SVN - Is it OK to use any flavor of SVN amongst the team?

Question: Is it OK if, within a team, developers use different flavors of SVN? Say one using Tortoise SVN and other using Versionsapp.com SVN?
Answer: That's a lot like asking if it's ok for your website users to use Safari and Firefox. There aren't "flavors" of SVN. There are different SVN clients. That is a very different thing. It doesn't matter what client you use.
Answer: Yes it should be fine as long as you are using the same version of svn e.g 1.5x and 1.6x will not play nicely with each other.
Comment: if he server is 1.5.x, and some team members use 1.6.x clients there will be no badness. using an older client is not advised.
Answer: The use of different front-ends is entirely a matter of personal choice. There is no risk in using an exotic colorful front-end other than maybe being considered a wimp by your fellow workers.
The use of different versions of the actual SVN program has historically been a very bad idea. For instance, SVN 1.5 would silently and irreversibly upgrade the on-disk format of your local copy to a structure that versions 1.4 and earlier could not use at all - so if e.g. you upgraded your IDE plugin but not the standalone version in your build system, you would break the workflow massively.
The SVN developers claim that such incompatibility problems are in the past now, but I haven't tried newer versions to confirm this, so I'm still wary of using different verions of SVN itself concurrently.
Comment: There's a lot of old SVN clients out there…
Answer: I use four versions on the same machine - two in Windows and two on Linux, including both GUI and command-line versions. I only use it at all because I've had some problems converting my old repositories to Mercurial, but using various different versions with the same repo is no problem.
However - it may be a bad idea to mix very old SVN version numbers with newer ones. I think major version number updates sometimes "upgrade" the repository, not making it inaccessible to older versions, but sometimes causing some problems.
Probably that's only a problem when the repository is accessed directly on a local drive, rather than using a network connection (I've mostly used subversion to keep a repos of documents, photos etc on USB sticks and external drives), but it may be worth checking into anyway. Worst case - you may need to synchronise major-version updates within your team.
The main thing to be careful with in subversion is that merges cause difficulties, to the point where many users never branch. If you're setting up a new system in particular, it may be worth considering a distributed system to avoid these troubles.
Subversion does have a few plus points, though.
Comment: you aren't using different *versions* you are using different clients, there is a *big* semantic difference.
Comment: @Jarrod - those different clients were also different versions - not major version differences, but I've rarely if ever had all clients at the same minor version. If you were using different clients on different platforms, and on the same platform for different purposes, would you really make a special effort to ensure they're all in sync? If you're anything like me, the answer is "only if I had to". If you read as far as the second paragraph, you'd have noticed that I specifically talk about major vs. minor version differences.
Comment: @Jarrod - besides, the question is about "flavors of SVN", not specifically version numbers, and even lists different clients as examples. So at best you're pedanting about the meaning of the word "version" rather than whether my answer is correct or useful. "Version" is an English language word with typical natural-language subjectivity and ambiguity.
Comment: in the tech industry version means something very semantically specific, it is very clear the OP doesn't understand these subtleties and this answer could be confusing or misleading. If you said, *four different clients that were all different minor versions* it would be a different story. You conflate different clients with versions of SVN. The two things are different than what the confused OP is asking. *Tortoise vs Versionsapp.com* reference shows this confusion, not only do you not clarify it you add to the confusion and instead of editing your post you defend your mis-information. Wow.
Comment: @Jarrod - There's *no* indication whatsoever that the OP doesn't understand these "subtleties", nor is there any indication that anyone has ever been confused in the year since this was posted. There is no standard for avoiding the word "version" when referring to different variants/flavors/versions/... in a wider sense than version numbers, though I used the specific term "version numbers" to differentiate when relevant. Different clients - particularly on different platforms - *could* have been a problem. It isn't in this case, but asking is still a reasonable and non-confused thing to do.
Answer: I recently do some work about SVN,my little experiences tell me that they are not much different.Tortoise SVN use a GUI way to do the work,while others may use a commmand line way,but they really did the same work.In all everyone has his way to do thing,so different tool appears to meet their needs.


Solving a system of linear equations with only an approximate solution

Question: I have a system of linear equations that is derived partially from experimental data. Theoretically, the system should have a single, exact solution; however, experimental error causes it to not have an exact solution. Is there a good method to find an approximate solution to this system? My idea for a naive implementation was to solve all pairs of two equations and average the value for the solutions to each variable, but this doesn't extend well as the number of equations increases. Is there any known algorithm to do this?
Comment: least squares might be a good candidate?
Comment: It's important to specify whether the linear system is in fact invertible (meaning you do get a single solution, although it might not be exactly the one you're looking for), underdetermined (you get multiple solutions, but might be able to pick a reasonable one), or overdetermined (there is no solution unless you hit the exact data).
Comment: Also, do the experimental error enter into the matrix (i.e., coefficients of the linear system) or the right-hand side?
Comment: And how many equations and variables are there? How do you solve all pairs of equations? Least squares (or are there only two variables?).
Answer: It seems you are looking for an optimization (here, specifically a fit).
You have some experimental data and you want to have a simple model explaining it.
The simplest way is using the Ordinary Least Squares. The idea is to minimize the standard deviation or the error you make on the vertical axis.
Another one would be the PCA where you try to find an angle to view your variables to find the maximum information. It's based on the eigenvectors of your system. The advantage is that it only tries to find the best solution to minimize the orthogonal error.
Many other solutions are possibles but it would be preferable to have more details about what you're exactly looking for and the link between variables.
Comment: so this is essentially linear regression?
Answer: You can use any of the numerical methods that is for linear equation systems.
Some of them are;

Gauss-Jordan Elimination
Jacobi Method
Gauss-Seidel
Successive Over Relaxation(SOR)

For more info, you can look at this
Comment: I'm sorry, but this is bad advice. If the linear system does not have an exact solution, trying to compute it (no matter how) will necessarily blow up in your face.


Get mapping Workitems when migrating with TFS Integration Plateform

Question: When migrating workitems from a project to another using TFS Integration Plateform, is there a way to get the mapping between the workitem id in the old project and the new id in the new project ?
Perhaps in a table of the 'TFS_Integration_Plateform' database for exemple... but where? I can't find documentation on the database!
If it's in the database, could you give me the table to look for?
My ultimate goal will be to have a plain text file ( a csv for exemple) with for each line having the old and new id. But if I have the table where to look for (or a sql query), I have all I need...
Answer: I think I have found what I'm looking for :
I should query RUNTIME_MIGRATION_ITEMS table.


How can I improve air quality in my car?

Question: Cars tend to have low air quality due to driving in an environment of exhaust and other fumes, dust, etc. Is there anything that will help with this?
Answer: Many modern vehicles have a cabin air filter in the heating/ac system that can be replaced.  These are often out of the way, so many people don't even realize that they have them.  You can also scent this filter, or add a dryer sheet for scent.
Comment: That would definitely help with dust. Probably not as much for fumes, unless the air filter had activated charcoal in it (and was changed very often).
Comment: Absolutely. I replaced the cabin air filter in a Subaru. The fans now flow air much stronger and the AC is much more effective. I now do this with every car I buy. Scenting the filter is an interesting idea.
Comment: Charcoal filters are available as an option for at least some vehicles.
Answer: A few good tricks that use to deal with odors in a vehicle.
For cloth seats and carpeting: Spray bottle with vinegar and spray until seats and carpeting are  moist. Then allow vehicle to sit in full sunlight. When dry everything will smell nice.
Floor mats: Use a power washer with water and one cup of vinegar.
The reason this works is because vinegar is a powerful anti-bacterial and disinfectant which most odor causing don't develop resistance to because of its acidity. Most life lives in a relatively narrow pH range. Of course there are exception to this rule (some deep deep underwater life ...OMG)
Comment: Watch out for cyanobacteria! I use cider vinegar on my hair sometimes - removes oils and softens it. I suppose that white vinegar *would* completely evaporate and dissipate in strong sunlight, which is also mildly antibacterial and breaks up odor causing molecules. All we need now is a thunderstorm for some ions... : )
Answer: Have you considered changing your air filter over to a different filter? It sounds like the air isn't being filtered in your vehicle very well.
Vinegar sprays also work well with window residue - but avoid lemon!
Answer: Yes. An inexpensive ionizer that plugs in to the lighter socket will:

remove fumes and dust from the air
provide ions which increase alertness

Should only cost as much as dinner out and could save your life. After a year or so the metal surfaces that emit ions might get corroded and so can be scraped with the edge of a sharp knife to make them sharp and shiny again. These devices are widely available.
Similar devices can be used at home to remove cooking smells, pet odors, and make the air feel fresher. (These must be cleaned occasionally.)
Comment: provide ions? what does that mean? isnt that what those power bracelets "do"?


How to search files in a specific folder and all its subfolders on Google Drive?

Question: The reason I need to do this search is the need to remove sharing access for all files located in the specific directory (let's say "OLD" folder). I added folders with files there in a daily basis. I tried to remove access from the top: from the "OLD" folder, but it only removes access from the folder itself, not from the stuff in it. I can of course star the files which I move to the folder "OLD" and then to remove sharing access I can just search for is:starred, select all results and then remove access, but it is kind of inconvenient, as, e.g. I may sometimes forget to star the files before moving them to "OLD". I would prefer the easy way, even some link to bookmark, because I do that kind of access removal regularly (let's say weekly). If I can't find a way to do it, then I will go ahead to learn and write some Google Script to do that.
Answer: The question was asked over in the Google product forums.
There are some solutions but there is no formal way in the Google Drive web interface.
Answer: Install Google File Stream. It'll put virtual copies of all your Drive files on your computer.
Then you can use your computer's search features to narrow searches to the folders you want to look in.
Mac & PC versions here


Why do we pronounce the letter "A" as the "eɪ" in Stake, and as "æ" in Cabbage?

Question: I wondered about the difference between those vowels. Is there a rule that decides what articulation fits the syllabe in each word and what is that rule. I tried phonogical analysis on those vowels in english to find out in which environmt does any of them fittingly come? Are they just another realisation of the same vowles, meaning, are they just allophones that can be used interchangeably or is any of them the phoneme? I will be very thankful of you help me for I m very confused between them.
Comment: "Five" doesn't contain a letter A.
Comment: Do you understand the difference between "letter" and "sound"; is your question "why do letters and sounds in English match so poorly"?
Comment: It has more to do with the word's etymology than anything else.
Answer: In Old and Middle English, the two sounds commonly written with 'a' were much more similar, being short and long versions of the same vowel: to a considerable degree they alternated depending on whether they were in an open or closed syllable.
During the Great vowel shift, the long vowels in most dialects of English went waltzing round the mouth to end up somewhere quite different, while the short vowels stayed more or less where they started.
So in a word like cane (where until Middle English the 'e' was pronounced as a separate syllable, so the 'a' was in an open syllable and pronounced long) the vowel became a diphthong /ɛɪ/; but can didn't make that journey, and the vowel stayed at /a/ (as it still is in Yorkshire) and in many places subsequently made the shorter journey to /æ/.
Comment: "Went waltzing around the mouth" – I like it!
Comment: @Colin Yes, [Wiktionary](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cane#Middle_English) says /ˈkaːn(ə)/ in Middle English. (I just realized I used  instead of  by accident)
Comment: "Cane" would have been pronounced /ca:nə/ before the GVS, right?
Comment: Something like that, @wjandrea. I was a bit naughty using that example, because it was a borrowing from Old French into Middle English, not an Old English word. But the phonetics work AFAIK.


How does Ethereum avoid mining pool centralization?

Question: As a proof-of-work (PoW) based blockchain, how does Ethereum combat mining pool centralization, which can lead to an entity controlling the majority of hashing power?
Answer: There are two primary ways that the existing PoW based consensus algorithm combats mining centralisation.
The first is by reducing losses due to orphaned blocks, which independent miners are more likely to experience.
This portion of the Ethereum mining algorithm, a technique referred to as GHOST, includes the headers only of recently orphaned blocks in return for a reduced reward to both the block producer and the includer of the (otherwise orphaned) block.  These included orphans from "grandparent" or earlier blocks are frequently referred to as "uncle" blocks because the gender neutral term "ommer" isn't widely known or understood.
The second way that the Ethereum PoW consensus algorithm combats mining centralisation is by its use of a Proof of Work function that is ASIC resistant.  By preventing mining from becoming dominated by specially designed and produced hardware, independent miners are kept competitive or even given an advantage in terms of their profits and/or levels of hardware investment, because they can make use of readily available commodity hardware (i.e. consumer graphics cards).
Comment: What about situations like we saw earlier in the life of Ethereum where large groups of people were pool mining because it was "easier" or "more familiar" to pool mine rather than solo mine? At the time, I believe there were 2 pools with at least 30% or more of the network hashing power each.
Comment: Well, that's one of the reasons I chose the phrasing "combats" instead of "solves".  Human psychology as well as other centralising forces still exist!  These two techniques merely help to reduce the incentive for them.


How can I give an ethereal appearance to a photo?

Question: Using only photoshop filters, how can I give a paradisiac appearance to a photo? The type of photos to edit are mainly portraits of women, but the technique must also be applicable to landscape photography.
Comment: Do you have an example image?
Comment: I asked a somewhat similar question about landscape "beach" photos. Some of it may apply to what you are asking. Check it out here: http://photo.stackexchange.com/q/26014/4892
Answer: The classic "soft focus" effect can give photos a dreamy, paradisiac look. Though there are many ways to achieve the effect, here is one variety:
Open your image in photoshop. This image (taken at Pulau Dayang, Malaysia) is slightly underexposed and will need some lightening up too.

Begin with duplicating your background layer by hitting Cmd ⌘+J on your mac or CTRL+J on your PC. You will end up with a total of two layers, like this:

With this new layer 1 selected, go to the filters menu and apply a gaussian blur with a rather high value. The exact value depends on the file dimensions. The bigger the photo, the bigger the value. When previewing the blur effect, try to imitate this look: (lots of blur but still some viewable detail):

Lower the opacity of Layer 1 to something around 60%. Detail from the layer underneath will start to appear:

It now starts to look more dreamy. We needed to lighten this photo due to its underexposed quality. Hence, change the blending mode of Layer 1 to "Screen". Your image might be too bright and needs darkening, then experiment with other blending modes like "Multiply" or simply Normal which works nicely too. Here is the "Screen" blending mode in action:

The image now looks something like this:

You could now change the opacity again to adjust for your desired brightness and/or dream effect.
(optional step): Hit free transform with Cmd ⌘+T on mac or CTRL+T on PC and enlarge Layer 1 ever so slightly. Experiment with the amount:

A good beach photo will have nice and vibrant colors. Add a Vibrance adjustment layer to the Background layer and boost the colors a fair bit.

Here is the end result after applying vibrance and a bit of saturation:

Please post your results, it would be great to see how it worked out for you!
Good luck!
Comment: Why do you resize the foto? To get an adition blur from interpolation?
Comment: Resizing displaces the background from the sharp layer in front, adding some additional feelings to the shot.
Answer: You could:

Cover your lens partially with a very fine net (you can pick any color that suits you). Working in conjunction with a shallow depth of field you can get that dreamy look. You can also use thing like a twig or flower.
Smear your lens/filter with some oily substance - I don't recommend this since you will have to clean up.

Here's an example I did with for number 1, picked it up during Emily Soto's workshop in KL. In example one I did not cover the whole of the lens with an object.
Comment: oooh, I love the first tip you gave here. I have seen that effect everywhere online, and wondered how it was done technically. Thanks for sharing this!
Comment: yep pretty neat effect actually. Swap around the colors for different look and move the object around so that it kind of frames your subject.
Comment: you say "very fine net"... would a normal white cheese cloth do?
Comment: mmm I think I'm a bit vague on the word 'fine'. Can be a bit bigger if you like. Try the cheese cloth, see how it works.
Comment: @HenrikSöderlund try looking at this DIY [project](http://www.petapixel.com/2012/11/27/turn-an-ordinary-sink-filter-into-a-soft-focus-lens-filter/) :D
Answer: Here are some elements you can use to achieve this feeling:

Make it bright. In our popular mental conception of heaven, light is everywhere. Chase away the shadows, and use a high key — not those high contrast images which look like bad attempts at digital line drawing, but push the exposure up into the higher registers, making even the darkest tones in the mid-range.
Keep it cool. Red, orange, and brown are called "earth tones" for a reason. For a heavenly effect, look to sky colors: cyan, blue, violet. If you must use the warmer part of the spectrum, use pastel versions of pink and yellow and light green. (This is probably a familiar concept, but if not, more on cool vs. warm here.)
Keep it soft. Use soft focus, but also use soft elements in your image. Silk, clouds, fog, skin. Avoid hard, sharp lines and anything industrial. The ethereal world is the realm of ghosts; make elements in your composition translucent. (If you want to do soft focus digitally, be aware that it's more than just a simple blur.)
Be surreal. Like dreams, the higher planes don't follow our rules of geometry or logic. Don't overwhelm your image — or your subject — but consider reflections, odd angles, flare, distortions, and inexplicable light sources. If you can introduce obviously  symbolic elements (in whatever cultural language you prefer), you can increase the feeling that your image is beyond the mundane, even (maybe especially) if the viewer doesn't have an immediate key to their meaning.

Some of this can be done "only with photoshop filters", but you'll have best results if you start with source material that matches up. If not, you may want to consider very strong post-processing, using heavy blur and veiling effects to add mystery.


How can I wirelessly connect the NXT and an iOS device?

Question: I've seen videos around YouTube (like this one for a car) that show an ability to control a Mindstorms set via iOS (either iPhone or iPod Touch).  I am just getting started with Mindstorms, but find this type of possibility very intriguing. How can I set this up? Should I use Bluetooth or something else?
Answer: As stated in the description of that video, the big issue is that the iPhone won't pair with uncertified devices:

The car is built with standard Lego Mindstorms NXT components. Since iPhone SDK does NOT allow using non certified devices (which are limited to other iPhones and some headsets etc.) I have used BTStack library.

I guess this is why there's an official app for Android, but not iPhone.
Note that the app itself is only available on Cydia, which I believe requires a JailBroken iPhone to run:

LegoDrive is available on Cydia. Just install using Cydia on your iPhone/iPod, enter your Lego NXT's device ID and you can use LegoDrive too!
LegoDrive (formerly presented as iCar) demonstrates how to control a Lego Mindstorms NXT robot using (rotating and tilting) iPhone over Bluetooth.

Edit to add (08-Jan-2013)
The recently announced Mindstorms EV3 includes the statement that:

LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3 will also include full iOS and Android compatibility out of the box.

While the new "EV3 Intelligent Brick" features:

New Linux-based firmware, a USB port and SD expansion slot [which] offer nearly unlimited programming and expansion capabilities
Comment: Simply go onto your Ipod/Iphone/IPad and search up Cydia in the app store. Now in Cydia search up LegoDrive currently today 7/31/2013 it is the the 3rd item on the list.
Answer: It's possible to control a NXT with the iPhone/Smartphone although this method requires either another iPhone, Smartphone, Laptop or PC with access to the internet.

The full programming and building instructions for the 'iPhoneRobot' can be found on BattleBricks. The source code for the server application and the NXT program is also available.
It's a clever way of controlling your NXT without jailbreaking your device, but it isn't a perfect solution. I'd like to try it out myself, but I find installing the server app to be too technical and the community that produced the instruction don't appear to be active any more.
Answer: Something like this app may come in handy:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/inxt-remote/id317399938?mt=8
Note that for this app you must have a computer on the same network and have a bluetooth device on that computer. It's a bit of a workaround - You may want to search for some other apps that can use built-in bluetooth.
Comment: Please provide some information about the app in the answer, such as its name and a brief description, not just an iTunes link.
Comment: 3 reviews on this app in store. All of them say don't buy, doesn't work. Doesn't sound like a good solution. Not going to test it myself.
Answer: If you are looking for some info on sending commands over bluetooth, you might want to check out the link below:
http://www.robotappstore.com/Knowledge-Base/Programming-LEGO-NXT-Mindstorms/92.html
It's a pretty good introduction into sending direct commands to the NXT over bluetooth.  That's what all the videos are doing that you see.  What's convenient about this method is that it doesn't limit you to only using one particular type of software to communicate - where if you use the correct commands any type of software or programming language can be used.
Best,
Ryan


Stability of Nitromethane

Question: Why is nitromethane not especially reactive? $\ce{NO2}$ is stable by itself, so why does it stay attached to $\ce{CH3}$?
Comment: A $\sigma$ bond.
Comment: 1) There's stable and there's stable. 2) 'But chloride is stable by itself, why should methyl chloride also be stable?' (Meaning: one is irrelevant for the other.)
Comment: @Jan  makes sense, but what bond exists between the two molecules?
Comment: Related: http://chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/34169/if-both-nitric-acid-and-nitrate-ion-are-stabilised-through-resonance-what-makes
Answer: It depends on what kind of reactivity you mean. Nitromethane is indeed flammable and is used as a racing fuel. It can also detonate, especially when mixed with an oxidizer. But it is generally quite stable to atmospheric oxygen at room temperature, perhaps because the nitro group is electron-withdrawing and reduces the likelihood that the hydrogens on the methyl group will react with oxygen or other oxidizers.
In other ways nitromethane is indeed reactive: for example, the nitro group makes the hydrogens on the methyl group acidic, so it reacts with an aqueous base like sodium hydroxide to give the nitromethide anion, which is useful in organic synthesis.
Consider the splitting of nitromethane into methyl radical and nitrogen dioxide. It has a normal sigma bond between carbon and nitrogen, and to break that bond you have to put a lot of energy in. You are right that NO2 is indeed stable on its own, but it is still a reactive, high energy species. Methyl radical is even more reactive, and the energetics of this bond-breaking reaction are overall unfavorable, at least at lower temperatures. Higher temperatures, such as might occur when sparking a detonation, may give the kind of splitting you are talking about, plus a lot of other reactions as well.

Stability of Nitromethane


How to put facebook like button in and customize it with different colors wordpress

Question: I'm just wondering is it possible to customize the facebook like button with different colors other than the usual? I would also want to know how to properly implement the code without using a javascript? thanks!
Answer: The facebook like button is an image so you would need to actually edit the image to what you want. If you are using a generic link to "like" then you could alter that link with CSS.
Answer: Facebook like button is implemented through IFRAME on different domain. I guess it's safe to say that you cannot change it. You can only select from the two options facebook has provided. The light and dark color.
for your concern about how to implement facebook like button, here's a comprehensive how to guide.
:)


How do exchange sites know all user deposit transactions?

Question: If they use transaction/wallet listener, how do they detect deposit transactions when their services are not running, do they fetch blocks at every height to scan for deposits to avoid any missing?
Thanks,
Comment: Any exchange that isn't running their own nodes in order to watch transactions is just a robbery waiting to happen. If you're handling large amount of BTC/whatever else, you should hopefully understand the massive danger inherent in trusting a 3rd party to provide information to you.
Comment: If they run a full node or an SPV node, how do they avoid missing any deposit transaction, I'd like to know how it works to implement a similar solution.
Answer: They're running full-node implementation.

how do they detect deposit transactions when their services are not
  running?

It's blockchain, all data available for anyone, they able to fetch data from blockchain anytime.

do they fetch blocks at every height to scan for deposits to avoid any
  missing?

There is a couple ways to get address deposits:

You can check the balance of particular address every N seconds.
You can parse a block and check if there are transactions related to particular address.
Answer: There are several ways to accomplish this. First as chytrik stated above, not running your own node is dangerous, but in my opinion only if you plan on submitting transactions. When it comes to watching wallets, there are 2 ways.

Active scanning. This method involves asking nodes/services what transactions exist for a particular address.
Passive triggering. This is usually accomplished by asking a third party to inform you that a deposit has been detected.

In the case of 1, it can be costly to scan every address ever used especially when creating a new address for each transaction or scaling to a large user or wallet count.
In the case of 2, relying only on a third party can be tricky.
The most cost effective way to handle this is to do both. Use a third party for primary notifications. If you expect a transaction during a window of say 10 minutes, you can have your system process the request once the third party triggers, and you can perform a "manual check" from the node directly by asking for all transactions and parsing the results looking for the expected transaction. This will give you the fastest response and the lowest delay. You could even only make the node request once at the end of 10 minutes as a fall back "final check" before invalidating the transaction (common with bitcoin payment services).
If you're doing something longer term, then you can once again rely on a third party to trigger an immediate update. As a fall back scan once an hour/day/week depending on what the use case is. If it's an end user application allow them to trigger the scan (of course within reason so you don't get DoS'd by your own clients clicking 'rescan').
This is the entire "trust but verify". No third party will have your keys. If you're an exchange you'll likely be scanning, but for a better user experience depending on the size of your customer base, scanning millions of wallets every 5 seconds just isn't feasible. You can also use multiple third parties as well. For an exchange these services won't be that expensive.
If intent on being the third party in these examples, then parse every block that arrives from the blockchain. Do what you need to do when you detect a deposit on one of your addresses.
Note: I formed this as a "large scale" response to the concept of exchanges. There are other things that can be done at small scale eg: a personal wallet and setting a node to watch an address.
Comment: That's fair enough. It depends on how responsive you want it. If you can/will plan to be offline for long periods, then it won't matter if you have to submit 10,000 requests to the node. An exchange really doesn't plan on being "down" for a few days.  People also won't tolerate waiting for their deposit to be delayed that long. My overall point is, thousands of wallets, if you want to scan every 5 seconds for updates to all of them, that may be a problem. At some combination of qty and frequency you will overwhelm the node. Suggesting you keep scalability in mind when designing your solution.
Comment: Sure thing! Since again, the context is "exchanges" and you're talking SPV now, this is a good read: https://medium.com/@jonaldfyookball/why-every-bitcoin-user-should-understand-spv-security-520d1d45e0b9 -- Be aware that this article is from the standpoint of a single user. Not an exchange. Also be aware of any limitations on the number of addresses your SPV may be able to handle.
Comment: I have a few thousand addresses, using a third party service to notify for received transactions to those addresses may not be possible because if my server is shut down for a few days, rescanning all the addresses may be costly (time and fee) or reach the third party's limit.

Seem like parsing blocks (from my own node or a third party) is the easier way to archive this.
Comment: I think I found the solution, I add all the addresses to a wallet of an SPV application. The SPV app will be responsible for monitoring my addresses, updating received transactions no matter how long my server is down, thanks a lot for your help.


How the teaching of Islam explains why some people suffer and go to Hell etc?

Question: Recently I read something like "If God is All Loving and God definitely has the power why doesn't he simply make everything good and stop all this suffering". Also I am pretty sure that I heard that "God doesn't want to send people to hell so why doesn't he send everyone to heaven instead of punishing". As Muslims we shouldn't mess with what God tells us to do and God knows what we know not but for a Non Muslim stuff like this can be the decision between religion and not and statements like these often make someone disbelieve in God. (If there is any) What are the Islamic teachings on why people suffer and why doesn't God send everyone to heaven and why doesn't God make everyone Muslim and good so they can be rewarded? What is a suitable answer that we can use if a Non Muslim says this?
Comment: this question seems to be too broad to me if you need to know the answer you need to understand first why humans have been created, why Jannat and Jahannum were created etc. For ibadah there were already Allah has created the angels and all are simply good. Allah has made everything good and in perfect shape, the suffering you are talking is simply because of us.
Comment: Yes I know but non Muslims can say that why didn't God just create us perfect and without any Hell or suffering so what do we reply?
Answer: Why people suffer is directly addressed in the Qur'an: it's part of being tested prior to the afterlife.

And We will surely test you with something of fear and hunger and a loss of wealth and lives and fruits, but give good tidings to the patient, Who, when disaster strikes them, say, "Indeed we belong to Allah, and indeed to Him we will return." Those are the ones upon whom are blessings from their Lord and mercy. And it is those who are the [rightly] guided.
Qur'an 2:155-157

(See also Qur'an 2:214, 29:2, 67:2, and 76:2, and probably other verses I haven't listed.)
Suffering is also sometimes brought on by sin, and this is mentioned in the Qur'an, e.g.:

And whatever strikes you of disaster - it is for what your hands have earned; but He pardons much.
Qur'an 42:30

(See also Qur'an 30:41.)
Why mankind was created is explained directly in the Qur'an:

And I did not create the jinn and mankind except to worship Me.
Qur'an 51:56

Unlike humans and jinn, angels cannot choose to disobey Allah (Qur'an 66:6, 21:27, and 21:20).  So indeed Allah created a being incapable of evil.  However, this implies that angels don't have free will, or at least have their freedom limited (Are angels free-willed, perfectly ethical beings?).
The question Why is there hell? has been asked before: Is there clear answer to the Problem of Hell? and Why did Allah create hell?, and the short answer is "punishment and justice".


Windows Server - share files without access for administrator

Question: We have a MS Windows Server 2008 R8 based server that is administrated by our IT department. We would like to achieve two things simultaneously:

A folder on the server, containing several thousand files (new files added frequently) that is accessible to some ActiveDirectory users (e.g. board of directors) but is not accessible by IT department employees
IT department employees still maintain rights to administrate the server, including installing new software and services

We already checked some solutions:

Using NTFS access rights. Unfortunately IT (members of "Administrators" group) can set themselves as new owners of the files and change the permissions so that they gain access to the files.
Enabling EFS. Unfortunately even if you do not allow IT to access files, they still can disable EFS completely because they have administrative rights. Moreover as far as I know you have to manually add permissions for all users but the owner for each new file - very inconvenient.
Creating a new role for the IT department that has all the privileges apart from taking ownership of files. Unfortunately if you're not a member of the Administrators group, you cannot install new software, no matter what privileges you add to the role.
TrueCrypt - nice free encryption software, but with poor sharing capabilities. You can either mount an encryption container on the server (and then IT has access to its contents) or you mount them locally but only one user can mount it for writing.
AxCrypt - free encryption software that enables file-by-file encryption on the server. There are some disadvantages though - you have to manually encrypt each new file added. The files have their extensions changes. You can only set one password for all files (so all users have to know this one password).

Any other ideas? Our budget is limited so enterprise-class software from Symantec or PGP would probably be not an option.
Answer: It's not possible to give the IT employees full access whilst keeping the folder inaccessible to them. Therefore you need to give them a limitation in some way. Because they have physical access to the server this needs to be through means of encryption -- it may be inconvenient, but there are only two ways to stop access to data which someone has physical access to -- encryption or physical limitation.
I can't think of another way around this.
Comment: Thanks for the tip. What kind of encryption solution would you recommend?
Comment: I personally use TrueCrypt, but you're right, it's not very flexible in a networking environment, I don't think any encryption solution will be due to the very nature of it. The better way of doing it may be EFS or BitLocker, I've seen EFS deployed on some networks before, but I'm not sure of the ins and outs of it.


the symmetric group $S_{2^{r−1}}$

Question: Is there any routine technique to find a set of permutations which generate a Sylow 2-subgroup of the symmetric group $S_{2^{r−1}}$?
Answer: The Sylow $2$-subgroup of $S_n$, where $n$ is a power of $2$, is the automorphism group of a perfect binary tree with $n$ leaves. So, by induction, you can generate the Sylow $2$-subgroup by generators of $S_{n/2}$, plus anything which swaps the children of the root:
$\langle (1~2), \\\ (1~3)(2~4),\\\ (1~5)(2~6)(3~7)(4~8),\\\ ..., \\\ (1~~1+n/2)(2~~2+n/2)(3~~3+n/2)...(n/2~~n) \rangle$
Answer: Yes. There is a method to find $p$-Sylow subgroups of $S_n$, by wreath product. See page 18 of the great book "Permutation groups, Dixon and Mortimer".

the symmetric group $S_{2^{r−1}}$


Guitar Cables and Semi-electric guitars

Question: I am a total beginner at guitar and I bought myself a MPM Instruments guitar second hand for 60€. I thought it was a pretty good buy since it had a cable and a stand with it and it was a semi-electric guitar. However... I tried playing Rocksmith with the no cable fix and my first cable didn't return any sound. My second try I used a quarter inch to 3.5 mm adapter and a 3.5 mm cable (I dont know if this works the same as the other way around but I thought so :p) this time Rocksmith recognized my playing but only picked up buzzing. (+999 or -999 at tuning...) By now I am really desperate since I dont want to give 30$ to the real tone cable because my guitar might be broken and I dont think I have a way of fixing / checking this... anyone have a good idea on how to fix this? Thx a lot in advance :D!
Comment: Your question doesn't really explain what you are doing - a picture would really help.
Comment: By semi-electric do you mean electro-acoustic (acoustic guitar with e.g. a piezo pickup) or semi-hollow (electric guitar with magnetic pickups and a hollow body)?
Comment: Hey guys I am talking about an electro-acoustic guitar (I guess :/) The pickup came built in with the guitar but I dont have a visible electronics panel :/ @DrMayhem I will take a picture once I am back home again :D
Comment: Guys thanks too all of you for all the answers :D Dr Mayhem I took your advice to the heart and I went to my game shop too buy a real tone cable. This works fine with my guitar and I m rocking in Rocksmith :) I guess theres nothing wrong with it after all :p I just cant cable things right yet :D I do however get constant "volume too low" complains by rocksmith.. A way too fix it??
Answer: The simple test to see if the electrics in your guitar work is to plug it into a guitar amp. Take it around to a friend's or even to a guitar shop - they should happily let you test it.
If it works through an amp, then the guitar is fine - then you need to look at why it may not work with Rocksmith. From what I know of the cabling, I'd suspect the no cable fix first.

Guitar Cables and Semi-electric guitars


Refining search results on multi-word names

Question: I have a basic people search landing page setup with the standard webparts for searching: PeopleSearchBoxEx, PeopleCoreResultsWebpart, etc.
On the page I make use of the RefineSearchResults web control to generate a list of titles and titles that can be used to narrow the search.
The template looks like this (there is a similar line for 'Department':
<SEARCHWC:RefineSearchResults ID="RefineSearchResults1" runat="server" Title="<%$Resources:sps,RefineByTitle%>" SearchProperty="JobTitle"/>

The problem is that department might be a 2+ words name, like "Center for Help". If I click that, the search box becomes <original search> jobtitle:Center for Help which gives 0 results. The issue is that the search recognizes only jobtitle:Center as a special phrase, whereas for Help is viewed as a regular search term.
I tried testing manually with + (no difference) and quoted "", but quotes get removed when I search so they do not help. My question is:
a) Is there a way to do this for multi-word names?
b) How do I implement this in the RefineSearchResults control?
Answer: You should be able to use quotes, for example
author:"bill jones"

Are you sure you used normall quotation marks?


how does a sip flood attack work?

Question: I understand that SIP is an application-level protocol that is used to setup/modify/end communication sessions for things like VOIP and instant messenger. I also understand that users can send request messages (to other users?) and get responses back (saying that the other user will open a session?). I also understand that that this protocol can be used to create a SIP flood, which is a kind of denial of service attack. Is the idea to inundate a particular server with SIP requests--much like one might inundate a server with HTTP requests in an HTTP attack?
Answer: I'd recommend reading this paper I found on google: http://www0.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/f.huici/publications/sipdos.pdf
Where you are missing is that you don't DoS the server but rather the phones. Servers in SIP are often only used to find the clients. The idea is to flood the clients themselves. As per the publication, it would only take about 180 invite messages per second to take down the phone. Some phones even did a complete reset.
Comment: so basically if you send a few hundred requests to a sip client, it will flood?
Comment: well you flood him with packets, because he cant handle so much packets (unexpected behavior) he will start choking.

how does a sip flood attack work?


Why is it important for people who believe in Trinity that Jesus is God?

Question: I've heard a lot of discussion lately about whether Jesus is God, or not. I know there are arguments for Trinity, and arguments against. But I am wondering, why is it so important for those who believe in Trinity that Jesus is also God, and not only a perfect human being?
Comment: My answer to a related question uses different words, but it shouldn't be hard to extrapolate why Christ's divinity is important as no mere man could fit the description: [How is Christ's death so significant?](http://christianity.stackexchange.com/a/2329)
Comment: What exactly do you mean to ask? Belief in the doctrine of the Trinity implies the belief that Jesus is also God, just by definition of what it means to believe in the doctrine of the Trinity right? If x+1=2, then x = 1...? Your question seems like a dupe of what @StevenDoggart linked or one of the questions you linked
Comment: See also [What is the emotional appeal of the trinity?](http://christianity.stackexchange.com/q/23629/5160)
Comment: Many Christians I know, including myself, believe it is important because we believe the Bible explicitly states such. Anyone who denies it, we believe, is not Christian. This is what's known as a "close-handed" issue. Better put, it is a deal-breaker. We believe you NEED those close-handed issues or you are not following Christianity, but something else. "open-handed" issues are matters of preference or interpretation. Examples of this are the differences between Catholics, Orthodox Christians, and Protestants. Most people agree they are all Christians, but may disagree on the "correctness"
Comment: There are a variety of reasons why trinitarians find Jesus' divinity to be important for one's salvation. You'd be hard-pressed to find a single verse that says this is a pre-requisite.
Answer: The main reason that it is important to Protestants, that Jesus is the son of God, is because that is the basic precept on which their salvation depends. If Jesus were not deity, (or God) he could not keep the promises he made concerning salvation.
All Scripture is quoted from the King James translation.
example:

John 10:15 through 18  As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father: and I lay down my life for the sheep. And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd. Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father.

In the above passage what you will find, is that Jesus has promised that he will give salvation to his sheep. Jesus used the example of a shepherd because the people were familiar with sheep herding, and he also referred to those being saved as his sheep.
But the really important part is the part about his laying down his life and being able to take it up again.
If Jesus did not have the power to take up his own life again, how would he ever have the ability to give eternal life to anyone else?

John 10:28  And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.
John 6:54  Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.

Unless Jesus were God and not just a good man all of these would be hollow promises, since salvation is of God:

Luke 3:6 And all flesh shall see the salvation of God.

The veracity of Jesus claim is found in the Old Testament. Particularly in the Book of Isaiah, which is most descriptive, and also in many other Prophets from many years before his birth, which is foretold in Isaiah chapter 7:

John 5:39  Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.
Isaiah 7:13 and 14 And he said, Hear ye now, O house of David; Is it a small thing for you to weary men, but will ye weary my God also? Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.

Finally; if Jesus were not God all who have put their trust in Jesus for their Salvation would still be lost with no hope of eternal life.

John 6:37  All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.

Mark 2:17 When Jesus heard [it], he saith unto them, They that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick: I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.
Luke 19:10 For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.
Comment: @gideonmarx, the only promise of salvation is through the forgiveness of Jesus, and his forgiveness could not have been accomplished without being a perfect, sinless sacrifice. (Heb 9, 10) No ordinary human would have been sinless. (Ro 3:23)
Comment: @gideonmarx You seem to be discounting that the fact that Jesus said he has the power to take up his life, and no man however sinless could do that. He went on to say that he had been give the command by the Father. Not the power, but the command. In order for that He has to have been with the Father before, who is in Heaven, If that were untrue Jesus would have lied and would not have been a perfect sacrifice. Tell me if I am wrong in my reasoning.
Comment: There is not a single promise of salvation that Jesus could not keep as a human. He did not have to be a deity of any kind. God could have worked through Him and through His message.
Comment: You asked "If Jesus did not have the power to take up his own life again, how would he ever have the ability to give eternal life to anyone else?" The answer is in the very next verse "My Father, **which gave them me, is greater than all**; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand." John 10:29
Comment: @anonymouswho How does the fact that that, that power was given by the father, effect his ability to dispense that to us? I am wrestling with how that effects my statement. Please let me know if it in any way alters my statement. In John 10:17 and 18 he says that God commanded him to give up his life voluntarily and take it up again. Is there some Scripture, which says that the Father also gave him that ability? If so I am unaware of it?
Comment: You said this is the main reason why Jesus must be God, but if he received this *authority*, as well as *the people* who are to receive eonian life, *from* the Father, how does this necessarily make him God? It simply means he was a man whom God gave great authority to...Yes, there is a quote from Yeshua that says God gave him the ability to give his own life, take it up again, and to do absolutely anything..."**I can of my own self do nothing**: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is just; because I seek not my own will, but the will of the Father who has sent me." John 5:30
Answer: Jesus' divinity is not strictly a protestant assertion: The Blessed Trinity (Roman Catholic).
Jesus' divinity is crucial to his message. He made such assertions, and if we are to trust anything he says, then everything he says must be true. Similarly, if we are to trust anything the Biblical authors said, we must trust all of it.
The testimony of scripture is that Jesus is God. Here are some more thorough treatments of this idea: Bible Verses Stating Jesus was God, Jesus is God, Jesus-God
The essential message of salvation is that God himself became human and paid the price for our sins. Had God just chosen some good person to die, it would not have been the same kind of personal sacrifice on God's part. Not only that, but only a perfect sacrifice would do it, and nobody but God himself could have been perfect (Ro 3:23, 1 John 1:8).
Answer: It's important for Jesus to be both fully God and fully man because without being both he could not have mediated between God and man and could not have made an acceptable sacrifice for sin.
Perhaps the clearest scriptural evidence for this is Job 9:32-33

For he [God] is not a man, as I am, that I might answer him, that we should come to trial together. There is no arbiter between us, who might lay his hand on us both.

Since God is of an entirely different nature than man, we can't simply have another man mediate for us. We can't even have another God mediate (if there were one). We need nothing short of a God-man to arbitrate or else he can't "lay his hand on us both".
Psalm 49:7-9 gives further evidence that the sacrifice of a mere man will not suffice in atoning for sin:

Truly no man can ransom another, or give to God the price of his life, for the ransom of their life is costly and can never suffice, that he should live on forever and never see the pit.

These additional passages may shed more light for you. They each show various aspects of why Jesus must have been both God and man or he could not have done what he did for us: 1 Samuel 2:25; Job 16:19-21; Hebrews 2:14–18; 7:26; 9:22.
Answer: Why is it important for people who believe in Trinity that Jesus is God?
First, because people who believed in the Trinity did not believe it through reading it into the texts of the Scriptures but rather, the Scriptures itself forcefully evinces the fact of an eternal Triad. Without the Trinity, there is no God revealing himself to mankind and this entails the importance of Jesus' deity.
Second, because if Jesus wasn't God as the Father is God, then, it means that the Trinity isn't true and this entails that God did not save mankind whereas God alone could  save.We don't even have any options because if Jesus wasn't God but only human by nature, then, it means that Jesus is sinful like the rest of us for Jesus cannot be other than our nature and hence, Jesus couldn't save.
In order to solve this dilemma, we must accept the Biblical teaching of the Trinity because it is important that Jesus is God or else, God did not provide salvific grace.
Bad News:
Mankind is unable to save themselves because all are of Adam and bears the consequence of the original sin ( Romans 5:12-21).
Good News:
The only solution for mankind's problem is to obey all of God's law without fail or else, he would end up experiencing God's wrath ( Ephesians 2:3).
But the New Testament records that the Law was given for the purpose of knowing that no one is able to save themselves but rather, if there is such salvation available, it is only by God's grace which is the case in the NT ( Romans 3:20).
There are three options to be used for saving mankind:
1) God
2) Angels
3) Humans
Option no. 1 is a "yes" because God alone can give grace of forgiveness and new life for he was the recipient of the human transgression ( Ephesians 1:6).
Option no 2 is a "no" because Angels are neither giver of grace nor affected by mankinds' condition.
Option no. 3 is a "yes" because mankind needs to pay for its sin but the problem is that mankind is unable ( Matthew 19:25-26).
Conslusion:
Only God is able to save mankind from its terrible condition because neither angels nor mankind is able.But we have another problem, God is not man and only man can pay for his sins.In order for God to forgive mankind and be reconciled to him, humans must pay the price of his sins and not God for God wasn't the one who sinned.This problem is solved in the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus.
The Incarnation
God's plan of salvation is a wise plan indeed because he sent his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh (Romans 8:3). It is wise because it works. God's salvific act is an act of perfection, coming from his substance ( 1 Corinthians 1:24, Hebrews 1:3).
The incarnation teaches the one gospel, that is, that the μονογενὴς Θεὸς took on human flesh and spirit in order to live human life under the law and to destroy the works of the devil by his death on the cross and resurrection( John 1:1,14,18, 1 Corinthians 15:3, 1 John 3:8).
Acts 20:28 said that God purchased the church with his own blood.
Even the sub-apostolic and pre-nicene fathers concur:
I have become acquainted with your name, much-beloved in God, which you have acquired by the habit of righteousness, according to the faith and love in Jesus Christ our Saviour. Being the followers of God, and stirring up yourselves by the blood of God, you have perfectly accomplished the work which was beseeming to you. (Epistle of Ignatius to the Ephesians, Chapter 1. Praise of the Ephesians Chapter 1).
So far as I know, "we are not our own, but bought with a price;" and what kind of price? The blood of God. (Tertullian, To His Wife Book 2 Chapter 3)
Answer: The doubt arises if Jesus is God and is one of the GodHead only when we fail to see Christ in the old testament.
Lots of Christians think that Trinity is only in the new testament however Trinity is mentioned in the whole Holy Bible.
One God, three persons have been all there from the 1st chapter till the last chapter of the Holy Bible.
Few Old Testament verses to support them
Gen. 1:26, Gen. 3:22, Psalm 45:6-7, Isaiah 6:8.
Another old testament verse that supports Trinity is
Isa. 48:16-17 "Come near to Me, hear this: I have not spoken in secret from the beginning; from the time that it was, I was there. And now the Lord GOD and His Spirit have sent Me."Thus says the LORD, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: "I am the LORD your God, who teaches you to profit, who leads you by the way you should go.
Lets examine this again because this theme occurs over and over
Isaiah 48:16:"From the beginning from the time that it was, I was there: (1st person) and now the Lord GOD (2nd person) and His Spirit, (3rd person) hath sent me (1st person)."
The Trinity Is Foreshadowed In Benedictions
The Trinity is also foreshadowed in the triple benediction of Numbers 6:24-27.
The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you; the LORD turn his face toward you and give you peace. So they will put my name on the Israelites, and I will bless them.
The doxology of Isaiah 6:3 also gives hint of the Trinity.
And they were calling to one another: Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory (Isaiah 6:3).
Few New Testament verses to support them
Matt. 3:16-17, 1 Cor. 12:4-6, 2 Cor. 13:14, Eph. 4:4-6, 1 Pet. 1:2, Jude 20-21
So it's not to believe if Jesus is God or not, but to accept Jesus as God.
Answer: It is important for anyone that believes the account of Jesus. He said that He is the Son of God.

For when you see Me, you are seeing the One who sent Me. John 12 : 45

He also said that He is one with the Father (God).

Philip said, "Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us." Jesus answered: "Don't you know Me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen Me has seen the Father. How can you say, 'Show us the Father'? Don't you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in Me? The words I say to you I do not speak on My own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in Me, who is doing His work. John 14 : 8 - 10

Quotes from New International Version with capitalization alterations.
Comment: This does not really address the why part
Comment: Christians are considered believers because they believe the account of Jesus, what would be the point of being a Christian otherwise?
Answer: Because John chapter 1 implies as much:

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ... 14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. ESV

From this is derived the whole concept of LOGOS:

the Word of God, or principle of divine reason and creative order, identified in the Gospel of John with the second person of the Trinity incarnate in Jesus Christ

Also, if Jesus is God then Jesus has existed since the beginning, which is the foundation for another area of belief: that the "Angel of God" or "Captain of the Lord's host" in the OT is actually Jesus. See: Genesis 16:7, Joshua 5:14, and there are many more. These passages are called Christophanies:

Of the 214 usages of the Hebrew term used for "angel" [in the OT], about one-third of them refer to what is labeled by theologians as a "Christophany," a temporary appearance of Christ in the Old Testament. It is certain, however, that this special angel of the Lord is divine, for Hagar "...gave this name to the LORD, who spoke with her [as the Angel of the LORD]: 'You are the God who sees me,' as she observed, 'I have now seen the One who sees me'" (Gen 16:13).

Source: http://www.gordonconwell.edu/resources/Jesus-in-the-Old-Testament.cfm
Another justification for these being appearances of Jesus is that while no one would have bowed down and worshipped an angel, in every one of these appearances, the people in these situations bowed down and worshipped this Angel in the same way they would have worshipped God. This speaks to the divinity of the Angel before them.
Yet another justification for these being appearances of Jesus is in Colossians 1:

15 [Jesus] is the visible image of the invisible God. He is supreme over all creation. CJB

By this we can infer that no one has seen God the Father, and in any instance where someone encountered God (especially in the OT), they were seeing Jesus.
Furthermore, in Judges 13,

17 Manoah said to the angel of the LORD, "What is your name, so that when your words come to pass, we may honor you?" 18 But the angel of the LORD said to him, "Why do you ask my name, seeing it is wonderful?" NASB

Just as we do not know the true name of God (we have the tetragrammaton but we don't know the full spelling or how it would be pronounced), we do not know the true name of this Angel of the Lord -- thus they are equally divine.
So, you can see how Jesus' divinity is the foundation for a lot of scriptural interpretation.
P.S.: from reading this you may get the impression that I am implying that Jesus and God the Father are two separate divine beings. I most certainly am not. John 1:1 clearly states the Word was God, thus they are one and the same.
Answer: In John 15:9-13, Jesus says this:

9 "As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my
  love. 10 If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as
  I have kept my Father's commands and remain in his love. 11 I have
  told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be
  complete. 12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.
  13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's
  friends.

Jesus says that the highest form of love is to lay down your life for your friends. There are of course many soldiers throughout history who have died for country or to protect family. Likewise police, firemen, fathers and mothers protecting their children, etc. All these have acted to prolong the life of the ones they love, but none could ever rescue from ultimate death. The Bible proclaims that God is love, and not just love, absolute, infinite and perfect love. If the Creator is greater than his creations who are willing to sacrifice themselves for the ones they love, then the Creator must certainly sacrifice himself. In order for Jesus' death on the cross to be the supreme sacrifice demonstrating the highest degree of love, Jesus must be God. If he was not God, then it still remains for God to offer himself, and the work of Jesus does not represent a finished work.
John 19:30 says:

30 When he had received the drink, Jesus said, "It is finished." With
  that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

If in fact the work of salvation is not finished, Jesus died in vain and his final words before he rose were a lie on which no man or woman can base their faith.
I leave you with 1 John 13-16:

13 This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given
  us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has
  sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 If anyone acknowledges
  that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. 16
  And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

God is love.


Issues with deplyoing static files command and frontend loses css and js

Question: I have a serious issue which is ongoing with running
php bin/magento setup:static-content:deploy

First, I installed Magento 2.1.3  by uploading the files and run the setup wizard, all went fine, installed my theme and created a custom theme and all went fine whilst using the command etc.
But at some point, for whatever reason, the command ends up throwing many errors. The frontend has also lost functionality too.
The errors are are as follows in the console and sytemm.log, too many related to all themes active such as blank and luma:

I have checked a few resources and followed the instructions but no luck, some followed are:
1) https://github.com/magento/magento2/issues/2273
2) Static content deploy issue
3) https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37964713/not-able-to-deploy-static-content-magento2-0
4) How to fix the problem of loading css and javascript files?
Login to ssh, go to magento directory for instance I'm
cd /var/www/html/magento

1: Removed follwoing folders via running

rm -rf var/di/*
var/generation/*
var/cache/*
var/page_cache/*
var/view_preprocessed/*
var/composer_home/cache/*

2: sudo chmod 777 var -R
3: sudo chmod 777 pub -R
4: sudo php bin/magento setup:static-content:deploy
5: Repeat step 2 & 3.

And some others I found on google but no resolution to the issue.
Please help me, as it is urgent for me to resolve this.
Thank you in advance.
Comment: I would also check ownership of files and folders, when I delete pub/static or var/cache on my server they new files created belong to apache, and are not accessible. Still trying to figure this one out.
Answer: that is wired, It is file/directory ownership related issue, faced this issue while we run the command cache:clean and it gives error when you try to deploy static content again.


Third-party security issues with Shamir's secret sharing scheme

Question: In Shamir's secret sharing scheme, we are trusting a third party who generates the secret polynomial.
How can we ensure security here when we are involving a third party?
Answer: We simply have to trust this party because this scheme requires a trusted dealer (a party that distributes the shares to the secret to the participants - this can be you or some other party - but if its you you should trust yourself).
We can use verifiable secret sharing, that allows the parties to check whether the shares they have obtained are consistent, i.e. to verify if the dealer behaves honest (but the dealer still knows the secret and thus this is only a partial reduction of trust).
If we do not want to have a trusted dealer who sets up the shares at all, we have to switch to dealer-free secret sharing schemes. See for instance, here.
Answer: No one is stopping you from running the polynomial setup yourself. Knowledge of the polynomial is equivalent to knowing the actual secret. And knowledge of the complete polynomial is required to evaluate the polynomial at any point.
But this doesn't have to be a third party; it might be the case that your particular context uses a third party for this task, but that's not stated in the basic scheme.
However, there are quite a lot of variations of secret sharing scheme, e.g. without trusted dealer, with verifiable shares or with cheating detection. If you want to use something without trusted party, the protocols exist, but I have no idea if they are actually useable in practice.
Answer: It depends on the situation. The third party can be a computer in a datacenter with armed guards at the door. Or it can be an employee who doesn't want to screw up and be fired. Or other things. Of course, none of those solutions are 100% foolproof, and it would be better to have a protocol which doesn't use a trusted third party, but if no such protocol is known, the protocol with a trusted third party is better than nothing, and may be workable in many contexts.


How to change the file size of images without losing photo quality using Photoshop?

Question: I have a set of images of up to 20mb each, and I want to reduce the file size without losing quality.
How can I do it?
Comment: By "size" do you simply mean file size? Resolution? pixel dimensions? What are you going to use the images for in the end?
Comment: What's the file format?
Comment: actually i like to maintain photo quality which is actually after reducing photo file size.
Answer: Reducing the size is possible if your 20mb images are in an uncompressed format (RAW, BMP etc.). If you need to maintain the quality, you will need to use a so-called lossless compressor such as TIFF with LZW, PNG etc. JPEG will remove information and therefor also quality.
If you mean reducing the pixel size of an image it will always remove information, hence also remove quality. So this is not possible. You can apply techniques such as sharpening convolution to make it appear as if it is the same quality, but technically it will not be.
In either case you can create a batch script in Photoshop to do this for you. There are plenty of resources and tutorials on the net for this, so I won't write a new one. But have a look at for example this one:
Photoshop-Tips:-Batch-Processing-Images
Additionally, if you need this for storage purposes (I didn't get that impression, but this can serve as a tip), look into the open-source (and free) 7-zip compressor. This can compress any file type, but will also compress none-JPEG image files a little more as well as allowing you to use encryption on the resulting archive. Ideal for transporting in the cloud.
Answer: Simply put, you can't.
Imagine you have a dumpster full of tennis balls. You want to take all those tennis balls and put them into a 50 gallon barrel. They simply won't all fit. This holds true for pixels in images. In order for the image to fit into a smaller container, you're going to have to discard some pixels (information).
Now you may be able to reduce the container size with an acceptable amount of loss. For example, if you have a 20MB image in .tiff format. You may be able to save that image as a jpg set to 12 quality and find the resulting jpg, while much smaller, appears very much the same as the tiff.
In general, saving an image as a jpg with the highest quality setting will dramatically reduce the files size. While using the jpg format will in fact throw away image data, at the highest quality setting that data is often an aceptable loss.
Just be aware you can only do this once. Never, ever, save a jpg image as a jpg again. You immediately start drastically degrading any image when you do so.
In reality there's not a whole lof of information provided in your question - current format, image uses, types of images, are you editing the images, source of the images..... The actual question mentions 'resolution' but your post only refers to 'size'.
Answer: If the images are in JPEG or PNG format, then you can use lossless image optimizers such as optipng, pngout and jpegtran.
Those tools re-compress images and spend extra CPU time to apply heavier compression. With 20MB files this could take several minutes per file though.
Try the SuperPNG plugin for Photoshop.
On Mac there's ImageOptim that combines all those tools. For Linux there's Trimage and for Windows punypng web service.
Answer: In short, you can't. What you can do though is:

trim the images that don't fit in the canvas
delete hidden elements/images
use the proper file colorspace (don't use CMYK if it's something meant to be used for the web. Use RGB instead).
merging layers should also help if you are willing to loose the ability to change one of the merged layers afterwards.

If you have images in a loss-less format (like TIFF), you could try compressing the PSD file (ZIP is ok, but BZ2 should do a better job).
Answer: There are several tools to do it, one of the best free tool is caesium image compressor, you can download it from here Free Image Compression Tool , This tool can easily convert an 5MB image to few hundred KB with out loosing much of details, and i have made detailed video on how to use this tool, check out this YouTube video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4OTU8GNhh0
Answer: https://tinypng.com/ works great by reducing unseen color data.
Comment: Hello JBizzle, welcome to GDSE! Thanks for your answer. Could you elaborate a bit more on your answer? What type of software is it (online or desktop)? Is it free? How does it work exactly? What benefit does it hold over similar tools?


What is the difference between active learning and online learning?

Question: The definitions for these two appear to be very similar, and frankly, I've been only using the term "active learning" the past couple of years. What is the actual difference between the two? Is one a subset of the other?
Answer: Active learning (AL) is a weakly supervised learning (WSL) technique where you can have both labelled and unlabelled data [1]. The main idea behind AL is that the learner (or learning algorithm) can query an "oracle" (e.g. a human) to label some unlabelled instances. AL is similar to semi-supervised learning (SSL), which is also a WSL technique, given that both deal with unlabelled and labeled data, but do that differently (i.e. SSL does not use an oracle).
Online learning are machine learning techniques that update the models as new data is collected or arrives sequentially, as opposed to batch learning (or offline learning), where you first collect a dataset of multiple instances and then you train a model once (although you can later update it when you update your dataset). Batch learning is currently the common way of training machine learning models, given that it avoids problems like the known catastrophic interference (aka catastrophic forgetting) problem, which can occur if you learn online. For example, neural networks are known to face this problem when learning online. There are incremental learning (aka lifelong learning) algorithms that attempt to address this catastrophic interference problem.
Comment: Ah, I had misunderstood what online learning was previously. If you are training on streaming data, is online learning the typical approach?
Comment: @David Yes, I would say that you need online learning if you want to learn from a stream of data. Note that you should probably look into incremental learning algorithms, which are algorithms that somehow try to avoid the problems that naive online learning algorithms can incur.
Comment: What do you think about online algorithms compared to boosting algorithms? It seems that boosting algorithms can also be used with streaming data as well.
Comment: @David To be honest, I am not familiar with boosting algorithms, though I've heard of them many times. I just didn't yet have the opportunity to learn about them. I suggest that you ask a question on the site. Maybe someone can give you a more precise answer. Try to ask a specific question.
Answer: As it is referred in the survey paper "Active Learning Literature Survey":

The key idea behind active learning is that a machine learning algorithm can
achieve greater accuracy with fewer training labels if it is allowed to choose the
data from which it learns. An active learner may pose queries, usually in the form
of unlabeled data instances to be labeled by an oracle (e.g., a human annotator).
Active learning is well-motivated in many modern machine learning problems,
where unlabeled data may be abundant or easily obtained, but labels are difficult,
time-consuming, or expensive to obtain.

Online learning uses data which become available in a sequential order. It's main goal is to update the best predictor for future data at each step.
So, online learning is a more general method of machine learning that is opposed to offline learning, or batch learning, where the whole dataset has already been generated and used for training / updating the model's parameters. Moreover, a common technique for training Machine Learning models is to first perform online learning, in order to acquire an adequate data size, and then perform offline learning on the whole dataset and finaly compare the results generated by the two learning processes.
On the other hand, active learning can be performed both with online learning[1] and offline learning, in order to reduce manual annotation effort during the annotation of training data for machine learning classifiers. That is, independently of how data have been generated and with what order, active learning should make the least queries, to an Oracle, needed for annotation of a subset of the data.


Why is the eccentricity of Triton so low?

Question: Triton is very special, since its orbit is retrograde respect Neptune, its obliquity is near 0° and its orbit is almost circular (according to Harris (1984) is $5 \times 10^{-4}$). I'm familiar with the theory that claims that Triton was several Myr ago a KBO that was captured by the gravity of Neptune, but I didn't find an actual explanation of why the orbit is almost circular. Can anybody give me some theories that actually explain the cause of this? I've heard about tidal circularization, but I don't know if that explains it at all...
Comment: I blame Ariel...
Answer: Tidal circularization is indeed a plausible mechanism for why Triton's orbital eccentricity is so low, and I believe it is in fact the prevailing theory, at the moment. In short, tidal forces from Neptune dissipate energy in Triton's interior, essentially "squeezing" the moon. This results in a loss of orbital kinetic energy. The exact calculations that lead to the decrease in eccentricity are a little complicated - and described in the paper you linked to - but in a nutshell, Triton's orbit could have circularized on a timescale of about $\sim10^7$ to $\sim10^8$ years (Ross & Schubert (1990), for instance, computed the latter order-of-magnitude timescale).
Tidal circularization is not the only possible explanation for Triton's low eccentricity. Cuk & Gladman (2005) hypothesized that there was once a debris disk around Neptune, possibly caused by the collision of two or more other satellites after gravitational interactions with Triton. Interactions with the disk then contributed to energy loss from the moon in the same way that tidal circularization might have, thus leading to a smaller eccentricity. Interestingly enough, though, this could have happened within only $\sim10^5$ years! The authors have suggested that a hybrid of the two models may be the best explanation.
Comment: But my problem with the tidal circularization is that it's pretty frequent in the Solar System, yet the eccentricity of Triton is special. Maybe the debris disk theory in adding to the tidal circularization makes more sense (at least for me), because I've heard that the accretion disk tends to damp the eccentricities significantly in the model of planet-planet scattering, for example (Raymond(2009)).


How do I implement a Merkle Tree?

Question: I`m slowly implementing some Bitcoin protocols, and I'm not sure how to properly understand the Merkle Tree from the Bitcoin wiki:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Protocol_specification#Merkle_Trees
I have strings a, b, c, I double-hash them and I get the three leaf nodes. But I'm not sure what to do with the higher nodes. Do I double hash the sum of the resulting bytes (treating them like big numbers), or do I concatenate (treating them like strings), or perhaps do I should something else?
Answer: In each iteration, you concatenate two subsequent hashes of the previous level, and double-sha256 them. If there is an odd number of hashes, concatenate the last element with itself.
This gives you a new list of hashes. Repeat, and stop when one hash remains. This is the merkle root.
Assume you have tx hashes Ha1,Ha2,Ha3,Ha4,Ha5,Ha6,Ha7

First iteration: Hb1=Hash(Ha1|Ha2), Hb2=Hash(Ha3|Ha4), Hb3=Hash(Ha5|Ha6), Hb4=Hash(Ha7|Ha7)
Second iteration: Hc1=Hash(Hb1|Hb2), Hc2=Hash(Hb3|Hb4)
Third iteration: Hd1=Hash(Hc1|Hc2) => Merkle root
Answer: You hash the hashes. See the bottom of https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Dump_format#CBlock for an image.
Answer: Bitcoin Core's merkle root calculation function can be found here. Here's the simplified version:
<code>// Input: individual transaction hashes (a.k.a. leafs)
uint256 ComputeMerkleRoot(std::vector<uint256> hashes) {
    while (hashes.size() > 1) {
        // If there's an odd number of hashes
        if (hashes.size() & 1) {
            // Copy it to the end of the hashes array
            hashes.push_back(hashes.back());
        }
        // Compute double SHA256s of (hashes.size() / 2) blocks
        // Save the output to hashes
        SHA256D64(hashes[0].begin(), hashes[0].begin(), hashes.size() / 2);
        // Save the output to hashes
        hashes.resize(hashes.size() / 2);
    }
    // If there were no original hashes, return 0
    if (hashes.size() == 0) return uint256();
    return hashes[0];
}
</code>

How do I implement a Merkle Tree?


How many pages of music an average pianist should play during 4 years of conservatory studies?

Question: How many pages of music an average pianist should play for exams during all the 4 years of conservatory studies? What is a standard finals repertoire? Heard that Chopin and Liszt etudes are the gold standard for teaching pros in piano.
Comment: If you want to get the most out of your time, the number of pages of music you play *for exams* should be a tiny fraction (maybe 1%) of the total number of pages you *play*. It's probably the best chance you will get in your whole career to sight read your way through the *whole* of the standard 19th/early 20th century concert repertoire, if there is a half-decent music library. Not to mention playing chamber music, accompanying singers, etc, etc...
Answer: Don't think about the quantity but the quality
10 pieces studied fast are the worst think.
Try to be concentrated (careful to all the particular on the score) on one, two pieces for the time you need. If you learn how to study any piece following all the particular written. You can be sure that a day you will be more faster and perfectionist in any new pieces.
NEVER forget to train your sight-reading.
Busoni sad:

Bach is the base to play the piano. Liszt is the summit. Both make Beethoven possible.

Don't listen to anybody, but yourself. You have to find your way, YOUR repertoire.
Not all the people can play everything. We are not all the Argerich.
We HAVE to find our repertoire, where we can play and teach in the best way.
Rules for practicing the pianoforte
Busoni in a letter:

Rules for practicing the pianoforte

Practise the passage with the most difficult fingering; when you have mastered that, play it with the easiest.
If a passage offers some particular technical difficulty, go through all similar passages you can remember in other pieces in this
way you will bring system into the kind of playing in question.
Always join technical practice with the study of the interpretation; the difficulty, often, does not lie in the notes but
in the dynamic shading prescribed.
Never be carried away by temperament, for that dissipates strength, and where it occurs there will always be a blemish, like a dirty spot
which can never be washed out of a material.
Don't set your mind on overcoming the difficulties in pieces which have been unsuccessful because you have previously practised them
badly; it is generally a useless task. But if meanwhile you have quite
changed your way of playing, then begin the study of the old piece
from the beginning as if you did not know it.
Study everything as if there were nothing more difficult; try to interpret studies for the young from the standpoint of the virtuoso.
You will be astonished to find how difficult it is to play a Czerny,
or Cramer, or even a Clementi.
Bach is the foundation of piano playing. Liszt the summit. The two make Beethoven possible.
Take it for granted from the beginning, that everything is possible on the piano, even where it seems impossible to you or really is so.
Attend to your technical apparatus so that you are prepared and armed for every possible event; then when you study a new piece, you
can turn all your power on to the intellectual content; you will not
be held up by the technical problems.
Never play carelessly, even when there is nobody listening, or the occasion seems unimportant.
Never leave a passage which has been unsuccessful, without repeating it; if you cannot do it in the presence of others then do it
subsequently.
If possible allow no day to pass without touching your piano. [...] What do you think of these "maxims for Practice"? They are
formed from my own experience.


How does one say "It's all Greek to me" in Esperanto?

Question: The idiom "It's all Greek to me" means that something is not understandable. Different languages have different variants of this. How would I express this in Esperanto?
Answer: From here (but I've also heard it explained from people somewhere, maybe Evildea, if I'm not mistaken):

Ĝi estas por mi volapukaĵo.

Which comes from the other constructed language Volapuk which is regarded as "too hard" and therefore this meaning in Esperanto.
Comment: I'm not convinced "Volapukaĵo" means Volapukaĵo because the language is "too hard". I think it is more related to the strangeness of the words.
Comment: I think @Vanege is right, it's more about how different it is (same as Greek is different to English) but it is the right answer.
Comment: You are probably both right. Still, why would a language be considered "hard" if not because it is very different (in whatever aspect) from the native language of the learner?
Comment: @LyubomirVasilev A language may be hard because it is contrived or complex. For example, French may be hard to learn for a native Portugese even though the vocabulary of French and Portugese are very similar, because it has many irregular verbs and its conjugation system has many different cases.
Answer: "Ĝi estas por mi volapukaĵo."
Is a great way of expressing this.
"It's all Greek to me." means that something is not understandable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_to_me
Historically, Esperanto and Volapük have an intertwined history, Volapük was the first international language with a somewhat big following.
Volapük has logical grammar but the words are changed from their English and German roots in a haphazard way that actually make them not understandable. World -> "vol", "speak" -> "pük", "Diplom" -> "plom", "Problem" -> "blem", "Kompliment" -> "plim". (as written in Die Zamenhofstraße by Roman Dobrzynski, p. 178)
What does "löfob oli, o lanan obik mean?
The language isn't meant to be readily deciphered by someone unfamiliar with it. In contrast to Esperanto: "mi amas vin, mia anĝelo" is easy to understand because of the cognates in the words. Volapük is based on (roughly) the same languages that Esperanto is based on.
It could be easy and understandable but it isn't!
Volapük is all Greek to me.
Comment: the picture link broke... :-/


Quick edit will not appear in some views but will inside others

Question: I have created a list with different views and each view is a standard view style. I set up a link to the view and edit the web part properties to show the tool bar. Now before I selected show tool bar the page was able to be quick edited but after I made the change it will no longer allow me to quick edit it.
I wanted to make note that the list is not grouped, style is set to default, tubular > allow individual item checkboxes has been checked off, there are no rich text fields.
Why can I see a list view under the toolbars New, Action and Settings but not in the other image.

I also see there are page view options on some views but not others and some of the options in the web part properties disappear! I do not know how to fix this issue. you can see the difference in views via the images attached.

No one view which has quick edit enabled was set up with a tool bar with out my intervention.
the second view with quick edit disabled had a different format and I only added the show tool bar there.
Once I did this the quick edit option is not enabled anymore.
Why is are the view options available here on the one above but not in the one below and why are there items to be selected in the image above.

I also set up my quick launch links to point to the view as seen above.
Thank you in advance for your assistance.
Answer: You apparently have to have Tablular View turned on for a view in order for Quick Edit to work.
Answer: This is not the problem with Webpart rather this is the problem with the View.
Change the view settings -> Style -> Default
Comment: The view style is Default and still Quick Edit will not become available


What are some (bioinformatic) methods to characterize potentially novel gene transcripts?

Question: I am working with a few novel transcripts of genes- before I confirm their existence experimentally, I would like to perform some bioinformatic analysis. I have already considered coding potential, protein domain prediction, transcription factor binding sites, sequence homology, and RNA secondary structure (still a little unsure how to use this one). These transcripts were discovered using RNA-Seq. Are there any other elements of genes/confirmed transcripts that I should look for in the sequence of my transcripts and corresponding softwares? (I can find the software myself if necessary, but I have run out of characteristics to search for). I would like to characterize these transcripts structurally and functionally as completely as possible, including potential protein function, mRNA degradation, etc - some new features for what to look into would be appreciated.
Comment: The current version of your question is unclear. The RNA-Seq reads you are analyzing clearly exist (otherwise there would be nothing to analyze) yet your question makes it sound like the transcript does not exist. If the transcript does not exist then what is your alternative hypothesis? Where could the reads come from?
Comment: Thanks for your response! Let me clarify: these transcripts are created by alternative splicing, and are unique in that they contain retained introns. Their expression levels are quite low, and I have been told that there is significant likelihood that they are merely artifacts ( I am not too familiar with rna-seq to understand where this may arise) -"novel" transcripts with intron retention apparently do not often hold up to experimental validation. I want to gain evidence that they exist in silico before I move on to qpcr.
Comment: Furthermore, I would like to characterize these transcripts as much as possible - gain insight into whether they would just be noncoding transcripts or be of some interest- I attempted to look into what types of protein domains may arise, whether the transcript retained introns have coding potential, and new tfbs. Essentially I want to gain as much insight into the structure and potential function of this transcript as possible, using only the sequence. I am merely a student, so please ask for further clarification! *I edited to question to match my responses here.
Comment: @mdperry- As an example, I am currently looking into potential miRNA binding site introduced to the transcript through intron retention - I am open to investigation of any interesting features that these transcripts may bring!
Comment: You might want to check the genomic sequences and how the transcript is spliced so that RNA-seq data could be confirmed. You may also find alternative splicing isoforms. You could check poly A signals in the genomic sequence.
Comment: How was the library prepared? Poly-A or Ribo-minus? First of all you should validate the novel transcripts. Sometimes you may end up with false positives.
Comment: @WYSIWYG The library was prepared Poly-A. I am currently awaiting the necessary primers for validation (about a week), and in the mean time I wanted to characterize the transcripts as fully as possible (predict function, structure, etc) and was looking for more ideas on how to do so. I have read a number of papers performing in silico analysis and have done many of their methods and was looking for a few more.
Answer: It sounds like you have considered most of the obvious alternatives (and thank you for clarifying the question).  I suppose the first question in an alternatively spliced transcript with a retained intron is whether the open reading frame of the protein is maintained.  If there is a termination codon that now becomes in-frame due to the intron then the protein would ordinarily be truncated.  The mRNA could also get targeted for degradation due to the nonsense-mediated decay pathway (i.e., from introducing an early stop-codon).
If the alternatively-spliced transcript lacks any significant ORFs, or if there is an ORF but no suitable translation initiation codon then you have entered the realm of non-coding RNAs, of which there are two loose categories, microRNAs (there are several classes) or long non-coding RNAs.  most miRNAs have recognizable sequence motifs, may be contained in mir-Base, and may be complementary (in part) to a regulatory target elsewhere in the genome. lncRNAs are less well-defined. Perhaps the best criteria are transcripts that are stable enough to be detected, but lack noticeable protein coding features.  I don't even think there is a consensus on the minimum length of a transcript to be considered an lncRNA.
What sort of databases have you searched? For example the ancient dbEST contains all kinds of short cDNA reads from all over the planet, dating back to 1992 (or so).  Evolutionary conservation of exons and splice-sites, or reading frames can all be used to support the hypothesis that a transcribed region has a biological function.
For a really deep fishing expedition you can use tblastn, etc. to take a potential translated ORF and search all 6 conceptually translated reading frames of all the sequences in a database--it takes longer, and there can be many spurious matches that you have to search through, but if you are studying something that has never been annotated it might be worth considering.
RE: folding RNA (secondary structure) every sequence can be folded into some kind of structure (try it and see), but structurally conserved compact loops typically fall into one of a small class of selected families (like GNRY). Stems are easy to find, but if the single-stranded loop is huge, how likely is that structure to fold up in real time?
RE: TFBS not clear to me at all what you mean by this. Transcription factors bind dsDNA not ssRNA. There are families of protein domains that bind RNA but not typically with such sequence-specificity.  So unless this alternatively spliced transcript is being transcribed from some type of alternative promoter, I am not sure where you would even be looking for TFBS.  It's true that some large introns can indeed contain regulatory regions for the gene as a whole (cf. immunoglobulin heavy chain enhancer is conveniently stored in an intron), but it is not clear to me if that would have an affect when transcribed into RNA.
I do like your idea that a retained intron could now contain a binding site for a regulatory miRNA, but if I understand the theory this would lead to the transcript being degraded--so it would be more difficult to detect.
Comment: Thanks! Again, I believe I have not shared all necessary information; in some of the transcripts, the alternative spicing generates an alternative 5' UTR, in which I am searching for TFBS (these alternate 5' UTR's appear to be retained introns). The miRNA idea comes from that these transcripts are actually differentially expressed in the disease phenotype I am analyzing, so I was looking into  introduced miRNA binding sites as a potential reason. The ORF analysis is interesting-I had not considered the meaning behind a lack of orfs within the retained intron. Thanks for your time!
Answer: Some suggestions.
For identifying function do a homology search. There is little functional annotation of lncRNAs. So homology based information can be obtained only for protein sequences. So you can try these:

Check the coding potential. Find ORFs (perhaps set a minimum length cutoff). To be stringent you can also check for Kozak consensus sequences (for eukaryotes) in these novel transcripts. This program apparently includes the Kozak rule in start codon prediction.
Translate the RNA and run psi-BLAST. Psi-BLAST is better than normal BLASTp in identifying distant homologs.
You can obtain the GO (functional annotation) data for these homologs and relate them to your novel transcript.
For lncRNAs, you can find if they overlap with any other known transcript. Many lncRNAs seem to have overlapping loci with their target genes (both sense/antisense).
Search for RNA motifs. This article reports an extensive study towards identification of different RNA motifs (RBP binding sites) in humans and Drosophila. Other interesting motifs include quadruplex forming motifs and ARE.
If you have the genome sequence then you can map your transcripts to the genome and identify the introns. Actually your RNAseq assembly, if reference guided, would produce a GTF file. You can extract introns using the GTF. You may check for potential miRNAs in these introns, based on stem loop predictions. However it is better to have a small-RNAseq data for predicting miRNAs reliably.
As you had already considered, you can check for miRNA binding sites. For this purpose miRanda is the best for novel transcripts (TargetScan is a pain). You can use RNAhybrid too and take a consensus of miRanda and RNAhybrid results.
You can do other kinds of analysis based on just the sequence of the transcripts. These include checking for codon usage (for potential protein coding RNAs), GC richness (comparison with the known transcripts) etc.