Why would someone use a Bayesian approach with a 'noninformative' improper prior instead of the classical approach?

Question: If the interest is merely estimating the parameters of a model (pointwise and/or interval estimation) and the prior information is not reliable, weak, (I know this is a bit vague but I am trying to establish an scenario where the choice of a prior is difficult) ... Why would someone choose to use the Bayesian approach with 'noninformative' improper priors instead of the classical approach?
Comment: Thank you all for such interesting thoughts about this controversial part of the Bayesian statistics. I have been reading and comparing your points. There are interesting arguments validating its use in terms of formal rules, practicality and interpretation. I will select an answer at some point, but I am affraid this is going to be a very difficult task.
Answer: Two reasons one may go with a Bayesian approach even if you're using highly non-informative priors:

Convergence problems. There are some distributions (binomial, negative binomial and generalized gamma are the ones I'm most familiar with) that have convergence issues a non-trivial amount of the time. You can use a "Bayesian" framework - and particular Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods, to essentially plow through these convergence issues with computational power and get decent estimates from them.
Interpretation. A Bayesian estimate + 95% credible interval has a more intuitive interpretation than a frequentist estimate + 95% confidence interval, so some may prefer to simply report those.
Comment: MCMC is not really Bayesian method.  You could simply draw estimates from your target likelihood (not posterior) if convergence is the issue.
Answer: Although the results are going to be very similar, their interpretations differ.
Confidence intervals imply the notion of repeating an experiment many times and being able to capture the true parameter 95% of times. But you cannot say you have a 95% chance of capturing it.
Credible intervals (Bayesian), on the other hand, allow you to say that there is a 95% "chance" that the interval captures the true value. Update: A more Bayesian way of putting it would be that you could be 95% confident about your results.
This is just because you went from $P(Data|Hypothesis)$ to $P(Hypothesis|Data)$ using Baye's Rule.
Comment: I may be confused here, but how does "the true value" fit into a Bayesian framework? Maybe you are referring to the posterior mode (or mean, or.. etc)?
Comment: Yes, but doesn't "true value" indicate that the parameter is a constant (i.e. its distribution is a point mass)? The entire concept of looking at the posterior distribution seems to disagree with thinking of parameters in that way.
Comment: I'm referring to whatever parameter (population value) you're estimating with you're sample statistic, be it a mean, a mean difference, a regression slope... In brief, what you're after.
Answer: I believe one reason to do so is that a Bayesian analysis provides you with a full posterior distribution. This can result in more detailed intervals than the typical frequentist $\pm 2 \sigma$. An applicable quote, from Reis and Stedinger 2005, is:

Providing a full posterior distribution of the parameters is an
  advantage of the Bayesian approach over classical methods, which
  usually provide only a point estimate of the parameters represented by
  the mode of the likelihood function, and make use of asymptotic
  normality assumptions and a quadratic approximation of the
  log-likelihood function to describe uncertainties. With the Bayesian
  framework, one does not have to use any approximation to evaluate the
  uncertainties because the full posterior distribution of the
  parameters is available. Moreover, a Bayesian analysis can provide
  credible intervals for parameters or any function of the parameters
  which are more easily interpreted than the concept of confidence
  interval in classical statistics (Congdon, 2001).

So, for example, you can calculate credible intervals for the difference between two parameters.
Answer: Sir Harold Jeffreys was a strong proponent of the Bayesian approach. He showed that if you use diffuse improper priors the resulting Bayesian inference would be the same as the frequentist inferential approach (that is, Bayesian credible regions are the same as frequentist confidence intervals). Most Bayesians advocate proper informative priors. There are problems with improper priors and some can argue that no prior is truly non-informative. I think that the Bayesians that use these Jeffreys' prior do it as followers of Jeffreys. Dennis Lindley, one of the strongest advocates of the Bayesian approach, had a great deal of respect for Jeffreys but advocated informative priors.
Comment: +1 for the first few lines of your answer.  In my opinion, the reason to choose a Jeffreys' prior over a "non-informative" prior is not simply as a follower of Jeffreys.  It's because it really is like making no assumption whereas a so-called non-informative prior is making an assumption about the parametrization.
Comment: @NeilG I've also found some people like using them to essentially "Fail Frequentist" (in the same sense as Fail Safe) when using non-informative priors such that they can be interpreted by a naive reader.
Comment: @NeilG Essentially exploiting that a Jeffrey's prior will give you what someone trained in frequentist fields is expecting to see. It's a decent middle ground when working in placed Bayesian methods haven't penetrated much.
Comment: @EpiGrad:  What do you mean? (I'm sorry, my understanding of frequentist statistics is very poor.)
Comment: @NeilG I also forgot that, as in my answer, if you're using MCMC to *conduct* a frequentist analysis, skirting around convergence issues, then the Jeffrey's prior is also helpful.
Answer: We could argue forever about foundations of inference to defend both approaches, but let me propose something different. A $\textit{practical}$ reason to favor a Bayesian analysis over a classical one is shown clearly by how both approaches deal with prediction. Suppose that we have the usual conditionally i.i.d. case. Classically, a predictive density is defined plugging the value $\hat{\theta} = \hat{\theta}(x_1,\dots,x_n)$ of an estimate of the parameter $\Theta$ into the conditional density $f_{X_{n+1}\mid\Theta}(x_{n+1}\mid\theta)$. This classical predictive density $f_{X_{n+1}\mid\Theta}(x_{n+1}\mid\hat{\theta})$ does not account for the uncertainty of the estimate $\hat{\theta}$: two equal point estimates with totally different confidence intervals give you the same predictive density. On the other hand, the Bayesian predictive density takes into account the uncertainty about the parameter, given the information in a sample of observations, automatically, since
$$
  f_{X_{n+1}\mid X_1,\dots,X_m}(x_{n+1}\mid x_1,\dots,x_n) = \int f_{X_{n+1}\mid\Theta}(x_{n+1}\mid\theta) \, \pi(\theta\mid x_1,\dots,x_n) \, d\theta \, .
$$
Comment: It's worth pointing out that in the context of linear regression with normal errors, the frequentist prediction intervals are based on pivotal statistics rather than plug-in estimators and are identical to the Bayesian intervals under the typical noninformative priors (jointly flat on the $\beta$s and $\mathrm{log}(\sigma^2)$).
Comment: [Related to](http://biomet.oxfordjournals.org/content/92/3/529.short) @Cyan's comment.
Answer: The Bayesian approach has practical advantages. It helps with estimation, often being mandatory. And it enables novel model families, and helps in construction of more complicated (hierarchical, multilevel) models.
For example, with mixed models (including random effects with variance parameters) one gets better estimates if variance parameters are estimated by marginalizing over lower-level parameters (model coefficients; this is called REML). The Bayesian approach does this naturally. With these models, even with REML, maximum likelyhood (ML) estimates of variance parameters are often zero, or downward biased. A proper prior for the variance parameters helps.
Even if point estimation (MAP, maximum a posteriori) is used, priors change the model family. Linear regression with a large set of somewhat collinear variables is unstable. L2 regularization is used as a remedy, but it is interpretable as a Bayesian model with Gaussian (non-informative) prior, and MAP estimation. (L1 regularization is a different prior and gives different results. Actually here the prior may be somewhat informative, but it is about the collective properties of the parameters, not about a single parameter.)
So there are some common and relatively simple models where a Bayesian approach is needed just to get the thing done!
Things are even more in favor with more complicated models, such as the latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) used in machine learning. And some models are inherently Bayesian, e.g., those based on Dirichlet processes.
Answer: There are several reasons:

In many situations constructing test statistics or confidence intervals is quite difficult, because normal approximations – even after using an appropriate link function – to work with $\pm \text{SE}$ are often not working too well for sparse data situations. By using Bayesian inference with uninformative priors implemented via MCMC you get around this (for caveats see below).
The large sample properties are usually completely identical to some corresponding frequentist approach.
There is often considerable reluctance to agree on any priors, no matter how much we actually know, due to a fear of being accused of "not being objective". By using uninformative priors ("no priors") one can pretend that there is no such issue, which will avoid criticism from some reviewers.

Now as to the downsides of just using uninformative priors, starting with what I think is the most important and then heading for some of the also quite important technical aspects:

The interpretation of what you get is, quite honestly, much the same as for frequentist inference. You cannot just re-label your frequentist maximum likelihood inference as Bayesian maximum a-posteriori inference and claim that this absolves you of any worries about multiple comparisons, multiple looks at the data and lets you interpret all statements in terms of the probability that some hypothesis is true. Sure, type I errors and so on are frequentist concepts, but we should as scientists care about making false claims and we know that doing the above causes problems. A lot of these issues go away (or at least are a lot less of a problem), if you embed things in a hierarchical model / do something empirical Bayes, but that usually boils down to implicitly generating priors via the analysis procedure by including the basis for your prior in your model (and an alternative to that is to explicitly formulate priors). These considerations are frequently ignored, in my opinion mostly to conduct Bayesian p-hacking (i.e. introduce multiplicity, but ignore it) with the fig-leaf of an excuse that this is no problem when you use Bayesian methods (omitting all the conditions that would have to be fulfilled).
On the more "technical" side, uninformative priors are problematic, because you are not guaranteed a proper posterior. Many people have fitted Bayesian models with uninformative priors and not realized that the posterior is not proper. As a result MCMC samples were generated that were essentially meaningless.

The last point is an argument for preferring rather vague (or slightly more weakly-informative) priors that ensure a proper posterior. Admittedly, it can sometimes be hard to sample from these, too, and it may be hard to notice that the whole posterior has not been explored. However, Bayesian methods with vague (but proper) priors have in many fields been shown to have really good small sample properties from a frequentist perspective and you could certainly see that as an argument for using those, while with somewhat more data there will be hardly any difference versus methods with uninformative priors.


How is average cost in college scorecard derived?

Question: The Average Cost does not seem to be what the institution charges, how was it determined?
Comment: can you provide an example?
Answer: The average net price is the full cost of attendance (including tuition and fees, books and supplies, and living expenses) minus federal, state, and institutional aid, for undergraduate students who receive federal aid (for public institutions, this metric is limited to undergraduates who pay in-state tuition).  This is calculated based on a weighted average of IPEDS net price data of undergraduate, Title IV-receiving students.


Is there an 11-term arithmetic progression of primes beginning with 11?

Question: i.e. does there exist an integer $C > 0$ such that $11, 11 + C, ..., 11 + 10C$ are all prime?
Comment: @kodlu : You can write $2\times10^7$ or $2\cdot10^7.$ The use of an asterisk for that purpose is a workaround for occasions where one is limited to the characters on the keyboard.
Comment: Magma says $C>2\times 10^7$ and crashes somewhere before $C<2\times 10^8$.
Answer: Such an integer $C$ exists. The smallest $C$ with this property is $C=1536160080$.
I found this $C$ by computing the analogous number $C$ for a $3$-term prime arithmetic progression beginning with $3$, a $5$-term prime arithmetic progression beginning with $5$ and a $7$-term prime arithmetic progression beginning with $7$. This gave me the numbers $2,6,150$. When I plugged these into OEIS I found that the next term in this sequence is $1536160080$. You can see the relevant OEIS page here.
Comment: That's a nice strategy for finding an answer.
Comment: There are some other possibilities for $C$: http://oeis.org/A206045
Comment: @Kim: provided it's known already...
Comment: $1536160080$ [appears eight times in OEIS](http://oeis.org/search?q=1536160080&sort=&language=&go=Search) so there may be more than one approach
Comment: D'oh!  I made a mistake, otherwise I would have found it yesterday.
Comment: The usual reference web page for this is [http://primerecords.dk/aprecords.htm#minimalstart](http://primerecords.dk/aprecords.htm#minimalstart) by Jens Kruse Andersen, and it credits Günter Löh (1986) with finding this one. As you can see, explicit examples are known today if you substitute "11" with slightly larger primes.
Answer: Siemion Fajtlowicz has been promoting the topic of $p$-long arithmetic progressions of primes which start with $p$ during 1993-4 (or longer). He and his colleague Micha Hofri got an $11$-long progression. Then, soon after, I got a small theorem which allowed me to get bunches of such $11$-progressions very fast, and also a lot of $13$-progressions (of $13$ primes starting with $13$) almost as quickly.
On the other hand, I conjectured that only a finite number of primes $p$ start $p$-progressions. Moreover, I believe that no prime $p>13$ starts any. Perhaps there is already none for $\ p=17$. (I got my results during 1994).
See also: http://primerecords.dk/aprecords.htm
Comment: According to the OEIS page referenced there are such for $p=13,$ $p=17$ and $p=19.$ The minimal $d$ for $p=7,11,13,17,19$ are roughly $7^{2.5},11^8,13^{11.6},17^{16.6}$ and $19^{19.03}$ That slightly blows my rather slapdash estimation that $d=p^p$ should be about right. I'd think a more careful calculation would give credible bounds (which might be impossible to confirm in our lifetimes for primes past $30$ or so.)
Comment: What was your theorem?
Comment: Don't standard conjectures (Dickson) imply there should be (infinitely many) $p$-progressions for every $p$?
Comment: @Wojowu Could you elaborate on the precise statement of this conjecture?
Comment: @Kim http://primes.utm.edu/glossary/xpage/DicksonsConjecture.html
Comment: @Charles, please--see below.
Answer: For the sake of easy education let me mention the first simplest step toward finding $p$-long arithmetic progressions of primes which start with $p$.
Let $q$ be an arbitrary prime. Then the arithmetic progressions of more than $q$ integers must have a term divisible by $q$ when the difference of the progression is not divisible by $q$.
Now, let $\ p_0<p_1<\ldots\ $ be the sequence of all primes. Let there be a $p_n$-progression as described in this thread (in the first sentence of this answer/post). Then the difference of the progression must be divisible by the product of the previous primes, i.e. by
$$ \prod_{k<n}p_k. $$
Now, it is enough to check consecutive multiples of this product as the possible differences of the required progression.
Today, this remark would suffice toward a fast computation of the 11-progressions but around y.1992 it would make a computing station sweat for long hours (or days). But even in those days, the next step (a small theorem) was already good enough for computing even 13-progressions (but not 17-progressions).
Answer: There seems to be an interest in $p$-app ($p$-long prime arithmetic progressions) which start with prime $p$. Thus, I've decided to put some $\LaTeX$ sweat into more information, as elementary as it is.

A $p$-app is an arithmetic progression
     $\ (p+t\!\cdot\! d\ :\ t=0\ldots n\!-\!1)\ $ such that all its terms are primes, and integer $\ d>1.\ $ Then a simple theorem assures us that
$$ \prod \mathbf P(p-1)\ |\ d $$
Where $\ \mathbf P(x)\ $ is the set of all primes $\ \le\ x.$
Given any prime $p$ we would like to find all we can about the $p$-app's (do they exist, etc.).

Let $\ D:=\prod\mathbf P(n_1)\ $ as above. In particular, we would like to know everything about $\ r\ $ such $\ d=r\cdot D,\ $ where $\ d\ $ is the difference of arbitrary $p$-app.
Thus, let $\ q\ $ be any prime not in the said $p$-app. Then
$$ d\not\equiv 0\mod q\quad \Longrightarrow\quad \forall_{0\le k< p}\quad p+k\cdot d\ \not\equiv 0 \mod q $$
Notations:   Let $\ \ /_n\ \ $ be the $\mod n\ $ division by non-$0$ integers which are not factors of $\ n,\ $ with the division value in $\ \{0\ldots\ n\!-\!1.$
Thus,
$$  d\not\equiv 0\mod q\quad \Longrightarrow\quad \forall_{0\le k< p}\quad k\ \ne (-p)\,\ /_q\,\ d   $$
In other words, looking at the division remaining options (and under the established notation),
THEOREM 1
$$  d\not\equiv 0\mod q\quad \Longrightarrow\quad p\ \ \le\ \ (-p)\,\ /_q\,\ d\ \ <\ \ q $$
This significantly reduces the number of options for $\ d\ $ when it is (easily!) applied to all primes $\ q>p\ $ at the same time (in the same computer program).

APPLICATIONS

Let prime $\ p>3\ $ be a younger sibling of prime $ q:=p+2.\ $ Then

$$ (-p)\,\ /_q\,\ d\,\ =\,\ -\!1\,\ \mbox{or}\ -\!2 $$
$\qquad$ (Thus, even one prime $\ q\ $ contributes to the computational savings).

Let $\ p:=11\ $. The (see above) $\ D=2\cdot 3\cdot 5\cdot 7=210,\ $ and let $\ d := r\cdot D\ $ be the respective difference of an arbitrary $11$-app. Then, by the above THEOREM 1, when $\ d\not\equiv 0 \mod 13\ $ (i.e.
$\ d\not\equiv 0 \mod 13)\ $ then

$$ 2\,\ /_{13}\ d\ \equiv\ -\!1\,\ \mbox{or}\ -\!2\quad \mod 13 $$
or
$$ d\ \equiv\ -\!1\,\ \mbox{or}\ -\!2\quad \mod 13 $$
Since $\,\ d = r\cdot D = r\cdot 210 \equiv 2\cdot r\,\ \mod 13,\ $ and allowing for the divisibility $13\,|\,r,\ $ we finally obtain,
$$ r\,\ \equiv\,\ 0\ \mbox{or}\ 6\ \mbox{or}\ 12 \mod 13 $$
This reduces the amount of computation $\frac 3{13}\ $ time.
Then, taking into account another prime, $\ q:=17,\ $ we reduce the computation time again $\ \frac 7{17}\ $ times, or for a total saving
$$ \frac 3{13}\cdot\frac 7{17}\ =\ \frac {21}{221}$$
times (more then ten times faster), etc.


PoS, how will it prevent 51% attack?

Question: Wouldn't it be possible for a government seeking to destroy the blockchain just "print out" the money for getting 51%? if they plan to bring the network down then the printing wont effect the fiat economy since they will "burn" the money right after printing it?
Also If proof of stake give the most reward to the biggest coin holder won't it just make the rich richer thus centralizing most of the coins to a handful of people?
Comment: Trying to buy 51% of the currency may either take a long time at "normal" price or may shoot the price to moon because of huge short demand thus making it even more expensive.
Answer:
Wouldn't it be possible for a government seeking to destroy the
  blockchain just "print out" the money for getting 51%?

Possible? Yes.
But then this isn't any different to the current situation with PoW, whereby government agencies could collude to generate enough hash power to stage an attack. And to generate that hash power they could either requisition the hardware, or print money to buy it. (The problem with printing money and buying the hardware on the open market is the associated inflation.)
Related: How much would 51% attack cost?

if they plan to bring the network down then the printing wont effect
  the fiat economy since they will "burn" the money right after printing
  it?

The currency of staking is ether (ETH), rather than fiat cash. To get their hands on that amount of the existing ETH they'd need to buy it on the open market. To do that without upsetting the market would take time.
Related: An old official blog post from Vitalik on the distribution of ETH. Presumably this distribution has changed over time, but there might be something useful in there: Ether Sale: A Statistical Overview

Also If proof of stake give the most reward to the biggest coin holder
  won't it just make the rich richer thus centralizing most of the coins
  to a handful of people?

The barriers to entry are probably (possibly) going to be lower than they are for PoW. It remains to be seen, but presumably anyone will be able to join staking pools, whereas now only people able to afford hardware are able to join mining pools.
Related: Will a higher stake make more money in PoS?
(Also talked about here: What are the major risks of Ethereum moving to Proof of Stake?)
Comment: Thanks, thing are much more understood now. Will ethereum based coins be forced to stick or will they have the option to stay with PoW?
Comment: I think @wacax answers that pretty well in the comments on his answer. :-)
Answer: There are two parts that I will try to answer here.

Wouldn't it be possible for a government seeking to destroy the blockchain (or any blockchain) by just "printing out" the money enough to get 51% of the tokens?

The short answer is yes. They won't even have to print any money, just use whatever is stored in accounts without going though exchanges i.e OTC exchanges so it won't inflate the price after buying half the amount of tokens. And they could actually buy +50% of total Ether in circulation. This has been described already by Vlad Zamfir as a cartel attack meaning that a group of people or in your case a single government has a large amount of tokens in a blockchain that could use to censor non-cartel nodes in their own favor.
More information on:
https://medium.com/@Vlad_Zamfir/the-history-of-casper-chapter-4-3855638b5f0e
Realistically, Casper is being developed with a vision of "Oligopolistic competition" which "is the norm in many "real-life" markets"
A solution was proposed on The History of Casper part 5 and on Ethereum's proof of Stake F.A.Q.
In short:

The cartel had to be punished whenever validators appeared to be missing. It has to be punished severely enough and for long enough so that it is not in its interest to censor non-cartel members.
(...) this definitively showed that proof-of-stake was fundamentally more censorship resistant than proof-of-work, reaffirming my intuition that security deposits are king.
It was possible to see how this could be implemented: if a validator failed to get their blocks into the chain, all of the validators who did have their blocks in the chain would be penalized. It also became clear that the cost of censorship resistance in the cartel model is that a validator could deliberately go offline in order to make online validators lose money.
It was therefore also necessary to penalize validators who go offline, because it could not be clear to the protocol whether they were being censored, or whether they were offline of their own accord.

Since Casper would have access to stacked Ether to both cartel nodes and Non-cartel nodes it could punish cartel miners and other nodes in the cartel's chain equally plus punishing offline nodes as they could be offline deliberately. You can see the absence of non-cartel nodes a could punish cartel nodes sufficiently enough to effectively make them lose the majority of tokens staked thus rebalancing the percentage of non-cartel tokens to the majority.
Finally, if censoring attacks were successful in stopping a public network by knocking down at least 1/3 of validators as is the case with Tendermint. A hard fork could be used to recover it.
For the second part of the question:

Also If proof of stake give the most reward to the biggest coin holder won't it just make the rich richer thus centralizing most of the coins to a handful of people.

PoS gives rewards proportionally to what the node is staking and a chance of processing transactions depending on the amount staked. One has to keep in mind that rewarding validators with small stakes by making them process transactions more often than validators with large stakes opens vectors of attack as you won't need to acquire large amounts of a token in order to make an attack like the scenario just mentioned in question one but a small budget well spread across micro-validators could also open the possibility of cartel attacks.
Comment: Thanks for the extensive overview, will ethereum based tokens will be forced to switch?
Comment: ERC-20 tokens will be untouched after Serenity and they will remain with PoS unless they fork out to another Ethereum chain or migrate to other chains like Storj did. In fact even Ether itself will become an ERC-20 token (or whatever ERC specification will be at the time).
Answer: Adding to (or perhaps correcting) Richard Horrocks answer, money wouldn't get "burned" in this case. The effect a government printing money to buy a digital asset would be the same as if it did the same for any other asset: the fiat currency would simply deflate and holders of that currency would have become poorer. This is why Milton Friedman called printing money taxation without representation.
The higher the market cap of the cryptocurrency is at the time, the more expensive such attack would be.
Comment: IMHO, this answer seems to be self-inconsistent but can easily be remedied. If there are a trillion US dollars and a (crypto) currency had a total value of a billion US dollars and the US dollar and Euro were on par, the US could print 9 trillion more dollars resulting in a "market cap" (yes, I'm aware this is often how it's referred to) increasing to approximately 10 billion US dollars but still one billion euros. From a future-share-of-US-economy, market cap is the same. It is only nominally more expensive in US dollars (and approximately the same in euros).
Comment: I.e. I think the missing part is the distinction of nominal-same-denomination price increasing vs. the less precise "more expensive". I think this is what you've said in the first part of your answer.
Comment: I'm not quite sure I understood what you meant. But my point is that for a currency to not inflate from printing money there must also be growth in value (products and services) or the prices of everything (including all cryptocurrencies) climb.
Comment: In your first paragraph, you mention how one can print money to cause monetary inflation and (if done quickly enough) price inflation, thus abolishing an absolute notion of "expensive". As a result, I think the second should be amended to read "The higher the market cap of the cryptocurrency relative to a base currency, the more the attack would nominally cost, denominated in said base currency." to account for the base currency being inflated monetarily and price...ily to remain consistent.

PoS, how will it prevent 51% attack?


display xubuntu desktop on android tablet

Question: I want to use my android tablet as a secondary display for my Xubuntu laptop, not to mirror the laptop but as an additional desktop -- I do not need to drag windows from one to the other, and it is okay to run the android session as a separate login.
Ideally I would like to use the keyboard/mouse of the desktop for the android session, but I can live without.  If possible I would like the connection be made via usb instead of wifi (to help save battery).
On the askubuntu archive I found a post with almost the same title & question
How do you use an android tablet as a second display?
The answer is to (1) install vnc4server on the laptop, (2) get a vnc client on android, (3) connect the two, and (4) share keyboard and mouse using synergy.
I have done (1) and (2), and following
https://superuser.com/questions/182261/how-to-change-virtual-screen-resolution-on-ubuntu-connecting-via-vnc-without-re/187274#187274
I started the vnc server using
vncserver :12 -name "My-Server" -geometry 1024x600
Unforunately I'm not sure how to proceed with (3) and (4).  I tried to initiate the vnc session on the android by firing up "androidvnc viewer", but I don't know what to enter for port (default seems to be 5900?) and address.  Also, what should I use for "color format" -- 24bit or 16bit?
Speaking of address:  As I said if possible I would like to connect the tablet and the laptop via usb.  What should I use for address?  Alternatively, what address should I use if I need to connect the two via wifi?  In case that matters, I could be working in setups where neither devices have internet connection to the outside world (!).
Last but not least, upon reading old posts about vnc I found discussions about tunnelling vnc over ssh
How do I start the VNC server?
The post above uses x11vnc; is there a similar option for vnc4server, and how would I proceed on the android side?  I also found
http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/tunneling-vnc-connections-over-ssh-howto.html
But I'm not sure how to incorporate that into steps (1)-(4).
There is also the question of using synergy, but that's probably for another post :-)
THANK YOU for you help and patience.
Comment: Color format is the amount of space used for colours. 16-bit can contain one million colors. 24-bit contains all the colors the ordinary human eye can see.
Answer: You need a VNC viewer for Android. There's a bunch of free ones in the Android store.
You shouldn't need to setup SSH tunneling.


Looking for a tabbed sticky notes program

Question: All sticky notes programs clutter the desktop. Want a tabbed one and freeware possibly. Googled a lot, couldn't find one that would let me create any number of tabs. Best example would be the in built sticky notes in Windows 7 but tabbed. Found one close called NotesHolder but its not freeware.
Answer: the closest I can think of is Microsoft OneNote Here is the linke https://www.onenote.com/
I've used it for my work and what's nice about it is that you can screenshot of it and it will save it to your OneNote folder. So, if you forgot and you can open it again it just saves it for you later. But I dont know if this is what you are looking for.
You can google on it but here is one you might want to check it out
http://office.about.com/od/MicrosoftOffice/tp/Easy-Steps-for-How-to-Use-Microsoft-Onenote.htm
Answer: I would suggest
https://evernote.com/
This is a cool program that lets you access notes any where, iphone, ipad, windows, any browser.
It lets you store by books, pages, parahgraphs.
Comment: It is not a *sticky notes* program. The OP still wants one or a few 'stickies' on his/her screen.


Reduce blender noise

Question: How can I reduce or eliminate sound coming from high speed blender (a normal, common, 10 speed Osterizer blender)
Answer: They actually make blender sound enclosures which will dampen a blender's noise considerably. These are generally designed for retail applications (i.e. expensive), but you can draw on the basic design for inspiration.
In a previous living arrangement, I actually built an MDF box/cabinet to cover and store luggable appliances along the back of the counter top. The long cabinet which opened at the front was primarily intended to avoid having to lug out the heavier appliances, but closing the cabinet doors cut the noise dramatically. You can build a blender-sized version for your purposes (or an old speaker enclosure is ideal for this application).

Put your blender on a rubber or vinyl mat to keep it from turning your counter top into a large sound diaphragm.
You can deaden the noise further by adding acoustic insulation to the cabinet; but honestly, MDF has some pretty substantial sound-deadening properties, so I don't think the additional cost (and kitchen/cleaning unfriendliness) is worth it.
Comment: Bonus points to OP if they can make the blender battery operated, and completely suspended in a vacuum sealed chamber. No medium to carry sound = no sound.
Answer: I think the fundamental way of reducing your blender noise is to compare different blenders and select the one with lower noise. The noise will be mainly from the motor used by the blender, and that probably can't be reduced by you.
However if part of the noise is from the blending vibrating on a hard surface, then you might be able to reduce the noise by placing a piece (or a couple layers) of felt fabric or something soft but steady as a cushion to absorb some vibration noise.

Reduce blender noise


Electric static new problem

Question: Bought this house last year. Winter, no static. Two,
 weeks ago, in summer, touching kitchen light switches, doorknobs, now kitchen faucet gives me a static shock. Never happened before, now it's consistent. Electrician came out said light switches. It grounded, put little dangling wire inside box behind 2-3 switches. Still happening. Any BTW maybe not relevant but just before this started my Hvac system stopped working, AC guy checked breaker and the wire was loose. Tightened it up, AC worked fine again. Electrician put in a new breaker after that, just to be safe. Coincidence or related? Thanks!
Comment: When you say you get a "static shock" when touching things, do you mean that you get a single momentary spark, or you get a continuous tingling feeling?
Comment: What's the relative humidity inside the home?
Answer: Related.  Or at least, you shouldn't take the chance that it's not.
Turn the main breaker off to the entire house and see if it still happens.  That will be the final word on the subject of whether it is electrical related or not.  I suspect it is.
Other than that, don't test it.  Don't tease the dragon.  What feels like a minor pinprick when the rest of you is well insulated from anything metal, can become lethal current flow if you get between something hot and something grounded.
I would not be looking at breakers, I'd be looking at the grounds and neutrals.
A possible cause is the A/C guy misusing a ground as a neutral.  This can easily combine with another type of failure to put dangerous voltage on every ground in the house, i.e. Every switch cover plate, all metal conduit, dryer or stove chassis, even the circuit breaker panel itself.  The "other type of failure" might be the original problem.
Answer: If touching doorknobs produces a shock, that doesn't sound like a ground fault, since doorknobs are never grounded.
I think the hint might be that its started happening since the AC was fixed. With the AC working, the relative humidity in the house would have been reduced, perhaps to the point that static generation and consequent shocks are produced.
That's really efficient AC! But strange that there's no shocks in winter when the RH is normally really low. Unless you live in an area where the winter temp doesn't drop below freezing. I'm told such places exist ;)

Electric static new problem


Is a dedicated server similar in setup to a VPS?

Question: I was thinking about getting a dedicated server (I may need the extra power that a VPS can't provide) from The Planet but I don't know to much about how you would operate one. I have experience in setting up multiple VPS's on Linode and Slicehost, I just select my OS in their CP and connect via SSH in putty and do my thing. Is it the same with dedicated servers (just chose you OS from the CP and connect via SSH and put on whatever crap you want)?
Answer: Having a remote dedicated server is essentially no different from having a remote VPS.  Specifically how you go about ordering it and how they provision it will be different for each provider, but once it's deployed it will be managed the same way from your point of view.  Whether the OS is running on physical hardware directly or within a virtualized environment won't make much difference from the perspective of a remote connection (be it SSH or remote desktop).  There may be minor differences in things like network interface device names though, but the system itself should run and be managed in the same way as a VPS would.
Other things to note, if you need upgrades down the road (more memory, more disk storage, etc.) they may have to take the server down to physically install new hardware.  With a virtual server, they can usually allocate additional resources either in real time or with a simple reboot of the VPS.  Physical hardware takes longer to upgrade, so if you expect to need additional resources, plan for slightly longer downtime.
Expect reboots to take a little longer as well.  Tthe physical server will likely have a longer POST process and hardware boot processes (RAID controllers and the like) which a VPS doesn't have to wait for when rebooting.
Also, depending on the provider, the way you request a system restart (outside of the OS) may be different or unavailable.  Some will allow you to control the outlets that the server is plugged into, some give you remote KVM, others don't, check with your provider on how you can recover from a failed restart).
Comment: I did, sorry, it would not let me do it for a few minutes.
Answer: Yes it's the same. I use slicehost's VPS's, Serverbeach's dedicated servers and I also have a cluster of 20 physical Dell 2950 and 1950 servers at a hosting facility where I lease a rack. I run Ubuntu and CentOS. They're all very similar to operate. You SSH in, do your thing and sign out.
The only difference is my colo facility where I own the physical machines. I'm responsible for racking them and the guys on site replace hard drives for me if anything breaks. But other than that you can move your knowledge from a VPS environment to leased server to colocation and back again very easily.
Most dedicated server environment's where you aren't managing the hardware yourself are very similar to VPS's in terms of build process and rebooting etc.
Good luck
Comment: +1 And with a managed dedicated server you may still be on a VPS, just one which uses the resources of an entire physical box.  That way you get all the benefits from a VPS (quick reboots, quick reimaging, easy management) but with the resources of an entire server.


Is this a statue of a six-armed wooden Buddha?

Question:
Please help me identify this statue. Thank you!
Answer:
"Buddha statues generally show a particular Mudra (a Sanskrit word) or hand gesture."

~ Cited from: Buddha Statue Mudras

Bhumi Sparsha Mudra
Samadhi / Dhyana Mudra
Abhaya Mudra
Dharma Chakra Mudra
Vitarka Mudra
Vajira Mudra
Uttara Bodhi Mudra

Apart from the above listed Mudras there can be a combination of two Mudras or a variation of a Mudra depicted in a statue of Lord Buddha. For example the below statue of Lord Buddha depicts a variation of Abhaya Mudra.

~ Image source: Wikipedia
Since the statue you've shown doesn't depict any of the known Mudras, there is a high possibility of being that is not a statue of Lord Buddha.
Comment: Thank you. Yes, I have never seen these types of hand gestures and I have found nothing even remotely close to this figure.
Answer: Basically in all south Asian countries Buddhism & Hinduism are the same, which is why Buddhism & Hinduism do not coexist as major religions in any Asian country. At a time in history, the ruling classes chose one of them. Each religion shares the same ideas & images in the social or cultural contexrt. Thus multi-armed deities (e.g., Brahma & Vishnu), bodhisattva and Buddhas can be found in many places and will generally have the same meaning.
As for the picture, it looks Indonesian, possibly Balinese (but I could be wrong).
Comment: `which is why Buddhism & Hinduism do not coexist as major religions in any Asian country` In Singapore for example, surely, co-existent but readily distinguishable.
Comment: Singapore is a modern commercial centre; similar to a western colony; such as Australia


How did solitary aliens reproduce in the Alien franchise?

Question: As far as I remember the cycle went like this: Leathery egg. Face hugger. Implanted embryo. Gut-wrenching infant. Leathery, egg-laying Queen. We know the humans studied the aliens. Was there an in-universe (movie, comic, novel, video game) explanation of how solitary aliens were able to reproduce?
Comment: +1 for "gut-wrenching infant," though "chest-burster" is the more common name.
Comment: Did we ever see a solitary alien reproduce in the movies?
Comment: @Kyle: Yep, see my answer.
Answer: There have been two alternative reproduction cycles that have appeared in the movies that show how individual xenomorphs can reproduce without the need for a Queen:

The directors cut of Alien: There is a famous scene (deleted from the theatrical release) which shows Ripley discovering a barely-alive Captain Dallas and the body of Brett. They have been cocooned by the xenomorph, and are both mutating into one of the original eggs capable of creating a facehugger. This shows that a single xenomorph can use a victim for food and/or to continue the egg -> facehugger -> chestburster -> xenomorph -> egg life cycle.
Aliens vs Predator: Requiem: The Predalien (a xenomorph born from a Predator) is shown in this movie to have the unique ability to use it's second set of jaws to implant embryos down a victim's throat, thus bypassing the egg and facehugger phases and allowing a Predalien to directly spawn other xenomorphs. It's not specified where this ability comes from (possibly from the DNA coming from the Predator host).
Comment: The deleted scene seals the deal. A queen can lay eggs, but any of the aliens can make an egg out of a victim. +1 and the cigar.
Comment: But is the deleted scene considered canon? I.e. is this method of reproduction portrayed in the final cut of any comics, games, books, etc.?
Comment: The Aliens vs. Predator game introduced a new possibility - when the queen of a hive dies without any queens, a normal drone can undergo a process that mutates them into a juvenile queen.
Comment: It seems that James Cameron wasn't keen on eggmorphing and it was him who introduced the Queen, https://avp.fandom.com/wiki/Eggmorphing
Answer: From my understanding xenomorphs are incomplete DNA wise, they evolve and advance by assimilating the DNA of the host. So while individual aliens take on the characteristics of the species they were incubated in, the race as a whole follows the normal life cycle of egg > facehugger > full alien, with "queen eggs" making "queen facehuggers" etc.
This is one of the reasons Predators loved using Aliens as prey. 1) They changed with each new species they are exposed to and 2) they sit dormant in their eggs for as long as necessarily.
Answer: In the novel Prey (Alien vs. Predator Book 1) we are occasionally taken into the minds of the predators. The main predator thinks to himself that when a bunch of xenomorph males are in close proximity to each other, one of them will morph into a queen. The first Alien vs. Predator movie is loosely based on this novel. The most notable thing copied is the Predator branding the human with the mark of the clan (for fighting prowess).
This is presumably what also happened in the movie Aliens. The colonists investigated the ship and a number of xenomorphs were spawned. The xenomorphs would take some of the colonists back to the derelect spacecraft and more xenomorphs were spawned. Eventually the all male population produced a female, which took up residence in the warm and humid atmospheric reactor.
Answer: My interpretation was that the eggs were largely self-supporting after being laid, so they could just sit there dormant for years or decades - maybe longer - waiting for some nub to wander in. The movies provide no evidence of face-huggers hatching without a potential host nearby, and I don't recall any situation in the comics where that occurs.
It's easy to see the hibernation concept in the first and second movies. It takes decades for Ripley to get home, and for a third of that time there are colonists on the planet - who have no contact with the Aliens, it's not until Ripley gets back and Burk sends the colonials out there that they get infected.
The third movie skips the egg process, as Ripley and Newt are already infected by the time they go into the deep freeze for the journey home. Whether Newt's alien would have evolved into a queen is totally speculation, since it's implied and later confirmed that Ripley is carrying a queen.
It's kind of a 'which came first' problem. There are species in our own world who exhibit similar behaviors, changing sexes as needed, producing queens as needed, etc.
I think they get what they need from the embryos, and if they can't get it they make it...like ants or lizards. So if no queen is available one of them will morph into one.
Quick addition, I was just looking through the Dark Horse AvP comic from 1990. The Predators in that series were flying around the galaxy with an imprisoned alien queen, forcing her to produce eggs, and then using drones to fly down to random worlds seeding them with the eggs...so they'd have more challenging game.
Answer: I know that the first born alien once the queen dies can morphology into a queen. That'd how it was on the rts game. Avp
Answer: My understanding of it was that a certain percent of the eggs were queens.
The veracity of this is questionable as deleted scenes from the first Alien film depicted the captain of the Nostromo not having been killed\eaten but rather mucused to the wall and apparently implanted with a chestburster. Whether every Alien is able to produce and implant a Queen embryo was implied, it is only conjecture on my part if that was preserved in canon.
The only implicitly stated method to propagate the Xenomorph species was for a Queen egg to be triggered and "impregnate" a host.
Answer: A solitary Xenomorph specimen would go through a hormone storm so to speak and mutate in a queen in order to lay the eggs and continue the species. Being as almost all Xenomorphs are female (With some males being noted in the expanded universe), this is easy to see.
Male Xenomorphs are incapable of "switching gender" or becoming a Queen, but they serve as the Praetorian sub-species, which are larger than the standard Drone and Warrior and are noted as the guards of the Queen in a Hive.
Answer: I think I recall reading the original novel that references were made to the way wasps stun their prey and then lay eggs in them. This is further evidenced by the deleted scene. I can totally understand the "group of aliens together, with no queen present, one of them becomes a queen" that happens here. I think bees are like that, all female, but sterile unless there is no queen in the hive. However in the first movie, there was only one alien...
Answer: The notion of the Aliens genetically morphing biomass into their spores / eggs was the punchline of the original script by Cannon, etc. (The aliens in the screenplay went through even mire lifecycle phases, eventually ending up intelligent enough to build pyramids, etc., after a formative period of voracious feeding. The overwhelming complexity of their reproductive cycle was the Sci fi lynchpin of the original script.) That was changed in the theatrical cut of the 1979 film with the deletion of the famous cocoon scene and other cuts. CAMERON came up with queen idea for the sequel. After that, folks have just to rationalize the two approaches to how the things reproduce.


What's the earliest instance of a "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" reference to beholders?

Question: Is there any recorded use of the phrase, "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" being used in a commercially available D&D campaign or any rulebook of any edition, specifically to reference (secretly or overtly) a beholder that appears in the course of the campaign? What's the earliest instance?
Comment: I've updated this to ask for the earliest instance since that will help us filter to a "best" answer rather than merely collecting an ongoing list of all the times it ever happened. (Which is probably a lot.)
Comment: Related: *[Beauty and beholder in respect to other senses](https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/273643/why-cant-synonyms-be-swapped-out-of-any-phrase-since-their-meaning-would-be-the/273674#273674)*
Comment: @ShadowRanger At best that comment was chatting, and possibly it was attempting to answer the question. Neither usage are what the commenting feature is provided for, so your comment was removed. See [this FAQ](https://rpg.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6533/321) for more information. Thanks!
Answer: The earliest reference is 1983
First time I heard it referenced in Dungeons and Dragons was in the 1983 Saturday morning cartoon.
It was Episode 2, The Eye of the Beholder, specifically at this point during their conversation with Dungeon Master.
Not really published though and not exactly canon.
Comment: This does at least establish by precedent that it was very early on that the reference was occurring to people and being used.
Comment: This is a better answer than you give yourself credit for. That episode aired in September 1983.
Comment: @ruffdove You are correct. I don 't know where I get 87 now. I have corrected that. Thanks.
Comment: You bet! I almost posted a new answer putting the date a month earlier at August 1983. Dragon magazine published the Ecology of the Beholder that month and the article was teased on the cover as "An Eye *on* the Beholder." Close, but I don't think it counts.
Answer: The earliest reference is 1988
Yamara was comic strip which appeared in Dragon magazine. The first strip published in May 1988 made this joke:
Answer: The earliest reference is 1990
Not exactly a campaign but an early issue of Dragon magazine had a "cute" drawing of a beholder on the cover. The issue's tagline is "Beauty is in the eye of — oh, skip it." It was their 1990 April issue, #156:

Cover by Daniel Horne © TSR & WotC, used under Fair Use for teaching and cultural critique purposes
(This issue is in the tradition of April issues of Dragon being silly for April Fools'. If you ever wanted to encounter the dread Bubble Dragon or a herd of Blink Mammoths, this is your DM's issue.)


Why did Tokugawa Ieyasu oppose Hideyoshi's plan for expansion?

Question: When Hideyoshi wanted to invade Korea, the Tokugawa clan noticeably stayed out of the conflict. What were the reasons for them doing so?
Comment: Well, on the [Wikipedia article](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokugawa_Ieyasu), it says that "he wisely kept his soldiers out of Hideyoshi's campaign in Korea." and "The Tokugawa samurai never took part in this campaign". However, it didn't say why he didn't take part though.
Comment: Got a link for "noticeably stayed out of the conflict"? I doubt I can provide an answer, but its been fun reading up on it. My *guess* would be it was political. Hideyoshi was old by this time, so if they thought things were likely to go badly, being the leaders in the opposition from the get-go might give them enough prestige to help gain the Shogunate (which they did indeed get about 5 years later).
Comment: OK. There is sort of kind of a link to that part of the wiki page. If that's the best you have, that's the best you have. I've added it for you.
Answer: Addressing the link you cited, Tokugawa Ieyasu taking no part in fighting is not the same as opposing the war in general. In fact, Ieyasu was the one who proposed the invasion strategy that Hideyoshi adopted. When combat operations began, Tokugawa troops were part of the reserves who stayed in Kyushu. But, as you said, whether or not Ieyasu actually opposed Hideyoshi's plan, he definitely ended up staying out of the fighting.
The immediate (and official) reason is because the Tokugawa clan is occupied. Keep in mind Ieyasu had only just been relocated to the newly vacated lands of the the Hojo clan. Hideyoshi's (ultimately failed) move uprooted the Tokugawa clan from their native land, and forced them to undergo the difficult process of integrating themselves into the Kanto provinces. Not only did Ieyasu now need to settle his retainers and their families, he also had to establish an administration in his new territories. Furthermore, he would have to pacify the provinces.
Moreover, not only did the Tokugawa clan face a great deal of work, having been generously rewarded already they also cannot expect to be rewarded with any more land. This contrasts with the western daimyos, who were looking forward to being rewarded with Korean conquests. Expending soldiers in that war thus would have been a waste for Tokugawa ambitions. Fortunately, because of Hideyoshi's ill-fated gift, Ieyasu could plead to be exempted from military service using the home front's difficulties as an excuse.
So while the western daimyos whittled their strength away on the fields of Korea for eight bloody years, the Tokugawa armies rested and managed their territory of Kanto into the basis for their later victory over the Toyotomi clan.
Comment: A minor quibble, but it has been my understanding that "daimyo" is both singular and plural in English?
Comment: @gktscrk I have seen "daimyos" used a lot; not sure if there's a rule on such loan words..
Comment: Apparently, [both](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/daimyo) are formally correct, but "daimyo" [more common](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=daimyo%2C+daimyos&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cdaimyo%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cdaimyos%3B%2Cc0). Although, of course, that could be because people are only writing about one... :P
Answer: He stayed out because he was saving his strength for taking over Japan. Right after the Korean war finished he staged a coup and took control from Hideyoshi's government.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Sekigahara
Answer: To Semaphore's excellent answer I would just add that Hideyoshi was already showing signs of declining health. Ieyasu's Japanese nickname can be translated as "cunning badger" and he is known for patience and long term outlook. Thus, it is likely that he envisioned ambitious Western daimyo returning with battle fatigued troops and a physically (and indirectly mentally) weakened Hideyoshi who at the time of the planning didn't have any natural heir, a definite disadvantage in clan conscious Japan. As it was, Hideyori was born as the invasion was under way, and this might have influenced both Hideyoshi and Ieyasu. The former now wanted to establish a dynasty, the latter planning moves to oppose it.
Ieyasu left reserve troops at Nagoya castle (the one on Kyushu) but spent most of his time in Edo, preparing for the future. It is no coincidence that once Hideyoshi died, he moved swiftly to establish himself as the hegemon of Japan.


Are depictions of the prophet PBUH forbidden Islamically?

Question: I always thought this question was asked but can not seem to find it on the website. I would like the input/knowledge of people on their interruption of the ruling of Islam when it comes to drawing the prophet PBUH. Please provide sources from the Quran and Sunnah forbidding such actions.
Comment: Unless there's a valid reason to expect the answer here to be any different from the ruling of drawing people in general, this looks to be a duplicate.
Answer: Many people believe that drawing is haram, and mabye think otherwise. I won't say it is haram, as not everyone worships what they draw, but I will say that I myself have stopped drawing long ago. On the day of judgement, those who drew will be tortured until they bring life to what they drew, but they will never be able to. Also in another Hadith the Prophet came home one day and saw a curtain with a picture on it and he got extremely angry and ordered it to be destroyed. We also know that angels do not enter a house in which there is a dog or image. Now from these we can come to the conclusion that drawing the Prophet (pbuh) is just as wrong, if not worse. This is due to the following reasons:

His honourable title and status to us
In the future people may take this as a norm to draw him and eventually start worshiping him too

Some ahadiths include:
-Hazrat Umar RA narrates that the Prophet PBUH has said: verily those who make pictures will be punished on the day of resurrection, it will be said to them :give life to what you have created
Abu Hurairah RA said that i heard the Prophet PBUH saying: Allah SWT said : "Who is more unjust than he who tries to create what i created, they should try creating an atom or a grain or a barely"


Why is the letter 'w' reserved for words that are acquired from other languages?

Question: I really don't understand why Spanish reserves the letter 'w' for words acquired from other languages.
Comment: Some time ago we had a lot of fun with [¿Existe un nombre de animal que empiece por la letra "W"?](https://spanish.stackexchange.com/q/21963/5481). There we learned that "Hay que tener en cuenta que [la letra W no entró a formar parte del alfabeto español hasta hace apenas 50 años](https://spanish.stackexchange.com/a/21079/5481)"
Answer: The letter 'W' wasn't part of the original latin alphabet. It was the last letter to became part of the Spanish alphabet, the Academy officially recognized it in the 1969 orthography. It was created in the german languages trough the duplication of the latin 'v'. It was taken as a loanword already in the Middle Ages, to write Germanic words, most of those words now are written with proper Spanish letters like 'g' (gualda, güelfo) or 'v' (vagón, váter). It is now used in loanwords like web, sándwich, waterpolo, Wagner, Weimar, etc.
Comment: Is "Meddle Ages" a deliberate spelling, or a typo?
Comment: sorry it is a typo. should be the Middle Ages
Comment: The **letter** W was most likely not taken as a loan**word**, or am I mistaken?
Answer: The letter doesn't properly belong to the actual spelling of the Spanish language; indeed, it is only normally used to spell out loanwords, especially from gothic languages, German, and English, and Latin language transcriptions for words from oriental languages.
The phoneme /w/ from latin became /v/ in the romance languages; for this reason V ceased to be appropriated to represent the sound /w/ of the Germanic languages.
I guess you could compare it to the letter "ö" from German; the English spelling for this letter becomes "oe", such as in "Schoenberg (Schönberg)", and it's used almost exclusively when spelling out German words.
Comment: Not so sure about the ö/oe similé. AFAIK that is an "accepted alternative spelling" when the original digraph is not available, but I think "the English spelling becomes..." is too strong a statement. Then again, what do I know. :-D
Comment: @DevSolar Right, it doesn't fit quite right. It's just that there's no similar thing in English as far as I know
Comment: You mean a letter falling out of use and being replaced? There is đ changing to th...
Comment: ö/oe is actually more a case of original orthography developing in differing ways. The umlaut originated as a minuscule 'e' above the affected letter. Some languages (German and Swedish for example) decomposed that into a form resembling a diaresis, while others just shifted it into two letters (and Norwegian did it's own thing and produced 'ø'). English went the way of 'oe' because of French usage derived from Middle Latin orthography for the Greek diphthong 'οι', which was a ligature 'oe' (you can still see this usage in English, for example in 'onomatopoeia').
Comment: If you want a similar case in modern language, I'd suggest looking at the usage of 'l' in Romanized Japanese. It's not found in anything but loanwords, because the Japanese language (rather famously) doesn't have an analog to the sound it makes in most Indo-European languages.


Which laptop should I buy for dual booting Ubuntu 18.04 LTS and Windows 10?

Question: I  require to dual boot Ubuntu LTS 18.04 along with Windows 10. Which laptop would you recommend to do so? I would need a good community to troubleshoot with, documentation, step-by-step guides to dual boot Ubuntu on that particular laptop. My minimum storage and RAM requirements are respectively 512 GB, 16 GB. The laptop should have good I/O. The laptop would be used for video editing and playing GTA V and Rainbow Six Siege along with Rocket League, along with a bit of machine learning (thus CUDA support and tensor flow). I would need 8+ hours of battery life when web browsing, watching video/movies, coding. The laptop should also not have any major issues (like overheating for instance) and should last me for a couple of years. The processor needs to be Intel and discrete GPU NVIDIA.
Comment: Maybe try to be more specific. "Good I/O" is rather ambiguous. Which ports do you really need? Which size of laptop do you prefer? What price range are you looking at. Also, I don't think that a dual-boot tutorial for your particular laptop should be a major concern. The process is pretty much the same for all Windows laptops.
Answer: Lenovo ThinkPads are excellent and are available and their P series machines such as this P53  are excellent performers for gaming and video work.  If you need to scale down in cost, the  W  series machines are very reasonably priced in the resale market.
Thinkpads are still professionally serviced by IBM Global as well as everyone else, and Lenovo publishes the most detailed and accurate hardware manuals.  There are very popular in the https://Askubuntu.com community as well as elsewhere. Lenovo also provides excellent support for Ubuntu, as I found when refurbishing them at https://freegeek.org .
Comment: Please also see https://hardwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/someone-answers


Is it possible a block a contact in lumia 520?

Question: I need to block a certain phone number from contacting me. I don't know where to find this option in Nokia Lumia 520. Can someone please help with this issue?
Comment: What Os Version do you use?
Comment: i use windows 8.0 version
Answer: In the history list, tap and hold on the offending number, and choose "block number...".
To check on the list of currently blocked numbers, go to settings -> call+SMS filter, and tap on blocked numbers. You can also use the advanced button to block witheld numbers, pin to the start screen, and control whether you get notifications when there is blocked activity.
Whilst the "blocked" SMS messages don't show in the SMS app, they do show within the filter, so you can still get Google secondary authentication tokens, etc.
Comment: @VivekParekh Thanks Vivek - I use this feature *a lot*, and find it handy for blocking cold calls, and also found out "the hard way" about Google's sign-in confirmation emails - my recommendation would be to pin the app as a small tile...
Comment: @rowland shaw: i use lumia 520 with windows 8. When i tap and hold the number in the history, it gives me a single option to delete item. Also i dint find anything in the name as call+sms filter in the settings. Please help me with some others options or do i need to upgrade to windows 8.1 to avail this option
Comment: You shouldn't need 8.1 for this feature, but be aware that some standard options *can* be blocked by your network provider; It's possible that the feature is blocked for you. In either respect, to check you have the latest published version, simply swipe across to **settings** -> **phone update**, and check for updates there; You should also check for updates in the store - it will indicate the number of updates on its live tile, or have an entry at the bottom of the screen when you go into the store app.
Comment: Are you talking about any application that can block calls or is it an inbuild functionality in lumia 520?
Comment: This is functionality that is part of Windows Phone for all Lumia phones running 8.0 or later.
Comment: Okay. If so where can i find that option. Can you put some screenshots.
Answer: Call + SMS filter (for Nokia Lumia phones only)

Swipe right to the app list
Scroll down until you find 'Settings' (tap)
System
Scroll down until you find 'call+SMS filter' down the list, then tap to open
Answer: Finally, i figured out a way to block contacts in Nokia Lumia 520. For that we need to update the accesories and the Extra+info from the store. Then you will have the call+sms filter in Lumia black of Lumia 520. Additionally you also get a option called touch. If you double tap the screen, it will wake up. We can use this instead of power button.
Comment: After updated the accesories and the Extra+info from the store. Then i will not seen any call+sms filter option in Lumia 520 anyone can help me?
Answer: Turn on Block calls+SMS in the call+SMS filter app.
Go to Phone on the Start Screen.
In call history, long-tap the phone number or contact you want to block.
Select block number.. from the drop-down menu.
The phone will ask you to confirm.
If you agree, the phone number will be added to the blocked list.
or
Go to Messaging.
On the threads, long-tap the phone number or contact you want to block.
Select block number.. from the drop down menu.
The phone will ask you to confirm.
If you agree, the phone number will be added to the blocked list.
After the phone number is added to the blocked number list, you will no longer receive any calls or text messages from that number.
Note: You cannot block MMS or IM messages with the call+SMS filter app.
Answer: To blacklist contacts in Lumia 520.Simply update the call and SMS filter.Then go to the call history pick the number by a long hold then a delete and  block option appears.Then do the necessary.
Comment: I have not any "sms+call" setting on my Lumia520 mobile setting. Please, suggest me how I reject and block a call.
Comment: And I have no "call+sms filter app". How I block a call? And when I select this number and long tap this phone number the I see only details, delete and add to speed dail options, there is no "block number" option. Please, early reply..


Is it just me or are all website UIs similar?

Question: Why is it that every website has a navbar on the side or on the top? I have yet to see a really innovative website interface? why? Are there certain rules that most sites follow in laying out the page? What are those rules?
Answer: There are no "rules" only "guidelines".
By that I mean that in theory there is nothing stopping you designing whatever interface you want, however, there are various factors that come into play that might stop you achieving your goal.

Browsers work in a certain way. HTML can only suggest a layout for the page, so while you have a great design that works on paper, it might fail on some browsers at some screen resolutions.
Users expect certain elements to be in certain locations. This isn't always a conscious expectation, but one built up from exposure to other applications etc. If your design is too different they might not "get it" and find your application difficult, if not impossible, to use.
Comment: @Steve: As he [summarized ten years ago](http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20000723.html): "Users spend most of their time on other sites. This means that users prefer your site to work the same way as all the other sites they already know."
Comment: Upvoted for #2.
Comment: There's a book by Jakob Nielsen that really emphasizes the point about user expectations when it comes to usability... http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/073571102X?ie=UTF8&tag=bucke04-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=073571102X
Answer: There are many common guidelines for web site design that are often adhered to. The Web Style Guide covers many of them. Another resource sometimes used for creating usable websites with such guidelines is the Usability Kit by Sitepoint.
Familiarity is a well known aspect of usability as you have noticed. Most people are familiar with the navigation at top or left side. Also, although this study is somewhat old at this point, it shows through eyescanning research that people view sites in an "F" pattern.
Answer: You can use any navigational layout you want on a personal website but if your working with a consumer, education, federal or medical site you have to meet the accessibility requirements by law or you may be fined. Even with those requirements, there is still a little bit of creative wiggle room to break out of the box on some level.
The real challenge is that humans are habit forming and they are comfortable with what they know and you want to avoid making them think. A good example is what Microsoft did by adding the ribbon bar navigation to Office 2007. I thought the change was much more efficient but 90% of the people in my building stayed with the older version because they were "too busy to learn the new navigation" with the end result being a lost sale. Even Apple follows that rule as innovative as they are.
Answer: The rule is: Don't mess with users' expectations.
Some designs are proven to be effective over time, and when it is effective and become a standard, it is better to conform to the standard design to provide a better user experience, rather than creating a new one that requires the users to learn (unless the new one can be more effective).
There is a "rule" in design called Golden Ratio. You can always see this around. Example, some websites have their sidebars about 1/3 of their page width based on this.
Also, some websites make use of web layout frameworks, like 960.gs, Blueprint CSS, and YUI Grid. The developers would just follow the tutorials / templates given and thus make the websites look similar.
Of course, you can come up with your own innovative user interface. I have seen a few around, like a navigation bar that is always visible at the bottom or at the right of the page. Just make sure that the interface you come up with is usable and doesn't cause frustration to the users.
Answer: I think what you see are designs that are hi-profile, draw users into the site, and generally succeed being duplicated in format, structure, and media.
Basically, just like there are patterns in programming, there are patterns in web design. It makes sense that we would see so many similar characteristics.
Answer: Consider text. It reads left to right, top to bottom. Scrollwheel mice reinforce this notion, they scroll up and down. For this reason, text-heavy sites (like this) are laid out from the top left.
There are famous exceptions. The Google home page, for instance. It can, because it's a lightweight page.


Is cash(currency) a security and a debt instrument?

Question: I know that cash is a financial asset and securities are defined as tradable financial assets, so cash is a security, right?
Another thing I'm wondering is that whether cash/banknote is a debt instrument or not. On wikipedia it is defined as one of a debt securities.
Answer: I don't think cash could be described as a security... one of the characteristics of securities is that they have imperfect (if very high) liquidity and provide a return (be it fixed or variable). Cash is the definition of liquid and inherently provides no return - you could earn interest on cash by depositing it in a bank but then you are creating a debt obligation in effect - the cash inherently, as in cash in a physical safe, generates zero return nominal by definition. You could think of cash as a debt security where a debt is theoretically placed on the issuer. But: in practice the debt is impossible to pay. You cannot bring a bill into the fed and demand they honour it. So I suppose it would be a debt security in the theoretical sense but it lacks almost all properties of debt securities:
cannot be repaid in practice, never intended to be repaid, perfectly liquid etc, and it has a value that cannot be expressed in terms of anything but itself.
Answer: I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding is, as a matter of US law, cash is not a security because it is explicitly exempted under The Securities Exchange Act of 1934:

The term ''security'' means any note, stock, treasury stock, security
  future, security-based swap, bond, debenture, certificate of interest
  or participation in any profit-sharing agreement or in any oil, gas,
  or other mineral royalty or lease, any collateral-trust certificate,
  preorganization certificate or subscription, transferable share,
  investment contract, voting-trust certificate, certificate of deposit
  for a security, any put, call, straddle, option, or privilege on any
  security, certificate of deposit, or group or index of securities
  (including any interest therein or based on the value thereof), or any
  put, call, straddle, option, or privilege entered into on a national
  securities exchange relating to foreign currency, or in general, any
  instrument commonly known as a ''security''; or any certificate of
  interest or participation in, temporary or interim certificate for,
  receipt for, or warrant or right to subscribe to or purchase, any of
  the foregoing; but shall not include currency or any note, draft,
  bill of exchange, or banker's acceptance which has a maturity at the
  time of issuance of not exceeding nine months, exclusive of days of
  grace, or any renewal thereof the maturity of which is likewise
  limited.

SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934, Section 3, Part 10


When Christians say "the Lord" in everyday speech, do they mean Jesus or the Father?

Question: It's very common to hear Christians say "Lord" or "the Lord" in different contexts: everyday conversations, prayer, testimonies, sermons, etc. Some example sentences that come to mind: if the Lord wills, I love the Lord, etc. When Christians say the Lord, whom are they exactly picturing in their heads? Do they mean Jesus (as in "Lord Jesus"), or the Father?
Comment: I edited the tags of a question to specify op wanted trinitarian answer since the answer by clayworth was accepted. As it was first written it was too broad
Answer: For most Christians "The Lord" or "Lord" will usually mean either God the Father or Jesus. Sometimes they may mean the Holy Spirit or just "God", meaning (for Trinitarians) any or all three of the above.
There are many occasions in the Bible where Jesus is referred to as "Lord", and also God the Father is frequently referred to in that way. (I have not specifically found one where the Spirit is referred to as Lord, but "Spirit of the Lord" is found frequently.) For groups that hold to the Athanasian Creed the equivalence is defined there. " So likewise the Father is Lord; the Son Lord; and the Holy Ghost Lord. And yet not three Lords; but one Lord. "
Comment: *"I have not specifically found one where the Spirit is referred to as Lord"* - what about: *17 Now **the Lord is the Spirit**, and where **the Spirit of the Lord** is, there is freedom. 18 And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from **the Lord who is the Spirit**. [2 Corinthians 3:17-18, ESV]*
Answer: Seventh Day Adventist Christians -  hold the Trinitarian view (I speak from that perspective because it is what I am most familiar with) that where the term Lord is used on its own, which one specifically is being referred to is usually determined by looking at the overall context of the passage of scripture within which the term resides. In some cases, it refers specifically to Jesus, other times the Father, and indeed even the Holy spirit, all three at once, or it could even refer to none of them...(story of Lot with Angels visiting him in Sodom prior to its destruction)
Genesis 19 Angel visiting Lot in Sodom

1Now the two angels came to Sodom in the evening as Lot was sitting at
the gate of Sodom. When Lot saw them, he stood up to meet them and
[a]bowed down with his face to the ground. 2And he said, "Now behold,
my lords, please turn aside into your servant's house, and spend the
night, and wash your feet; then you may rise early and go on your
way."

It is not that Lord defines God, rather, it defines his majesty, honour, and glory... it's a term used even in the secular world to convey reverence, humility, and respect to the intended recipient (for example to an earthly King).
So in SDA denominational beliefs one finds the following Trinitarian position:

"That God is the Sovereign Creator, upholder, and ruler of the universe, and that He is eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, and
omnipresent.
"That the Godhead, the Trinity, comprises God the Father, Christ the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
"That Jesus Christ is very God, and that He has existed with the Father from all eternity.

We can then move outside of my denomination's beliefs and look at a very well known Bible passage, 1 John 5:7:

7 For there are three that testify: 8 the Spirit and the water and
the blood; and the three are in agreement. (NAS)

At least one Catholic source I have googled has the following statement:

Bishop Anthony B. Taylor delivered this homily on Trinity Sunday, May
26. [2013]
In Mass, when we pray to "Our Lord," who are we talking to? To God the
Father or to Jesus? In the Gospels — prior to his death — when people
call Jesus "Lord," they thought of him like we think of "Our Lady" — a
great person but still only human.
It was only after Pentecost that people began to understand that Jesus
was God as well as man, such that unlike with Mary and the saints,
when we pray to him we do more than just praise him and ask him to
intercede for us. We worship him just like we do the Father because
Jesus is God too, the second person of the Trinity, whose feast we
celebrate today.
So when we pray to "Our Lord" at Mass, who are we talking to — God the
Father or Jesus? In Mass — whenever I start with "Let us pray" — the
answer is, strictly speaking, to "God the Father," but since the
Trinity is One God, we can't address the Father without at least
implicitly including the Son and Holy Spirit.

I have reference for the Baptists' position on to whom they are assigning the term Lord:

baptism is for believers only - those who can personally declare Jesus
as Lord.
Comment: @DJClayworth...Remember when Jesus taught how to pray... he said, Matthew 6:9 (Luke 11:1-4)  "Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name..." However, don't forget Isaiah 6:9 (note "everlasting father") "...and He will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Comment: You get my upvote for the Bishop Taylor quote.
Answer: The use of the word Lord for Jesus in the Bible comes from the Greek Kyrie.
The wiki for Kyrie has a good write-up about where it's used in the Gospels. And there's a good reason to be confused about it because it is used in by Jesus in a parable about the poor man who knew he was a Sinner and prays, Lord have mercy on me a sinner.
Now, this is an assumption, but I think it is a correct one from experience, adherents to the Eastern Orthodox Church and Greek-speaking Catholic Churches are most likely influenced by their liturgies and hearing 'Lord' in this sense will think of Jesus even though the person in the parable told by Jesus Himself was clearly talking about the God of the Jews who would be recognized, not as a Trinity of persons but as God the Father.
Kyrie Eleison is repeated like a zillion times in their liturgies, as opposed to just 3 in the Latin Rite.  But they're apt to repeat "Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God Have Mercy on me a sinner" in clear reference with the person in the parable who repeats "Lord have mercy on me a sinner".
Latin Rite Catholics use it in the same vein, it's literally the only Greek at mass, but in North America and much of Europe, we're influenced by popular culture and Protestantism so we might think of Lord in both ways.
In a hymn like "How great Thou art",  I'd imagine "Oh Lord my God" is a reference to God as the Creator of the Universe.  Now, a lot of people have an idea the the Trinity is composed of The Creator, The Redeemer and The Sanctifier as titles of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, so it's easy to understand why God the Father = Lord there.  Whether that abides by any theology is not the crux of this question and I won't go there.
But in a popular worship song like Matt Maher's "Lord, I Need You" is definitely about Jesus.  Of course, he's a Catholic who a lot of Protestants like so that's confusing and not worth thinking about.
The Newsboys, Lord, is definitely about Jesus too.  It never says "Jesus" but "You are the author of knowledge" (Logos, I guess) and "Redeemer".
Matt Redman's "10000 Reasons (Bless the Lord)" is a confusing case, I think it's a reference to the song of the 3 young men roasting in the fire in the Book of Daniel.  They  were saying how everything blesses the Lord.  And there, they're not talking about any revealed Trinity of persons.  When you "Bless the Lord" or "Worship the Lord" in modern understand, you're possibly not that worried about that.  Songs like this make no distinction between persons of the Trinity.
George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord" is about a Hindu god named Krishna, even with all the Hallelujah's, so.. um, bad example.

So there you have it, "Lord" is a confusing word.  I think it means "Master of the Bread" or something like that, in English - so Bread of Life = Jesus.  Not that there's anything magic about English, but it's pretty cool.
Answer: "Lord" was used by Jesus when speaking to His Father:

At that time Jesus declared, "I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children (Matthew 11:25, also Luke 10:21) [ESV]

As the term means "he to whom a person or thing belongs, about which he has power of deciding; master..." it would be appropriate for Jesus to address His Father as Lord. However, after His death and resurrection, that condition changed:

And Jesus came and said to them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. (Matthew 28:18)

There will come a time when there will be another change (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:24-28), but currently all authority rests with Jesus, which is best stated in using Lord:

yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist. (1 Corinthians 8:6)

Moreover, addressing the Father as "Lord" is misleading as to the current relationship between the individual Christian and the Father:

For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, "Abba! Father!" (Romans 8:15)

How individual Christians apply the term "Lord" today may vary, yet the NT instructs the earliest Christians to say "Abba Father" and "Lord Jesus Christ."
Oscar Cullmann describes the title of Lord as it was used by the early Church:

In designating Jesus as the Kyrios the first Christians declared that he is not only a part of divine Heilsgeschichte in the past, nor just the the object of future hope, but a living reality in the present - so alive that he can enter into fellowship with us now, so alive that the believer prays to him, and the Church appeals to him in worship, to bring their prayers before God the Father and make them effective. Both the individual Christian and the gathered Church experience in faith the fact that Jesus lives and continues his work. The Church as the Body of Christ is founded on faith in the exalted Christ who still intervenes in earthly events. The first Christians expressed this deep conviction in their confession of faith Kyrios Jesus, 'Jesus is Lord.'1

"Lord" was a most significant title applied to Jesus. As Cullmann says, "The designation of Jesus as Kyrios has the further consequence that actually all the titles of honour for God himself (with the exception of 'Father') may be transferred to Jesus."2

1. Oscar Cullmann, The Christology of the New Testament, Revised Edition, translated by Shirley C. Guthrie and Charles A. M. Hall, The Westminister Press, 1963, p. 195
2. Ibid., p. 236-7
Comment: People continue to confuse Jesus the Almighty God (Isaiah 9), with Jesus the Son of Man (God Man or Man God). Once He became human, he lost his divinity and therefore all His power had to be given to Him from above. These are two very important concepts in understanding the humility Jesus took on in order to die for our sins! The divine form cannot die, only the human form can. Jesus became a helpless dependant child.
Comment: *"it would be appropriate for Jesus to address the Father as Lord. However, after His death and resurrection, that condition no longer exists"* - [Are you sure about that?](https://hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/questions/55872/is-the-son-second-in-authority-under-god-the-father-1-corinthians-1524-28)
Comment: *After His death all authority is vested in Him* - Correct, with the exception of the Father, who is the only one with authority over the Son (see the link above).
Comment: Ah, good point. Maybe you should post an answer to the question :-)


Merging of accounts

Question: I had to create a new account due circumstances beyond my control. I already have an account with the same user name (kuku) and I was wondering if someone could merge my accounts. I tried to ask over at meta, but didn't have enough rep.   Thanks.
Comment: You may want to mention what the original account was...
Comment: the account had the same user name i.e. kuku.  If it helps, this is one of the question I asked with the original account: [http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/70415/showing-that-mathbbr-is-connected]
Answer: Please try the suggestions found here:

Set the email address of your registered account to the address used in your other account. Since email is not visible to anyone, this will confirm that you own both accounts. Note that the system may prevent this.
If you provided your "real name" in the original profile, adding it to your new one can also help to remove doubt about the ownership of both accounts. Obviously, this is pointless if your "real name" is also your display name. You might also consider filling in your birthdate, if you provided that on your original account...
If possible, add the OpenID (or other credentials) you used on your original account to your new one.
Wait. There are automated processes that merge accounts. Wait a bit to see if things are resolved automatically.
Flag one of your posts for moderator attention and ask for a merge:

If the details match, we will go ahead and merge with no further ado. If we feel we need more confirmation for some reason, we will either comment or email to tell you.
Wait some more.
If all else fails, email the administrators using the "contact us" link found at the bottom of every page, noting the URL of both accounts in your request.
Comment: Thanks very much.
Comment: @kuku: like Shog9 said, please edit your new account to show your real name and/or e-mail a moderator (me, for example) with the e-mail address you used for your old account. I'm pretty convinced you are who you say you are, but want to make double sure.
Comment: @WillieWong: Unfortunately, I've misplaced the password for the email address used in creating the original account. Also, I never had my real name on real(full name) on the original account. Is there anything else I can do besides waiting? Thanks.
Comment: @Kuku: What we want is a piece of non-publicly displayed information. For example, if you can tell us which e-mail address (you don't have to send the e-mail from there) you used to create your previous account, that'd be fine. Or you can edit your new account to use the same "real name" as that you used to create your old account. It doesn't have to be a real name. All we are asking for is some piece of non-public information which can be used to show that you are who you claim you are.

Merging of accounts


Web site for XAML snippet sharing?

Question: I am making a game with WPF and C#, and I frequently am in need of artwork for it.  Some things could be easily shared, such as explosion animations, exhaust plumes, etc.  I was wondering if there are any good web sites for this?  All I can find are tutorials and the infrequent sample, but I imagine there is a site out there that I am missing.  I would also like to clarify that I am looking for pure vector based XAML snippets.  I know there are a lot of sites out there for sprites and textures, but I am looking for XAML components that I can tweak.
Answer: I don't know of any sites specifically for this, but the XAML icon pack that comes with VS2010 is a good starting point. See also: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/315819/source-for-xaml-toolbar-icons . These are not game related -- but considering how few WPF games there are out there, you gotta take what you can find.
Illustrator makes it very easy to export XAML (Inskscape also has a XAML export feature, but in my experience it's very buggy, borderline useless). There's also tools to convert Flash to XAML, if you have Flash and prefer that workflow. If you want to go 3D, there's a XAML exporter for Blender (probably other 3D packages have them too). And don't forget Blend (the trial lasts for a long time!).
Finally, there are also a lot of open-source WPF apps to check out. I'd guess 95% use bitmap rather than vector graphics (mainly because vector rendering will slow things down), but some might have XAML graphics. Also, the legality of this is questionable, but if you find a really cool effect in a closed-source app, you can use .NET reflector + BAML Viewer to check it out -- don't copy/paste it, but it can't hurt to look for a little inspiration.

Web site for XAML snippet sharing?


In a single cell battery, is voltage exactly equal to cell potential?

Question: I've been researching electrochemical cells. In chemistry-focused sources, you usually see the potential difference between the electrodes referred to as cell potential, but in engineering/industrial sources(where you talk about "batteries") you usually see plain "voltage." Are the two always the same, or are there some situations where they're different(excluding multiple cells)? I want to know whether you can use the cell potential formula $$E^o_{cell} = E^o_{cathode} - E^o_{anode}$$ to calculate an accurate standard conditions voltage for a battery. If not, what gets in the way?
Comment: I did not alter my answer in response to your edit as the answer basically remains the same. The formula for the cell potential is correct as you have written it and can be used to calculate standard cell potentials so long as you know how to use it.
Answer: It is not uncommon for two identical phenomena to be described by different terminology in different contexts or scientific disciplines. In this case, voltage and electric potential difference refer to the same thing. According to this Wikipedia article:

Voltage, electric potential difference, electric pressure or electric tension (formally denoted ∆V or ∆U, but more often simply as V or U, for instance in the context of Ohm's or Kirchhoff's circuit laws) is the difference in electric potential energy between two points per unit electric charge. The voltage between two points is equal to the work done per unit of charge against a static electric field to move the test charge between two points. This is measured in units of volts (a joule per coulomb).
Answer: Electrochemical potential is referenced (mostly arbitrarily) towards the standard hydrogen electrode, while "electrical potential" has "ground" as reference (which usually means "zero excess charge"). "Voltage" is the difference in potential, measured in Volts, for both.
The standard hydrogen electrode has 4.44 V relative to an ideal ground (absolute potential, at 25°C), but thats's hard to reproduce, so for all practical purposes, it ($E^0$, standard electrode potential) is defined (by IUPAC) to be zero at all temperatures. It's all relative.


How common are generic-case exponential time algorithms in production software?

Question: I know that exponential time algorithms should generally be avoided but are sometimes necessary. A case being the Traveling Salesman. How common are such algorithms in production software? Are these cases typically necessary or a result of rush jobs? I understand that many can be solved with a good heuristic. What is typically done with those that cannot?
Comment: My impression is that for things like the traveling salesman problem, one ditches the exponential time algorithm, and instead goes with a much better heuristic (in the case of the traveling salesman, they are quite good)
Comment: @user281377: It is also in [O(n^2 2^n)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travelling_salesman_problem#Exact_algorithms) so yea, it's an exponential problem. This is also clear because it can be mapped to SAT in poly time which can be solved in 2^n time -- that works for all NP problems.
Comment: **Lots** of problems are solved with "exponential" algorithms. (TSP, CDS, ILP, etc.) It's just that the exponential algorithms happen to have good heuristics, so they work reasonably with lots of real-world data. A better question might perhaps be, "How common are [*generic-case*](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic-case_complexity) exponential-time algorithms in production software?"
Comment: Adjusted the question
Comment: Traveling salesman is n!, not exponential.
Comment: @Raphael: I stand corrected.
Comment: Do not confuse [heuristics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heuristic_%28computer_science%29) with [approximations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approximation_algorithm) or [probabilistic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probabilistic_algorithms) (read paragraph two) algorithms.
Comment: some related answers here: http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/q/305/351
Comment: If you need the correct answer (approximates don't cut it) then you're forced to sit and wait for the exponential-time algorithm to compute. There is no magic solution. But if you're waiting 300 years for the algorithm to compute you may be able to redefine what you "need".
Answer: Something that not in production software but done on production software is formal verification. It is probably not adopted for most customer software but gains track for embedded systems and drivers, that is for hard- and software whose correctness is important (and tractable).
Those verficiation problems that are actually computable (barrier #1) are often EXPTIME-hard, in the more lucky cases you get PSPACE-complete problems (barrier #2). Both classes are (suspected to be) harder than NP-complete problems, which are easy in comparison. Doubly-exponential problems are also easily obtained.
In these cases, heuristics (in the sense of end result) don't cut it as you need definite results; therefore you need big machines and time. There are heuristics (in the sense of alternative selection) that often lead to shorter runtime (i.e. clever search space exploration when error states are searched) but in the worst case, waiting is all you can do. Or you can do a pen-and-paper proof and have it checked by machines, which is computationally simpler.
Answer: Commonly used algorithm with exponential worst case complexity is the simplex method used in linear programming. However, what is generic-case complexity of that method is an open issue. With some specific assumptions it's polynomial.
Answer: Programming language interpreters are worse than exponential time (in the length of their input, i.e. in the length of the program they're interpreting), and they are quite common. Another example is automatic theorem proving / constraint solving / sat solving / integer linear programming. And yet another example is symbolic differentiation as implemented in e.g. Maple/Mathematica (although it is possible to do symbolic differentiation in linear time if you're allowed to share subexpressions between nodes).
Answer: Let me take the example of travelling salesman problem.  I have worked on it a few times.
There are a few times when I have been in a team that wrote solution for travelling salesman problem but with some more parameters.  For example, it could be a store with a fleet of technicians and engineers each with a unique skill set.  The destinations come up every day in the form of service requests.  All the programs are in production though they have undergone modifications and maintenance since originally writing them.
This is how they worked.  Each engineer would receive a list of things to service on a hand held device everyday.  As they finish each service task, they should close the case.  The cases that are left out join the cases to be scheduled for the following day with slightly higher priority as by then the customer would have expressed some dissatisfaction.  There was a large set of reasons why an engineer would not attend a case.  Traffic problems were most common.
How common are they?  At least as common as number of after sale service requests coming from customers.  Without after sale service, for example, retaining customers is going to be hard and gaining new ones is going to be harder.
With many web based shops such as Amazon and other book stores and other such shops doing well in business, I would think travelling salesman is more common than it used to be.  Also, there could be many variations of the travelling salesman problem that are taught in text books.
Comment: Like the [Canadian traveler](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_traveller_problem).