How to explain combinatorical principles like the rule of product to students who "just don't get it"?

Question: I assist in courses that provide mathematical background to computing science students. Every year, there are some who "just don't get" (in their words) concepts like the rule of product or the corollary that there are $p^n$ options to choose $n$ times from $p$ options (e.g. colouring $n$ fields with $p$ colours, no restrictions). Are there some metaphors from programming that may help these students?
Comment: When expressed in formal math notation like this,  I don't get it. Expressed in code, I get it. I've been programming for 40 years +/-.
Comment: This is arguably a simplest combinatorial problem possible. If a student can't get it, well, tough luck. Not everybody is cut to be a programmer.
Answer: Yes, there are. For the rule of product, one can use nested for loops. For example, when one has to choose from 5 pairs of jeans and 7 shirts, you could use a loop like the following to list all the options:
for (Jeans j : jeans) {
    for (Shirt s : shirt) {
        print(j, s);
    }
}

You can then ask how often the inner loop loops and how often the outer one loops. The student then usually understands he should multiply to get the total number of printed pairs.
I do not know of a programming analogy for the power case (ideas welcome), but as this is an extension of the rule of product it is usually explained rather easily: the $n=2$ case relates to the for loops above, so we would have $p\cdot p$. For $n=3$, we would add another loop, hence $p\cdot p\cdot p$. For $n=4$, we would get $p^4$, etc.
Comment: @nocomprende no changing your jeans until you have worn all your shirts, ties, pants, socks in all their combinations. Sounds like a plan :)
Comment: Wow, I should write a program like this to get dressed for work! Shirts, ties, pants, socks... No wonder it is probably the hardest thing I do all day.
Answer: I will cover "colouring n fields with p colours, no restrictions", as the first part was covered by @Keelan.
Number bases
There are at least 2 special cases that they should already know: "How many values in an n bit binary number?", and "How many values in an n digit denary number?"
Ask them to answer for specific examples e.g. 1 bit, 2 bit → 8 bit. Create a table. Then find a pattern, and generalise to write a formula [$2^n$]. Then add a column for base 10, and maybe base 8, and 16 (if they have done these, in CS class). Now get them to find a pattern again, and generalise [$b^n$ where $b$ is number base, and $n$ in number of bits]
Then link this to non-numberbase, problems: generalise to colours.
Answer: This doesn't call for a metaphor from programming. It's rather the opposite, you get it for programming applications such as the number of times through a nested loop because you get the math.
For the product rule, there's a pretty natural geometric presentation. If there are $p$ choices for A and $q$ choices for B, place the choices for A in rows and the choices for B in columns:
$$\begin{array}{c|c|c|c|c|}
 & B=1 & B=2 & \ldots & B=q \\ \hline
A=1 &  *  &  *  & \ldots &  *  \\ \hline
A=2 &  *  &  *  & \ldots &  *  \\ \hline
\vdots & \vdots & \vdots & \ddots & \vdots \\ \hline
A=q &  *  &  *  & \ldots &  *  \\ \hline
\end{array}$$
There are $p \times q$ stars in that table. You might relate this to the area of a rectangle. Make sure you draw all the cells as identically-sized squares (unlike my figure above!), say that the length of the side of the square is the length unit, then the total area not including the labels is the number of cells and that's $p \times q$.
In the special case where $p = q$, you get $p^2$. If you add a third choice that also has $p$ possibilities, you can still present it visually as a 3-dimensional model, although it's harder and you can expect some students to have a hard time. Show how three choices with $p$, $q$ and $r$ possibilities respectively give you a total of $p \times q \times r$ possibilities. With the same number of possibilities $p$ for each choice, you get $p^3$.
The numbers increase pretty fast, so it soon becomes unwieldy to count them all. Now is a good opportunity to demonstrate how to go from the two-choice case (two dimensions) to the three-choice case (three dimensions). When you add another dimension of length $r$ to $p \times q$, the number of choices is multiplied by $r$. When you add another dimension of length $r$ to $p \times p$, the number of choices is multiplied by $p$.
At this point you've discreetly planted the seed of the idea of recursion. "When you add another dimension, …" — that's the induction step. Each time you add a new dimension, with $p$ choices in each dimension, the total number of choices is multiplied by $p$.
There are $p^2$ choices with $2$ dimensions, $p^3$ choices with $3$ dimensions. Oh and by the way there are $p$ choices with $1$ dimension, and $p = p^1$. $1 \mapsto p^1$, $2 \mapsto p^2$, $3 \mapsto p^3$, can you see a pattern? (You may or may not mention $p^0$ at this point, depending on whether you think students will get it.)
And the formula corresponds to the induction pattern: $p^{n+1} = p^n \times p$.


Questions that are lists of things

Question: Pete Clark recently asked a question which is, essentially, a list of things. In the past, we've had differing thoughts from the community on this topic (for, against). Thoughts?
Comment: @aeismail That feels somewhat contrary to the spirit of SE sites, and how they work. The entire format favors after-post editing, pulling, etc. over asking permission to post. Beyond that, how would you determine whether to post or not? A plurality of votes? 2/3rds? What the moderators say?
Comment: Seriously, though: I am so tired of arguing over things like this.  I asked a question purely out of a desire to create useful, extremely mainstream content on the site that would be of evident value to its users. If the moderators feel that the proper course of action would have been to first debate whether this was proper procedure: I don't understand why you're putting in so much effort to cancel out my own good-faith efforts and work.  But if you feel that's a good use of your time: go for it.  I'm sorry that our visions of what is useful and productive are so divergent.
Comment: As for the matter of starting the question at hand, I think the better procedure to have followed would be to ask about posting the question on Meta _before_ submitting it to the main site.
Comment: @Fomite: The goal of Meta is to discuss questions about the main site. If you want to know if it's a good idea to ask a question, Meta is the place to start the discussion. CW questions are also supposed to be exceedingly rare on SE sites-which means a consensus should be sought first.
Comment: @aeismail: Not in my wildest dreams did I imagine that my question would not be squarely on-topic for the site.  Let me rephrase my previous comment on this, even more personally: the idea that it might not be is very frustrating to me.  This (quite recently enacted) business about CW-questions supposed to be exceedingly rare is not the way that the other SE sites that I have used for years function.  On a site like this one where the culture is **not** for all sufficiently reputable users to freely edit every question, it seems clearly poorly thought out.
Comment: @PeteL.Clark - See [this blog post](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/the-future-of-community-wiki/) from August 2011 detailing the "new" use of CW. Perhaps the sites you frequent do not follow those guidelines, but many others, including this one, do.
Comment: I am not trying to "cancel your good-faith effort." I am saying what _should have happened_. There are other advantages to posting here first: you are also creating awareness for the question. and soliciting help. Ultimately, it's about checking if there's enough _community support_ for making a question a community wiki.
Comment: @PeteL.Clark - See edit. "We've agreed" is shorthand for "this is how all SO sites work, the alternative is kinda unattractive, and last time we talked about it no one cared, so why change from the status quo?" If you disagree, go ahead and post! Last time you and I disagreed the community strongly supported your viewpoint, so historical trends are in your favor :)
Comment: I removed all the comments not pertaining to the topic at hand.
Answer: I'm rather in favor of this particular big list question for a couple reasons:

"Necessitate constant revision as facts change" and "My guess is someone has done a meta analysis" are actually mutually contradictory objections. Either a single, authoritative, static source can (or should) exist, or it's in constant need of changing. It can't be both.
There's a steady drumbeat of exactly these questions, and I think there's definitively a place for a thread we can point to and say "Find your field, consult the excerpt, and ponder whether or not you think you have a problem or not". This is, as far as I can tell, our "What book should I pick up to learn C/C++..." question.
"a list of excerpts and/or personal opinions about authorship will be of limited value." I don't think a list of excerpts from authoritative sources would be of limited value, and I'm particularly interested in knowing how that would differ from @Strongbad's proposed systematic review.
The list has the advantage of being potentially very wide ranging in terms of fields. My concern for these types of questions is always that the answer for one field might not match another, and if we don't have anyone in X field on while the question is active, we lose that information. A persistent collection of said information would avoid that problem.
Comment: @eykanal You're stretching the analogy. All I intended to say was that it's a question that's going to continually recur, and could use a "Go here, read this" answer.
Comment: @eykanal As for this: "to detail the submission policy of hundreds of journals, with maybe a handful of people who are familiar with each journal" the excerpt I posted applies to very nearly *every* medical journal, and most biomedical journals. That's neither a single journal post, and if we only have a handful of people familiar with an entire field, that's our failing as a community, not a flaw with the question.
Comment: Yes, you understand my intent quite well.  It's a good feeling. :)
Comment: The [C++ question](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/388242/the-definitive-c-book-guide-and-list) is doing a sort of meta analysis in that it is weeding through lots of books and coming to a conclusion/recommendation. It also only has a single integrated comprehensive answer. With lots of "little" answers it will be harder to compare across fields. If they followed a template that would make it easier, if they were integrated together even better.
Comment: As pointed out elsewhere, the C++ question has had >90 edits, and that is all to a single answer, just adding new books, where thousands of people share a knowledge base (C++). In our case, this would be one question purporting to detail the submission policy of hundreds of journals, with *maybe* a handful of people who are familiar with each journal, oftentimes only the individual who posted. I fail to see how the two questions are similar at all.
Answer: I'm not necessarily against big-list questions, as long as every answer is potentially interesting for all readers interested in the question. For instance, the C++ question mentioned above, or this question about latex editors, if you're interested in the question, then all answers are potentially interesting.
In the case of the question Compiling ethical standards for coauthorship across academic fields and regions, I believe that apart from people who are fundamentally interested in comparing different fields/regions, in general at most one or two answers are relevant to each individual reader. Hence, the voting on each answer does not necessarily reflect the quality of the answer, but more likely the relevance of the answer to the reader.
So as such, it's not particularly constructive, and I think a better place to compile such a meta analysis could be on Wikipedia, where there is no need for a voting mechanism.
Answer: CW for a list of things is tricky. (Personally I do like some big lists on SE if they are objective (e.g. list of software to do X).)
CW for a list of subjective things is very tricky. The same things holds for things that cannot be shortened to a single sentence. (While the problem is interesting, I don't feel it will work with SE system; however, I would like to see what happens rather than close it prematurely.)
Answer: "Lists of things" is a rather broad category, and there are many different kinds of list questions, I'll restrict my answer to this specific example and similar questions.
The important questions in my opinion here is whether the topic is better handled by a single CW question as proposed here, or by an individual questions for each field.
One large disadvantage is that the big CW question is unordered, the answers are sorted by score, which is pretty much meaningless in this specific case. To find the specific field you have to scroll through the entire list manually.
Another aspect is that I'm not convinced that just the statements of scientific societies are enough to actually answer such questions fully. While I think a good answer to such a question should reference such sources, it often should go above that. The official statements are rather general and might need more clarification or explanation to be really useful.
I think this subject would be better served by individual questions, with appropriate closure as duplicates if the situations and fields are similar enough to an existing question.
Comment: @mkennedy That is not an excuse to make the whole thing unordered and confusing, suprisingly many people would not even think of using the search for this.
Comment: The fact that the list is unordered is a minor issue--that's what ctrl-f (search) is for.
Comment: The word "journals" does not appear anywhere in my question.  I asked for statements of professional ethics.  It seems to me that a journal is not a locus of professional ethics *per se*: they may set ethical standards for their own submissions, but that's much more localized and was not asked for.  What to do when or (more likely if) a question like this gets "numerous pages of answers" is not a serious present worry.
Comment: @mkennedy - There are hundreds of journals, each with their own standard. You'd be searching across numerous pages of answers.
Comment: @Mad Scientist: I agree that this question will not answer all possible questions about ethics of coauthorship.  However I think it can be useful in answering many such questions, which is a much more reasonable standard.  About statements of scientific societies not being comprehensive: first, there is more to academia than the sciences.  But second: I fear you're right, that there is not enough written literature addressing this.  This question gives us a way to find out.  One could imagine using it in the future to try to draft a cross-disciplinary statement.
Comment: @PeteL.Clark The statements will probably all be roughly "all authors must substantially contribute to the paper", the more interesting question is where to draw the line on what is a substantial contribution and what not. That is why I don't think this CW post can answer any but the easiest of these questions (where an author as done nothing at all for the paper). And these details are better served by individual questions in my opinion.
Answer: I don't like big list question in general. In this particular case, I like it even less. My guess is someone has done a meta analysis, and if they haven't they should, on the authorship requirements of different societies/journals. A question about where to find and how to interpret field specific authorship norms would also be useful, but I think a list of excerpts and/or personal opinions about authorship will be of limited value.
Comment: The question does not ask for personal opinions about authorship.  It asks for links to official statements of ethics.  "My guess is someone has done a meta analysis, and if they haven't they should," This is rather ironic: I think someone should do this too!  May I ask why you think amassing and collecting in one place information that people regularly ask questions about on this site will be of limited value?
Comment: @StrongBad So flag those answers.
Comment: All questions require a certain amount of maintenance.  This particular question is (I think) not of the type to draw off-the-wall answers, since what it asks for is very specific.  I honestly think that maintaining this one question will allow for better and more efficient answers to hundreds of future questions.  And anyway, maintaining valuable information is part of the work that we do on this site.  *If* a big-list questions gets a lot of spammy answers, sure, we can address protecting it or even closing it.  I see no big problem here.
Comment: @PeteL.Clark the question does not ask for personal opinions, but my guess is that they will creep in there. I am not sure what the added value of copying and pasting from a bunch of websites into a single webpage is. Maybe it would make it easier for people to compare across fields, but I am not sure many people want that comparison.
Comment: I think it is incredibly important to make comparisons across academic fields.  To my mind that's one of the reasons that academia.SE exists.  In particular, at the moment the answer to these types of ethical questions seems to be "Well, this is how it is in my field.  Maybe this [behavior that seems horribly unethical to me] would be ethical in your field."  By compiling the ethical standards across different fields one could imagine responding to this by saying "No, this is unethical in all of academia": see XXX.
Comment: @Fomite - That's the "constant maintenance" that I refer to. Keeping an up-to-date list is a lot of work, and it's work that's unlikely to be done in a volunteer setting like this, particularly if we end up making a number of lists like this one.
Comment: @eykanal I'm not convinced the maintence cost of the list exceeds the cost of continually trying to provide high-quality, field specific answers to a steady stream of "Should this person be a co-author?" questions. Especially if *those* aren't allowed to have opinions creep in.
Comment: @Fomite - I do hear that point. However, I think the cost goes the other way. [The C++ question you point to has >90 edits](http://stackoverflow.com/posts/388242/revisions), and that's for a question that thousands of people can assist with. Each answer here will likely have only a handful of people are both (1) familiar enough with the field and (2) care enough to update the answer. I would rather us simply mark the questions as bad questions and leave it at that.
Answer: My thoughts are that these types of questions are not useful:

They necessitate constant revision as facts change
They are of questionable use, as few would use that question as the authoritative source
The ease of scope creep for the question makes it difficult to manage and requires constant maintenance to keep it clean

Questions that are lists of things


SO Jobs pagination at top too

Question: The SO Jobs search results are not all that great. In order to pin point particular jobs of interest I use ctrl-f to search for a keyword on the page. For example, run a search of "Product Management" jobs. I got over 300 results that were intermixed with a number of software and other development positions. To help me process these quickly I hit ctrl-f "product" to find the 1 - 4 per page that would be applicable. I still have to scroll down to the bottom of the page to go to the next one. Having a next or the pagination at the top as well would allow me to quickly skip past screens of no interest.
This would address my symptoms. The best result would be to improve the search results.
Thanks.
Comment: I've not forgotten this, in the process of adding in some tooling to help diagnose some of these issues better.
Comment: What wasn't useful about the results? We can do a better job of making the results more relevant if you tell us why the results you received weren't relevant to you
Comment: In terms of the results, I just re-ran my search for "Product Manager" located anywhere. 381 results returned.
  1. I see the featured opportunities. Gotta pay for the service somehow. That's cool.
  2. Follow on results:
     a. 3rd listing is a PM position for Time Inc. located in NY 2w ago
     b. 4th is a PM position at Conde Nast Intl. located in London 5d ago
     c. 5th is for a firm in Germany from 3w ag   d. 6th is in Atlanta 2w ago
     e. 7th is in Boulder from 1w ago
     f. 24th is a Sr. PM listed 1w ago in CA
How are these sorted? Not by location, not by date either?
Comment: they're sorted by matches which takes aspects of your match preferences and uses them to weight attributes of each job. Aurélien wrote a [blog post](https://email@example.com/a-dive-into-stack-overflow-jobs-search-62bc6e628f83) about it last week. I just looked into your match preferences and it looks like they weren't fully synced with another part of the system; perhaps take another look and see if there's any difference?
Comment: Second page results from comment above include:
Software Engineer, Product Development 12h ago, Product Manager 1w ago, Principal Product Development Engineer, 1w ago.
I get that the two positions sandwiching the PM position inclue product in the title so the're included. It however trains me to check all pages and listings because I cannot trust the results.
Comment: Thanks for quick reply! That is spectacular. Wasn't aware that match settings were used. I had forgotten all about these since they were setup 6 - 18 months ago. Might be good to have some help on the page to this effect. "Seeing too many/little results check your match settings." Couple more things now. I see that the results are sorted by listing date. I added a match criteria of United States. There are still a few international listings coming through? My very specific location matches from earlier don't seem to be honored however? How about listing my criteria so I can turn on/off?
Comment: More... used "remote" as a filter and this culled results down to 42. Appears that the filters are being used like an AND function instead of an OR. If that makes sense. As a job seeker, I want to get the widest set of applicable results and then funnel it down based on what's returned. I want to know that I am not missing any possible jobs opportunities because of some search criteria. I however don't want to see positions that don't apply to me. This complicates my life and leads to frustration and not using the service. If I am not using the service employers will stop paying for listings.
Comment: more... not ranting, I value SO and am trying to provide some feedback to make this part more useful to all. As a product manager it's part of what I do.  Thanks.
Answer: When I search for product management incognito I get a bunch of product manager and project manager jobs... I see just one developer job on the first page of results.
Even when I'm logged in and I mirror your match preferences the first page is entirely product/project management jobs. Can you detail what about the results isn't useful to you? Maybe some example jobs that appeared in the results that don't fit?
Also, you can search for Product Manager positions which filters the list to those that have been specifically marked as product management jobs. Those, though, do appear to have a problem; lots of them are development jobs. We're looking to see why that is now...

SO Jobs pagination at top too


Carbon fibre vs aluminium for racing

Question: I've been commuting on a mountain bike these past 3 years. Now I want to get into road bike racing. Is it worth saving up money over a few months for a carbon fibre bike? Or should I just go and buy a good quality aluminum bike tomorrow?
Comment: Generally, you have to spend significantly more on a carbon fiber bike to get comparable quality to an aluminum bike. Also, note that for a while at least, the type of bike doesn't matter - the rider does.
Comment: Well, being close to the UCI limit doesn't make a difference, even for most racers (despite what they think in their heads).
Comment: Well, you probably should be somewhat close. You don't want to have a 50 pound road bike in a race.  Probably anything under 25 pounds is sufficient to be competitive. Just about any quality road bike will fall into that category.  You can actually find bikes made of steel, aluminum, titanium, or carbon that are at the UCI weight limit of 15 pounds.  You should choose the frame on other criteria such as budget, how well it fits, longevity of material, repairability and how cool it looks.
Comment: One option is to get an aluminum now.  If you later get a carbon you can use the aluminum for backup and training.
Comment: What @Batman says is quite true. Both carbon fibre and aluminum bikes can get quite close to the UCI weight limit of 15 pounds, and most of the weight is in the components and wheels, not in the frame of the bike. The frame and fork will only weight 4-5 pounds, and the rest of the stuff will take up the remaining 10-15 pounds.
Answer: There are two answers to this question:

(Money no object)

Go out and buy yourself a carbon frame with all the trimmings. If you want to race, there is no better hardware option.

(Money important)

you say you haven't even begun to race yet. How do you know you'll like it? How do you know you'll be any good? If you go down a carbon route, you're talking about a serious investment which could possibly end up gathering dust in your garage. Frankly, you should consider a steel bike at this stage. When you're losing races because of the weight of the bike, then it's time to upgrade.
Be careful with something like bike racing, it will eat up your every last penny if you're not careful.
Comment: +1: Buy what you can afford now, because if the bug bites, you will find a way to buy more bikes.... The feeling of beating someone on the "money is not object" machine on an old steel beater... the look on their faces, the silence - its golden and that memory will live with you forever. Given cycling is the new golf for cashed up middle aged execs, if you can't beat at least 1/2 the field of carbon frames on a beater, you should not be on a carbon frame (based on the question re need to save up).
Comment: Well, a steel bike may not be cheaper than an aluminum bike depending on your market. But a cheap bike of decent quality is the way to start, then upgrade when you're sure.
Answer: A good rule of thumb is: if you spend less than $2000 get aluminium instead of carbon as you'll get more bang for your buck. A good quality aluminium frame with some nicer wheels will generally give a better/faster ride than an entry-level carbon bike (bought just for the sake of having carbon!).
The slight performance/comfort benefits of a more expensive carbon bike are of no concern to an entry-level racer. The most gains for you will simply come from more regular and longer rides.
Comment: As Eddy Merckx said "Ride lots" :)
Answer: For a novice racer, frame material doesn't matter. As for the groupset, Tiagra's fine. The differences in Shimano's groupsets is mainly weight, plus so durability. I'm speaking from experience here- I would swear that my Tiagra equipped cross bike shifts better than my Dura-Ace road bike!

Carbon fibre vs aluminium for racing


How do the expansions for Race for the Galaxy alter the game - are they worth buying?

Question: Can someone give a good summary of each expansion for Race for the Galaxy, and explain how it changes the game? Is it worth it to buy the expansions straight out? Or is it fine to stick with the base game as long as you want? What's the compelling reason to expand? Just curious!
Answer: The expansions all have different themes to them, and they change up the game play in significant ways.  The first expansion, The Gathering Storm, is easily the most interesting in terms of changing up the game play.  It adds in the goals, which channels play in different ways in each game.  That, plus the new start worlds, provide enough extra variety that I'd suggest it's worth getting after playing roughly 25 games or so of the base game.  That many games allows you to see the different strategies that are available and become familiar with the approaches.
Rebel vs. Imperium has an excellent new start world mechanic, where each player gets dealt two start worlds with their opening hand and then gets to make a choice.  This, on its own, justifies the expansion I think.  The takeover mechanic isn't especially interesting, it just doesn't come up terribly often, so really here, you're talking about just beefing up the deck and providing more variety.
The Brink of War, honestly, I don't care for.  The prestige mechanics seem to tilt things pretty far back towards military being the most successful strategy.  Perhaps I'm just not very adept at it, but after about 15 games or so, I'm close to taking the cards out of my deck.
Alien Artifacts is actually the start of a new expansion cycle. It's designed to be played with just the base game, and it changes things in a very different way than the first three. It introduces a map that the players build, with the players moving around on the map to find new stuff. Explore becomes a first-class action with the expansion, which isn't really much true in the other ones. I only have four or so games with it, and I think some of the rules for building the map are kind of inelegant (although understandable why they are the way they are), but it's a fun experience. I'd still probably buy it third of the four expansions, though.
Comment: This (and the other answer) do not discuss Alien Artifacts, which came out in 2013. I'd be curious to see this answer updated for that expansion as well.
Comment: Updated with quick thoughts on Alien Artifacts, @Scribblemacher.
Comment: Same complaint about Xeno Invasion now
Comment: @Deo I haven't played Xeno Invasion yet, I'm afraid. I've been wanting to play Race again recently, though, so I'll move it up the pile and post thoughts here when I get that chance.
Answer: The most compelling reason to get the RftG expansions is to get more cards overall. This makes the game more replayable and allows for different interactions between cards from the original set and the expansions.
As for each expansion, you can expect the following:

The Gathering Storm: Ups the total player count to 5, adds more cards, new start worlds, goals (ways to score VPs by accomplishing certain things), and a "robot" that allows you to play solitaire. It introduces drafting rules.
Rebel vs. Imperium: Ups the total player count to 6, adds more cards, new start worlds, introduces takeover/warfare mechanic that allows players to conquer other players military worlds (sounds more interesting than it really is).
The Brink of War: Adds more cards, more goals, new start worlds, more counters for the solitaire game, introduces Galactic Prestige mechanism and a once-per-game power to search cards or add bonuses to your selected phase.

You can play RftG with all of these expansions by using Keldon's RftG AI.
Comment: +1 for mentioning RFTG AI - it's a really great try-before-you-buy thing, and was what sold me on Brink of War.
Answer: It depends on your groups and their preferences:
--The "proper way" is to get a few dozen or hundred games under your belt (not too impractical since Race does play relatively quickly).  Then add each expansion at its core (e.g. The Gathering Storm without Goals), then add those optional material (e.g. TGS, but now with Goals)
--The "save on costs" is to stick with just base because you think that's fine as is
--Some groups jump to later expansions sooner than later, or immediately since they want more advanced game play, and don't want to waste time with "training wheels"
Other factors include saving on shipping costs if you buy online, or buying them as you need them to ensure you don't buy an expansion that won't end up getting used.
As for the expansions themselves, there are 5 of them, forming 3 separate arcs (where each arc's set or sets should NOT be mixed in with other arc's cards)...
.
Xeno Invasion (arc3)
The theme here could be from any one of the many literary works in sci-fi, but the closest one I can think up of are the aliens in the movie: Edge Of Tomorrow.
The core game includes new homeworlds, and many new cards.
--Many cards introduce new combos for consumption.  For example, consume a green good and any good for 2 VP and 1 card (of which the reward is new too, as we've had 1 VP + 1 card, 1 VP + 2 cards, and 2 VP, but not that)
--The mix and match Explore power is now a global rule in this expansion, so it makes exploring much more 'viable'
--Xeno and Anti-Xeno are 2 new keywords
--The Xeno aliens (not to be confused with other types of aliens you've run into from previous sets) have military worlds that can NOT be settled via "pay-for-military-world" powers.  They must be conquered via military strength.  OTOH, there are powers that grant military against Xeno military worlds only to help with that.
The optional Invasion module has players utilize anti-Xeno defense powers.  This I hear is similar to the Barbarian in Cities & Knights Of Catan.  PLayers are still playing competitively, but there's a "co-petitive" element where they need to work together (or not) to collectively repel a large xeno invasion force.  I hear this adds to the game length, but not as long as the Orb Scenario from Alien Artifacts.
.
I've only played the core game via Keldon's AI, and did like the new stuff sans the Xeno Invasion module (on account it's not implemented).
However, without the Xeno Invasion module, I still prefer arc 1 with all options available.  I like the power creeps, the wide variety of cards and powers, Goals, and even Takeovers from time to time.
I prefer Alien Artifacts WITH the Orb Scenario, but unfortunately, Keldon's AI doesn't have that implemented.  Furthermore, one is hard pressed to play it with that IRL since it can double the game length, which is a turnoff for many folks.
With just The Gathering Storm, it adds a few more options (not too many, and too little for my tastes), but at least still keeps it within easier reach for newbies).
With just The Gathering Storm + Rebel Vs. Imperium, more options, more fleshed out military paths, and ability to pick a homeworld from a red color coded one vs. a blue one.


How do I get and install more themes, icons, and pointers?

Question: I've downloaded some nice themes, icon packages, and pointers from sites like gnome-look. Now what do I do?  Where else can I get these kinds of things?
Answer: Installing new themes in Ubuntu 11.10 and 12.04 LTS
Ubuntu 11.10 and later versions switched to GNOME 3, and in the process lost the ability to add new themes easily through the Appearances window. However, new themes can be installed in other ways.
11.04 and earlier uses GTK+2 themes; for Ubuntu 11.10 and up, you'll want GTK+3 themes. These can be found easily at a site like gnome-look.org.
Once you have your themes, extract them to the appropriate folders.

GTK+3 themes go in ~/.themes (or /usr/share/themes to be available for all users)
Icon themes go in ~/.icons (or /usr/share/icons to be available for all users)

To install and use the themes you download, you'll need to either:

install the GNOME Tweak Tool. You may also want to install the User Themes Extension (gnome-shell-extensions-user-theme); see the source below for more information.
install MyUnity

Use these instructions to change to your newly installed theme.
Source: http://maketecheasier.com/install-custom-gnome-shell-themes/2011/09/27
Answer: Installing new themes in Ubuntu 10.10 and below
To install the themes open the Theme Manager which can be accessed from System > Preferences > Appearances then just drag the theme/icons etc on to the window.
Once installed you can either directly use the theme or modify it to use individual components like icons, borders, etc in the Theme Manager.
Comment: It's somewhat amusing that the accepted answer now applies only to EOL releases.
Answer: Installing cursors/icons/themes in 11.10 and above:
When you found a nice icon or cursor packages you download it, right click on it and choose 'extract here'. Then you open Nautilus with root previleges gksu nautilus and copy/move the extracted folder to the folder /usr/share/icons/.
For theme packages you copy/move the extracted folder to /usr/share/themes.
Then you go to the Software Center and install the gnome-tweak-tool. Afterwards open the Dash with the Super(Windows)-Key and type tweak and choose the 'advances preferences' (or so, I'm not on an English system). Under 'theme' you should be able to change your cursor/icons/theme to whatever you like/installed.
Comment: From what I understand, `/usr/share/` folders apply system-wide to all users, which is good if you want everyone who uses your machine to have access to these themes. If you want them only for yourself, then `~/.icons` or `~/.themes` is what you want.
Answer: In Ubuntu 11.04 and earlier System > Preferences > Appearance
Then click "Get more themes online" which points to: http://art.gnome.org/themes
Ubuntu 11.10 has a simplified Appearances preference that dosen't include a button for getting more themes.


Visa for European countries for US passport holder

Question: I'm a US passport holder. What documents do I need when I fly from the U.S. to Germany?  Assume I'm going for a few weeks of vacation.  Obviously I need my passport.  What about a "visa"?  Anything else?
Answer: Germany is part of the Schengen area, so the visa requirements are the same as for any of the Schengen countries (i.e. most of the EU, excluding the UK and Ireland)
As a US passport holder, you can spend up to 90 days in any half year period in the Schengen area without need of a visa, provided you're not working. See the wikipedia page for a good introduction and overview, or have a look at the German Embassy Visa Page for more USA specific details and information.
Comment: +1 but remember that although UK, Ireland, Scotland, etc. are not really Schengen, as a US passport holder, you can also use the waiver program in those countries as well (and it will count towards the same 3 months as far as I can remember).
Comment: 90 days as well in Ireland, UK can be 90 days in 180 days or 180 days in a year depending on the officer who stamps your passport, but they do count separate from the Schengen days.
Answer: The US dept of state website usually has all the information you need for any country.  Just go here http://travel.state.gov/travel/travel_1744.html and select the country.
Here is a link to the section on entry and exit requirements for Germany:
http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/cis/cis_1123.html#entry_requirements
Here is what it says:
ENTRY / EXIT REQUIREMENTS: Germany is a party to the Schengen Agreement. As a U.S. citizen, you may enter Germany for up to 90 days for tourist or business purposes without a visa. Your entry into Germany begins the 90 day limit for the entire Schengen area. For further details about travel into and within Schengen countries, please see our Schengen fact sheet. Contact the German Embassy in Washington at 4645 Reservoir Road N.W., Washington, D.C. 2007, telephone (202) 298-4000, or the German consulates in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, or San Francisco for the most current visa information.
If you are transiting Germany en route to other countries, make sure you know all of the entry and exit requirements for your final destination. If you don't have the right documentation, you might be denied boarding to your connecting flight. For example, some countries (e.g., South Africa) require a certain number of blank visa pages or more than six months remaining validity on your passport.
Answer: Schengen area is the best! You get 90 days out of 180 travelling in most countries in (especially western) Europe. Notable exceptions: the UK and Ireland. More info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Area. Update: Switzerland is in the Schengen Area. My experiences at their border had me confused. That said, be prepared for more enthusiastic border control at the Swiss border, regardless of their Schengen status.
When I was planning my trip, I discovered that it is possible for the authorities to check you out a little bit more. Theoretically, you can be asked for proof that you have enough money to cover the trip--usually a credit card works, although bank statements may help. It may also help to have lodging booked for some or all of your stay, and a return ticket to prove that you intend to leave. All of that aside, I was never asked for any of this information, and rumor has it that Americans rarely are.
Once you're in the Schengen area, all you need is your passport to pass through to different countries, and you often don't even need that. Just be aware that if you take a bus or train across borders, authorities will often check that you have documentation. And that trips through Switzerland via Eurolines will give you a significantly more in-depth customs experience even if you aren't staying there.
Comment: In theory, Switzerland committed to give up *systematic* checks of *persons* when the country entered the Schengen agreement but it maintains border control for customs purposes, as it is not part of the EU customs unions. So checks could indeed be more frequent there compared to other Schengen internal borders. For some reason, it seems that the border with Germany has always been more strongly guarded than the border with France and my limited experience suggests that people using cheap transport (busses, seats on night trains) are checked more thoroughly than others.
Comment: I can attest as a non-US citizen but holding a Schengen visa I was never asked for documentation when transiting through Zurich; and I hold a passport of a country that is often flagged for extra scrutiny. The point being, that in the schengen zone provides a great deal of freedom of movement, something I especially appreciated as otherwise I would have to have visas for each of the 4 countries I traveled through.


What is the difference between an impact driver and an impact wrench?

Question: Obviously impact drivers and impact wrenches are designed for different purposes, but since they both work on the same principle is there some overlap? Is a small cordless impact wrench just a slightly scaled-up version of a cordless impact driver, with a 1/4" square drive instead of a 1/4" hex drive, or are there further differences? Could I buy adaptors to use one occasionally in place of the other, and if so what would be the disadvantages? I can guess a few downsides: the wrench would be heavy and large when used as a driver so not convenient at arms length or in tight spaces; the driver would be underpowered for really heavy-duty wrenching; the wrench might need some care to avoid twisting the heads right off your screws. Is there more to it than that?
Comment: Can you post some example products, to clarify your question?
Answer: Most driver bit sets come with a 1/4" square drive adapter (my small Milwaukee set also came with a 3/8" drive as well, though I don't know if that's common).  With that one bit, your driver is instantly almost exactly the same as a 1/4" impact wrench.  You'd have to look at torque specs to see if the models you're considering are comparable, but I bet they are.  Those little impact drivers have come a long way -- battery life is great and the torque is hard to believe.
I'd only consider a square drive impact wrench for heavier automotive (or other mechanical) use, and only in a larger size like 1/2" so it can provide some real help in removing tough fasteners.
Answer: Impact drivers and impact wrenches are quite different.  Look at the torque ratings, and you'll see why I say that.
<code>18V impact drivers: 1300-1400 in-lbs of torque
18V impact wrenches: 3800-5800 in-lbs of torque
</code>
I'm just guessing here, but I would say that wrenches have this extra torque because they have lower RPM and IPM (impacts per minute.)  By having more time for each impact, they can save up more inertia, delivering about 3.5 times as much torque.
Comment: There seems to be much less difference in torque for the smaller tools. For example, with Milwaukee's 12V M12 line: 2450-22 impact driver has 850in-lbs; 2451-22 3/8" impact wrench has 1000 in-lbs. Their 18V line has much larger differences similar to what you wrote.
Answer: Some confusion arising from the term impact driver being used for two different tools.
There are manual impact drivers and there are electric impact drivers.
The manual impact drivers are more specialized tools and have a cammed bit holder with a heavy cylinder that's meant to be struck with a hammer, and used for removal of philips screws.
The cam action translates the impact motion into a combination of rotary and downward axial motion, to minimize the chance of the bit camming out of the screw head and stripping it.
Electric impact drivers are the ones most people are familiar with, and accept small 1/4" inserts intended for driving smaller nut and bolt fasteners.
Answer: The impact drivers deliver a downward force as well as rotational , so better suited for screw heads like phillips to reduce/ eliminate cam out.
Comment: Impact drivers don't exert an axial force. They use rotational impulses for increased torque. Hammer drills exert axial force. Here's a good look at the internals of an impact driver - they don't have an axial component to their anvils. http://toolguyd.com/milwaukee-m18-fuel-impact-driver-compact-wrenches-gen2/


Learning to write flash fiction first?

Question: I was wondering if it would be unwise to get a very solid foundation in writing by starting with flash fiction, then working my way up to larger works.  I suppose I'm being naive in a sense, because I'm sure any decent writer would say that any medium/genre is an art form in itself, but humor me.
Answer: Starting with flash fiction alone would involve a number of tradeoffs. On the positive side, the shorter length can seem less intimidating as a goal and can provide more frequent positive feedback from completion. Flash fiction also tends to force the writer to ruthlessly edit the work to meet the strict length limits. Learning to kill one's children (cutting out even a single phrase may seem like murder) and to rework one's writing beyond completion into being finished is useful. Such short fiction may also teach how to imply information rather than showing or telling and to accept unintended interpretations.
On the negative side, such length limits can reduce the fun of writing by restricting the writer's expression and requiring the hard work of aggressive editing.
Flash fiction may also increase the pressure to complete (but not finish) the work in a single sitting. This may be helpful as a discipline to prevent stopping and to force the dedication of significant, undistracted time to writing. However, it may also increase frustration from writer's block and teach a false sense that editing is less important.
I suspect that using a 500 word minimum for a completed work would be more helpful for a beginner in providing a sense of substantial accomplishment without being overwhelming, while allowing more freedom of expression than the 300 to 1,000 word maximum of flash fiction. Taking each first draft and requiring at least a 20% cut in word count in the first series of edits might provide some of the benefit of flash fiction's constrained length.

A common suggestion for beginning writes is to have the means to jot down story ideas and snippets of text. These can be useful in dealing with the dreaded blank page.
Another common suggestion is to dedicate a minimum amount of time to writing and to recognize that research, organization of materials, and editing are part of the writer's work. If a creative block is reached, it is often better to spend the dedicated time editing, organizing and reexamining notes, or even doing research than to stare at a screen. Editing is perhaps the most helpful since it is more likely to stir the writing mood, but sometimes even editing can be unproductive and the other tasks would be more useful and more affirming.
Having multiple stories in progress provides more opportunities to shift between tasks and types of tasks, but there is a danger of having too many uncompleted stories. Having many uncompleted stories can discourage writing by giving the impression of there being too much work to do and of one never completing one's stories.
Answer: I think this might be a good idea.  Flash fiction allows the writer to just write, unhindered, without the pressure to produce instantly usable material.  I think this is a useful exercise and something you may want to hone, as this can definitely free up your writing style when you get to writing the first draft of something substantially longer.
Comment: Precisely my thinking.  Thanks for you reply!

Learning to write flash fiction first?


What does the NS prefix mean?

Question: Many classes in Cocoa/Cocoa Touch have the NS prefix. What does it mean?
Comment: I prefer to believe it means "namespace"
Answer: The original code for the Cocoa frameworks came from the NeXTSTEP libraries Foundation and AppKit (those names are still used by Apple's Cocoa frameworks), and the NextStep engineers chose to prefix their symbols with NS.
Because Objective-C is an extension of C and thus doesn't have namespaces like in C++, symbols must be prefixed with a unique prefix so that they don't collide. This is particularly important for symbols defined in a framework.
If you are writing an application, such that your code is only likely ever to use your symbols, you don't have to worry about this. But if you're writing a framework or library for others' use, you should also prefix your symbols with a  unique prefix. CocoaDev has a page where many developers in the Cocoa community have listed their "chosen" prefixes. You may also find this SO discussion helpful.
Answer: It's from the NeXTSTEP heritage.
Comment: Yes, of course. It's all beautifully laid out in the other answers, that's why I didn't bother copying that information into mine. Sorry if that offends someone - I don't mind if the accepted answer changes to one of the others (if that's possible - never checked that).
Comment: ...or perhaps the NeXT/Sun heritage (Sun was a participant in the OpenStep consortium)
Comment: I would like to see more but the link to  NeXTSTEP
Answer: NeXTSTEP or NeXTSTEP/Sun depending on who you are asking.
Sun had a fairly large investment in OpenStep for a while. Before Sun entered the picture most things in the foundation, even though it wasn't known as the foundation back then, was prefixed NX, for NeXT, and sometime just before Sun entered the picture everything was renamed to NS. The S most likely did not stand for Sun then but after Sun stepped in the general consensus was that it stood for Sun to honor their involvement.
I actually had a reference for this but I can't find it right now. I will update the post if/when I find it again.
Comment: I've heard the same story from a very reliable source; I'm pretty sure this is the most accurate answer here.
Comment: I found a reference: http://www.cocoabuilder.com/archive/cocoa/136618-what-does-ns-means.html
Comment: Internet Archive of Reference: https://web.archive.org/web/20151008121657/http://www.cocoabuilder.com/archive/cocoa/136618-what-does-ns-means.html
Comment: @SimonWoodside Link is dead.
Answer: It is the NextStep (= NS) heritage. NeXT was the computer company that Steve Jobs formed after he quit Apple in 1985, and NextStep was it's operating system (UNIX based) together with the Obj-C language and runtime. Together with it's libraries and tools, NextStep was later renamed OpenStep (which was also the name on an API that NeXT developed together with Sun), which in turn later became Cocoa.
These different names are actually quite confusing (especially since some of the names differs only in which characters are upper or lower case..), try this for an explanation:
TheMerger OpenstepConfusion
Comment: I could have sworn Apple fired him for various reasons.
Comment: @Nic Jobs quit in Sept '85 after losing the power struggle with Sculley.
Answer: From Apple's developer docs:

Historical Note: If you're wondering why so many of the classes you encounter have an NS prefix, it's because of the past history of Cocoa and Cocoa Touch. Cocoa began life as the collected frameworks used to build apps for the NeXTStep operating system. When Apple purchased NeXT back in 1996, much of NeXTStep was incorporated into OS X, including the existing class names. Cocoa Touch was introduced as the iOS equivalent of Cocoa; some classes are available in both Cocoa and Cocoa Touch, though there are also a large number of classes unique to each platform.
  Two-letter prefixes like NS and UI (for User Interface elements on iOS) are reserved for use by Apple.

Source: Programming with Objective-C
Answer: Basically NS comes from NextSTEP, the original operating system that became Mac OS X when Apple acquired Next.
I want to explain something else and this is why exactly it's needed.
In C++ there are namespaces and almost anything goes in std
This is why you have std::string.
Namespaces are used so it's harder for you to make a mistake and you can write your own class string without conflicting with the system one.
Objective-C is superset of C, but it doesn't include namespaces and for the same reason above all system classes are prefixed with NS or some other strange prefix.
This thing is the same of how all DirectX classes are prefixed with D3D and how all OpenGL classes are prefixed with gl.
This means that you should not use NS to name your own classes and when you see NS, CA in Core Animation or CG in Core Graphics you understand that this is a call to a system framework.
Swift changes this convention, because Swift supports namespacing and it maps its core types like String to the NS equivalents.
Answer: From Cocoa_(API) Wikipedia:
(emphasis added)

Cocoa classes begin with the acronym "NS" (standing either for the
  NeXT-Sun creation of OpenStep, or for the original proprietary term
  for the OpenStep framework, NeXTSTEP): NSString, NSArray, etc.
Foundation Kit, or more commonly simply Foundation, first appeared in
  OpenStep. On Mac OS X, it is based on Core Foundation. Foundation is a
  generic object-oriented library providing string and value
  manipulation, containers and iteration, distributed computing, run
  loops, and other functions that are not directly tied to the graphical
  user interface. The "NS" prefix, used for all classes and constants in
  the framework, comes from Cocoa's OPENSTEP heritage, which was jointly
  developed by NeXT and Sun.
Comment: Wikipedia is wrong here. Foundation Kit [first appeared in Enterprise Objects Framework](http://www.cilinder.be/docs/next/NeXTStep/3.3/nd/Foundation/HybridWorld.htmld/index.html), which predates OpenStep. Incidentally the NeXT version of Foundation was supposedly based on a CoreFoundation-like C API, but that wasn't exposed as public interface until Mac OS X.
Comment: @user23743, I don't think you're correct. EOF predates the OPENSTEP operating system, but not the OpenStep API. The EOF documentation you linked to directly (references OpenStep)[http://www.cilinder.be/docs/next/NeXTStep/3.3/nd/Foundation/IntroFoundation.htmld/], and they were both released in 1994.
Answer: When NeXT were defining the NextStep API (as opposed to the NEXTSTEP operating system), they used the prefix NX, as in NXConstantString. When they were writing the OpenStep specification with Sun (not to be confused with the OPENSTEP operating system) they used the NS prefix, as in NSObject.
Answer: Bill Bumgarner aka @bbum, who should know, posted on the CocoaBuilder mailing list in 2005:

Sun entered the picture a bit after the NS prefix had come into play. The NS prefix came about in public APIs during the move from NeXTSTEP 3.0 to NeXTSTEP 4.0 (also known as OpenStep).  Prior to 4.0, a
  handful of symbols used the NX prefix, but most classes provided by
  the system libraries were not prefixed at all -- List, Hashtable,
  View, etc...

It seems that everyone agrees that the prefix NX (for NeXT) was used until 1993/1994, and Apple's docs say:

The official OpenStep API, published in September of 1994, was the first to split the API between Foundation and Application Kit and the first to use the "NS" prefix.

What does the NS prefix mean?


Does Lisa Kudrow break character a lot during scenes in Friends?

Question: I always find that whenever Pheobe says something funny and just before the camera changes angle, Lisa Kudrow makes a face that is similar to someone holding their laughter. I have seen the gag reel and there are a lot of scenes where she was laughing because of the lines. But there are some instances where she says something funny and makes that "holding laughter back" face. What I try to figure out, is that PHOEBE that makes that face, or does Lisa Kudrow? Any interviews or articles that describe this?
Comment: Right!!!!???? Also, given your display name, you should be knowing the answer @ChanandlerBong  :P
Comment: Interesting - I always thought of it as the "Phoebe snort" expression, never considered it to do with 'Lisa'
Comment: TBH, Cox did it a lot too. Possibly even more than Kudrow.
Comment: Interesting question, I've made the same observation.
Comment: I know Jeniffer Aniston held her laugh in a lot of scenes. Specially the one where Ross plays the bagpipe.
Answer: Friends is a sitcom, and a lot of sitcoms and other comedies1 are kind of meta, in that the characters will say something funny for the audience's benefit but the actors will laugh or almost laugh. The filmmakers often leave this in the show because, even though they technically broke out of character, the show isn't meant to be all that serious in the first place and audences might be more likely to laugh if they see the actors laughing or almost laughing.

1 For example, in the comedy sketch show, Studio C, the actors often visibly struggle to repress laughter and keep a straight face, but they leave that in the show because often it makes it even funnier. :)
Comment: Even more so - Mrs Brown's Boys, which uses a lot of 4th wall breaking anyway, will also leave in fluffed lines, the pauses necessary to re-say the line, & the actors' responses to those fluffs. The main character will also frequently ask questions in character which were clearly not expected by the actor on the receiving end of the question.
Answer: Friends, as a show, rarely explicitly breaks the fourth wall. It's more accurate to say that all of the characters on the show frequently, implicitly, lean on the fourth wall for humor (Chandler about babies names, Rachel referencing fan obsession with her hairstyle at the time, etc..). There were a handful of one off exceptions, eg. Ross in a laurel and hardy homage.
Phoebe's infrequent 4th wall breaks stand out because they are performed in character, as part of regular episodes.
So while I don't find any specific references to her "holding laughter back" face being intentionally allowed screen time more often than for other characters, it would make sense as a decision.
Comment: Would you mind explaining how does Chandler's comment lean the fourth wall? I'm afraid I don't get it.
Comment: Yeah, it was both ridiculously excessive and unusually well done in the latter shows. The One with the Apothecary Table is often quoted as an example of the best done intentional product placement on television - well meshed with the episode, and very effective. To this day, Pottery Barn sales spikes correlate to reruns of the episode.
Comment: Me neither. Although some of those lines sound good as fourth wall interactions, the characters were portrayed to be of such thoughts through out the show. Like the random Donald Duck wearing a towel when out of a shower remark by chandler. That's their personalities. I guess?
Comment: Both we and the characters know Monica ate a lot of snacks as a child, making it an in character joke. The 4th wall lean is a reference to the latter episodes heavy reliance on snack and pop based product placements - by that point in the show's life, there likely would have been a serious conversation about making the baby's name a product-placing joke
Comment: Thanks, I wasn't aware that the snack product placement was that big, but I guess I'm not paying attention to this kind of stuff.


When writing Sci-Fi whats a good way to determine the year?

Question: I'm having trouble deciding what year I want my Novella to take place. How do other Sci-Fi writers make up what year it is in their writing? I want it to be far enough in the future that the present is considered a part of history that hasn't been forgotten, or considered ancient. So, how far ahead should I put the year that the story takes place?
Comment: So are we looking at a living Memory Scenario (there might be an old man in a rocking chair ranting about how "Back in my day, we only had 150 Pokemon and we were damn greatful.").  Or are all people alive in that year now deceased.  This can actually be surprising length... You can find on Youtube a clip of a 1950s era game show where celebrities had to guess the guests accomplishment in 20 questions.  The guest was an elderly man and they impressively guessed he witnessed the assassination of Lincoln.  The may was a five year old boy at the time, but was in Ford's Theater that night.
Answer: Assuming that your characters relationship with the past is similar to your own, look back through historically significant events until you find one that feels old enough but not too old.  Also consider which aspects of our society make up the history you are looking at, because different types of memories age at different rates.
For example, the days before computers and cell phones probably seem like ancient history to anyone under 30.  While films of Jimmy Hendrix performing at Woodstock seem relevant and recent.  The amount of change is more important that the amount of time when laying out your characters understanding of the past.
Finally, setting the date for a Sci-Fi novel should justify the differences between your mythical and our real worlds.  If your characters have neural implants instead of cellphones, then it is probably more than 10 years from now; but if instead, they still have cellphones whose batteries die every night, it is probably less than 10 years.
The date of your story is just a number that appears at most, every couple of dozen pages.  Focus on your story!  Don't worry about such details until later.  You can change it once your story tells you in what age it needs to live.
Comment: Or, the batteries in the neural implants die every night. Thus giving a whole new meaning to "Sorry, sweetie, I'm just too tired tonight."
Comment: *"if instead, they still have cellphones whose batteries die every night, it is probably less than 10 years"* Interestingly enough, ten years before you wrote this answer, the typically cell phone had a battery which (when in decent condition, at least) lasted for more like ten days, and certainly a week, than for one day.
Comment: I love your point about 'the amount of change being more important than the amount of time'. Very good observation. At first, I was critical of your claim about people under 30 (I'm 28) and the days before cell phones, but as a part of your answer, it plays an acceptable part.
Answer: Its actually a very subjective and artistic question. I would take tech, emotional attachment and the audience into account.
Tech.
What tech is there and how forward thinking is your futurist mind?
How revolutionary is the tech and how long would you estimate science to get there?
Emotional attachment
What historical events are woven or known about in your world?
Does it relate to the real world?
How many generations does it take before the emotion of the past events lose their attachment to that future present?
Ww2 can feel like a moment ago or a lifetime away depending on the emotional attachment by the characters.
Audience
The reader can be surprised in your story. Sometimes it can leave the reader with a pleasant surprise or it can be negative if they do not believe. Your time can be more real if its close and more fantasy the further away.
There are a lot of examples of real tangible stories written for a fantasy future or a real story written for the near future.
Does the audience want near or far?
Comment: +1 For the solid bullet point. Set the time accordingly. The story has to appear reasonable and credible. You can't write that people are no longer using their feet for locomotion just 50 years from now.
Answer: I'm thinking around 2300 or 2500, although my reasoning is that I consider the American Revolution to be history, and everything before that to be ancient history. Although, that's just me. Try judging time on technological revolutions, i.e. American, French, industrial, modern technological revolution. All advanced the game quite a bit.
Or you could just make up your own time system. It's a lot easier in my opinion, but to each their own.
Answer: Looking at it the opposite way, I'd say that anything that your grandfather saw is "not-that-old". If you met (or may have met) the person that witnessed it, it does not feel that much different than being told of something that happened yesterday. E.g. I knew a person that was just around the corner when a Portuguese president was shot back in 1918, so I kind of was there too. So, "not-too-old" would be 3 generations ago, from my grandfather being young, until I am really old. With current life expectancy that would be a little bit more than a century.
Repeat the thought for my grandfather, and something that is "not-too-old" for them, but "too-old" for me, would be your desired time frame. Roughly more than a century, less than three.
I am guesstimating here, but I wonder if there is any psychological studies about this kind of time perception? I am partially inspired by the memory of some study claiming that we choose mates based not on increasing our "success", nor that of our children, but the probability of "success" of our grand-children. I don't know if any of those are somewhere out there to be found.
Answer: You might consider referencing some of your favorite sci-fi stories. I love the Hyperion series, and it's set, what, in the year 3200? I felt that Simmons set his story "so far in the future" as a) allow his tech to exist but 2) the reader could see the date only as a number or reference without getting caught up in "FTL transportation is only one hundred years away? I might make it!!"
I do like Henry Taylor's "different memories age differently" as well - you could definitely suit that to your purpose.
But like my own age, it's just a number :)
From personal experience, don't choose a number from the past to just indicate the passage of time unless you explain it. I arbitrarily dated in my manuscript using "1950" and my beta reader was confused by it (she is not a sci-fi reader). When I explained I just was using the numbers until I settled on a dating technique, she was ok with it.
Comment: Welcome to Writing.SE! You provide a good answer, except for the very last part: it looks like you're asking a question yourself here. We are not a discussion forum, but a Q&A site. If you have a question you want answered, there's an "ask a question" button at the top of the page, that's where new questions go. Take our [tour], it should explain how Stack Exchange works. :)
Answer: Agree with all others. The answer lies in the writing theory, story design. The number of the future year doesn't matter at all without your story goals, without what you want to say or make to feel.
You cannot just take a year you want:

I want it to be far enough in the future

without consequences. It all matters for your story.
E.g. if you have completely different technology from now but the year number is not such big that means of technological revolutions, quantum leaps and interesting times at all. The opposite situation: so many years past, but we see only slight evolutional changes that give us a feeling of kinda conservatism with stagnation, crisis of development or boredom or.. revolution is coming.
So, it's up to you as author of your story design to decide.
Also, your question is incomplete, you need to add clarification:

to be far enough in the future X that the present is considered a part of history with the world in technological state Y

by this Y you give a reader the feeling of the environment the story in.
If you at first want or decide (marketing, personal preference or whatever) to use far enough in the future then the second you should select the style/mood/atmosphere/parable of your story and choose an appropriate technological setup (i.e. warp drives (if any), implants or artificial body clones, super collective mind, new iphones with android installed).
You can look at futurology as a science, but not to dig in deep enough (nobody knows the future and you are the author) unless your story is analytical paper for economists or so (also, know your reader).
Answer: I don't know. My Sci-fi is about 10 years in the future, but you said you wanted the present to be history. Maybe about 50-100. That should work.
Hope this  helped!
Answer: I note that Rolazaro Azeveires wrote:

Looking at it the opposite way, I'd say that anything that your grandfather saw is "not-that-old". If you met (or may have met) the person that witnessed it, it does not feel that much different than being told of something that happened yesterday. E.g. I knew a person that was just around the corner when a Portuguese president was shot back in 1918, so I kind of was there too. So, "not-too-old" would be 3 generations ago, from my grandfather being young, until I am really old. With current life expectancy that would be a little bit more than a century.

That does not fit too well for a few people.  Harrison Tyler (born 1928) is the grandson of President John Tyler (1790-1862).  Doctor Otto Habsburg (1912-2011) was photographed with Emperor Franz Josef I (1830-1916), who was the grandson of Emperor Francis II & I, (1769-1835).
Anyway, in science fiction it is fun to use different calendars and have the reader wonder just what date in the Gregorian calendar 3,000 A.U.C. corresponds to, for example. Or 37 New Age.  But of course the writer would have to give an example of a date in both systems somewhere to be fair to the readers.
Answer: Although I feel that there are some great answers here already, I'll give my 2 cents as well, in hopes that others have the same initial question, but with a different story in mind.
This answer will be somewhat influenced by my own 'sci-fi' project.
Depending on what the feel of your story is, what role the 'science-part of the fiction' plays in that story, how thoroughly you explain the science, and what science it is based on, you can do different things.
The Feel
All stories feel different, based on the events, the characters, and the setting.
In some stories, the setting is heavily influenced by or based on the science-part of the fiction. In other stories, only some events are based on it. If you are writing a thriller, a lot should probably be kept unknown for a long time. If you're writing action, not as much. There are countless ways to write Sci-Fi.
The role of the sciency part
Some Sci-Fi stories make it obvious that it is Sci-Fi. Other stories barely show it. Most of the latter story could center around life/the world 'as we know it'. Perhaps it feels like a psychological thriller until we realize that some until-now-unknown tech/science is at play. In that case, the overall work would probably be regarded as a Psychological Sci-Fi Thriller.
In my work, we follow 'ordinary people' who happen to be affected by something that we learn about later in the story. That is the science we have yet to uncover. To the reader, what happens to the characters seems like mental disorders or illnesses, and we are trying to figure out what is wrong with them, or how their issues can be solved.
How thoroughly you explain the science
It's always a tricky balance when it comes to the question of 'how much to explain'. The usual answer is 'as little as you can get away with', which is partially due to that fact that most fake science can be proven wrong by actual scientists if you try to explain it.
What science it is based on
Depending on what science or technology is present in your story, and whether it is an obvious development from something we know, the question of 'when the story takes place' can vary.
If it is obviously an improved version of something we have or use today, you must estimate roughly how long it would take us to get there from 'today'. This means looking into prototypes for similar technology, things that have been proven 'impossible', experts' opinions or estimates of when X will be possible, and so on.
If it is something that is less obviously dependent on existing tech, you can simply come up with a reason why we haven't heard of it or experienced it, even if the story takes place in the year 2019 or in the 1850s.
In my story, the tech can be categorized as somewhat 'mythical', meaning that scientists have been working on 'breaking the code' in order to make 'something like this' happen. However, that is the official side of things. In my story, we learn that that is merely the public statement, kept to ensure that there wouldn't be a national or potential world-wide crisis, following the news of 'what is actually possible'.
A cool thing you can include in your story, is using or mentioning well known historical events, but adding your own touch to them. Giving a different explanation for why or how it happened, or an unknown consequence of it.


RavenDb Config and DocumentStore abstraction?

Question: I am using RavenDb across multiple projects and solutions to access three different databases that are all part of the same product. For instance, I have multiple MVC projects that fetch user info and some data out of the 'web' centric database and the 'backend' database, using '-' for the id override (but I need this only for a subset of classes in the 'web' db). And then I have another 'backend' database that is used by services (as well as the MVC projects). And finally a third temp/scratch database I use by another set of services to build the backend db. And of course, all of these are being accessed from different class libraries and even console test, seed, and integration test apps.
Managing all of these is becoming quite a nuisance. Every time I create a new console app or class library that access the db, I have to setup config and raven packages for each project, make sure indexes are built, etc.... Not to mention running update on all nuget updates, or in my case, installing a new unstable version of the server/client binaries.
Is there an easier way to manage this?
I tried to abstract the DocumentStore creation and initialization, as well as index creation into it own project and reference that. But the other projects then had to manually add newtonsoft.json (and nlog) from the package directory.
As well, I am getting the following when I try and abstract the DocumentStore into a class with a static property:
StackTrace of un-disposed document store recorded. Please make sure to dispose any document store in the tests in order to avoid race conditions in tests.
Anyone have any thoughts on handling these issues?
Thanks
Comment: Is this still an issue?  The Raven 2.0 client does not have the dependency on newtonsoft.json and nlog.
Answer: I don't think that the manual addition of the references is a big issue, but you can add the actual nuget references as well.
Note that the DocumentStore not disposed error is something that only happened in the unstable (debug builds), and won't happen on release builds.


Dashboard light to replace catalytic converter, later engine loud dash light disappears

Question: A engine checklight appeared on my 2004 Hyundai Elantra GT hatchback, and was diagnosed as a faulty catalytic converter, that was considered normal for the age of the car. About 3 days later when i started the car in the morning, the engine was very loud but the checklight had disappeared. I thought the loudness of the engine was an issue with the exhaust (maybe a hole) and that for some reason it removed the checklight. I did not drive the car for about 3 days. Today I wanted to drive it to my mechanic. The car drove normally, without a loud noise and no checklight. Should I be concerned?
Comment: Welcome to Motor Vehicle Maintenance & Repair!
Answer: Not knowing the reason for the loud noise would disconcerting to me. Usually load noises from engine or any other system is a indication of a serious problem. I would definitely have a mechanic check it out. A catalytic check engine light to me would indicate the downstream O2 sensor detected a defective cat. This followed by a lot of noise then a absence of the check engine light afterwards could mean damage to that O2 sensor.
I think a new cat and both O2 sensor need to replaced and all the computer codes checked to find out why the cat failed in the first place otherwise the problem will reoccur.
Answer: The catalytic converter is actually a set of thin "tubes" like a square grid that has been extruded. This tube-like system improves the surface of the converter that comes in contact with the gases.
With time, this "grid" crunches in a way that produces long "needle" like fragments. These fragments very often stuck in the grids holes preventing the air been exhausted properly, thus reducing power and even changing the sound of exhaust system.
You should have your converter examined for such a case because this case, if worsens could lead to engine issues such as overheating, stalling, inability to start etc.


Blank screen after logging in

Question: I just installed the 64 bit version onto my laptop. It is the only operating system on the computer. After the initial setup and restart, I tried to log in, but after I typed my password and hit enter, the screen just went black. Tried to restart several times and had the same problem. Not sure what to do. I tried to use the 32 bit version instead but it doesn't even install. My computer is 64 bit, 200 g hard drive, 2 ghz processor, 4 g ram
Comment: see if this helps
[error-message-signal-out-of-range-92khz-58hz-when-starting-ubuntu-what-is][1]

  [1]: http://askubuntu.com/questions/132885/error-message-signal-out-of-range-92khz-58hz-when-starting-ubuntu-what-is/
Answer: go in to your bios and change your SATA configuration to AHCI Mode also you may have to run install with --nomodeset
try just changing your config first. if that still dosent work then add --nomodeset
or --fb=false
or --vga=788

Blank screen after logging in


How can I run Java software?

Question: What is the best way to run Java code on the RP? Does installing the OpenJDK from the Debian/Fedora repos work OK? Are there tweaks one should use for improved performance? Also, is there a "light weight" JVM available for the RP which runs better/faster than the standard JVM from OpenJDK? If so, how is this obtained and installed?
Comment: Note that OpenJDK does not have an ARM JIT yet, making it slow.
Comment: It appears that the ARM JIT by Oracle is not part of the OpenJDK.
Answer: For the "lightweight" part of your question, there are a number of smaller JVMs that you might want to consider.
For instance JamVM was originally designed to work in small systems like the RP and both it and Cacao (another smaller JVM) are available as packages in debian:
icedtea-7-jre-jamvm
icedtea-7-jre-cacao

though both use the open-jdk class libraries AFAIK, and its the class libraries that are the huge part (disk footprint wise) of installing a JRE.
Answer: Installing from the repositories should work fine on Debian:
sudo apt-get clean
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install openjdk-6-jre

Java doesn't seem to be available on the Arch repo.
Can someone please edit with information for Fedora, I have no knowledge of that distro.
Answer: There's no special lightweight JDK that I know of, but the normal openjdk from the repo seems to work ok-ish for me.
I say ok-ish - there's no problem with functionality per-se, at least none that I've found. That includes headful applications, Swing / AWT also seems to work well (haven't tried JavaFX.) Performance on the other hand isn't anything to right home about due to a lack of JIT (see this question.)
Answer: I've seen a lot of interest in running various cut down JVMs running on raspberry pi but few people have looked into compiling java straight to machine code.  http://gcc.gnu.org/java/ hosts a compiler that can give you machine code from java or from java byte code.  The project that I was going to get to use gcj for ended up being scrapped before it got off the ground  but the compiler is billed as a good fit for embedded systems so it should suit the raspberry pi just fine.
Half way down the page in this forum there is a very nice graph somebody made comparing the relative performance of various JVMs as well as gcj http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=6330&p=124107.  Keep in mind these benchmarks were made before the drastic performance increase included in the latest raspbian distro.
Comment: Now, six months later, do you have hands-on experience with doing this on the Raspberry?
Answer: Oracle has graciously ported a version of Java 7 SE headless to the ARM for the Raspberry PI.
I copied over class files from some of my non-EE console based code and it runs fine - but about 9 times slower than a Pentium IV at 3GHz.
see
http://eclipsejpa.blogspot.ca/2012/10/java-se-7-embedded-on-raspberry-pi.html
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/java/raspberrypi-1704896.html
Answer: Oracle released Java 8 (and Java 7) for ARM. Use the Link from this Page to get the currently best Java version for your Raspberry Pi.
This should also work:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install oracle-java8-jdk

Answer: I don't how it works with a JVM, but I know the ARM SoC on the Raspberry Pi can run the Java bytecode itself.
I don't have the Raspberry Pi to test JRE. So I speculate.
Use: cat /proc/cpuinfo/ and see if java could support the Raspberry Pi.
Comment: This `java` flag in `/proc/cpuinfo` means that the CPU support Jazelle extension. You can read about this on [wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazelle).
Comment: The problem with Jazelle is that none of the open source JVMs can use it.

How can I run Java software?


Shell script Process PID logging and maintenance using exec

Question: I am trying to launch a java process as a server and then might periodically need to restart/kill it at certain times. Since I use a shell script to launch java jvm(to build classpath), I thought of logging the shell script process id using  $$ and then run java as
"exec java" so  that I can use the logged process id for killing the process and launching the new jvm.
Is that the best way to do it? Any feedback?
Answer: In my opinion one of the best ways to launch, control and maintain java processes/daemons is by putting them under control of the tanuki service wrapper, see here for more information: http://wrapper.tanukisoftware.com
Comment: service wrappers sound interesting. I will take a look at Tanuki and other options.


How to implement token based api for rest api in java?

Question: I am working on a project, and I came here in this moment, where I now need authorization. I am using Apache Shiro for my web interface, but as long as mobile web-apps are concerned, I hardly think basic username:password auth will hold. And, the documentation of Shiro doesn't say much  about tokens. Therefore, as the alternative, I am thinking to implement token.
I came upon few ideas.
1.To use Oauth, but it sounds too complicated.
2.To use JWT. This sounds fascinating.
So, after some research, and based upon ease of use, I opted to use JWT. But, I came across some questions.

While reading online, I saw Authorization header decorated with "Bearer ". What does Bearer do? As far as I have understood, "Bearer has something to do with Oauth, as googling Bearer mostly comes with "Oauth" on it.
However, I decided to put this header to the response, "Authorization" : "Bearer ".
Now what, how will jax-rs figure out itself. Do I need to implement my own methods to deal with authorization, or there are some filters or frameworks that deals with all these so I can focus on what I can do.
Comment: Sorry but product recommendations are prohibited on this site. You should probably ask that part on another site?
Answer: Bearer means that possessing the token (ie: being the bearer of the token) is sufficient to be authorized. You don't need to prove you hold a private key or something else.


If I upgrade to iOS 5, can I restore a 4.2 backup?

Question: I have an iPhone 4 with iOS 4.2 backed up to one of my PCs which I no longer use. If I upgrade to iOS 5, will I lose the opportunity to restore from one of these old backups? Would I be able to restore the phone to the old operating system and then restore from an old backup?
Comment: I have just tried restoring an old backup on 4.2 to a new iPhone on 5.0.1 - apparently there is some sort of bug - a password for the backup is requested. I did not create one when I did the backup. Any ideas??? I have tried every single password I have.
Answer:
If I upgrade to iOS 5, will I lose the opportunity to restore from one
  of these old backups?

No. You can restore your settings, data, photos, videos, apps, and anything else iTunes has backed up from iOS 4 right over to the new iOS 5. Backups are compatible with future versions of iOS. You could likely restore an iOS 3 backup to a device running iOS 5. The only complication you would run across would be the apps and whether they retained support for your current iOS. Most developers periodically drop support for older devices as time goes on. For example, most new games in the App Store very rarely support the iPhone 3G or older iPod Touches. Moreover, they have also begun dropping support for older iOS versions, such as v3.0. If this conflict every surfaced, iTunes would simply not migrate over any apps that did not support your device (of course still moving over the rest of your data).

Would I be able to restore the phone to the old operating system and
  then restore from an old backup?

Yes, and no. Let me explain the "yes." Apple digitally signs every release of iOS. This signature is verified by Apple prior to its installation. This is often referred to as a "signing window." During this window, any firmware can be installed on your phone, provided it has a valid signature and is being permitted by Apple (passes verification). Apple has historically left the window open for about a week and only for the previous version of iOS (e.g., if iOS 5.1 was released tomorrow, the window would cover iOS 5, if iOS 5.2 was released after that, the window would cover 5.1, and so on). More specifically, now that Apple has released iOS 5.0, iOS 4.3.5 (the previous version of iOS) is likely still being accepted, but that window is fast closing (and could likely have already been closed). Additionally, the rollback only applies to the direct previous build (in this case only iOS 4.3.5 and not 4.3.3 or 4.2.1), but it is time sensitive (iOS ups the ante by introducing tighter measures that may prevent the use of SHSH blobs, effectively sealing a downgrade to Apple's small window, but that's another topic altogether).
If you decide the day of release that the new firmware isn't for you, an immediate downgrade is 100% possible. As the days pass by, that number drops dramatically. If you miss that window, you will be unable to install the previous release without SHSH blobs, and software designed to jailbreak devices, which can allow a downgrade indefinitely. It's of note that SHSH blobs must be taken from a device running that particular build. You cannot extract SHSH blobs for iOS 4.3.3 from iOS 4.3.5.
So it's a mixed bag. Yes you can downgrade, but you must act fast. After that, it is a resounding "no." Unless of course you have met the requirements (SHSH blobs, etc.). However, as I said, iOS ups the stakes by seeking to block (or rather change the behaviour of) SHSH blobs, effectively limiting a downgrade to Apple's window.
This of course omits discussion of the baseband (the component that handles cellular data) which is another factor to consider should you requiring unlocking the handset to handle multiple carriers, however, this falls slightly outside the scope of your question, and for your intents and purposes, something you needn't worry about.
Comment: No. Apple keeps this information very close to its chest. You can however visit here: http://theiphonewiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=SHSH for more details. Take the "open" notices with a grain of salt, they are not "synced" with Apple's servers, but changes by a member of the public.
Comment: Thanks for the detailed answer. Does Apple have any documentation about this 'signing window' so that I can learn more about it? Also, is there a link that explains how someone can downgrade the OS if he or she is still within the signing window?
Answer: No, you will not lose the ability to restore from backup. It's the same situation if you were upgrading to a brand new phone - it is quite possible to restore a iPhone 3G (running iOS 4) to an iPhone 4S. The operating system on the iOS 5 phone would remain iOS 5, but the data would be properly pulled from the backup.
Someone may want to clarify this, but I believe iPhone backups are almost solely your own user data, and very few system files, as system files or OS updates can simply be re-downloaded.


Is there an advantage to having cellulite

Question: There are many ads nowadays advertising cellulite removal, and it causes me to wonder if there is an advantage to having cellulite or if it is just a result of too much fat unevenly spread?  Is it structurally more efficient at storing energy or providing insulation?
Answer: There's no advantage or disadvantage (beyond personal perception of attractiveness).
It's a benign condition that can occur with hormone changes, weight changes, and especially genetic predisposition.
It occurs in most women (up to 90% will have it at some point) and some men, and physicians consider it 'normal.'
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/cellulite/DS00891


Can cold weather be sufficient to act as a refrigerator?

Question: Might be a silly question, but if the place I want to travel to has 35 degree F highs and 27 degree F lows, and the ideal temperature for a refrigerator is 35 degrees F ... can't I just loosely pack raw meat in ice for the car and then once I'm outside just leave it outside (with packaging)? It should technically keep for a few days right? Assuming a bear doesn't get to it first (maybe something like two odor proof bags).
Comment: I went backpacking once in Colorado in June, we hiked to near the top of a mountain and camped out for a few days. There was a lake and a lot of snowpacks around (it was still cold). Between the three of us we fished the lake and caught probably 50 trout, which we packed in the snow during the time we were there, and then took the fish with us when we left.
Answer: 35° is 35°, whether in your car, in your pack, or in your refrigerator back home.
However, handling raw meat otherwise is very different outdoors than at home.  Personally, I think bringing raw meat into the wilderness is a bad idea.  There are plenty of other foods that give you the same or better nutrition, don't require as careful handling, weigh less, and aren't as much of a predator-magnet.  For example, if you really want to bring meat, try jerky.  It preserves much better, can be chewed as-is without needing cooking, weighs a lot less, and takes up less space for the same amount of protein.
If you are going into bear country, then raw meat is a particularly bad idea.  Bears have such sensitive noses that a couple layers of plastic bags won't help much.  I'm not sure there is such a thing as a "odor proof" bag to the point a bear can't smell meat inside.
One advantage of being human is being able so survive on a very wide spectrum of foods.  If you're going into the wilderness for a few days, leave the raw meat at home.  Have a steak dinner when you get back.
Answer: When meteorologists tell you the temperature, likely they mean the temperature more than 1m off the ground in a shaded place (for example in a Stevenson screen).
Anything sunlit is likely to be warmer. The ground is likely to be different (warmer or cooler depending what else is going on). You can't assume that just because the weather report for the region gives a high of 35, therefore no spot in the region went above 35 all day. At best it means that a specially-constructed place in official weather station for the region didn't go above 35. And a forecast isn't even a measurement.
If you put with your meat a thermometer that tracks highest temperature seen, or if the ice doesn't melt, then you know the stuff stayed cool. There's every chance you can keep food chilled out of doors in refrigerator-temperature weather, if you can keep it well-shaded (stone or brick enclosures are good).
As Olin says, don't leave food out for bears. Whether it's "for bears" or not is decided by the bear, you don't get a say.
Answer: Yes you can. Degrees are degrees no matter if in a fridge or outside of it. And some less degrees won't hurt to food preservation (while some extra ones of course could).
If you need to carry the food in a backpack for a long time remember that the body radiates warmth, so take that into account, and don't keep the food close to your back in the rucksack.