What is the Buddhist perspective on child abuse?

Question: Suppose a father is abusing his 3 year old child. As a consequence, the child is suffering. Who is the cause of the child's suffering?
Comment: The child is causing the child's suffering. Others may cause us pain, but only we can choose to suffer because of it. Out of delusion, we see no other choice but to suffer pain.
Comment: Why not ask, "**What** is the cause of the suffering?" For example, ignorance etc.
Comment: @Ryan Ideally try to post an answer as an answer, not as a comment (comments are not made for answers but are more for asking for clarifications or suggesting improvements to the question).
Comment: I always feel like my "answers" are too short and succinct to be accepted as actual answers, hence I post them as comments instead. I'll try to be thorough enough to be able to post real answers going forward
Comment: @Ryan What's wrong with a short, concise and pithy answer like your "comment" above? Do you mean the child causes the child's own suffering by "reacting" to the pain?  Pain X Reaction=suffering?
Comment: @uilium yes, reacting and/or resistance to pain is what causes the suffering. anyone that has sat for any period of time and faced and has overcome pain can see this to be true.
Comment: Because of many different answers, I still don't know which answer is correct. So what is the cause of the child's suffering? Does Buddhism teach there is only one cause or that there are many causes? From what I read, there's only one cause: craving within the one who is suffering. I'm I right or wrong on having such view?
Answer: The Pali scriptures (SN 12.17) state, from the perspective of ultimate truth, that the cause of suffering is 'ignorance' (rather than 'one-self' or 'another').
However, in the conventional scenario presented in the question, the father is causing the suffering because a 3 year old child does not have the cognitive capacity to engage the Buddhist path.
What is occurring to the child has no relationship to any (imaginary) past lives. I have never read this idea in the Pali suttas, where suffering (dukkha), let alone the suffering of helpless small children, is attributed to past lives.
The suffering is due to the evil within the mind of the father because the child cannot overcome the in-born ignorance in their mind that is causing the suffering.
Dhammapada 137 clearly states there are "innocent" victims of crime & AN 3.61 states what a person feels in not related to past kamma.

137. He who inflicts violence on those who are unarmed and offends those who are inoffensive, will soon come upon one of these ten
  states:
138-140 Sharp pain, or disaster, bodily injury, serious illness, or derangement of mind, trouble from the government, or grave charges,
  loss of relatives, or loss of wealth, or houses destroyed by ravaging
  fire; upon dissolution of the body that ignorant man is born in
  hell.

~~~

When one falls back on what was done in the past as being essential, monks, there is no desire, no effort [at the thought], 'This should be
  done. This shouldn't be done.' When one can't pin down as a truth or
  reality what should & shouldn't be done, one dwells bewildered &
  unprotected. One cannot righteously refer to oneself as a
  contemplative. This was my first righteous refutation of those
  brahmans & contemplatives who hold to such teachings, such views.
Answer: I don't know if you intentionally chose "Who", since "What" seems a better question.   I'll take some license and rephrase the question (I hope you don't mind).

Q: What causes the child's suffering?
A: Many things.

For any event Y, X caused Y if removing X removes Y.  Note that Y can have many causes! For instance, some of the causes of the child's suffering include...

The abusive parent.
The child's reaction.
The child's nervous system.
The laws of physics.

And so on.  Remove any of them from the equation and the suffering ceases.
Thinking in terms of a single cause of suffering (or in terms of who suffers) reinforces the kind of "ownership" of action or "mental object" that serves as a focus for clinging, especially to self.
Now if you wish to relieve an abused child's suffering, then I recommend local law enforcement or a child protective agency.
Answer: Lord Buddha has rejected the following

That everything happens automatically, for no specific reason or
force.
That everything happens according to a will of a God or similar
That everything happens because of Karma

It is the 3rd that you seem to question here.
The Father is definitely choosing to do the action. He is responsible for his own actions, he cannot leave the responsibility to Karma or anything else. Buddha had Vinaya Nikaya with set of consequences for those who miss-behave.
How past Karma applied here is anyone's guess (except for Lord Buddha, who could see directly). It's extremely difficult to say, and the subject of "Karma Pala" (Karma Result) was once classified as "Achinthya" meaning infinite, which would be just too much for a normal mind to grasp. Note it's the result of the Karma which is hard to grasp, the Karma itself is well taught of. This could be because we accumulate an infinite amount of Karma.
Comment: Are you saying that the cause of the child's suffering is the father because the father is choosing to do the action?
Comment: In a simple answer to "Who" is, father yes. I am aware that you could analyse how Karma in action here and how suffering is in your own mind rather than action. But father is still responsible and will have the consequence. Karma shouldn't just be used to explain extreme examples, the fact that we see is also result of Karma.
Comment: You are saying the father is the cause of the child's suffering. I have updated my answer, to reflect my thoughts on it.
Answer:
"Phagguna, if anyone were to give you a blow with the hand, or hit you with a clod of earth, or with a stick, or with a sword, even then you should abandon those urges and thoughts which are worldly. There, Phagguna, you should train yourself thus: 'Neither shall my mind be affected by this, nor shall I give vent to evil words; but I shall remain full of concern and pity, with a mind of love, and I shall not give in to hatred.' This is how, Phagguna, you should train yourself." http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.021x.budd.html
"Monks, even if bandits were to savagely sever you, limb by limb, with a double-handled saw, even then, whoever of you harbors ill will at heart would not be upholding my Teaching. Monks, even in such a situation you should train yourselves thus: 'Neither shall our minds be affected by this, nor for this matter shall we give vent to evil words, but we shall remain full of concern and pity, with a mind of love, and we shall not give in to hatred. On the contrary, we shall live projecting thoughts of universal love to those very persons, making them as well as the whole world the object of our thoughts of universal love — thoughts that have grown great, exalted and measureless. We shall dwell radiating these thoughts which are void of hostility and ill will.' It is in this way, monks, that you should train yourselves." http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.021x.budd.html
"165. By oneself is evil done; by oneself is one defiled. By oneself is evil left undone; by oneself is one made pure. Purity and impurity depend on oneself; no one can purify another." http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/dhp/dhp.12.budd.html

Indeed, the father's abuse should be stopped if it can be stopped, but we should remain unaffected by his actions. Why?
If we are trained like it is said above, the actions of the father should not give raise to aversion, hatred, evil words, hostility, anger, sadness, ill will and similar in our minds. Only a delusioned mind, permeated with ignorance, could be affected by the father's actions.
Indeed, the abuse of the father is wrong action done by the father. Why?
If the father would be trained like it is said above, his mind would never give raise to aversion, hatred, evil words, hostility, anger, sadness and similar. Only a delusioned mind, permeated with ignorance, could be affected in such a way to give raise to aversion, hatred, evil words, hostility, anger, sadness, ill will and similar. Thus, if the father knew this truth and practiced it, he would never abuse his child, his mind would be unaffected, ill will would never arise in him and the abuse stemming from ill will would never happen.
Indeed, the father should be helped if he can be helped. Why?
If we are trained like it is said above, we would feel an immense compassion towards all beings, especially towards the ones whose minds are permeated with ignorance who have not or cannot yet accept the truth like it is said above.
Thus, the abuse of the father is wrong action done by the father. The cause of abuse is in the father.
This is the truth of the cause of suffering of the father.
Indeed, the child's suffering should be stopped if it can be stopped, but we should remain unaffected if it can't be stopped. Why?
If we are trained like it is said above, the suffering of the child should not give raise to aversion, hatred, evil words, hostility, anger, sadness, ill will and similar in our minds. Only a delusioned mind, permeated with ignorance, could be affected by the child's suffering.
The suffering of the child is wrong action done by the child. Why?
If the child would be trained like it is said above, his mind would never give raise to aversion, hatred, evil words, hostility, anger, sadness and similar. Only a delusioned mind, permeated with ignorance, could be affected in such a way to give raise to aversion, hatred, evil words, hostility, anger, sadness, ill will and similar. Thus, if the child knew this truth and practiced it, he would never suffer, his mind would be unaffected, sadness, anger and fear would never arise in him.
You could argue: "Yes, but a 3 year old child cannot be trained like it is said above. He is too young to grasp the truth and liberate his mind from ignorance! Thus, the child's suffering is not wrong action done by the child!"
It is wrong action. Just as a lion cannot grasp that killing is wrong action, in the same way a 3 year old child cannot grasp that suffering is wrong action. Just as an adult cannot grasp that suffering is wrong action, in the same way a 3 year old child cannot grasp that suffering is wrong action.
Indeed, the child should be helped if he can be helped. Why?
If we are trained like it is said above, we would feel an immense compassion towards all beings, especially towards the ones whose minds are permeated with ignorance who have not or cannot yet accept the truth like it is said above.
Thus, the suffering of the child is wrong action done by the child. The cause of suffering is in the child.
This is the truth of the cause of suffering of the child.

What would a liberated Buddhist say is the cause of the child's suffering: the father, the child, both the father and the child or something (or someone) else?
I think the answer to the cause of suffering can only be one: the cause of suffering is always within the one who is suffering.
Consider a 3 year old child. His father is abusing him. As a consequence, the child is suffering. Remove the abuse and the child will stop to suffer. But, is the cause of suffering in the child really removed? No. Read the story about Mistress Vedehika http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.021x.budd.html
When the abuse is removed from the child, the cause of suffering is still present within him, his mind is still ignorant.
Even if the child had a perfect father and perfect living conditions for the rest of his life, in such a way, that no aversion, hatred, evil words, hostility, anger, sadness, ill will and similar would arise in his mind until the moment of death, he would still not be liberated from suffering - he would still be reborn after death. Why? Because he still craves and clings, even though his life was perfect, without any suffering. He was clinging and craving. He was suffering.
Furthermore, if we take the view "the cause of suffering is sometimes within me and sometimes outside me", we would make the same mistake described in the story of mistress Vedehika. We would remove the cause outside us, but the true cause of suffering would still be within us. By taking such a wrong view "the cause of suffering is sometimes within me and sometimes outside me" is like putting your head in the sand. No liberation would come in taking such wrong view.
Indeed, if we had a chance to help the child or the father, we would not say to them: the cause of suffering is always within the one who is suffering. Why? Because they wouldn't understand it properly because of ignorance. The child would probably become even more hurt because the blame for his suffering would be put on him. The father's evil doing would probably continue because he would have one more excuse to cause suffering to others: "I'm not to blame, I'm not the cause of anybody's suffering". Thus, we would need to choose our words carefully and wisely. That was not the question. The question was, what's the cause of the child suffering, not what would be the best way to liberate the child from suffering.

UPDATE
Suppose we have this view regarding the child's cause of suffering: "The cause of the child's suffering is the father"
With such a view, liberation from suffering comes from the child's ability to have control of his surrounding environment. When he will develop perfect control of his surrounding environment, his suffering will cease. Now suppose 20 years later a bandit comes into his perfect environment and abuses him. As a consequence, he suffers. Has the child really attained liberation from suffering? No. Why? Because the child clings on his surrounding environment.
Furthermore, is his environment permanent or impermanent? Impermanent.
Can he have perfect control over his environment or can he not? He can not.
Is worldly existence satisfactory or unsatisfactory? Unsatisfactory.
How could this be the right path towards liberation? It can't and it isn't. Why?
Because the child is searching for the cause of suffering outside, not within. The child had wrong view "the cause of my suffering is outside me, in my environment, in beings that surround me, in actions these beings perform on me, in actions my environment performs on me, in actions my body performs on me, in actions bacterias and viruses perform on me, in actions bandits perform on me, in actions my father performs on me, ..."
With such wrong view, clinging and craving cannot be removed. With such wrong view, the Second, Third and Fourth noble truths cannot come to fruition:

Suffering, as a noble truth, is this: Birth is suffering, aging is suffering, sickness is suffering, death is suffering, sorrow and lamentation, pain, grief and despair are suffering; association with the loathed is suffering, dissociation from the loved is suffering, not to get what one wants is suffering — in short, suffering is the five categories of clinging objects."
The origin of suffering, as a noble truth, is this: It is the craving that produces renewal of being accompanied by enjoyment and lust, and enjoying this and that; in other words, craving for sensual desires, craving for being, craving for non-being.
Cessation of suffering, as a noble truth, is this: It is remainderless fading and ceasing, giving up, relinquishing, letting go and rejecting, of that same craving.
The way leading to cessation of suffering, as a noble truth, is this: It is simply the noble eightfold path, that is to say, right view, right intention; right speech, right action, right livelihood; right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration."

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn56/sn56.011.nymo.html

Suppose we have this view regarding the child's cause of suffering: "The cause of the child's suffering is in his fathers's Karma"
With such a view, liberation from suffering comes from the child's ability to have control of his father's Karma.
Can we have full control over the Karma of others? No.
Can we have "some" control over the Karma of others? Yes. How? By having the ability to control the actions of others.
The ability to control the actions of others arises from the ability to have control of our surrounding environment. Again, liberation from suffering would come from our ability to have control of our surrounding environment.
Is the environment permanent or impermanent? Impermanent.
Can we have perfect control over our environment or can we not? We can not.
Is worldly existence satisfactory or unsatisfactory? Unsatisfactory.
How could this be the right path towards liberation? It can't and it isn't. Why?
Because we are searching for the cause of suffering outside, not within. Our view "The cause of the child's suffering is in his fathers's Karma" is wrong.
With such wrong view, clinging and craving cannot be removed. With such wrong view, the Second, Third and Fourth noble truths cannot come to fruition.

Suppose we have this view regarding the child's cause of suffering: "The cause of the child's suffering is in the child's Karma"
With such a view, liberation from suffering comes from the child's ability to have control of his Karma.
Can we have full control over our Karma? No.
Can we have "some" control over our Karma? Yes. How? By having the ability to control our actions.
The ability to control our actions arises from the ability to have control of our minds.
Can we have perfect control over our minds or can we not? Yes we can.
How could this be the right path towards liberation? It is. This is the right path to liberation. Why?
Because we are searching for the cause of suffering within. Our view "The cause of the child's suffering is in his Karma" is right.
With such right view, clinging and craving can be removed. With such right view, the Second noble truth will come to fruition. When the Second noble truth comes to fruition, the Fourth noble truth will lead us to meditation - a search for the cause of suffering within, not outside. Once we find the cause within, the Third noble truth will come to fruition.

And what is the cause by which stress comes into play? Craving is the cause by which stress comes into play."
And what is the result of stress? There are some cases in which a person overcome with pain, his mind exhausted, grieves, mourns, laments, beats his breast, & becomes bewildered. Or one overcome with pain, his mind exhausted, comes to search outside, 'Who knows a way or two to stop this pain?' I tell you, monks, that stress results either in bewilderment or in search. This is called the result of stress."
And what is the cessation of stress? From the cessation of craving is the cessation of stress"
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an06/an06.063.than.html

Suppose we have this view regarding the child's cause of suffering: "The cause of the child's suffering is in the child's mind" or "The cause of the child's suffering is in the child" or "The cause of the child's suffering is within the child"
With such a view, liberation from suffering comes from the child's ability to have control of his mind.
With such a view, liberation from suffering comes as already described above.
Whenever we are searching for the cause of suffering within us, sooner or later the four noble truths will come to fruition. Whenever we are searching for the cause of suffering outside us, the four noble truths will never come fully to fruition.

Craving and clinging within the child is the cause of the child's stress. This is the only right view if we want to reach full liberation.
Conventional thinking about the cause of suffering goes like this:
When things are in order, I'm happy. When I'm happy, I will cling on things being in order.
When things are not in order, I'm not happy. When I'm not happy, I will crave for things coming into order.
Things are changing order, there is nothing I can do about it. Thus, sometimes I'll be happy, sometimes I'll be not happy.
Buddhist thinking about the cause of suffering goes like this:
Things are changing order, there is nothing I can do about it. When things are in order, I will not cling on things being in order.
When things are not in order, I will not crave for things coming into order.
Thus, I'll not be, which is beyond happiness or anything you've ever imagined.
Comment: The law of kamma does not apply to animals such as lions. The answer is also wrong in negating the view: "A 3 year old child cannot be trained like it is said above. He is too young to grasp the truth and liberate his mind from ignorance! Thus, the child's suffering is not wrong action done by the child!". The Pali suttas explain 'kamma is intention'. The child does not act with intention thus its suffering is not due to kamma. The suffering is solely due to ignorance. This is why in the secular world children, let alone 3 year olds, are not treated in courts of the law the same way as adults
Answer: I don't understand how we could ever be fully awake or conscious of past lives we have had. How can something we have no memory/awareness of and no way to gain memory/awareness of be the cause of karma in our lives now? That just seems so unfair. I'm not sure if I even believe in past lives, future lives - that's not the point of the Path, right? The Path is to live here and now, always.
Also, I understand that suffering always comes from inside so the child suffering from an abusive father's actions is "the cause of his or her own suffering." Logically, without judgment, I understand that. But what choice does the child have in their situation? They do not have the choice to be aware. The choice to follow the Path and love themselves and everyone else in loving kindness. I wish to God I had had the awareness when my mother was yelling at me that I was a pig and selfish and criticizing my body and just everything about me - I wish as a child I had been able to somehow discover Buddhism. But ultimately, what choice do you have when you're brought into the world in a hypnotic mind-state where all you do is observe and soak in everything around you? You soak up all the suffering your parents are going through. It doesn't make it your "fault". Your brain is literally just new and growing. I don't understand putting responsibility for change and growth on a child. I just don't. I gues what I'm saying is why ask that question in the first place - who or what is the cause of the child's suffering? Does it help the child to determine logically that the child is the cause of its own suffering? No, because they don't really have the wherewithal to have a choice in their situation - or the resources and tools to change anything, really.
Comment: I'll try to give some perspective. Memory/awareness is a fabrication. Not truth. There is no death and birth. Both are fabrications, not truths. Child has no choice to be aware/follow the Path, due to ignorance. Not having many choices and only observing and soaking is due to ignorance. It is none fault, because of no self. It is your/father's/mother's/etc. fault because of ignorance. Thus, child is only a fabrication. Responsibility is a fabrication. Everything is a fabrication.
Comment: Child can't determine logically his suffering, due to ignorance. Nobody is to blame for that - remember: no self. Even though everything/responsibility is a fabrication, a being needs to fabricate everything/responsibility/memory/awareness/etc. to be able to follow the Path, remove his ignorance and gain wisdom. That's why Buddha teaches how to live a responsible life, in peace and harmony (no violence, no stealing, no hatred, etc.).
Answer: Another way to answer this, is that there isn't really a child suffering in ultimate reality, and no father either...All there is is what we are truly experiencing in awareness, moment by moment. One really can't fit a child or father into moment by moment reality(ultimate reality). In ultimate reality no one is to blame, suffering is just suffering that is the effect of a previous cause. ...but that doesn't mean we throw conceptual reality out the window. All of the Pali Canon is conceptual after all. I doubt anyone could understand this without practicing continuous moment by moment mindfulness. That is why I stress that the answer to this question can be found eventually in the practice of mindfulness(along with virtue and concentration).
Comment: +1 for the sammuti sacca vs. paramattha sacca explanation.
Comment: This still does not answer the question: who or what is the cause of the child's suffering?
Comment: @beginner Sure, in conceptual reality you can answer this question but you won't get a truly deep answer unless you meditate. In ultimate reality, if you saw "the child" it would be just a formation. Reality doesn't say "this is a child", "this is a car", "this is suffering", "this is a bellybutton"...We say these things, they don't arise in ultimate reality ...they arise from language...they arise from our minds. Did reality name you? No, a mental process named you. Things like names, laws and Redwood Trees are concepts from conceptual reality.
Answer: Another user has already mentioned the different realities so i will make it short.
In paramattha sacca, i.e. ultimate reality, there exists no conventions or concepts, meaning that there is no one who suffers, there is no creator of kamma or receiver of kammic results.
In sammuti sacca, i.e. conventional reality there exists concepts such as people, entities, animals, a father, a child etc.
Here the father is the cause of his own suffering. He is creating his own suffering by giving rise to unwholesome intentions based on Greed and Delusion.
The child is the creator of its own suffering by reacting to the phenomena, i.e. the fathers abuse. There might arise physical and mental pain, anger, sadness and the like. If the child reacts to these mental and physical phenomena the child is taking ownership of them and identifying with them.
There is a difference between saying:
"Pain, anger or sadness has arisen" and "I am angry, sad or feeling pain".
First one is objective. There is observation and non-interaction with the object(s).
The second one is when one is having wrong view due to ignorance and thinking that there is a Self that is experiencing and the owner of these phenomena.

To sum up: The child is the cause for its own suffering. The father can only impinge on the child's senses. Its the identifying, taking ownership of and having aversion to the objects that creates the suffering.
Comment: Thanks for the answer. Are you saying that with the removing of ignorance, anger or sadness still arise, but the experiencer does not react to it? If yes, do you have a source for this?
Comment: Look up "Paticca sammupada, i.e. The doctrine of Dependent Origination": http://www.vipassana.com.my/ebooks/deporigin.pdf. Removing of ignorance takes place when one achieves wisdom which is insight knowledge into how reality functions, i.e. the 3 signs of existence.
Comment: @beginner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_stages_of_enlightenment#Path_and_Fruit suggests that "freedom from ignorance" implies "arahant". Freedom from anger or ill-will implies "anāgāmi" (non-returner). Freedom from identity view (saying 'I' am suffering) implies sotāpanna. So I think that anger has ceased to arise, *before* the removal of ignorance is complete.
Comment: In paramattha sacca, i.e. ultimate reality, there is suffering & a creator of kamma or a receiver of kammic results. SN 12.17 states "It's not the case, Kassapa, that stress does not exist. Stress does exist." Ignorance is the creator of suffering & the mind (citta) reaps the results of karma.
Comment: @Dhammadhatu. A Creator is a concept just as a man, woman, animal etc. In ultimate reality concepts do not exist. There exists only Rupa, Citta, Cetasika, Nibbana. This is my understanding of it.
Answer: We suffer as a result of past unwholesome karma(action). In the next life it is likely the abuser becomes the abused. That's Buddhism and the reason we don't like it is because we cling to our ideas given by society and we have no deep understanding of how things are what they are and nothing more. We don't like children to be abused more than we don't like adults to be abused when ultimately in Samsara we are all infants making our way.  We can gradually grow up(become enlightened) when  we constantly practice virtue, concentration and mindfulness. In order to practice mindfulness we first must learn a meditation technique(hopefully under a teacher's guidance but a teacher isn't absolutely necessary). Then it takes a little faith to practice the technique that may appear, at first glance to be pointless and repetitive. Then it takes effort to practice, it takes interest in the practice. One should ask themselves if they are interested in not suffering. When practicing, we little by little see directly what the Buddha was trying to teach us and this gives us faith or rather it gives us confidence in the Buddha's teachings we still can't understand.
Comment: The abusing father is not the cause of suffering. The child is giving rise to suffering through its ignorance. The father is only causing pain.
Comment: The abusing father is the cause of his own suffering. You cannot harm another without first harming yourself.
Comment: So, the abusing father is not the cause of his child suffering?
Comment: Is the abusing father the cause of the child's suffering or is the abusing father not the cause of the child's suffering?
Comment: Ok. If this is the correct answer I will mark it as answered. Write an answer so I can mark it.
Comment: So... an eye for an eye? (-1)
Comment: @Pragabhava no, not an eye for an eye. Nobody is punishing anyone. Do you believe this Isn't an answer in accord with the Buddha's teaching?
Comment: @beginner I think it's what the Buddha taught but some disagree. I don't understand why but I think it is just hard to   buy something so contrary to our parental instincts.
Comment: @Uuu IMO, thinking of Karma as the wheel of retribution is a simplification that (in some cases, I'm not speaking of you) leads to indifference and justification (hence the -1). As I've been taught, Karma is conditioning. If you are conditioned to violence, you'll generate and live in an environment of violence, suffer because of it, and reinforce your inclination to violent behavior (hence the wheel). Is the ignorance of the father that makes him suffering and violent; the child, as object of this violence, also suffers. Eradicating the father's ignorance eases the child's suffering.
Comment: @Uuu The _Bardo Todol_ speaks loudly on the chances of a bad rebirth due to mistakes in the intermediate state that are more related to ignorance than Karma.
Comment: @Pragabhava What retribution? It's merely cause and effect that can also have "good" results. Nobody is to blame and nobody is punishing anyone. Karma is not conditioning, karma is our actions based on our conditioning.  Conditioning is probably a good translation for sankaras. The child suffers as a result of his own reaction to the pain. I suppose this all could be  my opinion too but are there any scriptures to corroborate this more radically different approach than I am used to?
Comment: Let us [continue this discussion in chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/51365/discussion-between-uuu-and-pragabhava).
Answer: I would like to amend this post with the following statement about Karma.
At the risk of coming across as a troll to the religious minded I feel I must state my opinion concerning the nature of Karma and its place in the above question.  I base my opinion upon my own direct personal experience of the Truth. That said, in the spirit of Sanatana Dharma, that there is no end to the different ways the Elephant of Truth can be experienced I do not claim anything more than a provisional voice where the sound of silence is concerned. Though I have grasped more than one leg of the Great Mystery I do not claim to be a sage. I am at best a Wayfarer. For me there is only one Truth that no truth can fully describe. Some things can only be said in Silence.
In my opinion to blame or burden all but the most exceptional of 3 year old children with any responsibility for anything he or she does is in itself a form of child abuse. I do not believe we carry the burden of our past nor the honor of our past with us from one incarnation to the next. In my opinion the notion that our past places our future is at best a dualistic notion that is not based in or on Reality. Rather, it is simply a means of maintaining the status quo of the World System. No small child is responsible in any way for his or her environment. For most people this is the only time in their life that they are in fact free from karmic entanglements. Mountains are mountains again. We start over from scratch with each turn of the wheel until we die to every conditioned sense of self we cling to while objectified. To make any limiting statement about the spirituality of any small child is a form of abuse. Physical death is a time out period. The acquired personality dies but our essence is eternal. Changeless. Fully Empty is about as good as any dualistic expression can come. Our Original Face never changes. A human being that has set off on the Journey to the Interior simply see's more and more of what has always been. I concur with the Buckminster Fuller saying, "The Gravity of Metaphysics is Love." And Rumi, "The Love Religion has no codes or doctrines, only Love." Or the Apostle John, "God is Love!" God being what we focus on the most.
With each new incarnation a new ego is developed. The task then becomes to overcome or see through this conditioned sense of self that the World of Maya does it's best to force upon us. At the end of the day We are "Transcendent Beings", each a permanent member of the Family of Existence. We transcend all relative terms, be they poetic or mathematic, every name is a map at best. A map of Idaho is not Idaho.
It is my opinion that the Buddha's fundamental teaching was for one to primarily learn the Truth for oneself not through teachings but from one's personal experience of the Great Transpersonal. That we each have been granted by existence a Free Charter of Inquiry. Each of us has the Great Gene of Transcendence but only we can open our inner eye to It. We are Godlike in potential. And yet even the Buddha after his Great Experience still spent the rest of his embodiment learning how to express or think of things from the Awakened Perspective. At first he did not think women had the Enlightenment Gene, but in time he came around. No one has a patent on the Truth. But some do have Copyrights. Thus, the Buddha's Great Charter of Free Inquiry. What made the personage of the Buddha so great in my opinion was his ability to grow in human understanding. Though his awakening was instantaneous it took time for him to come to a mature position where the true essence of women is concerned. One's cultural milieu is a powerful glue. Even he had to get up and walk away from the Great Aloneness to wholly enter into the Great All Oneness. Everything is in relationship with everything else for we are each parts of that which has no separate parts. Truth is more a State of Being than a state of mind. The mind will always lag behind Being, or what some people call Mind. I believe the word Being comes closer to the essence of Truth than Mind, but I am talking nuance here. The tao that can be named is not the eternal Tao. There is no end to our embodied education. I believe the Buddha's greatest message was that until one knows for oneself what one truly is one doesn't really know anything. The Buddha had arrived at a Peace that Passeth Understanding. He knew enough to know he was not a separate God because he was truly Awake. A separate God is a Fake God. An asleep god. That to be Awake did not mean the end of dependent relationship, but the beginning of true cognitive understanding of what has always been. As Jesus stated, "I and the Father are One!". Everything is interconnected. "From the first Totality has been a Unitive One!. Hui-Neng. As do all the Great Sages from every place and every time proclaim. Truth is Universal. Therefore, it is my opinion that one does not have to quote the Buddha to support a Buddhist opinion. There are Buddha's among us. But we do not always recognize them for to truly know a Buddha one must be a Buddha. The Buddha chose one word to describe himself. He was Awake. We must be wholly Awake to wholly know a Buddha. Born again as it were. Childlike. Sleeping teachers, leave the Kids alone.
It is not the letter of the law, it is the spirit that matters most. Words do not contain the truth anymore than a map of Idaho contains Idaho. For this reason the Buddha spent the last 40+ years of his life talking about not talking. Until one directly experiences the Great Truth for oneself talk is cheap. Karma is a relative term for actions do not matter near as much as intentions. And yet even the best of intentions can have unintended consequences. So intend only Love. Though limited by their nature words can at times trigger a knowing that leadeth to True Understanding. Everything is potentially useful, even the old twisted and knotted tree can provide shade. So the Buddha talked much about that which cannot be realized through any simulacrum. Any representation falls short of that which is of itself so. Such a thing/not-thing are we where Truth is concerned. Absolute Truth is more a unitive one than a numerical one. Great Poetry speaks to the Great Heart within each of us. More a feel, than a think. If one wants to see the Moon one must take their eyes off a pointing finger and simply look at the Moon for oneself. Or as Jesus would say, "Look with the Third Eye". Look with the nondual eye, the inner eye of being.
Reality is not a state of mind nearly so much as it is a state of Being. Grace listeth where it willeth but rarely on those not looking for it with their heart. With their inner being. With at least the shadow of their True Being. One cannot defeat or cancel out any good or bad karma through any purist ascetic practice. There are no lines of demarcation in Nature, rather, there are merely areas of confluence. Nothing is separate from the Whole. All anyone can do is decide that the most important thing to know is the Truth. All commandments reduce down to one categorical imperative, love. The love of the Truth. Whatever the Truth is. One must be willing to give up anything and everything to know anything with true certainty. What the heck is really going on? I am going to sit here until I know! The Buddha was a Lion of Being. As are all the sages of the perennial philosophy.
The above Question is a Koan of sorts. An indirect question with no direct answer. Let go of dualistic thinking, two ends of a string appear to be separate until one sees the underlying unity of a whole string. Awaken from the Fall into Dualistic thinking. Yin and Yang are not opposites. Yin and Yang are opposite non-opposites for one contains the seed of the other. Day is relatively meaningless without night. To know a Buddha one must become a Buddha. Like knows like. As above so below. Samsara is Nirvana. Silence must be heard. The action of the Sage is non-action. Wu Wei. Action that is not driven by external circumstance alone. Action that is driven by context as well as content. Awakened Action. The Third Eye Perspective.
Even in a relative world there is no excuse for Child Abuse. It is one's duty to take responsibility for one's actions. The young child is just reacting. The responsibility of the Adult subsumes any reaction the child might have. But, as the child grows up, he or she must at some point begin to take responsibility for their negatively reactive actions if they are to ever get past their victimization. We are just spinning the Wheel of Karma to continue into adulthood while stuck in a reactive mode. Increased Awareness is the ticket off the Karma train. Otherwise we just keep playing the Game of the Victim. A game that many times turns into the Solipsistic Game of I Am God. The only thing or person that matters is me. I am not only me, but I am everyone else as well. I can do whatever I please. I am all that matters. I can abuse children, and others in a less dominant position than I am.
To that I say, "No one is above the Law!".
Butcho
Comment: This seems to be a general description of the overhead teaching. Please address the question, which is: *"What is the Buddhist perspective on child abuse?"*.
Answer: In a relative sense, it is obvious that the father is the cause of the child's immediate suffering.  That is plain to see.  If the father was not abusing the child, then at least this one suffering would not exist.
On a deeper level, however, all suffering is caused by karma.  That is one of the four noble truths.  For the father, his karma has ripened in a negative way such that it bears the fruit of abuse.  His karma also has likely placed him in an environment to lead to such a situation.  The father's suffering in this situation is thus caused by his own karma.
For the child, his/her karma has ripened in such a way that he/she is in a relationship that has fostered abuse against him/her even if it is not the child's direct immediate responsibility.  It is the law of cause and effect - the child's suffering was the result of ripened karma.  The child was born into a specific circumstance and so on, and so forth.
This does not mean that the child bears guilt for the situation at all.  We, especially Westerners, develop attachment to the victim in a situation and produce a dualistic mindset of perpetrator vs. victim.  On a relative level this is important - the father should be punished under the law.  However, according to Buddhism, we develop equanimity for all.  We feel equal compassion for both the child and father as we see with deeper wisdom that the karmic fruits of both parties led (and will lead) to their suffering.  But each person bears their own karma - each person bears their own suffering as a result of their karma and the ignorance in their mind.
To contrast, I recently read an account of two Tibetan nuns who were imprisoned, tortured, and raped for many years by their Chinese oppressors after the 1959 occupation of Tibet by China.  Instead of choosing suffering, however, these women viewed what was happening as the result of karma and thus were able to find peace in the situation in that the karma was being resolved - it would not linger any longer after the events were over.
Horrific and horrible as a situation may be, a mind directed towards enlightenment can view any situation and opt to avoid suffering and thus end the negative karma.  We can also choose not to act on negative karma (i.e. in the case of the father in the abuse) and avoid it as well.  It is not fatalism to hold such a view of karma - each decision is indeed our own responsibility moment to moment.  That said, if we are not brought out of ignorance, we may never see it as such and thus cycles of abuse can persist across generations of families.  Perhaps the father was abused when a child - you can see how things get complicated quickly.
Of course, it would be wrong to simply say, "Well, too bad, that was the karma."  That is fatalistic and incorrect and lacking compassion and love.  However, once one has received wisdom and had some level of realization, you can see how any one being's suffering, be it human, animal, or otherwise, is the result of their own karma and the subsequent results from karmic causes.  It is the cause and effect that has persisted indefinitely backward in time and stopping one's own negative karma is indeed a big part of enlightenment.
Comment: Hi Mishtook, correct, if you read further down you would see I agree with you: "Horrific and horrible as a situation may be, a mind directed towards enlightenment can view any situation and opt to avoid suffering and thus end the negative karma. We can also choose not to act on negative karma (i.e. in the case of the father in the abuse) and avoid it as well. It is not fatalism to hold such a view of karma - each decision is indeed our own responsibility moment to moment...."
Answer: The child is the cause of his own suffering in this lifetime. The Father is the perpetrator of the suffering inflicted on the child in this lifetime. By the laws of karma, the child suffers from their own actions of the past. The Father will suffer too as a result of the action he has taken against the child in this lifetime, when the soul within his human vehicle reincarnates again in a future lifetime, be it that he chooses ignorance for the remainder of this lifetime.
The same way that the child was born into this lifetime carrying the karma that caused his/her suffering from this lifetime. The child is living the consequence of his own actions of the past and therefore is the cause of his own suffering. The Father is the soul contact who is teaching the child his karmic lesson, and the person who inflicted the suffering, but the Father is not the actual cause of the suffering, by the laws of karma.
People can't grasp it because they are not viewing it in spiritual terms of the soul essence reincarnating into another human vehicle. People view it as a child being hurt and abused, an innocent child in this lifetime, but they neglect to acknowledge that this child's soul may have lived a life as a serial killer in a past and they are now having their own karmic debt repayed. Or what if in a past life the child was the Father's, Father and the Father was abused by the child in that lifetime, and this lifetime the child is carrying the karma from those actions that he/she now must repay, by the laws of karma. Everything is energy, what you give out must come back.
Every action has a consequence, you reap what you sow. If we are all taught to look within, as a natural way of life, we can heal and release some of this karma we all carry and heal the ancestral lines of our genetic dna. If we look within we can access our akashic records and learn what our karma is about, understand our life lessons, learn them and stop them from reoccuring. Of course in order for this to happen the Parent must first become aware before they become a Parent, and then raise the child in the same fashion so that the child has a chance to also be aware, and release attachments to emotions and the past.
The karma can be minimized but the lessons still need to be learned to end the repeating and to get out of the karmic wheel of reincarnation. But the suffering must still exist for people to grow and evolve. If life was always great why would we need to seek out our higher selves, why would we have a need to no longer be ignorant if their was never suffering or lessons to be learned we would cease existence. But, there are better ways of going about this than by staying ignorant. Everytime a harmful action is taken by someone, someone or something must then return that same action to the one who first created the harm.
And then that something or someone must also have someone or something return that energy back to them, and so the karmic wheel of reincarnation goes around and around. Until we all heal ourselves and others, learn to love each other unconditionally and accept that spiritually we are all of the same energetic consciousness, learn forgiveness, patience, non-judgment and selflessness, then the wheel will keep going.
That's nature and with nature comes karma. Heal your past karma and that of your ancestry, live in mindfulness, look within and connect to your higher self, create a balance of giving and receiving, love and treat everyone as equal, and live and act in kindness and honesty and you will only create good karma.
Comment: I negatively scored this post because the following ideas have not been supported with reference to any teachings of the Buddha: (i) By the laws of karma, the child suffers from their own actions of the past; (ii)  the soul within his human vehicle reincarnates; (iii) the child was born into this lifetime carrying the karma that caused his/her suffering from this lifetime; (iv) Father is the soul contact who is teaching the child his karmic lesson; (v) this child's soul may have lived a life as a serial killer in a past and they are now having their own karmic debt repayed; etc, etc, etc


How to get the icon for a MIME type?

Question: How to get the icon for a MIME type?
I don't want to use g_file_info_get_icon() because its input parameter is a file, not a MIME type.
My use case:
I have a wrapper file which embeds a media object, I can get the MIME type of the media object and want to find the icon of the MIME type. And I don't want to dump the media object to a separate file to use g_file_info_get_icon().
Answer: Did you try g_content_type_get_icon ()?
You might need to call g_content_type_from_mime_type () first.
GContentType docs

How to get the icon for a MIME type?


Scalability Layer in Tridion Blueprinting

Question: What level/Types of scalability we achieve by creating the empty root publication in Tridion blueprinting?
Though question may be very basic but each one can give a certainly different view of scalability so i am asking it over here.
Comment: Lots of great answers, but as a practical recommendation, new branches, implementations, or sites don't always mean a new complete branch of publications. Share what needs to be shared, split as needed, and don't hesitate to use authorization to help with what authors see in lower publications. Given a new website requirement for example, my *first* thought isn't a new schema or content publication (though it may fit the circumstances).
Answer: Keeping in mind that you cannot add a publication on top of a "root" publication, but you can always add publications between 2 existing ones, this layer is there really just to make sure you have the flexibility to add additional layers between "Root" and "Schemas" if you ever need to.
A common scenario nowadays is to have a separate set of schemas for mobile channels. You can do one of the following 3 options:

Create your mobile schemas in the same publication as your normal content schemas
Create a child publication of "Schemas" where you create your mobile schemas
Create a child publication or "Root" where you create your common schemas, move "Schemas" to be under this one, and create a "Mobile-specific Schemas" publication under this one too.

Even if the example is not perfect (I should add diagrams and such), the 3rd option would not be possible if you had created all your schemas on the top publication.
I guess the best way to describe that publication is "one day you may wish you had it".
Comment: +1 to the "wish you had it" point. I'd say mobile works as an example for 2013. I'm sure future versions of Tridion may look at the `mobile=publication(s)` equation differently. ;-)
Answer: If you put content or schemas into the root publication, then all of that is inherited down, whether you need it or want it or not.
I always saw "Empty parent" as a fail safe.  If you suddenly needed to manage a new group of sites with a different content model (say from a company acquisition), you could do so nicely by splitting off from the empty publication without impacting anything already existing.
Comment: +1 for the company acquisition point. This may also happen when the same company creates then wants to merge separate Tridion instances.
Comment: But of course, you might equally just create an entirely new master chain under such circumstances. If you really have an entirely different model, this would be better.
Answer: The empty parent or empty root Publication by itself doesn't add any features, but when you make sure that any new Publication you create is a child of that, then you have made sure that all your Publications are part of a single BluePrint, which allows you to move the Publication anywhere inside that BluePrint.
It basically comes down to the features of BluePrinting, you can only create a Publication as a child of another at first creation time, if you don't do it at first save, then you can never add it to a BluePrint anymore. So to allow you to do that, you will need an empty parent (which because it remains "empty" has no influence other than being your BluePrint parent).
Comment: Empty Parent, as the first publication does have minor control over the set of "default" items.
Comment: true, but if you truly consider them as default items, then every Publication will need them anyways, or gets them anyways
Answer: To generalize, you can visualize your Blueprint hierarchy as a Tree with Empty Parent being the Root of this Tree. This Empty Root will allow you to stretch another branch which may or may not have any dependency on the Existing tree.
To be specific:
Consider below scenario where you already have an existing blueprint hierarchy with multiple websites for a brand/company/service, and later on in the future you come across any of the below scenario:

A need to create a completely isolated Mobile Site
There is an acquisition/take over of organization which may have entirely different verticals and you want to put the site for it in the same architecture
One architecture for a big organization with a diversification of product range and for each product you may need to put up a site

Most basic error that I have seen people misusing the Empty Root is when they become a part of such a big implementation where the Blueprinting, Architecture etc are done and few site have already been rolled out and they are required to implement a new site without affecting the already rolled out site - Instead of understanding the existing system, they on the safer side stretch a new isolated BP hierarchy and go ahead with their implementation - do not do it
Comment: You can say it's a basic error to create a separate blueprinting chain, but that's only true in situations when creating a new chain is a worse choice than using the existing one.
Comment: Absolutely Dominic! There could be different scenario when you are not left with a choice but to create a new chain, but in many cases this might not be the case


Who owns NASDAQ? Does it collect fees from stock transactions?

Question: If NASDAQ is a corporation, does it make profits by charging fees on transactions? When I pay a fee for buying stocks, am I paying the broker or NASDAQ?
Answer: NASDAQ OMX Group owns NASDAQ, a stock exchange.
It is a corporation, and is listed on the NASDAQ as NDAQ.
It makes money by:

They charge each company to list their stock in their market.
They charge for transaction that is taking place on their exchange server
They may be offering other financial or other listing (or IPO) related services in a package deal with contracted third parties.

source
NASDAQ also charges for market data services, found in the NASDAQ "Datastore".
Other information about the fees charged by NYSE and NASDAQ may be found in the Investopedia article The NYSE And Nasdaq: How They Work.
Comment: Just to add, the fee you pay goes to the broker. However the broker pays NASDAQ fee that are yearly as well as per transaction.
Comment: The NASDAQ per-transaction fees appear to be very low: $0.0005
to $0.0035 per share, it looks like, depending on how they actually execute the trade. If you're paying a broker ~$4-$20 a trade and *not* transacting tens of thousands of shares with each order, the Nasdaq part of that is essentially nothing. http://www.nasdaqtrader.com/Trader.aspx?id=PriceListTrading2
Comment: @fennec But that's not really the point; It may be "essentially nothing" to the buyer and seller, but very much significant to NASDAQ, since it occurs for *every single share* of *every NASDAQ stock*.  Because the $$ volume of total trades is enormous, it surely adds up as sizable income for NASDAQ.
Comment: @fennec According to NASDAQ they currently transact around 2 billion per day. At your lowest price/share, that would be over $1mil per day! http://www.nasdaqtrader.com/Trader.aspx?id=DailyMarketSummary


UDP vs ICMP flood

Question: How can we measure the efficiency of the flood technique? Will it be by the number of bots required for flooding the link? In case of UDP and ICMP, which one would be more efficient and why?
Answer: The main goal of the UDP flood attack is to flood random (or specific) ports on a remote host. A UDP flood attack can be initiated by sending a large number of UDP packets to random ports on a remote host. As a result, the distant host will: Check for the application listening at that port, see that no application listens at that port and reply with an ICMP Destination Unreachable packet. Thus, for a large number of UDP packets, the targeted system will be forced into sending many ICMP packets, eventually leading it to be unreachable by other clients. The attacker may also spoof the IP address of the UDP packets, ensuring that the excessive ICMP return packets do not reach him, effectively anonymizing the attacker's location on the network.  This process consumes target resources, which can ultimately lead to inaccessibility. This could also be used against specific applications.
Another variation is the UDP Fragmentation Flood. The activity generated by this attack resembles valid traffic. This version of the UDP Flood attack sends larger yet fragmented packets to exhaust more bandwidth by sending fewer fragmented UDP packets. When the targeted server tries to put these unrelated and forged fragmented UDP packets together, it will fail to do so, Eventually having its resources exhausted resulting in possible crash/reboot.
ICMP Flood is  similar in principle to the UDP flood attack: an ICMP flood overwhelms the target resource with ICMP Echo Request (ping) packets, generally sending packets as fast as possible without waiting for replies. This type of attack can consume both outgoing and incoming bandwidth, since the victim's servers will often attempt to respond with ICMP Echo Reply packets, resulting a significant overall system slowdown.
Comment: While this answer explains attack types very well, it does not answer the OP's question.
Comment: The question does not specify efficiency against what.
Answer: The efficiency of a flood technique probably depends a lot on the protocol used, UDP packets may vary on size if you compare with ICMP, however, probably the correct metric is if the service that you want to flood is interrupted. Some services, for example DNS, will need a different flood metrics than a SIP service. So is difficult to compare because basically is two different types of attack.
Comment: Additionally, a UDP flood may attempt to overwhelm an application, whereas ICMP is handled by the kernel.
Answer: ICMP (ping) floods are more damaging because they are slower and generate lower traffic than UDP flood attacks and the server will try to respond to ICMP requests more often than UDP requests. But, in terms of how fast the server goes down UDP, HTTP, TCP and LDAP are more effective for an instant downing of the server.
Comment: Welcome on the Security SE! I suggest to write more about the reasons. I think UDP requests use typically more resources on the target, what makes UDP flooding looking more effective.

UDP vs ICMP flood


Getting Started with Subversion, Git, or similar Version Control System to keep a History of my Files?

Question: I realize this may be a broad question on the surface, but I'm looking for specific examples of setups/workflows that people use to keep a version history of edited files on a WordPress site. For instance, when developing a site (and even after it's live), I often make changes to CSS and PHP files, but I don't have a great way of reverting to older versions of those files.  For my purposes, making changes on a local development installation and then copying those changes over to the live site is often more trouble than I'd like.  Any suggestions on how to get started using a versioning tool to track edits to files on a live site?
Comment: Just curious, Mike - why the title edits? In my mind, question titles should follow the rules of proper grammar.  Maybe that's a good discussion for meta...
Comment: You're already part of [the discussion](http://meta.wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/68/what-should-our-question-title-guidelines-be) on meta, tnorthcutt. :)
Answer: I am not sure how much you know about using version control, but I recently switched from SVN to Git and find that to be great!
Though it depends in you live site's server has Git installed (or will let you). I have a Git setup on the live server also, running off a branch called something like production. Whenever I finish implementing/fixing something locally, I merge it into the production branch, then SSH into the live site's server and pull in the changes. Beats dragging files over FTP when you never know if you are overwriting changes etc.
I would recommend putting some time in getting acquainted with Git (if you haven't already), I find it much easier and less hassle than SVN when it comes to changing/adding loads of files (and unlike SVN it doesn't put stupid .svn folders everywhere).
I am on a Mac, so sorry if none of these applies, but I use Coda as a code editor and installed Git through Ports (using Porticus).
If I were to set everything up anew, I would do:

Install Coda
Install Porticus (which will require you to install Ports, but there is information on that page)
Once you have installed Porticus, open it open, search for "git-core" and Install that.
Download and Install GitX 7-5
There is a good guide on setting up a git repo here, but at it's basic: 1. Open Terminal. 2. cd to where you want your site to reside. $: mkdir mysite && cd mysite 3. $: git init and thats it! If you add files to this folder then continue to the next step
Once you have set up a GIT repository locally (above article) then if you open that directory in GitX you will be able to commit stuff etc etc.

Setting it all up on the server can be a bit tricky, I have a MediaTemple and a Dreamhost account which both have GIT out of the box. The link in step 5 tells you how to add a remote repo, so you don't have to do that until you want to bring your live site into the equation. I would recommend getting everything working locally first (unlike SVN, GIT doesn't require a remote repository, so you can do everything on your machine for the time being).
Comment: Could you go into more detail on what your workflow is like, what tools/editors you use, how you setup GIT on your live server, etc.?  I'm hoping for a good step by step walk through of how to get setup with something like GIT.
Comment: I added some steps to get started, good luck!
Comment: Also, do you have a good tutorial you recommend for GIT?  I'm on Subversion and have been wanting to switch for ages because of how fragile Subversion can be (and also because of those damn .svn folders too! :)
Comment: Joe, thanks for adding the details.  I'm on a PC, but I can look for equivalent tools, and that should all be useful for other Mac users.
Comment: I can only recommend git. It just rocks. Regardless on which OS. I use it on linux and on windows frequently (so to say: every day now). on windows there is a git bash. Great thing is: you have got all linux commands at hand directly: http://code.google.com/p/msysgit/
Comment: I tried to clean up old/broken links, but I have a feeling that the latter half of this answer - at least everything that goes into specifics of tools - is outdated, as is probably every answer on this question, but someone who knows the MacOS ecosystem would need to bring it up to date.
Answer: I use SVN for version control with everything I do in WordPress development.  I actually started this way because I needed SVN for plug-in development ... once I got started there, it was a natural extension to continue using SVN for themes and custom scripts on client sites.
Plug-ins
Since plug-ins are already hosted on WordPress' server, I just check out a plug-in directly to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory of my local WordPress installation (I run WAMP on my development box).  Then I make changes to my local copy and, when it's ready for showtime, commit to the repository.  It's a smooth process there, no uploading/downloading and instant verification that my changes worked.
Themes
Themes are a bit different, particularly when building for a client.  I create a local repository (I have an R partition on my hard drive specifically for this purpose) and check out the empty repository directly to my /wp-content/themes directory.  Then I make changes as needed and develop until it's ready, committing revisions as I go.
When I'm ready to publish the theme to a client's production server, I export the repository, zip it, and use the native Themes >> Add New functionality within WordPress.  This works with custom plug-ins (that aren't hosted by WordPress) as well.
Tools
Like I said, I use WAMP on my local machine to run a development installation of WordPress.  It works perfectly on my box and allows me to run as many instances of WordPress as I need for a particular project.
For SVN, I use Tortoise SVN.  It's free, remarkably easy to use, and integrates with the file and command structure of Windows.  Updating, committing, and exporting are all simple right-click, select command operations.  Using "Export" allows you to send the entire folder (without the annoying .svn folders) directly to any location of your choice - I frequently export to the desktop.  Zipping the folder is also a right-click operation, and WordPress handles the upload.
Manually transferring files can be a hassle, particularly if you keep changing one file but not all of them.  If you instead FTP over the entire directory with "overwrite all" selected, it's much easier to replace old files (and you don't have to keep track of which changed and which didn't).  It's like the old 5-minute installation WordPress used to have - just replace everything with the new version.
Answer: Personally, I think it is a fun exercise to install SVN / GIT and manage it,  but if you can swing $15 per month,  Beanstalk is worth every penny.  They manage the whole server for you.  http://beanstalkapp.com/  The FTP deployment tools are awesome. Mine automatically deploys the version to my staging server when I commit for example
Another way to get some personal file versioning is to use drop box.   Every time you save a file into your dropbox it tracks the version, and you can restore to any previous version later on..  You and another developer, or group can share a drop box folder.   Granted this does not do trunks, merges, etc, but it does make it very easy for a distributed team to work on one website.  You just can not really work on the exact same files at once.
We keep our SVN working copy in dropbox, then I commit the files when the time is write.  My designers will not commit files or deal with SVN, So this is the comprimise.
I prefer SVN because I do not need all the trunking that GIT is so great for and there are better GUI tools available of SVN.
Answer: I like Aptana a lot, its has subversion integrated in and you can connect to your server with ftp/sftp easily and push files up, another great feature that it has is that if you create a new php project and include the "entire" WordPress folder (with wp-admin, wp-includes) you get code completion in your theme files.
In my setup the repo is local.
Comment: "repo" is common shorthand for "repository".
Comment: What is the "repo"?
Comment: "repo" = "repository"
Comment: i use also git ([egit plugin](http://www.eclipse.org/egit/)) inside Aptana(under win and linux), works fine and easy.
Answer: You ask for "but I'm looking for specific examples of setups/workflows that people use to keep a version history of edited files on a WordPress site" but you also mention products :)
You get above as answer a list of tools and some best practices but I will focus here on the workflows: THEY ARE NOT WORDPRESS SPECIFIC:
But for the general examples/setups/workflows:
For starters: there ARE CM patterns, so independent of tooling. Google on CM Patterns, a lot of books out there, wiki's even communities e.g. http://www.cmcrossroads.com/forums.
There are also guides on setting up a valid stream strategy (google stream strategy), etc...
I don't think there is anything special about WordPress deployments compared to CM Management incl distributed parallel development on large Siebel, SAP, Informatica, Java etc.. factories. It's really almost default.
What is missing, I think, is that noone has writing a CMplan for WordPress development (yet) (IEEE). Once someone has done that (tool independent). The requirements can be filled in, I think, with any tool.
I think the reason that plan has not been written is that almost all WordPress implementations are still done by 1 person with a simple development-production setup so not with multiple developers/designers in the build phase having to deploy different versions that are running in the test environment, for instance.
the CMP plan starts with identifying all CI's in other words: make a list of all types of CI's present in a WordPress implementation including the apps, plugins, database, documentation, help, content, config files, release notes (!), etc...). That is a good start. Then decide which ones you want to bring under CM.
Next decide on what causes changes on these CI's e.g. a customer call for a bugfix, or an upgrade that is needed. If done right, this leads to a situation where you have the feeling things are under control.
Decisions like merging back from production to development and the way to handle that is part of that chapter (2 main patterns here) (though ofcourse you should try to minimize these hotfixes).
Only later look for a tool to do CM on one side (which includes version management as one of the tools) and change management tooling on the other side (which keeps you sane).
I think that is the best workflow to start with since, as far as I googled, noone has done yet. I think once the first person has written a WordPress CM Plan (according to IEEE) every other WordPress person in the world can copy that plan and make adjustments and implement the patterns in their tooling.
Isn't that too much work/too heavy : depends if you have a company or not: it can save your ass big time one day to have good CM plan.
Answer: I am on a shared host so I can't install SVN or anything like that. I use Mercurial to version-control on my home machine. I use Beyond Compare's FTP-sync to keep the local and remote folders in sync.
Answer: i'm using git. it's simple. you nly have to understand simple command such as clone, comit, push, pull and you're ready to go. that's the basic.
eventhough, if you use git it more such as coordinate a team to work on a products, then it's another level. but in the end, it worthed to use git or any version control. there're realiable when shit happen.


What is the point of using a limit order?

Question: I'm pretty new to trading, more specifically day-trading, and on my paper trading account, I am given the option to trade at the market's current value vs. putting in a limit order. I could understand using a limit order if you don't have time to constantly keep track of the market, but day-trading isn't exactly the most hands-off type of trading. I have found that it's a lot easier just to wait for a certain price that you like and put/short at market price instead of setting a limit order and hoping for the stock to hit your preferred price. Am I just being naive or are limit orders just universally less reliable than market orders?
Comment: In my experience people ask the point of a market order. Why would you trade anything and be completely price agnostic? No professional trader would be. I've worked on several execution systems for trading firms and we intentionally never implemented market orders because we never wanted a trader to accidentally send one.
Comment: @fordprefect It depends.  For large investors or small cap trades with low volumes that would be the case, but for individual investors trading in small quantities of highly liquid large cap assets market orders are quick and easy and are virtually guaranteed to execute immediately very close to the ticker price.  You don't put on a space suit to drive to the corner store.  Doesn't mean you couldn't, and it does mitigate certain risks, but it's not really necessary.
Comment: @fordprefect Interesting comment about technical implementation for your traders.
Comment: Keep in mind that when you place a market order you are actually trading with people that have limit orders on the book; and conversely limit orders need to wait for market orders to fulfil the trade. The two order types perfectly intertwined.
Answer: I think you might be misunderstanding what a market and limit order are.
To clarify.
A market order will be executed at whatever the current price is when the trade happens. So you can't be sure what price you will get, but you can be reasonably certain the transaction will happen.
A limit order allows you to put in an order and only exercise it at the price you specify or better (lower if buying, higher if selling).The downside is that the trade isn't guaranteed to happen if that price is not available on the market.
In most cases you should be using a limit order unless you absolutely MUST trade the stock at any price.
The usefulness of limit orders is not only for day trading
Comment: I think an important point this answer is missing is that orders don't execute instantly. If you submit a market order at a time the market price is $400, that doesn't mean it will be executed at $400. Market volatility may have moved it arbitrarily far, especially if many traders are trying to make similar trades at once. A limit order lets you put in a limit on how far off of the current market price you're really willing to execute.
Comment: The quoted price is also just the last price a transaction was executed at. It doesn't mean that price is still available even.
Comment: @Thomas: People also don't realize that prices can literally change instantly.  If someone has a pending limit buy order for 100 shares at $500 but nobody else is willing to pay more than $100 when someone seeks to sell 101 shares at market price, the price will instantly jump from $500 to $100.  If someone has a stop loss order at $350, without a lower price limit, all their shares would get sold for $100 or less.
Comment: @amalloy I'd also add that it often surprise people when they realize that a stop market order doesn't mean the market order will be executed when the stop gets hit; it can take some time in between
Comment: Depending on what you trade it can also sometimes be hard to trust the book (in cryptos where spoofing is totally ok, for example) so even with good precautions, this can happen too.
Answer: Suppose we are trading a very illiquid stock of a small company. Some people are trading around a small number of shares for 10€. There are standing sell orders of a volume of maybe 2k oder 3k shares around 10€. They are selling and buying some hundreds of stock. There is another standing sell order for 10k shares at 1000€.
You place a buy order for 12k shares.
What happens?
You pay 1000€ per share for the shares exceeding the 10€ sell orders. The price you see while placing the order is 10€.
Doesn't happen? I've myself bought shares for a total of 1000€ and increased the stock price by 10% while doing so (from 7€ to over 7.8€, so no penny stocks). And in the news, other people have done a lot worse. Just recently a women placed an order for ~25k and left the deal with a loss of 360k. (Source in german: https://app.handelsblatt.com/finanzen/banken-versicherungen/banken/comdirect-kursschwankung-beschert-anlegerin-hohen-verlust-doch-wer-traegt-den-schaden/27080916.html?ticket=ST-1351009-QtmrjHAqAesgEz2OPIhd-ap2)
Comment: It might be good to adjust your example to have a definite number (e.g. 2k) of pending sells orders at 10€, and then indicate that an attempt to buy 12,000 shares at market price would result in the purchase of 2,000 shares at 10€ each, and 10,000 shares at 1000€ each.
Answer: A market order basically determines when the order is executed: as fast as possible but the price is unknown.
A limit order determines at what price the order is executed: at maximum your limit but the execution time is unknown.
Whether a limit order is useful depends a lot on what you are trading. If you are trading a liquid stock during market hours, there is little gain in adding limit orders. Those stocks won't be jumping in crazy patterns within the next few seconds that it takes to execute your order.
If you are trading something exotic, a limit order close to the current price can make sense. If you are placing orders while markets are closed (e.g. late in the evening for execution the next morning) a limit order is an absolute must.
A good rule of thumb can be given by looking at the bid-ask-spread. If it is small, a stock is liquid and a limit order probably unnecessary. If the spread is large, use a limit order.
Comment: @Manziel: If a stock were trading at $10/share and the supply of people willing to sell a stock were to dry up except for one person who was willing to sell a share for one million dollars, what would determine whether a market order would get left unfulfilled, or whether the person who had expected to spend about $10 would be on the hook for another $999,990?  Are any sort limits applied by default to guard against such possibilities?
Comment: Is there any harm in using limit orders?  If a stock seems be liquid at $10/share and one puts in a limit order at $12, I would expect the order to get filled just as a market order would unless there the supply of people willing to sell at $12 or less dries up before one's order is processed, and if that does happen I'd want to figure out what was going on before buying at a higher price.
Comment: @supercat yes if you try to be too "smart" about it: bidding $9.98 for a stock that's at $10 thinking that you'd skim a couple cents apiece this way. The price might actually be going away from your limit and you'd never buy that stock.
Comment: @njzk2: Is there any harm in placing limit orders at prices that will be filled unless something severely unexpected happens?  If one is expecting to pay about $10 for a stock and puts in a limit order at $12 and the supply of sell orders below $50 dries up, not buying the stock at $12 would seem a better outcome than a purchase at $50.  Sure one might luck out if one buys for $50 and is able to sell for more, but people who buy into a bubble are essentially guaranteed to, on average, lose money.
Comment: No, there is no harm. Actually, this is the recommended way to trade stocks with a larger spread and/or lower liquidity. If they are trading at 10$ and you want to pay about 10$, just place a limit order for like 10.10 to avoid anything changing severely against you
Comment: @supercat I don't disagree with the use case you describe.
Comment: @supercat The above sounds like an interesting new question
Comment: @supercat For every stock there are order books that contain the buy and sell orders sorted by price. A market order will simply work through the order book until it is filled. In some cases it can indeed happen that all the "normal priced" orders dry up and people buy/sell at abnormal prices. Check for the 2010 flash crash for an example. In general the only protection against this is a limit order. However, some broker will internally convert market to limit orders based on your account's cash balance.
Answer: JohnFX wrote:

A market order will be executed at whatever the current price is when the trade happens.

This is entirely accurate. But who sets "the current price"?
People entering limit orders.
When you enter a limit buy order, you announcing to the world, "I'm willing to buy at $x."
When you enter a market buy order, you are saying "whatever people are bidding, I'll pay it."
For small orders, you may not care about the difference. If you want to buy 100 shares and the security you are trading moves millions of shares per day, and your trading strategy won't be affected by a move of a few cents up or down, then it doesn't matter much.
But say you are looking to buy 1,000,000 shares. There are 400 shares with an ask of $50.00, 400 with $50.05, 400 with $50.10, ... you will have to pay increasingly higher prices as you exhaust the "order book", which is the list of people who have entered limit orders. Before your market order for 100,000 shares has finished executing you will have pushed the price up significantly, and that likely is contrary to your objectives.
Answer: The other answers do a fine job, but maybe an example will help. The market is composed of bids and asks; the minimum selling price is the ask and the maximum offer price is the bid. When these two values overlap, your broker executes the trade.
Imagine an instance where a seller sets a ridiculously high price (think 25% higher than the last transaction) on a thinly traded security at the end of the day. If some poor fellow then enters a market order overnight, and nobody else comes along and sets a lower floor by market open, the order is filled at the high price.
This happens more often than you think, and in fact is a kind of crummy way that some attempt to periodically game the system and take advantage of inexperienced traders.
Answer: The other answers are great but just a scenario to maybe better illustrate the point.
Let's say you're watching some penny stocks and you see one that routinely fluctuates between .01 and .03 most days.  If you monitor this and the last trade was .01 and you execute a market order to buy, (it's not instant) you might get it at .01, .02 or .03.  If you get it at .03 then theoretically you're screwed unless it breaks the pattern and goes higher.  If you enter a limit order to buy at .01 and it executes, then you can enter a limit order to sell at .03 and triple your money if it executes.
The only time I use market orders is for mid-term to long-term investments or buying a dip or something where I want it now and I'm OK paying slightly more than the last trade price.
Especially when day trading, you should already have entry and exit prices in mind and a market order won't reliably accomplish that.
Answer: I'm going to offer a bit of nuance to add to the other answers, because you mention you are day trading.
Trading and especially day trading is quite a bit different from investing, as you are trying to make money off what are basically random fluctuations in price (which may be caused by random news), rather than long term fundamentals.   To make money trading you need some kind of system which does a decent job at giving you indicators of when might be good times to get in and out of a trade.  What you want to avoid are "false positives" - as prices at small time scales move up and down seemingly at random you can't just pick the last direction the stock was moving and for instance decide to buy just because the last tick went up.  In any given time frame, the market might continue moving up/down (trend), or it might reverse.  When you are day trading, one simple strategy is to either assume the price is going to trend or reverse and either go with the trend or against it if the previous trend seems to be stalling out.
Now where do limit orders come into this?  The bid/ask spread itself introduces random fluctuations in the price.  If you buy at the ask and somebody else immediately sells at the bid, the price immediately appears to move against you.  But if you place a limit order to buy, you are essentially placing yourself to buy at the bid rather than at the ask, albeit at the end of the line at that price, wherever that is.  Where this is ultimately beneficial in trading is when the price is not trending.  If your indicators can do a decent job at predicting these inflection points (and people try a lot of things like Fibonacci retracement points and who know what else) then placing a limit order can both serve as an automatic entry point only when the trade is calculated as having a good chance of succeeding, as well as shaving off what you would have lost to the spread.
By contrast, if the price is trending placing a limit order will likely be futile as the price will be moving away from whatever limit you set.  In this situation you might place a limit if your model gives you some idea of how much you expect the price to change so that the market doesn't move so fast that by the time your trade executes (slow fingers and what not) the price move you were expecting has already occurred.  Again, this is really about reaching a point where the price is no longer trending, only from the reverse side (not getting in if you miss out on the gain rather than getting in as the reversal occurs).
Answer: Limit orders are needed to make the market work at all.
Imagine that every order placed by the buyer or seller of a commodity or equity were a market order.
That literally means "buy or sell this at any price". Well, what is that price? Nobody is specifying it: nobody is bidding and nobody is asking.
Limit orders are the bidding/asking mechanism that drives the price.
Comment: But why should the question author be the one to make the market work if they can just post a market order and let others do the pricing?
Comment: @Philipp That is a worthwhile point to cover.
Answer: When you're day trading, you're frequently (typically?) trading rather small market fluctuations already. Individual cents matter (ideally you are multiplying these individual cents by a lot of shares to make the trade worthwhile.)
A limit order ensures that you're buying and selling on the right side of the market spread rather than on the wrong side of it as a market order often would. It also ensures that your trade simply won't happen at all if your target price is not available (e.g. if you tried to buy on a quick price dip, but the dip was already gone before you got your order in.) This is very important when day trading since you're likely already trying to trade rather small swings in the price where the market spread represents a significant portion - or even the entirety - of your potential profit. And because you don't want your buy to execute if you've already missed the window of opportunity for your trade.
Also, just as a word of advice, day trading is usually not advisable unless you're already quite familiar with the markets and really know what you're doing. It does sound like you're staying on top of it, which is good, but, even so, day trading is quite risky and is rarely a good idea for inexperienced traders, unless maybe you're just doing it in small quantities on no-commission trades as a learning exercise.


Saving money on electricity: Is a refrigerator more efficient when empty, or full?

Question: To save money on hydro (electricity), I'd like to make optimum use of my refrigerator.
For this purpose, is less energy used when the fridge is full? Or when it is empty?
Comment: I agree that a full fridge uses less energy.   My standalone freezer says to put water bottles in it if it is less than half full to make it more efficient.  I wonder how many dollars (or watts) will you save though.
Comment: @DumbCoder. How do you create a fridge of your own man?
Comment: If the fridge is empty, you'd better unplug it.
Comment: How about don't use it ? Or you can create an earthern fridge of your own.
Comment: I believe the closure of this as off-topic was incorrect.  I've re-opened this.  Let's please discuss at meta: http://meta.money.stackexchange.com/questions/379/do-we-need-to-draw-a-line-about-household-cost-cutting-questions-such-as-the-exa
Comment: @Kaushik It's called a [cellar](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_cellar).
Comment: Thanks. But I live in a condo man :)
Answer:
The most important point to me: If you don't use everything in your fridge before it goes bad, then a full fridge will have costs that a (nearly) empty one doesn't, because you'll be throwing away more food.
If you keep the door closed, then the amount of heat leakage from the fridge is independent of what's in it, so either should be equal; it's (almost) entirely based on the barriers between the inside of the fridge and the outside.
If you open the door, then most of the heat leakage is going to be in the form of convective heat transfer from air leaving the fridge. At this point a full fridge has an advantage, because more of the air is blocked by the contents of the fridge.
Chad brings up a useful point: the fridge is likely to work harder to cool things quickly than it is to cool things slowly, even if the heat energy transfer involved is the same. That said, I think the cooled mass of the fridge itself is so large that it swamps any such effect from the material in the fridge.
MrChrister's point about ice machines requiring heat to dislodge the ice is definitely true, although not all ice machines do things this way.
Answer: Keep the door closed to save money.  And if you have an ice machine, turn that off too.  You need to warm up the tray to get ice out of it and heating something inside your freezer is expensive.
Answer: Full fridge uses less.  Mostly due to a sort of 'flywheel effect' from the mass inside the fridge.
frankly I think this is more of a science trivia question,  If you are trying to save money on power, then there's a lot of other things you can do, and there's tons of websites out there with power conservation tips.  just google it.  A better question here would be what to do with the money you save ;-)
Answer: Well an empty fridge is a waste of 100% of the cooling.  If you are cooling nothing then all of the energy to cool it is wasted.  Air is not very conductive of Heat.  Its why double paned glass is more effiecent than single pane the air provides an isulation barrier.
So in a fridge you want to quickly bring the temperature of items placed inside down to a storage temperature. (Around 34F 1c)  Having a fridge full of already cold items will allow for a much quicker transfer of heat out of the item placed within.  And since the heat is dispersed out through a larger mass the amount of cooling required will be the same but because the mean temperature change over time is less the fridge will have to work harder for less time if the fridge is full.
But in the end the amount of energy required to cool a full freeser will be higher than an empty one as there is more heat to disapate.  But the cost of keeping it cold is spread out among many items.  So if you only have 1 orange per day in your fridge and it costs you 30 a month to run your fridge then your oranges have an additional 1 cost on them.  But if you use 20 things a day and it costs you 60 a month  it only costs you .1 extra per item.
Answer: In "steady state", the refrigerator only has to pump out the heat that has leaked in from outside.  The amount of heat leaked is related to the difference between interior and exterior temperatures, and the overall insulation quality.  Thus, a refrigerator full of cold food uses the same amount of energy as a refrigerator full of cold air.
In practice, people open the door, take cold food out, put "warm" food in, and the unit may also make ice, dispense cold water, and defrost itself.  Aside from tweaking those uses, (e.g. minimizing time with the door open), a useful trick is to use empty milk cartons or similar containers to fill up unused space.  This helps by reducing the amount of cold air that escapes when the door is opened, and the air in the cartons has low thermal mass, so it cools down rapidly.  When you need the space, you can remove the cartons and set them aside.
Similarly, water-filled cartons may be used as a sort of thermal ballast--leveling out the temperature fluctuations within the refrigerator, particularly if the electric utilities are erratic.  However, they increase the cost of refrigeration when cooling the water in the first place, and when you eventually dump out the water, the expense of cooling it goes down the drain.


Solving Cauchy-Riemann equations

Question: I'm stuck with this system of equations.. How to see through it?
$$
\begin{aligned}
2(1+y)(1-x)=(2-x)(1+2y) \\
x(2-x)=y(1+y)
\end{aligned}$$
Comment: What is the relation with Cauchy-Riemann equations?
Answer: Hint: Expand the first equation, you will get a simple expression which you can then plug into the second, and this will give you the two solutions easily.
(on a side note: in cases like these it is often useful to interpret the equations geometrically, so that you know what you are looking for)
Answer: Trivial solutions of $x(2-x)=y(y+1)$........eqn($1$) are $(0,0),(0,-1),(2,0),(2,-1)$
Now, consider $2(1+y)(1-x)=(2-x)(1+2y)$
If we assume a non-trivial solution $\implies $ we can multiply both sides by $xy$ which gives
$2y(y+1)x(1-x)=x(2-x)y(1+2y)$ where $x(2-x)$ cancels out with $y(y+1)$ (if we exclude above four pairs) which gives
$2x(1-x)=y(1+2y).....$ eqn($2$)
Multiply eqn($1$) by $2$ and subtract eqn($2$) from it gives
$2x=y$ (excluding above four cases)
Putting it back in eqn($2$) gives
$1-x=1+4x\implies x=0\implies y=0$
As only $(0,0)$ and $(2,-1)$ satisfies eqn($2$) out of trivial solution pairs of eqn($1$) and no other solution exists, Thus, there are no solutions other than  $(0,0),(2,-1)$

Solving Cauchy-Riemann equations