since the 90s, but how did people get apps and games installed on their computers before that and how were they accessed and saved?
Comment: I feel old. Very old.
Comment: People didn't get apps on their computer, because software wasn't called apps.
Comment: Some people took the time to type in multiple pages of source code that were printed in books and magazines.
Comment: We used to pour raw bits into cardboard boxes and ship them to customers.  We even included a short manual with some instructions!
Comment: AOL sent at least one CD per day via snail mail. Or you bought a cassette with your software of choice from your neighborhood computer store and listened to it attempting to load. Or download from the local BBS at <=2400 baud.
Comment: The term "app" is used in an anachronistic way here; before the advent of internet I don't think anybody would have recognised the word. Initially software was a collection of programs, "application programs" emerged as a subcategory, which at some point (maybe in the 1980's) became abbreviated "application". But as far as I can remember "app" only took off with the advent of smartphones.
Comment: In the 90s/early 00s, you would buy software, which came on CD or floppy, at a computer store. Before this, you bought cassettes or typed it in from books or magazines.
Comment: @MichaelGraf So do I after reading this question and I am **_23_**
Comment: _"how did people get apps and games installed on their computers before"_ → Exactly the same way people get most games for their Nintendo Switch **today**.
Comment: @MarcvanLeeuwen the term _app_ as an abbreviation of _application_ existed long before smartphones, though in my memory it was only a term used by computer enthusiasts, while smartphones later made it common parlance. I didn't dig too far in looking, but the definition of _killer app_ was an issue in the Microsoft antitrust lawsuit, which means it had been around for some time. I'm guessing it goes back to at least the 80s.
Comment: [When I was a boy, every packet was delivered by carrier pigeon](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ov9p8FsHHx4)
Comment: I'd like to point out that that they weren't called "apps" until about a decade ago. Up until smartphones and tablets hit the market, they were universally called "programs". And, as someone above noted, for the many of the earliest home computers (such as my first TSR-80), you would write most of the programs yourself. Things got a lot easier in the mid 80s and early 90s when the market for home computers led to a lot of retailers carrying computer programs as boxed sets like the one pictured above.
Comment: The Internet has existed since 1969.  Did you not see the celebrations for its 50th anniversary a couple of years ago?  I first used in in 1982.  It is the WWW that has only existed since the 1990s.
Comment: The same way you would buy any computer hardware from a computer store...unless you're completely unfamiliar with what discs, CDs, and DVDs are. Then I got nothing.
Comment: We used SneakerNet. That is to say that we physically took our media (floppies, usually) from computer-to-computer by walking.
Comment: in the 80s, if you were lucky, there was at least one guy in your school, who had the same computer you had, owning 2 floppy disk drives, and countless floppy disks
Comment: My first regular job was as a programmer back in 1969.  The computer vendor released software on magtape reels about 2400 feet long.  There were a few items that were released on paper tape, notably the read-in mode bootstrap loader.
Comment: @LioElbammalf The iPoAC protocol is documented on [RFC1149](https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc1149). Implementation details [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_over_Avian_Carriers).
Comment: "...their computer". When I first got involved in the late 1960s, people didn't own computers: universities, governments, and corporations owned computers, and they hired operators and systems programmers to look after them. This of us who wrote programs depended on compilers and other software that had been supplied by the manufacturer.
Comment: 2400' [magtape](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic-tape_data_storage).
Comment: I don't currently have the rep to answer, but an additional method used in the UK was telesoftware (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telesoftware). The BBC transmitted data that could be picked up by the BBC Micro computer using a special adapter (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Micro_expansion_unit#Teletext_adapter)
Comment: [Obligatory XKCD.](https://xkcd.com/1755/)
Comment: @molo [& Marc van Leeuwen but I can't add 2 tags] - whilst true that *most* OSes used the term 'program' rather than 'app', Mac has used 'app', as in 'Application', since at least the beginning of the 90s. We old hands thought it quite a liberty that the rest of the interwebz in general 'stole' our idea with the advent of smartphones. We still got them on floppies back then, but they were always 'apps'.
Comment: Back in the day we had "internet on a disc" kind of thing. Some computer magazines publisher will compose a webpage with computer news and software, and save it on a (pressed) CD. The readers can read news and "download" software from this "website on a disc". I stopped buying those CDs after 2003 when I finally had home internet but I've heard of USB thumb drive versions of this ~5 years afterwards.
Comment: Before WWW, I have used punch cards, 110 baud terminals, cassette tape, ARCnet, 10 MB HD cartridge, 320 MB 8" HDD, ST506 HDDs, Apple ][ floppies,  CDROMs, and dial-up BBS to install the software. I worked for a company in the early80's that invented streaming game service on cable TV using the VITs line of video with 4Mbps and streaming games for VIC20, TRS80,  ][+ with interactive service and demo'd in Vegas at Cablecon.   Getting onto the 1st web was like crawling on broken glass with low-level protocols.
Comment: Buying games on optical media is still common.
Comment: My first computer an Atari 8bit came with an OS and a build in basic. So also without a disk station/cassette recorder you could play and learn how to program with this computer. We bought magazines & books and copied programs they was printed in source. Also programs/games came on cartridges. Disks were shared and copied. We met to program together. Really nice time.
Comment: If you're wondering how the installed apps would run on old machines, very early machines would simply run a disk software when inserted in the machine.  Later machines would use a command prompt like Microsoft's DOS and you would type in a command to run the app.  Later on, Windows and other GUI software would let you access apps with a double-click, but even early Windows software would need you to type in a command to run them from the DOS prompt.
Comment: @doneal24 Indeed, I believe that is what the song is referring to.
Comment: Sometimes in the 90s, when yours truly was in charge of the math department PC classroom, I simply shooed all the students away, and started installing MSWord. First insert disk #1, then disk #2 (and insert disk #1 to the next computer) etc. 10 computers, 10 "floppies". Took a while :-)
Comment: It's a multistep process.  First you implement some network protocols. Then you standardize them.  Next, wait for other implementations.  Eventually, the company whose software you want to buy will have a network presence. Simple, eh?
Comment: It's not really an answer in itself, but an insight into the app-distribution industry of the 80s/90s might be found in Jeff Vogel's "Failing to Fail" GDC talk. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stxVBJem3Rs He talks about having people literally call him up and mail-order his games from his house at one point!
Comment: They're called 'applications' on the very first page of Inside Macintosh Vol. 1 from 1984; for customers of at least one vendor it's been a recognised term for almost 40 years.
Comment: Before the Internet we didn't need such frequent upgrades, as there was no need to patch software to stop bad actors trying to hack into the system.
Comment: [Over the radio?](https://radiolab.org/episodes/mixtape-cassetternet)
Comment: Re the age of the abbreviation "app": GEM used ".APP" as a file extension for executables that made particular use of GEM's WIMP capabilities: .
Comment: The first computers mostly used paper tape. Later on IBM came with punched cards.
Answer: People used storage media, which they carried around to the machines they wanted to use the software on. The same way music and video were physically distributed in the late 20th century on tape and CD.
Very early on, programs and data were stored on paper tape and punched cards. Then magnetic tape. Then floppy disks. Then CD-ROMs. Even cartridges containing semiconductor memory were sometimes used, particularly for game consoles. (Now that I think about it, we still use cartridges as USB flash drives.)
You might get your software directly from the computer manufacturer. The OS usually came this way. Early on, most software was custom and written by the user (often a large company). Then custom software houses started popping up. Much stuff was ordered in the mail, especially before retail computer stores existed in every major town.
Small computer stores selling software, parts, etc., used to be everywhere, at least in Canada. They're much less common now, relatively speaking. There were two within walking distance, where I lived in the 1990s and was in the suburbs! Computers failed more often, technology was moving faster, and people didn't order as much online then. You might visit the computer store several times per year if you have the budget, often to buy the software.
Here's Windows 98, out of the box, as you might buy for a machine without any operating system on it:

Included is a paper manual, a registration card to mail off to Microsoft, a credit for some free Internet service, and Windows 98 itself: the boot floppy (for computers that could not boot from CD) and the Windows 98 install CD.
By this point (1998), floppy disks were too small to hold most major software releases and were limited to boot disks and small files such as device drivers. Network distribution was also common by then, but many people were on dial-up. (Windows 98 would take days to download at that speed.) The disc itself is nearly full, with Windows taking several hundred megabytes and the rest being movies and music bonus content. Before long, it would not be uncommon to have an entire set of CDs to install software, echoing the sets of floppies sometimes seen in the 80s and early 90s. Then higher density DVDs were used.
It's worth noting that plenty of people "borrowed" such kits from a friend rather than buying them themselves. Floppies, and then much later, CDs, could also be duplicated by the user. Software piracy is not new, and with commercial software, various steps were taken to combat that. For example, you might need to enter codes from the manual that were uniquely matched to the disc in the same kit.
The Internet started competing against physically distributing media (not just for software, but film and music and everything else too) in the 2000s, finally coming to dominate in the last ten years or so.
Comment: Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of mag-tapes!
Comment: I remember software spread over 8 floppy disks.  *Please insert disk 5/8*
Comment: I still have the box (but not the diskettes) that contained MS Office for Windows 3.1 and IIRC there were about twelve 3½" diskettes.
Comment: Even as late as 2010-2015 one could find CDs and DVDs with games and popular software (Windows, Microsoft Office) in retail stores. Even Windows Vista was marketed on DVDs.
Comment: Note that cartridges can also still be used for Nintendo Switch games
Comment: @JakeRobb I know I've installed Windows 95 from diskettes. [Raymond Chen said they were 13 high-density disks](https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20050819-10/?p=34513). Of course you had double that amount, just in case any of them failed. It was a whole-afternoon plan.
Comment: @NomadMaker the bandwidth is great but the ping is diabolical :-)
Comment: @vsz Windows 8 was the last Windows to be marketed on disc. I know, because I have a physical disc copy of that. With Windows 10 physical copies they switched to using USB drives.
Comment: There also used to be big computer software *conventions* where various disks were sold to visitors - this was also where you could get certain demo disks (sometimes called Freeware or Shareware) that would contain multiple demos of various software (usually games).
Comment: Coincidentally, during this time period, Microsoft dodged $40 billion in taxes by structuring itself as a Puerto Rican manufacturer that manufactured boxes with CDs inside them, with a loss-making RD center in Redmond.
Comment: @NomadMaker I recall an actual assignment of comparing the bandwidth of a Pony Express rider with his saddlebags filled with floppy disks against a wired data connection.  The rider was remarkably competitive (in the 90's).
Comment: @NomadMaker: Also relevant: [xkcd's what if - FedEx Bandwidth](https://what-if.xkcd.com/31)
Comment: "as you might buy for a machine without any operating system on it" which was how 99.99% of computers were sold. You might get a copy of an OS bundled with it, but you still had to install it yourself.
Comment: @gerrit I seem to recall installing at least one app that involved 20+ 3.5" floppies. I can't recall what it was though.
Comment: @JakeRobb I recall installing applications which took 50+ floppies. Like you I can't recall what they were though
Comment: @WeatherVane I found a complete set of 3.11 floppies in the skip at work. They were my path to buying "upgrade" versions of win95 / 98 later on
Comment: @vsz Your timeframe doesn't quite match. Windows Vista was released in 2007, Windows 7 in 2009, and Windows 8 in 2012. So "Even Windows Vista was marketed on DVDs" is not aligned with "Even as late as 2010-2015".
Comment: @nanoman : that was one example. Even if Windows Vista itself was no longer available in retail stores near the end of the timeframe I mentioned, many others still were. Especially games, but also Office packages.
Comment: @NomadMaker thanks for that great quote from Tanenbaum, Intro OS, on minix, from around 1990. Minix came on something like 6 floppies, to be downloaded with ftp from the internet, accessible only at the local university
Comment: I can speak to memories of using our Radio Shack Tandy Color Computer 2 where attaching the 5.25" floppy drive was an upgrade to previously having cartridges, and doing loading and saving via a tape recorder. And then, of course, there were the programs of dozens of pages that my brother typed in from *Rainbow* magazine...
Comment: I remember installing Word Perfect on my dad's machine.  It was over 20 disks.  It actually came with a case to hold them all.
Comment: Windows 95 (original release) was ~35MB. It came in either 13 special DMF floppies, or on CD - in which case you'd get a lot of filler, include a video of the song "Good Times" by Edie Brickell. Windows 98 was ~100MB.
Also in my case, we had a parallel-port-attached external HD to distribute stuff to computers without CD drives.
Comment: In essence, it's the same way you get software today, without the Internet, except they had different kinds of media to put it on, and they weren't so centered on updates. Don't forget, though, books of BASIC code where you could type out the code for the games yourself and then play them. Don't forget that audiocassettes (the same ones used for music) could be used like discs.
Comment: I'm not saying it never happened, but I don't recall ever having to type in any codes to get a program to work until after the Internet arrived (it was popular with Shareware, Windows operating systems, Microsoft Office, antivirus programs, and programs that cost loads of money, but not too much with games and things). In the 1980s, it seemed like most people just used their computers to play video games, make greeting cards, and a few other things. Word processing didn't seem too common until DOS became popular (we used Norton Textra Writer).
Answer: People are focusing on floppies and tapes.  But the question is literally tagged with floppy-disk, so pointing them out may not be that helpful. The more general answer perhaps is that you went to a physical store.  Almost everybody had bought their computer at a physical store, so at very least they could go back to that same store to buy some software without much of a discovery process.
In the 90's, every small town had multiple places that sold software in boxes as a physical product.  Radio Shack was ubiquitous here in the US, and it always had some shareware disks or the like.  At peak, that one brand had something like 8000 total stores, and the US has about 5000 towns with at least 5000 people.  There were several other brands of small retail stores like Electronics Boutique and Egghead Software that would fit in a small retail storefront, strip mall, or small shop in a large shopping mall.  There were also a ton of small independent or local stores in many places.
Big-Box consumer electronics stores like Best Buy and Circuit City were a little less common than the small stores since they were physically larger.  But they were also pretty common.  There were something like 2000 Best Buy stores at peak.
Past that, I can remember seeing occasional software at grocery and drug stores in the mid 90's.  It wasn't a major staple or anything.  But by that point the market was large enough that you'd occasionally see family friendly shareware games or some crappy third tier desktop publishing software for making "Welcome Home" banners.  Department stores like Target always had an electronics section that stocked at least an aisle of PC games.  Bookshops often had a software section as well.  Buy our book on how to use Turbotax...  And also buy Turbotax, was a pretty common kind of bundle deal.
Grocery stores, book stores, news stands, etc., also had an aisle full of magazines.  Among The New Yorker and Guns Today or whatever, you would also see Nintendo Power, Mac User, Amiga Format, Byte, etc.  All of those magazines would have ads so you could order stuff by mail.
It was definitely harder to find software in the 80's when computing was much more of a niche hobby.  You might need to go to a nearby big city to find a specialist store until the late 80's.  But by the 90's, software was kind of ubiquitous.  In a developed country like the US the majority of households had a computer by the end of the 90's, so it was just a huge market for any retailer to ignore.
So by the 90's, a typical computer user would probably have dozens of places they could potentially buy games and other software from, with something like a reasonable drive to a mall a town or two over on a weekend.  You go, pay $20 - $50 to get a Big Box.  The box would have a manual, a tape or floppy in the 80's, floppies or a CD in the 90's.  Stick it in the computer, and click "setup" or type "install" or whatever the process was for that app on that computer, and off to the races.  If you had one of the three supported models of Dot Matrix printers, you could print a Welcome Home banner with your choice of a clip art duck or a clip art dog 20 minutes after you got home from the store.
Comment: Don't forget software retailers such as Babbages's, Software Etc., and ComputerLand. Every decently sized mall in America had a software store.
Comment: And also way back when, some magazines would publish the code and you'd type that in to your computer manually. Line. By. Line.
Comment: Also mail order software was around as long as mail order hardware and both were pervasive in the 1980s too,
Comment: I know that it's tongue-in-cheek when you talk about the banners printed on dot matrix printers. But your answer gives the wrong impression that this technology was still relevant in the mid-1990s. By that time, dot matrix printers had almost completely been superseded by inkjet printers, not least due to the highly successful HP DeskJet 500 in 1990 (the color version was introduced in 1991). Virtually the only application in which dot matrix printers were still somewhat relevant by 1995 was printing on fan-fold paper – which might include banners after all, now that I think about it.
Comment: +1 for old retail stores, which I felt was the crux of the question. I kinda miss walking into a store and seeing all the PC game boxes. (That said, it's super nice to buy a new computer and just redownload everything from Steam at like 80 Mb/s.)
Comment: Office supply stores were a big one for me growing up. My Staples had a few large aisles dedicated to computer hardware, and a fairly sizeable area for software on cds.
Comment: @Schmuddi banners were a big deal back in the day.  And you could only effectively generate them with fan-fold paper.  Ink jet printers didn't use fan-fold paper, but dot matrix printers did.
Comment: The bit about software being a niche product through the 80s is probably accurate for the US, but less so in the UK and the rest of Europe, where home computing was a big thing from the early 80s. Software was available in a wide range of high-street shops - newsagents like WH Smith, pharmacists like Boots, and even local tobacconists as well. Though I don't know what proportion of software sold would have been productivity software as opposed to games, which were of course the most common use for 80s home computers.
Comment: @BrianH Yes, mail order catalogs were very important, in the '90s, most had Mac and PC versions. So you had MacWarehouse and PCWarehouse (where if you called to order, you could probably find a picture of the person you were speaking with on one of the pages in the catalog!) - although, after they were big, the blonde MacWarehouse covergirl probably no longer answered the phones. Other important ones were MacConnection/PCConnection and MacMall/PCMall.
Comment: I remember we looked at games (a CD in a pretty box) in toy stores in the '90s/'00s. At some point you could also borrow them from the library. There were also CDs with like 50 games on it, mostly demo versions where you could only play the first level and they hoped you would order the full version. (via the phone or something, we never did that) Also illegal copies from friends/family on 3.5" floppies and later CDs were popular.
Comment: @Schmuddi: I remember still printing school papers on dot-matrix in 1996, but that was more of a "Dad was a cheapskate" thing than non-existence of better technology.
Answer:
Typed them in from magazines and books, saved them on tape or floppy.

Get software by loading it from a tape or floppy borrowed from a friend/colleague/school/club and copy it to yourself.

Use a modem to download or upload from a bulletin board system.

Buy commercial games/programs on tape/floppy.
Comment: I used to write my own software - much more interesting. But then I was never interested in games.
Comment: Regarding 1: Nothing like typing in several pages of code and then trying to figure out which typo was causing the program to crash.
Comment: @aslum: I still remember the joy of *Rainbow* magazine including a checksum function that at least told you the likely line number for the error.
Comment: These I've also done: (5) Plugged in the code using switches and a deposit switch. Sometimes this code was the bootstrap needed for external media. Sometimes, it was the entire program. (6) Hand-soldered the program (hard-wired for real!) (7) Used a [Cauzin reader](https://rich12345.tripod.com/museum2/softstrip.html). I still have mine. ;)
Comment: @No'amNewman writing your own software has always been more gratifying.  Games weren't off the table either.  I remember one time when I had a day at work with nothing to do, so I wrote my own version of Breakout.
Answer: Several ways depending on the era which you are talking about:

I have some really old commercial software that came on 8" floppy disk.  These are pretty rare today but were quite common in the pre-IBM PC days:
After that, and a lot due to the introduction of the Apple II, the Commodore PET, and then the IBM PC, the 5.25" floppy disk came to dominate.  Very similar to the earlier 8" disks but smaller:
Next came the 3.5" "floppy" disk.  The media was floppy but the hard plastic case made the overall unit not floppy:
After that, downloads from dial-up systems started taking over.  File repositories on "FidoNet" Bulletin Board Systems, CompuServe, AOL, and others started being used for distributing software especially "shareware" and "demo" software.  Around the same time, CDROM also became a distribution media and that continues to this day:
After that, the internet began to evolve as a viable, and inexpensive with near immediate fulfillment, method of software distribution.

There are, of course, some other methods which were used.  The earliest consumer programs were printed in magazines and you typed in the code, some commercial software was distributed on "magnetic tape" usually targeted at mainframe/minicomputer systems.  There were, and still are, some other magnetic tape formats usually in cartridge formats.
And we cannot forget Cassette Tape format!
I still have a cassette with "MicroChess" for the KIM-1:
Comment: When they first came out, CD-ROMs contained such a huge amount of data it was *near* un-imaginable.  At least compared to floppy disks (and consumer tape).  Home PCs were still commonly using both 5.25" and 3.5" floppies (1.2 / 1.4 MiB).  I remember being amazed, copying from a ~650 MiB CDROM archive of "shareware" onto floppy disks. (At the university library.)
Comment: There were also some types of storage media that bridged the transition from floppy disks to CDROM drives such as the [Zip drive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip_drive). I never owned one myself, but the software company that I worked for as a student used them for backups, and I *think* they also used commercial software that was distributed on Zip drives (or perhaps it was pirated software?).
Comment: @Schmuddi  I considered adding the Zip drive, and I actually still have one, but I am not aware of any commercial or shareware software that was distributed on them.
Comment: I also neglected to mention Hollerith Cards, paper tape, and front panel switches.
Comment: @JakeRobb  I'm not sure that the OP was looking for every possible variation of every possible media category.  But you are indeed correct.  I'll also note that some vendors, Apple, Commodore, and Digital Equipment come to mind, used proprietary disk formats.
Comment: "hard floppies"
Comment: Don't forget that each physical iteration of disc also had multiple densities. Your photo of a 3.5" floppy has "HD" in the corner, which means it's a double-sided, high-density floppy with a capacity of ~1.4MB (+/- a bit depending on how it's formatted). There were single-side, low-density floppies that could only store 360kb but were physically identical aside the HD badge. CDs also varied in size, although not as widely! There were even double-sided DVDs which had to be ejected and flipped over (until the drives gained support).
Comment: *tsk tsk* for posting disc pics without their sleeves on ;)
Comment: You should also mention the [Cauzin Softstrip](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Dlfpab1Knc)
Comment: @Kingsley In the mid-'90s I used to go to a computer shop in the next city and pay GB£0.50 per floppy for shareware copied from a CD like that.
Answer: As far as the question is not limited to commercial software, here's an alternative view.
Before the advent of the internet or any widely used long distance packed-switched networks, long distance data distribution among UNIX computers was achieved using a store-and-forward system called UUCP, which facilitated, among other things, distribution of discussion groups (Usenet).
It was a distributed (without a single main server, unlike a BBS) discussion board system with hundreds if not thousands of various "newsgroups", some of which were used to distribute source code (partially archived at comp.sources.*), either platform-specific in an appropriately named group, or portable enough across different CPU architectures and UNIX-like platforms to be compilable and usable with little effort.
Comment: And binaries ([uuencoded](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uuencoding) into text) as multi-part posts in newgroups under `alt.binaries.*`.  That part of usenet still exists today, mostly used to distribute "warez", aka pirated software and audio or video files.  Many ISPs that still have news servers don't carry those groups, anymore, though.
Answer: One method wasn't mentioned here: radio broadcasting.
The official Czechoslovak Radio used to broadcast a special night show for computer freaks in the late eighties, and it ended with a few short programmes for ZX Spectrum, which the listeners could record on audio tape and then <code>LOAD ""</code>
Comment: Yep, same in Yugoslavia. We'd also order the tape cassettes with games from the bootleggers that were posting their ads in various computer and gaming magazines. Or we'd just go to the flea market on Sunday morning and meet them in person :-)
Comment: I came here to write this, and then I found your answer! On top of all complications of this process, my tape recorder had this *bass/treble* dial, if you didn't put it in the perfect position you could not load the radio recording...
Comment: @DrMcCleod Very poor, indeed, *R Tape Loading Error* was common. Perhaps that was the reason why they withdrew it from air after a couple of months.
Comment: In Germany, we had also [Channel Videodat](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_Videodat) (Wikipedia page unfortunately only in German), which used a modulated video signal during the vertical blank interval. That "space" was otherwise used for [teletext](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletext).
Comment: How reliable was this? On my old ZX Spectrum even tape-to-tape copying on the same dual-tapedeck could be an iffy proposition.
Answer: The internet has existed since the 1960s, the World Wide Web is a 1990s development. 'Apps' is used to refer to software obtained via curated 'Stores', like the Apple App Store and the Google Play store. Other than Steam, those didn't exist before the late 2000's. In general, the term is 'software'.
We used cassette tape and floppy disks, or we downloaded from bulletin boards over the phone. We typed programs in from listings in books and magazines. Sometimes we even got software broadcast over television via Teletext services like CEEFAX.
Comment: Well, we may not have had 'Apps' but we had 'Applications'. When phones came out, they were too small for Applications, so they were shortened to 'Apps'. :)
Comment: And the internet did *not* exist in the 1960s. Arpanet started in 1969, but that was a far cry from the internet.
Comment: Don't forget 'applets', mini applications that could be embedded inside webpages!
Comment: I never even heard "application" until I moved from 8 and 16 bit machines to Windows in the '90s. I found it quite an ugly term. Everyone I knew in the home computer scene until then just said "program" or "software".
Comment: "The internet has existed since the 1960s" - not for most people.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet "the emergence of architecture such as the Domain Name System, and the adoption of TCP/IP internationally on existing networks marked the beginnings of the Internet. Commercial Internet service providers (ISPs) emerged in **1989** in the United States and Australia."
Comment: @dbmag9, I think we would all prefer to forget those. Are you going to bring up Flash next?
Comment: @JakeRobb this comment section is an applet - although not the traditional kind. This one is written in Javascript.
Comment: @user25371 I'm not familiar with SO's implementation, but having been developing web apps for 20+ years, I suspect it's more accurate to think of the entire site as one large application with many components and functions; not multiple little, separate applications.

That said, I was not talking about applets in the general, dictionary definition sense. Rather, I was referring to [the HTML applet tag](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/applet). I suspect dbmag9 was too.
Answer: Just to toss a log on the fire.
One of the more novel mechanics in terms of mass distribution was through an optical scanning device.
Specifically, this was a device, about a foot long, that you plugged into your computer. It was a mini scanner. The sensor was about an inch wide, and moved down the track, like a normal flat bed scanner without the bed. And it wasn't a generic pixel scanner, it only scanned the encoded images, like a barcode or QR code scanner.
Dr Dobbs actually published these in their magazine for, perhaps, about a year or so.
Edit:
After some research and help from a fellow on another forum, this is the device I'm talking about:
Cauzin Softstrip https://rich12345.tripod.com/museum2/softstrip.html
Edit 2:
Ha! I found it!
Go to page 711 within https://archive.org/details/dr_dobbs_journal_vol_11/page/710/mode/2up and you'll see the softstrip images. I simply wasn't looking late enough, October '86. I was looking through '85 and early 86.
On page 693, they mention what they're doing.
Also, at a time there was some software distributed in magazines on flimsy 45 RPM records. And, I believe, at some point there were radio broadcasts of software that were meant to be recorded and loaded into a computer.
Comment: @WillHartung well that's an improvement on typing TRS-80 BASIC code character for character from a magazine.
Comment: Do you have more details of this scanner device? Maybe the name? It sounds fascinating. (If it's too much for this answer, I can ask a separate question.)
Comment: Yes, can you explain more how this worked. You'd buy a magazine or book with encoded images and the scanner would convert it to computer code?
Comment: I actually had one, won it as a prize somewhere, I think at a Mac show at school. But I don't recall the name. As I said, it was about a foot long, 1.5" + wide, made of brown plastic. I tried looking through some of the old Dr Dobbs, but I can't find any yet where they have the scan codes. But I almost sense that some of the pages that had them, had them removed before they published them. Hard to say.
Comment: @WaterMolecule Yes, you could easily fit 4 "bars" of coded data across a normal page. In the Dr Dobbs articles, they had one row per page next to the source code. You'd scan it in and get a text file -- at least for the source code, but nothing to stop you from using it for binary.
Comment: @WaterMolecule Indeed. I recall seeing those black pages of TRS-80 BASIC program listings. I've looked through the DDJ "best of" volumes they published, and its clear they removed these. In fact, they've removed I would say 99% of the advertising in these as well, so they likely did it then. They clearly removed entire pages, so they may have removed the page mentioning that they were doing this at all. I got the device probably in 1985, and it was after that that they did it.
Comment: If you look at the DDJ Volume 11, 1986 edition. In the first (January) issue. Look at the "C Chest" program listings and note the large amounts of white space on each side of the page. I'm pretty sure that's where these bars were. It could have been all advertising, but historically, they didn't wrap their code in advertising. Circumstantial evidence here to be sure, but that's all I have for the moment.
Comment: You should totally link an image of a SoftStrip.
Comment: ISTR, some of the published software was "copy protected" by printing the bar codes on a dark red background. The scanner could distinguish the black ink from the red background, but photo copiers of the day would only give you a solid black page if you tried to copy it.
Comment: This seems to be an extension of using conventional barcode scanners to input programs from paper, e.g. the HP-41C calculator had a [barcode wand accessory](https://literature.hpcalc.org/items/354), circa 1979. Also of note, this idea was resurrected for the Gameboy Advance as the [Nintendo e-Reader](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_e-Reader).
Comment: The Cauzin scanner cost about $200 (the equivalent of $550 today). It was a nice idea, but not too many people bought them.
Answer: Plenty of answers here detailing how to get your hands on some physical medium with a piece of software on it, but I don't see any of them touching on the point of

how did people get apps and games installed on their computers [...] and how were they accessed and saved?

So, there were several ways. In the very early days, before my time (aka in the 70s and 80s) computers often didn't have a hard drive in them. Each time you booted them up, you had to supply some physical media (a tape or a diskette) that contained the software. You put in the media and pressed the power button. The computer loaded the software in memory and you continued from there. This is quite similar to older game consoles that need to have a CD or a cartridge in, before you can do anything with them.
As the 90s rolled around, hard drives became cheap enough that most computers started to have them. Or maybe a bit earlier, as I said, this was before my time so I'm a bit murky on the dates. This meant that software could now be copied to the computer itself. Operating systems started to reside on the hard drive, while other software could still be run directly from an external media, or also copied to the hard drive. This copying part was known as "installing" and most software usually came with an extra "installer" program which ran directly from the disk and copied the software to the hard drive. A lot like installing an app on your phone, except you had to launch it manually from the physical media. Most also included and "uninstaller" program that you could later use to delete the software from your hard drive.
As for saving data - well, you also used either the same (or different) external media, or saved your files to the hard drive.
Added:
Also I should note that back then you had to be at least somewhat familiar with all the folders (directories) on your computer. Today when you install an app on your phone you have no idea where exactly its files are. It's just "somewhere on the phone". Similarly with saving files to "My Documents" or whatever. But back then you had to know at least the path to the executable file itself so that you could locate it and run it. And when you saved/loaded some files, you had to know where they are located too.
However that applies only if you had a filesystem to begin with, so that includes various disks and diskettes. Tapes were different, but I have no experience with those.
Comment: Good point! My first hard disk was more expensive than the complete computer. (30 MB for an Atari ST for 3000 bucks.)
Comment: @vitsoft Actually, my first own computer (set aside programmable calculators) was self-designed and built, run an 8080 with 0,0009 GHz system clock, with 1 KB RAM, 20 keys and a 6-digit 7-segment LED as I/O. Yes, no ROMs, no "mass storage" (tape, floppy, HD, ...), no screen, no network. Boy, was this a great time, and I had so much fun with it! Best thing, I could afford it from one month' compensation of non-military service.
Comment: My first two computers, Atari 800 and Tandy 2000 both came sans hard drive. But by the end of the 80s hard drives were a standard feature.
Comment: @thebusybee I had to pay 15 month' salary for a PC-XT with 10 MB HDD back in 1989 but I never regretted. Booting without waiting for a floppy to load DOS 3,0 was luxury. As it hasn't got realtime clock chip, I had to manually set date and time after each restart.
Answer: Another aspect that no one has mentioned yet is, many computers had dial-up modems that worked over telephone landlines.  They worked by converting streams of data to sound, which was sent as a voice call, and back (modem originally was short for MODulator-DEModulator, although today it mostly means boxes that connect to cable and DSL internet).  These transmitted at a tiny fraction of the speed of the modern Internet (early ones might transmit only a few hundred bytes per second), but files were much smaller then, too.
Some people would get extra landlines to their homes and have a modem listen on them, which would pick up and connect any user who dialed up to a text-only forum called a Bulletin-Board System (BBS).  This would run a program that (like a console on Linux, Mac or Windows today) emulated a terminal with sixteen colors. this normally brought up a menu, but you could log in to leave messages, play some games (Rogue Trader being one of the most popular) and download files.  The vast majority of BBSes had only one landline with one modem, so users would need to be considerate and not hog the line.
In the U.S., the phone company would not normally charge extra for local calls, no matter how many you made or how long they lasted, even if someone were using the phone line all day, so all BBSes recruited from a local area code.  Some were free, and some charged a subscription fee.  They would advertise in computer 'zines, or I remember some stores having flyers with a list of local BBSes.  However, many would regularly call each other up, or exchange data through what was called the FidoNet.
When the Internet came along, most of these were replaced by dial-up Internet Service Providers.  There was an intermediate stage with proprietary networks that were nationwide, with offices in each area code where subscribers could make a local call and connect to a modem. AOL is the best-known, gave all its users Internet access in the mid-'90s, and eventually stopped offering dial-up service at all, instead charging for access to its subscriber-only chat rooms from the Internet.  Most phone companies have since replaced their old analog wires with Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) service, and now offer high-speed Internet connections over those.  Nevertheless, a few BBSes have hung around, replacing their landline connections with Telnet-protocol connections to an Internet address.
Today, add-ons for some vintage computers plug into the same ports as a vintage modem and emulate one.  A variant of that at the time was to connect two computers with a "null modem cable," which simply connected the input pin of one computer's serial port to the output pin of the other, and could be used for a sort of two-person LAN party.
Also, if you're reading this site and have not seen WarGames yet, you absolutely should!
Comment: *let's play global thermonuclear war* ... on second thought, that might not be such a good idea right now
Comment: "modem originally was short for MODulator-DEModulator"  It still is. It is still necessary to modulate and demodulate signals sent over cable or DSL links, amongst others.
Comment: @manassehkatz-Moving2Codidact Still topical as ever? Oh, that reminds me: check out [the true story, too. Stranger than fiction!](https://www.powells.com/book/cuckoos-egg-tracking-a-spy-through-the-maze-of-computer-espionage-9781416507789)
Comment: I read that several years ago. Didn't think of the connection though.
Answer: There were a myriad number of ways that consumers would get software for their computers. You could buy physical media from a store, or by mail order, or by calling a toll-free number. You could download digital media from things like Usenet and BBS systems. People would copy software onto all kinds of media, from disks to audio cassette tapes. Software listings were found in some magazines that you could subscribe to monthly, quarterly, annually, or something else. It sounds crazy now, but back in the 1980's and perhaps earlier, you could go to various stores that sold magazines or electronics and find various code listings that you'd have to painstakingly type in one line at a time, sometimes for hundreds of lines. Before the day of the Internet, people came up with all kinds of creative ways to share and distribute software in various forms.
Answer: Way back, you'd load a bootstrap loader into the computer using toggle switches on the front of the computer ).  The loader would read in an inital program via paper tape, typically from the paper tape reader on the side of the teletype that acted as the console.  That program might be a more sophisticated loader.  Finally you'd "boot" the computer.
Here is the front panel on a PDP-8
Notice that the switches are group into 3 to a color.  That's because the PDP line used Octal (3 bits) rather than Hex (4 bits) as the number base.  You'd get the bit pattern right and then toggle the load (?? - it's been a while) switch.  Also note that there are 18 switches available, even though the PDP-8 is a 12 bit machine (sorry, I don't know why, PDP-8s are before even my time).
The "Rim Loader" bunch of octal numbers in the rectangle on the left is probably the bootstrap loader - all 32 instructions, each 12 bits long.
Anecdote
Legend at my first employer had it that a much bigger competitor was trying to move into our business (which was automation software for paper mills).  They used PDP-11s (I think) and much of their software was on paper tape.  They had just about finished up their system when they went home for the weekend.  The procedure was to stash the paper tape in a drawer in the computer cabinet, lock the cabinet and go home.
The computer used magnetic core memory (which was non-volatile), so it didn't need to be loaded from paper tape very often.
Over the weekend, something happened.  The paper tape caught on fire, burning the computer and effectively all the software.
We offered to get the customer up and running in less than a month.  Everyone in the company set to work taking a system they'd installed in another customer's mill and converting it to this company's needs.  The result was our first product (everything had been highly customized before that).
Our competitor stepped back from being our competitor after than.  But, 5 years later, they bought us.  The project manager (and the guy who'd locked the cabinet) ended up running the new subsidiary (and being my direct boss).  He heard references to this story many times.


いる/える Godan Verb Rules?

Question: For words like 帰ります is there a specific reason they're Godan instead of Ichidan in any case? Things like a change from an historical pronunciation of the word, grammar relating to the radicals of the character or is it literally random with each of these decisions genuinely being made arbitrarily? For 帰ります just for the sake of example, what was the original reason it's Godan and how many other いる/える Godan verbs have similar stories?
Comment: Related: https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/30910/7810, https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/59752/7810
Answer: I think you are approaching this the wrong way.  You seem to assume that all verbs that end in -eru or -iru should be ichidan.  But there's no reason why that should be true.  In linguistics there are no "shoulds".  It's just the way that the verbs are.
Let's try looking at this from another angle.  Consider the inflections for the ichidan verb kaeru = "to change" (変える).  As you know, inflections are the part of the word that changes; in languages like English and Japanese, that happens at the end of the word.  I will separate the part that doesn't change (the "base", "radical" or "stem") with an hyphen:

kae-nai
kae-masu
kae-ru
kae-re-ba
kae-yo

Now compare the stem for the godan verb kaeru, "to return" (帰る):

kaer-a-nai
kaer-i-masu
kaer-u
kaer-e-ba
kaer-ō

Notice how, for the ichidan verb 変える, the base or stem ends in a vowel, -e.  For the godan verb 帰る, the stem (=the part that never changes) ends in a consonant, -r.  Because of this, linguists call the traditional "ichidan" verbs vowel-stem verbs, and "godan" verbs consonant-stem verbs.
So the fact that a verb has conclusive inflection (shūshikei 終止形, dictionary form) ending in -eru does not, by itself, tell us how it inflects.  We need to know whether the stem ends in a consonant or in a vowel.  "To return" has the stem kaer-, and "to change" is kae-.  It's just that the conclusive form of vowel-stem verbs (ichidan verbs) adds -ru, so that, by coincidence, they end up sounding just like consonant-stem verbs whose final consonant happens to -r.

Why are some verbs vowel-stem, and some verbs consonant-stem?
We don't know.  The oldest records we have of Japanese are from the Nara period, and at this stage the distinction was already present.  In ancient Japanese consonant verbs used four extra vowels, not five (so they were 四段 yodan, four-grade, in Japanese terminology).  And there were more kinds of vowel-stem verbs, with some rules which made the vowel change, and more irregular verbs, too.  But the basic distinction between vowel-stem and consonant-stem verbs, those like kaer-u vs. kae-ru, goes back as far as we have evidence.  For example, the verb kaer-u "to return" has been reconstructed as *kapyer- (かへ甲る)¹, while "to change", kae-ru, had the ancient stem *kape- (かへ乙-).²
Some linguists have proposed that all verbs were originally consonant-stem, and vowel-stem verbs were derived from them.  Others have argued for the opposite.  As far as I can tell, there's no definitive answer yet.
Frellesvig, in A History of the Japanese Language (pp. 119–), notes two phenomena that happen with ancient vowel-stem verbs.  The first is that, in many cases, the vowel-stem verb appears to be derived from an adjective, with a change in vowel (aka-ki "red" → ake-ru "redden, lighten"; sabu-si "lonely" → sabwi-ru "grow desolate").  In other cases, the vowel-stem verb appears to be derived from a consonant-stem, changing the transitivity (tuk-u "stick to" → tuke-ru "attach something").  These alternations (both the change in vowel quality, and the addition of an extra vowel) have been theorized (by Ohno, Unger and others) to come from some prehistoric suffix *-y, which formed diphthongs like akay-, later changing into ake- etc.
If this theory is correct, the reason why 変える kae-ru is a vowel verb is that, a very long time ago, it was formed with this hypothetical *-y suffix, possibly from *kapay- (compare 変わる kawar-u < kapar-u).  And the reason why 帰る kaer-u is not a vowel verb is that it never had such a diphthong.  But all of this is hypothetical; and even if it's correct, there are still many modern vowel-stem verbs which would not trace to these *-y-verbs.  The proposed *-y formant would have created most of the vowel-stem verbs, but not all³ (e.g. mi-ru "to see" and ki-ru "to put on" appear to have been vowel-stems from the beginning).

Notes:
[1] There used to be two kinds of e, called in Japanese linguistics the "A-type" (甲) and the "B-type" (乙).  I'm following Frellesvig in interpreting A-type as ye, and B as a plain e.  Also the はへひほふ sounds used to be pa,pe,pi,po,pu; in the middle of words they later became wa,we,wi,wo,u, then finally a,e,i,o,u (so kapyeru > kaweru > kaeru). The orthography changed, accordingly, from かへる to かえる.  These ancient pronunciations aren't relevant for the discussion, so you can gloss over all that.
[2] One of the verb inflection rules was that, when two vowels met, you picked the second. So kapyer- plus the conclusive suffix -u resulted in kapyeru かへる; but kape- + -u > kape+u > kapu, かふ.  The unchanged stem was visible when you added a consonant-initial suffix, like kape-te かへて, which didn't change the original vowel.  This rule accounts for the "bigrade" (ニ段) verbs of traditional grammar.
[3] The verbs thought to be made with the *-y formant are called "thematic".  For those familiar with traditional grammar, the thematic class corresponds to lower bigrades 下ニ段, upper bigrades 上ニ段, and possibly the s-irregular サ変.
Comment: @Earthliŋ Maybe! If I'm reading this correctly, all vowel-stem verbs descend from either a) thematic  verbs once built from the formative *\*-y*, or b) a handful of upper monograde verbs with a monosyllabic stem (*mi-, ki-*…). This brings to mind two questions: i) why the *\*-y* element always resulted in -i/-e, and ii) whence the monosyllabic -i verbs, and how are they related to the thematic ones.  I'd have to dig a bit deeper on the literature to answer that properly, though…
Comment: Could this also explain why vowel-stem verbs only end in *-e* or *-i* (which is [this question](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/59752/1628))?
Comment: @Earthliŋ, Boiko:  Another possibility is that the 二段・一段 verb forms are [defective](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defective_verb) developments from underlying 四段 full-paradigm verbs.  We see this in the modern language primarily with 下二段 forms in verb clusters like つく・つける, with similar related developments also producing 五段 forms paired with 下二段 forms as in かかる・かける, both arising from earlier かく.  Some of the oldest 上一段 verbs might also be noun derivations.
Comment: @Earthliŋ, Boiko: For research on developments within the scope of historical Japanese, [this paper](http://nihon5ch.net/contents/ch5/daigakuin/gengo-2008-3-part1.pdf) presents a compelling case for one mechanism by which 下二段 verbs would develop -- essentially as an outgrowth of the potential / 自発 sense of an otherwise transitive verb, used to describe the agent performing the action.  The 終止形 stem for 変える was かふ, suggesting overlap / cognacy with other かふ verbs (like 買う, 交う, etc.).  The putative prehistoric //-y// mentioned above might be cognate with OJP / classical ゆ, the 自発・受け身 suffix.

いる/える Godan Verb Rules?


How to prove perm-power is in P?

Question: Let $\mathit{PERM\text{-}POWER} = \{ \langle p, q, t\rangle \mid p = q^t \}$ where $p$ and $q$ are permutations on $\{1, \ldots, k\}$ and $t$ is a binary integer. How do I prove that $\mathit{PERM\text{-}POWER}$ is in P?
Comment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponentiation_by_squaring
Answer: Computing the $t$th power of a permutation is as simple as writing the permutation as a product of disjoint cycles (clearly doable in polynomial time), computing the $t$ modulo each cycle length (also clearly polynomial in the length of $t$, say by grade-school division bit for bit), and iterating each cycle remainder number of times (polynomial even if you don't try to be smart about it, because the remainder will be smaller than $k$, so there are $O(k^2)$ operations even for naive iteration). Finally compose the iterated cycles (again using $O(k^2)$ operations when doing it naively).

How to prove perm-power is in P?


Why are tuition fees for PhD students so high in the USA, despite not taking any class?

Question: As a PhD student in a US university, my tuition fees are ~44,000 USD per year, despite the fact that I don't take any class: only 6 classes are required during the PhD program, and I've completed them during the first two years. Why are tuition fees so high? (tuition is paid by fellowship / RA / TA / ...)
Comment: @Jigg: Rice is also a private institution.  And at both Rice and MIT, the tuition for PhD students is an institutional fiction since no one actually pays it.  Thus supply and demand has nothing to do with it; it simply determines how much money flows between various units within the university, or between a granting agency and the university (and those agencies almost never actually pay the sticker price).
Comment: It is worth noting that tuition fees for older PhD students (3 or 4th year and higher) are often quite lower than the fees for 1st and 2nd year students. For example at Rice University, the tuition fees for the mathematics graduate program are $19,940/semester for 1-3rd years and $1,108/semester for 4th years and above.
Comment: @AruRay Interesting! In mine (MIT), tuition fees are pretty much the same since I started (as usual there is some inflation).
Comment: Related:http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/21189/10643
Comment: I assumed that the point of having a reduced rate for older students was to help out folks who are close to being done with their PhD but are no longer being funded (the difference between $19000 and $1000 is negligible/immaterial for a university, but quite material to a 6th+\epsilon year grad student! The reduced rate could be the difference between someone finishing their PhD in one additional semester they pay for out of pocket and having to leave due to not being able to afford to stay.)
Answer: I think it is essentially a scam. There are essentially 3 types of students (1) self funded, (2) departmentally funded, (3) externally funded. For departmentally funded students the tuition fees are essentially meaningless and just represent money being shifted around internally. Self funded students can be really hurt by large tuition fees, but departments can offset these fees by partial departmental funding (again just internally transferring money around). The scam comes when students are funded externally and the external funder is required to pay the full fee (and potentially even indirect costs on the tuition fees). Things get messy when the funding has a cap on tuition fees. For example the NIH NRSA pays 60% of the tuition up to $16,000 plus a $4,200 "institutional" allowance. Most departments I am aware of offer a tuition subsidy to individuals who get an NRSA.
It is worth noting that high fees not only puts PIs at expensive universities at a disadvantage (okay to be fair, it reduces their advantage) in that their research is more expensive than someone at a cheaper university, but it also puts them in an ethical dilemma. When tuition fees make hiring a PhD student more expensive than a post doc, it is hard for a PI to justify hiring a PhD student.
Comment: *"I think it is essentially a scam."* This is a bold statement, that I think is 100% correct.
Comment: The reason to hire a PhD student instead of a postdoc is that the former is going to be around for much longer time; and successful theses count towards the PI's CV. This is not only a US thing, in Sweden now it is cheaper to hire postocs than PhD students, and both are directly paid by the PI.
Comment: Despite the popularity, this doesn't answer the question and smacks of conspiracy theory. Charging tuition and indirect costs (IDC) on external grants is negotiated position between powerful, sophisticated entities. IDC and what's subject to it are periodically renegotiated between the US govt and universities. Both sides know that high IDC rates, just like high salaries, make a university less competitive in some ways, but at the same time universities need a way to leverage grants to pay for the things that support them. The system we have isn't perfect, but nobody got scammed.
Comment: @StrongBad, high tuition is a mechanism to extract money from whoever will pay it. The US federal government is fully aware and goes in eyes open. Most of these institutions are non-profits, so despite maybe a few high administrator salaries, most of this money "extracted" from these funders goes to make MIT a better place to get a degree. If funds departments to do research, hire more faculty and staff, buy equipment, run libraries, etc, etc. If your complaint is that MIT is too expensive, you are free to go somewhere else. If enough people do that, tuition will drop.
Comment: The latter problem is easily taken care off by introducing postdoctoral fees.  Oops, they already exist.  So far they seem to be usually quite small, but who knows what universities are up to next?
Comment: @BillBarth My answer is that high tuition is a mechanism to extract money from funders. I agree with you that everything is up front and open making high PhD tuition not exactly a scam, but I think these schools are over stating the costs of training PhD students and being unethical making it essentially a scam.
Comment: @BillBarth or to increase the endowment.
Comment: @StrongBad, what do you think that gets used for?
Comment: Overhead can't be collected on tuition paid by a grant.
Answer: Because, as you mentioned, they are paid for by someone other than you. This happens in any subsidized industry/system. Interestingly, the subsidies grow over time instead of shrink -- the reasons beyond that are something you should ask an economics professor; it is a distinct trend.
You'll find folks who say this is the way things should be as much as you'll find folks who think its a scam. It is a logical outcome of the current academic system, may be a leading indicator of its eventual demise, and at the moment is something you should probably not dwell on unless you happen to actually be an economics postgrad (in which case I doubt you would have posed the question in the first place).
Comment: @OswaldVeblen "subsidy impact", "effect of price control", "supply and demand", maybe "equivalence of subsidy and protectionism", etc. The recipes for shortage are well known in economics; the recipes for healthy function of a market, on the other hand, remain a mystery. (Other than "enforce voluntary contract, prevent abuse of monopoly, and don't touch anything else" -- which is politically impossible to follow in government or academia and does *nothing* to guarantee prosperity, just restricts the conditions of one form of disaster cycle.)
Comment: @StrongBad Who? In short, government; outside of that fiscal input is voluntary (taxation is not). Why would that be interpreted by some as a leading indicator of the eventual demise of academia? I should be more clear: by "the demise of academia" mean the demise of the current system as we have it today. I do not by any means mean that academic study will cease (probably ever), but I do mean that the current post-WWII era of academia is considered by many to be in its final phase. Reasons range from the oldest debate about academia (the Sophist problem) to the market forces in play.
Comment: Could you suggest some good search terms for people who would like to read more about this phenomenon?
Comment: I am confused by this answer. Who is subsidising the system and why may it be a leading indicator of the eventual demise of academia.
Comment: Here is a Forbe's article about the economic end of this: http://www.forbes.com/sites/avidan/2013/01/01/after-housing-and-the-stock-market-is-higher-education-the-next-bubble-to-burst/
Answer: There are costs to you being on campus and using university resources whether you sit in a lecture or not. True, my non-lecture years were a lot cheaper for the university, but that doesn't mean the costs were zero.
My university required me to register for place-holder Research and Dissertation courses which never met so that they would have some way to account for how much to charge me. My real courses and these fake courses had the same per-credit-hour charge (more or less). Imagine if you only had to pay for the real classes that actually met. Your tuition bill for the first couple of semesters would have been $100,000 to $150,000 and then your later semesters maybe only a few thousand. This is pretty imbalanced and hard to justify to some people, so many universities average the costs across all their students rather than piling it on the ones that have lectures. It's not the only model (see Aru Ray's comment about Rice), but it mostly works out.
Comment: Why do you think taught lectures and seminars are more expensive than one-on-one meetings with your research supervisor?
Comment: @StrongBad, what makes you think I think that? The number of times I met with my supervisor for the faux Research and Dissertation classes I signed up for was independent of the number of credit hours they were listed as. Whereas a lecture course typically has guaranteed or required contact hours that can be budgeted for directly. Treating these faux courses under the same model is easier than lumping all the costs directly into the lecture courses (like maybe Rice appears to). I didn't intend to disparage time spent meeting with your supervisor.
Comment: There are also benefits to your being on campus. Namely that PhD students are often very productive researchers.
Comment: To my knowledge, professors also don't get paid explicitly more for advising 3 students vs. 2 either. They're paid broadly to teach a certainly, research, advise students, and do service (committees). Teaching seems to be the one place where you might supplement your salary on a per-course basis by picking up an extra class or two beyond your required load, but it doesn't typically matter if 15 rather than 25 students register for it. You don't get extra pay for each extra student above the minimum for the course to make.
Comment: I ran some numbers, and it indeed does seem cheaper when students are meeting with an advisor a few hours a week versus taking classes. The key point is that a faculty member teaching a 3-hour class must spend much *more* than 3 hours on it. If the choice is teaching a 3-hour class of 5 students or advising 2 students for 1.5 hours each per week, both would consume the same amount of faculty salary *except* that the faculty member actually spends more than 3 hours on the class. I think we're in agreement overall @BillBarth
Comment: @OswaldVeblen, but the pricing model isn't about recouping costs on an hour-for-hour basis. Otherwise, you would pay more to take a class or be advised by the Nobel Laureate at your university than you do for the classes taught by adjuncts. Yet, we don't do this. Universities are broadly egalitarian within departments at the very least, and to some extent across much broader swaths of schools/colleges (in the US sense). The model I describe with the filler research courses helps to maintain the model by charging students equally whether they take a lecture course or just do research.
Answer: Consider this. A PhD dissertation advisor has one to a few  PhD students, and their salary is somewhere in the range of 100k to 200k USD per year. Advising PhD students is a higher level work and may be considered, as a matter of an abstract principle, more challenging or meritorious than teaching a course. While 44,000 USD per year is probably somewhat on the high side, considering the above and that tuition also covers various campus services and facilities, I think it is still quite fair.


Should we not pray at 12 o clock in the night?

Question: I heard it from my mother that it is not allowed to pray at 12 o clock in the night as it is when the shaitan or Jinn pray. That it their time and we should not disturb them. And if we do so, they might hurt us. Is it true?
Comment: This has nothing to do with Islam the two major times where prayer is not recommended (nafl would be prohibited) are a few minutes after sunrise and before sunset.
Answer: Times when praying is foribidden
Times when praying (an optional prayer) is forbidden are defined by this two ahadith (based on this Arabic fatwa):

Uqba b. 'Amir said:
There were three times at which Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) forbade us to pray, or bury our dead: When the sun begins to rise till it is fully up, when the sun is at its height at midday till it passes over the meridian, and when the sun draws near to setting till it sets. (sahih Muslim and all sunan books)

and

Abu Sa'id al-Khudri reported Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) as saying:
No prayer is valid after the 'Asr prayer till the sun sets and no prayer is valid after the dawn prayer till the sun rises. (sahih Muslim also reported by abu Hurairah, ibn 'Abbas and other sahaba)

See also in sahih al-Bukahri, sahih Muslim etc.

Ordered prayers can be performed and must be performed if missed at any time due to the hadith.
Most scholars consider the ruling to apply on sujud too: for example sujud at-tilawa (when reciting the Qur'an) and sujud a-Shukr (performing a sajda of thankfulness)

So the first hadith forbids to pray:

When the sun is rising (from begin till it is fully risen)
When the sun is overhead at noon, until it has passed its zenith
When the sun starts to set (this is often described with اصفرار الشمس which means when the sun gets a dark yellow color) until it is completely set.

Note that some schools of fiqh reject the 2nd point here.
The second hadith forbids to pray:

After the 'asr prayer until sunset.
After the sobh (fajr fard) until sunrise.

The hanbali and shafi'i school of fiqh consider it haram to start an optional prayer at those times unless one has a reason. Shafi'i and hanafi make an exception for the Friday noon as there is no evidence that sahaba used to stop praying sunnah at noon, but they went ahead until the Imam came out.  The maliki school makes a difference between times where it is haram or discouraged to pray optional prayers, according this it is haram to pray while the sun is rising, when the sun sets, so far this applies in general. And while one is in a mosque it is haram to pray: while the Imam is holding his sermon on jumuah, when the call (iqamah) for a ordered prayer has started, when the Imam is going to start his sermon (khotba) of jumuah and if one remembers a missed prayer and has only time to start praying it before the time of an other ordered prayer starts. And it is discouraged to pray after sobh (fajr fard) until the sun rises to the height of a spear above the horizon and after 'asr prayer until sunset.
Praying 'isha after the middle of the night
According to this hadith in sahih Muslim.

The Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) was asked about the times of prayers. He said: The time for the morning prayer (lasts) as long as the first visible part of the rising sun does not appear and the time of the noon prayer is when the sun declines from the zenith and there is not a time for the afternoon prayer and the time for the afternoon prayer is so long as the sun does not become pale and its first visible part does not set, and the time for the evening prayer is that when the sun disappears and (it lasts) till the twilight is no more and the time for the night prayer is up to the midnight.

Midnight here doesn't mean 12 O'clock but the middle of the night as one can deduce from the Arabic original

صَلاَةِ الْعِشَاءِ إِلَى نِصْفِ اللَّيْلِ

Some scholars like al-Istikhari (shafi'i), ibn Hazm, ibn Taymiyyah and ibn 'Othaymeen said that praying 'isha after the middle of the night is considered as not performing it on time but a qada' as they say the time for Isha' ends at the middle of the night. While the majority of scholars say the timing for a ordered prayer ends with the beginning of the time for the next ordered prayer even there's a fatwa of the sahaba abdurrhamn ibn 'Auf and abdullah ibn 'Abbas confirming this view. This also goes ahead with the meaning of this hadith.
The view of the hanfi and shafi'i school and a rather unkonown view of the maliki school says that the time for 'Isha' is when the twilight disappears until dawn. This is primarily based on the last linked hadith and on a hadith on the authority of abu Hurairah i couldn't find in the wording quoted in this article or fatwa

أول وقت العشاء حين يغيب الشفق ، وآخره حين يطلع الفجر

Which means the beginning of the time of 'isha' is when the twilight disappears and the ending is once the dawn rises.
The known and applied opinion of the maliki school here is that the time for 'isha is until the third (first) of the night based on this hadith (afterwards it would be considered as qada') this is also the view of the hanbali school (with small differences).
On the other hand it was reported that our Messenger used to delay praying al-'Isha as compiled in sahih Muslim and al-Bukhari (see also this hadith).
Note that my linked article which includes a lot of more ahadith saying that our Messenger used to delay 'isha' which is a known sunnah according the majority of scholars they only differ about the preferred time at when one should perform it.
As you may see there are -and Allah knows best- some misunderstandings and misinterpretations about this. So i couldn't find any source which relates praying at the middle of the night with jinns and we know very well that praying at night is a well known sunnah unless ahadith like this one and similiar narration about praying after 'Asr prayer.There's also a kind of recommendation to not let children outside from the time of sunset on quoting Jinn as a reason, read for example this fatwa and there are many ahadith quoting Jinn when it comes to night times asking us not to keep cups uncovered or doors or windows open etc.. The thing is that scholars defined the times for prayers as follows: a time which is ikhtiyari إختياري (of choice) one could say a preferable time: which usually is at the begin of the time of an ordered prayer and a time which is idtirari إضطراي (of -urgent- necessity)  one could say a time one must perform the prayer to not be considered a sinner. This is usually at the end of a time for an ordered prayer and before the call of the following ordered prayer would come.
See also this fatwa and this.
Comment: May I ask from which country are you, so that I can convey the same to my mother?
Comment: @servant-of-Wiser i live in Germany but grow up in Morocco. I still try to find a source for your statement...
Answer: There are no hadith or ayat to support this claim there for we should be careful to follow any teachings that cannot be backed up as this is bidah and this is a sure way to hell fire.
The only times we are advised not to pray is as the sun raises and sets and at high noon.
Hadith:
Jabir ibn Abdullah reported: The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, would praise Allah in his sermon as He deserves to be praised and then he would say, "Whoever Allah guides, no one can lead him astray. Whoever Allah sends astray, no one can guide him. The truest word is the Book of Allah and the best guidance is the guidance of Muhammad. The most evil matters are those that are newly invented, for every newly invented matter is an innovation and every innovation is misguidance and every misguidance is in the Hellfire."
Uqba b. 'Amir said: There were three times at which Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) forbade us to pray, or bury our dead: When the sun begins to rise till it is fully up, when the sun is at its height at midday till it passes over the meridian, and when the sun draws near to setting till it sets.
Comment: I am not sure what the country we live in has to do with our knowledge of the deen?
Comment: Jazak Allah Khair! May I ask from which country are you, so that I can convey the same to my mother?
Comment: Sure , I am from South Africa
Answer: Interestingly, i also heard my father saying don't pray around 12 at night, and when asked for reason he didn't gave one.
And this reason given is interesting, though it has no source for the confirmation and as of my research i found nothing.
So, this claim has no value.
Comment: Jazak Allah Khair! May I ask from which country are you, so that I can convey the same to my mother?
Comment: from Pakistan .
Answer: It is very important that we make every effort to follow reliable opinions within Islamic scholarship. When we hear things, it is our job to check their veracity. Negligence in these issues is what leads people to bid'ah (innovation in religion) which has been forbidden by the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH).
However, we are also commanded to be kind and gentle towards our parents, so treat the matter with wisdom as it is improper conduct to be rude to parents, even if they are incorrect about something.
As for your answer, this is not true as even the Prophet Muhammad would pray isha (late night) prayer very late with his companions.
Comment: Jazak Allah Khair! May I ask from which country are you, so that I can convey the same to my mother?
Comment: @servant-of-Wiser from Pakistan, live in Canada
Answer: In the name of Allah.
Before I answer your question, please keep this in mind: "This day I have perfected your deen, completed my favor upon you, and chosen (or is pleased with) islam as your way of life" Surah Maiedah - table spread (in the beginning)
The more important issue at hand is that Islam is complete.  Islam is perfect.  Nothing needs to be taken out or added in the "deen".
Our role model is Muhammad (peace be on him) who clearly delivered the message:  " None is worthy of worship except Allah"  He also showed us how to worship Allah.
Back to your question, there is no proof for the prohibition from Quran, Sunnah, or companions so we can pray at midnight.
A side point, not all jinn are shayateen (devils).  Just like some humans are bad, and some are good. In the same way, some Jinn are bad, and some are good.  Read Surah Jinn (72) for details.
Allah knows best.
Comment: Jazak Allah Khair! May I ask from which country are you, so that I can convey the same to my mother?


Aeroplane Noise Reduction

Question: Does anyone have any advice on how to remove and aeroplane flyby? Ive tried with notched eq, but as the sound is dynamic it doesnt work. Im toying with getting RX 3 and was wondering if anyone has any cheaper solutions?
thanks a million
Answer: First of all I don't think there's an easy solution to these kinds of noises.
Although RX3 is great product, it's not a magic pill (nor any other product.
It totally depends on how loud/continuous/'wide' it is. Since this is a flyby
it could mean that the sound evolves dramatically over the course of a few seconds.
This is much harder to reduce (with any technique).
Another thing: what does is it have to be reduced to relatively? Speech or is it
a natural soundscape? High pitched birdsong could 'survive' a hipass filter. Or you
could replace the airplane frequency range with another ambience of the same range
that doesn't have a lot of noises.
Anyway this is all stuff that takes a lot of time and effort, don't expect a perfect
soundscape afterwards.
Good luck!
Answer: Airplane ? - No Chance ;( Go and record again. Maybe this saves your time instead figuring out RX and realizing, this doesn´t work. I tried several hours to eliminate Airplane pass bys, but it never leads to pleasing results
Answer: One thing to mention. Does the aeroplane really disturb, or does it only disturb you?
Ask another person to check that. Sometimes you get mad on things that are actually no problem at all. And make sure that the aeroplane is not vanishing in a cut or fade.
Comment: Yep ! Nothing more to say. We´re totally fixed on something that disturbes us. And sometimes it´s really not a real problem :)
Answer: Nah, iZotope RX is surely your best best.
It's such a broadband noise that it cannot be trivially removed. Either you'll cut an audible hole in the overall sound or you cannot damp the airplane sound enough, so it'll stay audible.
RX might just be able to cut it out and mask it with the "replace audio" features it has (by either copypasting another audio segment in place of the removed flyby sound or by having RX try synthesize the audio that's missing).
Without RX, you could also try cutting the entire flyby segment off and then try cross-fading the remaining segments to combine them back to a constant track. Or finding a segment that can fill the missing part. This can work if the track is an ambience track and is constant enough.
Answer: Finding another (alt) take for those lines would be your best bet if that's something you have access to.
Answer: Try cheating the sound from a different take that doesn't have the airplane. Or use ADR. Or live with the airplane. The RX3 tool is as good as you will find, but it can only reduce, not eliminate unwanted sounds.
Good luck.

Aeroplane Noise Reduction


What is a good way to organise and identify keys on a keyring?

Question: I have a number of keys on my keyring - screen door, main door, garage door, some random key that I don't know where it goes, etc. When I purchased the house, the previous owner placed different coloured zip ties on each key for identification and snipped the tails off. This is pretty clever but adds to the bulk of the keyring. What is another good way to identify the keys? The heads are assorted shapes and sizes.
Comment: Put them in the order you need them. My brother used to play a pub game that required the other party to identify every key on their key ring. If they couldn't, he would throw it away. People used to thank him.
Comment: http://www.geekalerts.com/u/Star-Wars-Darth-Vader-House-Key.jpg
Answer: I have added notches to the side of the key head in the past. One of the advantages to using this method is that you can find the correct key in the dark.
Start with this:

Take a file to the edge of the key head. Move it back and forth to create a furrow.  End up with this:

Add as many notches to the key as you require. If your key has a flat edge that isn't used by the pins to unlock the lock, you can also use that side.
Comment: I've always done something similar, drilling holes instead of notches. Works quite well.
Comment: +1 for works in the dark too, ubiquity of cellphone flashlights notwithstanding;)
Answer: Since I have lots of different color permanent markers, but not lots of different colors of nail polish, I use my wife's clear nail polish.
Mark the key up with the sharpie - I usually put a dot on - and then a drop of clear nail polish to cover it and keep it on there.  Once dry, it stays on there forever -  or until you use nail polish remover to remove it.
Comment: Nail polish is not in abundance at my house either, but I've got a bit of modelling paint. I think I'll use the paint to mark up the keys, and after it's dry I'll apply some clear nail polish to help keep it there.
Comment: I didn't have any nail polish in my house either. So I went to a grocery store and bough five. Problem solved.
Comment: My local dollar store carries nail polish. No point in spending $3-$5 in cosmetic section of a regular store per bottle if one of these is local to you.
Answer: I've often seen people solving this problem by using colored key caps.

But if you are like me and want to avoid extra weight/volume, you can use dot stickers. Stick one on each side for faster lookup. (update: according to another user, such stickers often have the color rub off in your pockets)
Answer: Coloring the keys is a good way to go.
For coloring I would suggest nail polish,  which is quite durable. Other spray paint might be tried as well, but nail polish is really accessible and easy to apply.
If you want you could even mark keys with letters or numbers or symbols. But please take care not inviting thieves by writing house number or address on the keys. Make the markings subtle and the meaning known only  to you and those using the keys.
Comment: Point given for nail polish, this is what I use in different colours. Seems to last ages
Comment: If i could accept two answers, this would have been the other. Alas, an up vote will have to suffice. Thanks for the tip!
Comment: I was going to suggest the key covers.
Answer: You could try to group them together in small clusters based on your daily activity, and even put them in a sequence based on step by step usage. Add a label rather than a color on each key, especially if you have a lot. If the keys keep adding, an idea would be to switch "technology" (badge-based access systems etc.).
Answer: I use order and memory.
Start by removing any keys you don't need on your keyring. They're just adding to the bulk from the off.
I order my keys by frequency of use and by direction where one way represents locks at the front of my house and the other way represents locks at the back of my house. The car key is the "root", the key next to this is "forwards".
While this exact pattern might not work for you, I'm sure you could come up with something similar to suit. If you need a lot of keys, I'd consider two keyrings linked together with i.e. one for work and one for home, or one for inside and one for outside.
Answer: 1/4" Professional 36pc Letter & Number Stamp Punch Set

Amazon
Comment: Unfortunately I don't own one of these punch sets, and can't really justify purchasing one just to mark out a few keys. I like the idea though!
Comment: Do these work on key metal? Keys tend to be very hard and brittle
Comment: @Oxinabox Yes, all of my keys are stamped. The stamps are hardened steel and keys are usually made out of brass, so no worries.
Comment: That's routinely used here to mark the maker of duplicate keys, so yeah, it'll definately work.
Comment: Why does this set have two 'Y's?  I could see doubling up on something that's used a lot like 'E', but 'Y'?  Weird.
Comment: @DarrelHoffman, since `0` is missing, perhaps it is just a misplacement.
Comment: Having said that, `9` is also missing in favour of `&`. I suppose `O` and `6` can be used in their place, but seems a bit strange to include `y` and `&` instead
Answer: Since nobody has mentioned it: Split it up into multiple rings.  E.g. you can put your work keys on one ring, your home keys on another, and the car keys on a third, then link all the rings together.  This has the advantage that if you need to separate them for any reason (say, to give your car keys to the repair shop, or lend your home keys to the neighbor when you go on vacation so they can water your plants), it's as simple as separating that one ring.
Answer: I used Washi Tape and used not only colors but patterns. For instance, my mailbox key has a brown polka dot pattern and my apartment key has a light green squiggles. Worked better for me than having to remember the colors.
Comment: Overal, good answer. I have made a slight edit and you are welcomed to change it back if you wish.
Answer: There are a lot of key organizing product on market. I use a Keysmart organizer to organize all my keys into a slim case.
Other brands of similar products are available too if you just do a simple google search for key organizers.
As to identify the keys, usually I arrange them in the order of most frequently used, but I think with this type of organizer, you can also use permanent marker or nail polish to  color code back side/the spine part of the keys as labels.
This is their main website: http://getkeysmart.com
Comment: Do these help identify the keys?
Comment: I usually arrange them in the order of most frequently used, as the previous answers mentioned. I didn't want to include a duplicate answer, but I should  still have mentioned that. Thanks for reminding me!
Answer: Discard this idea if you're looking for quick identification with the requirement of some memorization (i.e. colors).
Personally, I use a metal engraver from Amazon (roughly $14) and write something on the key.  I use an acronym (SR = Snowboard Rack) or a name/word (Dad = Dad's house).  The benefit of this is that you can be descriptive, but the downside is that you will need to take a close look at your keys.
Answer: I recently found myself looking for a new/better solution for organizing separate sets of keys as I have access to several properties/storage units across Southern California.
While I subscribe to a lot of the aforementioned solutions (ordering of keys, colored dots/key tags, easy means of separation) I came up with a new, unique solution which I am quite proud of.
I created a spreadsheet on Google Drive entitled 'Keys' with a single sheet called 'Legend.' This sheet has 3 columns: color, name, and address. For each address, I use a colored key tag and add all the keys to the ring (in order of sequence used), then add a row to my spreadsheet with the color of the key tag, descriptive label, and the address the keys go to. I then share the spreadsheet with myself (i.e. only my Google account can access the sheet) and copy the link to this shared document.
Next, I use the link to create a QR code (this can be done for free on any number of sites online). The colored key tags I use have a clear window where you can slide a slip of paper to identify the set. Using a word processor, I create custom labels for each keytag using the same QR code. For example, if I have a set of keys to 2 separate storage units I would create a label with the QR code and maybe the name and city of the storage facility (avoid using unit numbers in the event that you drop/lose the key on the premises -- someone would know exactly which unit to steal from). I print out these labels and slide them into each key tag whose color corresponds with the color specified in the Keys spreadsheet. Now I can use my smart phone to scan the QR code and it will give me (and only me) the additional info to identify which set of keys I need as well as the address of the place that they go to.
Finally, in the event that I do drop/lose the key somewhere, I include some type of contact info (phone number/email/mailing address/etc.) on the reverse side of the key tag so that the keys can be returned. For added protection/security I specify a return address that is a P.O. Box.
NOTE: do NOT make your spreadsheet publicly accessible or it defeats the whole purpose! Share the sheet with only specific people by entering their Google user IDs.


Polls in Google group

Question: Is there any way to create a poll in a Google group?
Answer: You can create a "Form" from within Google Docs and publish that form to your group.
Answer: Google Moderator is a decent utility for polls. If you use Google Apps, you can have some Apps specific functionality. But to answer your question, no, there is no polling functionality in Google Groups.

Polls in Google group


Attaching painted MDF to finished wood wall

Question: I am working on a project where I have been given painted letters made of MDF wood that need to be mounted permanently on a wall that is covered with finished ( rough ) pallet wood.  One of the requirements is that the letters cannot be screwed onto the wall ( no screws or nails visible ).  Since the MDF and wall wood are both painted/finished I figured that regular wood glue is out of the question.  Would construction adhesive be the best option for attaching these letters to the wood wall?
Comment: Can you explain why no nails but are considering a adhesive? The adhesive will really make a mess of the rough wood. A 3 penny? Very tiny, colored finishing nail would hold and the coating for the color hides the nail.
Comment: @EdBeal The issue with the nails is the visibility of the heads and the potential damage to the MDF letters, as they are already painted with a custom mix of colors that is unavailable to me it would be difficult to cover the nail heads so that they are unseen. ( These letters will be around eye level ).
Answer: Liquid nails will do just fine!
Answer: There is an easy way using CA glue. But you must be careful not to use excessive amount   because it may squeeze out and ruining the finished surface.
The strength of this glueup also depends on the strength of the paint or finishing on both mating surfaces.
There is a possibility the glue will affect the finished surface and ultimately weaken the bonding.
If really strong and lasting attachment is required, consider using wooden dowels. This will require you to mark the back side of the object you want to stick. Transfer the mark on a sheet of transparent plastic and use it as the template to mark the wooden wall. Shallow drill the object and the wooden wall using proper drill bit which will match the dowel's diameter.
One-third depth of the thickness of the object is sufficient for the drilled holes. Use wooden dowel length of two-third of object thickness to connect the wall and the object. You may use tiny ammount of any slow setting glue to strengthen the attachment.
I prefer the second method. Dowels are very reliable.
Comment: I will go ahead with dowels as I can rely solely on the strength of the wood rather than the paint and finish.  Thanks.


What is the geographical scope of XBOX Live? Can I play with a friend in India?

Question: I live in the United States, and I would like to play XBOX Live with a friend in India.  Is this possible, or are there divisions among servers that host different regional players?
Comment: Your account has been properly merged, which now presents you enough reputation to upvote (and the ownership needed to accept).
Answer: So you wouldn't think this, but apparently the Xbox Live region for the US does not extend to Canada.  They have their own region up there.  A region I can only imagine is filled with Hockey and Maple Syrup. It's like they're a different country.
I spent some time abroad (where Canada is now defined as abroad for the previously mentioned reasons) and I learned a couple things about Xbox Live:

Points in one region do not carry over (ie. you can't use Canadian Xbox Live points on an American Account)
Your account is locked to the region you created it in
You can use your account in a foreign region (eg. my American account worked in Canada)
You can play with people in other regions

That last one seems most relevant to you question.  Not only have I played with friends in Canada (both there and in America), but also friends in England and Germany.  Now I've never tried India, but I'd bet you dollars to samosa, you can.
Although, watch out for that points thing... its really annoying.
Comment: on a completely unrelated note: I *love* samosa
Answer: I live in the US and have played against someone who lived in Hong Kong before. (I think I've also played against people who live in Europe ... did a couple of multiplayer games and wasn't entirely sure who was there.)
That doesn't specifically answer your question, but it leads me to believe that you should be able to play against your friend on Xbox Live.
Answer: i really don't think you can play with other countries or regions because i haven't played with anybody from other regions and when i watch youtube people from other regions like UK i only here british people. Thats what i think but maybe i am wrong