What is the essence of sin?

Question: There are bound to be lots of questions like "Is X or Y a sin?". However, what is sin at its root and where in the Bible do we get our understanding of it?
Answer: Luther has famously argues that every time you break any other commandment, you always break the first commandment; in other words, behind every sin is the desire to worship a god other the God. Whether it is pride, in which we consider ourself to be God, or a sin of fear-of-man, in which we consider another person to be God, all sin is, at its core, idolatry.
When you see the essential problem as a worship issue, over against a breaking-of-commandments issue, I think several things are clarified.

Worship and idolatry addresses both the positive and negative sides. That is, when we do what is right, we are worshipping God (and conversely), and when we are not worshipping God, we are not doing what is right (and conversely).
Much of the Bible talks about idolatry, and seems a bit foreign and obsolete to modern ears. After all, we do not deal with Baal or Molech on a daily basis. However, when considering this as an example of our basic relationship with God, these passages become much more relavant. God is repeatedly enraged by his people worshipping idols and intermixing with other gods. Though we do not by and large bow down to physical idols made by hands, we do worship at the gods of money, power, etc.
The idolatry issues allows for a distinction between things that are good and created by God against things that ultimate for us. God gives us food, but we can be gluttons. God gives us sex but we find all ways to abuse it. Seeing sin as essentially idolatry allows us to have good things be God-centered, and not find abuse to be the only use we can comprehend.
Comment: I think that you missed what luther was saying. The first commandment is to Love God with everything that you are. Jesus said that all of the law and all of the prophets were based off of this and the second commandment. He also said that to love is to fulfill the commandments. Luther was repeating this by saying that when you sin, you go against the law of love and you break the first commandment. This is because God equates your love to your obedience. Has nothing to do with idols.
Comment: @JonathonByrd, how do you reconcile that statement with the fact he mentions idols 11 times in his commentary on the first commandment: http://www.bookofconcord.org/lc-3-tencommandments.php
Comment: I guess that I missed what luther was saying, lol. Trust God and not something else.
Answer: Simply put, sin (lowercase s) is the act of disobeying God.
A bit more complexly put, Sin (capital S) is kind of like a disorder that Adam and Eve got from disobeying God and that we all inherited.  This disorder (AKA our cursed flesh) contributes to our sinning, that is, committing sin, the act of disobeying God.

Requested Biblical references for original Sin:

Genesis 8:21
21 The LORD smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: "Never
  again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though every
  inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. And never again
  will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.
Psalms 51:5
5 Surely I was sinful at birth,     sinful from the time my mother
  conceived me.
Romans 3:10-12
10 As it is written:
"There is no one righteous, not even one;   11 there is no one who
  understands;     there is no one who seeks God.  12 All have turned
  away,     they have together become worthless;  there is no one who
  does good,     not even one."
Romans 5:12
12 Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death
  through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all
  sinned

(All emphasis mine)
As to how this happened,  I don't know how better to describe it other than "we inherited it".
Comment: This is a great redemptive-historical way of describing Sin. Can you expand on how the first Sin became the basis for all sin?
Comment: @Ray I have added Biblical references.  Does this answer your question?
Comment: So there is nothing inherently evil in any sin other doing what we were told not to?
Comment: @hippietrail It's a moot point because the 10 commandments cover all possible sin.  Therefore, everyone was told not to do any sin because Romans says that God wrote the law on mans heart (your conscience).
Comment: So man's conscience doesn't weigh up whether an act is good or bad but only decides whether it would result in disobedience?
Comment: @hippietrail There is no difference.  All bad acts are disobeying God and all good acts are not.
Answer: To quote the Westminster Shorter Catechism (Q 14, "What is sin?"):

Sin is any want of conformity unto, or transgression of, the law of God.

And the references given (Leviticus 5:17, James 4:17, 1 John 3:4):

And if a soul sin, and commit any of these things which are forbidden to be done by the commandments of the LORD; though he wist it not, yet is he guilty, and shall bear his iniquity.
Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.
Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law: for sin is the transgression of the law.
Answer: I believe that Wesley best defined sin as "A willful transgression of a known law of God." Romans 5:13 says, "... before the law was given, sin was in the world. But sin is not taken into account when there is no law." Romans 7:7 says, "What shall we say, then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! Indeed I would not have known what sin was except through the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, "Do not covet.""
Therefore, I would have to agree with Wesley's conclusion that sin is doing something of which you know God doesn't approve.
Answer: The law was given so that we might know what sin was.

1 John 3:4 (NIV) Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is
  lawlessness.
Romans 5:13 (NIV) To be sure, sin was in the world before the law was given,
  but sin is not charged against anyone's account where there is no law.
1 John 5:17 (NIV) All wrongdoing is sin, and there is sin that does not lead
  to death.

And here's why there is no such thing as a good atheist.

Romans 14:23 (NIV) But whoever has doubts is condemned if they eat, because
  their eating is not from faith; and everything that does not come from
  faith is sin.

Because everything not of faith is sin.
Here's an opposing view of sin in order that you may further understand what it is.

Proverbs 16:6 (NIV) Through love and faithfulness sin is atoned for; through
  the fear of the LORD evil is avoided.

Love counters sin.

1 Peter 4:8 (NIV) Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers
  over a multitude of sins.

Wickedness is the Sin that Jesus demands we repent of. We are the first of all of God's creation to bear a new kind of fruit and that fruit is love. Any tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.
Answer: There are different concepts of "sin" to be considered.  For instance, Christians hold to the doctrine of a sinful nature--meaning all humans are sinful from birth, by virtue of the fact that they are human.
However, it seems your question is more along the lines of what actions (including thoughts) are sin.
I think a concise definition in this context would be "Acting against the will of God."  Although to my knowledge, such a concise definition is not found in scripture.  If you look at the various scriptures that define sinful acts, though, you can come up with this concise definition:

Deliberate act against the law of God -- 1 John 3:4
Mental consent to temptation -- Romans 7:7-8, Matthew 5:27-28, James 1:14, Proverbs 24:9
Unbelief -- Romans 14:23, John 3:18, John 16:8-9
Negligence or Failure to do good -- James 4:17, James 2:14, Matthew 23:23, Matthew 25:43-46
Doing wrong out of ignorance -- Leviticus 5:17-19, Luke 12:48, 1 Timothy 1:13
Answer: At its most basic essence, sin is simply unbelief. The actions that we normally associate with sin (see Galatians 5:19-21) are only products of unbelief (the opposite of faith).

Romans 14:22-23 (KJV) Hast thou faith? have it to thyself before
  God. Happy is he that condemneth not himself in that thing which he
  alloweth. And he that doubteth is damned if he eat, because he eateth
  not of faith: for whatsoever is not of faith is sin.
Answer: The essence of sin is a rejection of God. We broke off our relationship with him.
God is the center of everything. He deserves all glory and honour as our creator and sustainer (Rev 4:11). He has the authority to say what we should do. Yet we think we know better and disobey his Word thinking we can be like him (Gen 3:5-6), we ignore him and pretend he doesn't exist (Rom 1:19), we prostitute ourselves with other gods (Ex 32, Mat 6:24).
This is why the gospel is primarily about being reconciled with God. It's not about getting into heaven, or finding meaning in life by finding God, or learning how to love one another. With these, there is still the problem of our broken relationship with God. Christ's death was to bring us forgiveness from God; redemption so we're no longer slaves to sin, but adopted to be his treasured children (Eph 1:1-14).
Answer: One of the best descriptions of sin that I have heard is, "Any disturbance of the shalom God intended for us." The problem with regarding sin as simple rule breaking is that keeping all the rules does not lead to the Kingdom of God.
Consider the Rich Young Ruler (Mark 10:17-27) for example. He asserts that he has kept the law since his youth and Jesus does not contradict him on this point. Instead, Jesus tells the man to go and sell everything he has and give to the poor. In other words Jesus is saying, "see there's not peace in this world, there are people in need. Stop hanging onto your stuff and help people." Or, as James puts it, "If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn't do it, it is sin for them." (James 4:17)
Thus, sin is not just rule breaking, it is not being in line with what God is doing to advance his kingdom. This way of thinking about things brings so much freedom. We are freed from always worrying about making a misstep into sin and instead can focus on seeking to imitate Christ and listen to what God is doing in our world.
Here's one source for this kind of definition: http://robbellcom.tumblr.com/post/80913487032/what-is-the-bible-part-59-sin
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Answer: This is a good question with no direct answer in the Bible. But we get a good glimpse of it's "essence" in the following scripture:
Let no one say when he is tempted, "I am tempted by God"; for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death.
James 1:13-15
I think we see here that there is a definite process that begins before sin is committed and then after sin is committed. The above answers do really well to highlight those things, and so I will emphasize a couple of things
-Sin starts with pride - one's "own desires" that are not shared with God.
-Sin is born, presumably when they are committed, but after that, they can develop into something worse. Jesus might be alluding to this in John 5:14 when he says, "Go and sin no more lest a worse thing befall you."
-Sin does not come from God. It is apart from Him, distinct from Him, and what ever nature or essence it has is not shared with God
Answer: Selfishness.
The essence of sin is selfishness. Let me explain.
The first of the Ten Commandments tells us not to have other gods beside God 1. God is God, and man is man. There's a huge difference. God deserves all the glory (Job 38-40); man deserves nothing but death (Romans 6:23). God will not give his glory away, either 2.
What originally tempted humans to choose sin was the promise to be like God 3. This is selfishness; instead of giving glory to God, wanting to be as glorious as God is.
Like Adam and Eve, we often want glory for ourselves instead of giving it to God, who deserves it 4. This is selfishness, and it is sin.
Now, here's an important passage:

Matthew 22:37-40 (ESV)
37 And he said to him,  "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40  On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets."

Here, Jesus tells us what the essence of the Law and the Prophets is. It is to love God and other people. The neglect of loving others is selfishness; the neglect of Law is sin.
What, then, is the ultimate selfishness? It's being so self-righteous that we don't even confess that we need help 5. That's also the ultimate sin; refusing salvation.

Exodus 20:2-3 (ESV)
2  "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
3  "You shall have no other gods before me.

Isaiah 48:11 (ESV)
  For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it,
     for how should my name be profaned?
      My glory I will not give to another.

Genesis 3:4-5 (ESV)
4  But the serpent said to the woman, "You will not surely die. 5 For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

John 7:18 (ESV)
  The one who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory; but the one who seeks the glory of him who sent him is true, and in him there is no falsehood.

Mark 2:17 (ESV)
  And when Jesus heard it, he said to them, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners."
Answer: Sin is trangressing the law, which is summarized by love thy neighbour as thyself.
8 Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law.
9 For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
Romans 13:8-9
See also Matthew 22:37-40; 1 John 3
Answer: The essence of Sin is to act contrary to to Love. It has been said above but it can not be said enough. The Savior said it best here:

Matthew 22:37-40 (ESV)
  37 And he said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets."

If you have perfect Love for your fellow man you will have no desire to sin, and will keep all the commandments perfectly.  We best Love and serve God by keeping his commandments which are to Love and serve others.

John 14:15
  15 If ye love me, keep my commandments.
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What is the essence of sin?


Attack on key exchange with authentication

Question: Suppose the honest parties - Alice and Bob - exchange public key in person/via telephone so that attacker can only eavesdrop on the line. Alice has hashed the public key using a collision resistance hash function $H$ before telling it to Bob. Bob will encrypt a random $k$ using $key = H(pk)$ and read it ($E_{H(pk)}(k)$) off to Alice for the authenticated scheme. Later on they both communicate through the internet where the attacker can act as a Man-in-the-Middle attacker. Is this scheme secure? As far as I can see, the attacker can't do anything since he can't either obtain $pk$ (as they use a CRH function) or key $k$(attacker doesn't have secret key from Alice)
Comment: "read it off to Alice", where "it" is ... $\;$
Comment: Is "it" the random k or H(pk) or pk or the ciphertext resulting from encrypting the random k with H(pk)? $\hspace{.23 in}$
Comment: "it" = Enc(H(pk), k) where k is a random key
Answer: No, this scheme isn't secure.
As far as I understand your description you are using the hashed public key of Alice as the symmetric key to a cipher, but as you already just send this hash over the line, the attacker can simply decrypt $k$ himself and thereby $k$ isn't established as a pre-shared key. By the way, there's no way to recover $pk$ from $H(pk)$ and thereby you can't public key encrypt $k$ here.
This can however be fixed in one of two ways: a) you don't hash the public key at all and just let Alice send Bob her public key, which he will subsequently use to asymmetrically encrypt $k$ so only Alice can read it. Or b) you just stay with the hash of the public key (and maybe drop the $k$ which doesn't serve any purpose if the channel is guaranteed to be integrity protecting) and let Alice send her public key over the internet in clear. Bob can verify the public key using the trusted hash of it and if the hash of the received public keys match, he can then use this to encrypt a session key.


Are coral cays and coral atolls just volcanic islands?

Question: Are coral cays and coral atolls just a different type of volcanic island? When I hear: "volcanic island" I think at places like Moorea or Hawaii, but ultimately, coral cays and coral atolls lay their foundation on the residuals of a volcano, right?
Answer: No, they are not necessarily volcanic.
Both of these terms, along with many others like fringing reef and barrier reef, are just morphologic — to do with shape. They tend not to imply anything genetic — to do with origin. (The separation of description and interpretation is an important principle in observational sciences like geoscience.)

Cay   A low island, often of sand or coral. See Wiktionary.
Atoll   A ring-shaped coral reef. See Oxford English Dictionary.

The name Cay is sometimes applied more generally to an island or group of islands. In some cases, as in Cay Sal Bank, Bahamas, the feature is actually an atoll: a ring-shaped reef. Cay Sal Bank is one of the largest atolls in the world, and did not form on a volcano.
Charles Darwin hypothesized in his monograph The structure and distribution of coral reefs that atolls form when a fringing reef around a volcanic islands grows as the volcano subsides:

Indeed, Darwin turned out to be correct that atolls often have a volcanic origin, but Cay Sal Bank is a counter-example. I think it's fair to say that most people would assume that origin though, and lots of Internet definitions , so it's notable if an atoll formed some other way, e.g. on a non-volcanic seamount (see Keating et al., 1987, in Seamounts, Islands, and Atolls, AGU), or by island subsidence due to dissolution.
Comment: That has to be some weird character encoding bug for km$^2$ I think. (Note that it's not the area of Cay Sal Bank, but of the entire archipelago.)
Comment: just a query about something in your reference for the Cal Sal Bank. It states "an area of approximately 122,000 kmÇ ". Do you know what the unit kmÇ stands for? This is the first time I've seen it. The C has a cedilla under it.
Comment: @Fred this is the original text : http://www.livingoceansfoundation.org/assets/2013/08/KSLOF_Cay_Sal_Bank_Assessments_final.pdf p. 3 - it is a font encoding problem on the web article which is not present on the original pdf


Why are Technic holes slightly smaller than studs?

Question: We know that Lego studs almost never should be placed into Technic holes because studs are slightly larger and will stress the hole.  However, why is there this discrepancy?  Surely when Lego created Technic they would have considered this possibility.  Is there simply not enough room for the hole to be slightly larger?  And if Technic holes were never meant to accommodate studs, why didn't Lego make the discrepancy larger to more naturally discourage such a mating?
Answer: I'm going to guess that when axles were first introduced Expert Builder was not a thing and the hole size was based on making a convenient path through the 4x2 brick that was the only thing with holes in it. Those holes do not work with studs, they are too large. Even the "new" 1x2 bricks with hole type 1 and 2 didn't accept studs (and the gap/slot at the top prevented it). That allows axle slop, but with the huge parts at that time this was not a problem, in fact it meant low-precision models worked just fine.
In 1970 there was the "Gear Supplementary Set" and "Gear Set with Motor" that had the first mention I can find of axles and gears.

Note that the set is labelled "Universal Building Set" and TLG appear to agree that "Expert Builder" appeared after that in 1977. In 1976 when the 695 "race car" was released it used second variant red axle stops and 1x2 brick with hole type 2 but wasn't Expert Builder.
The 1x2 brick with hole makes it clear that putting a stud in the hole was not possible (this may be the reason for the slot?)

AFAIK those bricks and axles are compatible with current Technic (they work IME but the dimensions might have changed a tiny amount and I wouldn't know)
Then we can look at TLG's current view of their history and see this from "The beginning" of Technic

In the early 1970s, Jan Ryaa was one of the very first LEGO designers to play with the idea of building cars, using large square LEGO Mobil bricks in yellow, red and blue with white cross-axles and cogwheels. These were used for showroom models and were not planned as production models, nor intended for sale.

I suspect he was using the production axles and bricks, but trying to make more mechanically accurate/challenging models and found the giant gears and 4x2 bricks a bit useless.
Brickset's history of Expert Builder makes it clear that by the time that theme was launched the "modern" Technic brick was in production. All four models used those bricks, and the hole were as compatible with studs as they are today.
Again, I can't find an official statement from TLG on this, but I will guess that since Expert Builder used existing axles they just ran with that size, only tightening up the hole a little to make their tiny-toothed gears work properly.
Answer: EDIT: Answer's wrong, but I'm keeping it here because I don't like to hide from mistakes.
The articles you listed don't say that studs are too large to fit properly in the Technic hole; they say that the hole is in a slightly different position. This causes an alignment issue on the tops and bottoms of the bricks, which leads to stress if bricks are attached across both studs on top. As for why LEGO chose this design, the second article you mentioned answers this: "The Center point was moved up in order to accommodate the additional plastic needed around the Technic hole so that a stud can still fit in the bottom of the brick."
EDIT2: I have a theory, actually. The slightly smaller holes might be a compromise, to allow for Technic bricks to fit a stud on the bottom of the brick without pushing the top too far up.
Comment: I'm asking about the hole size, not the position. You didn't read enough into the Lego presentation. Slide 12 says: "Technic holes are slightly smaller than those of System.  You can connect a single stud into a Technic hole and a child can still take them apart. Any more than that and the resistance becomes too great and there is the potential for elements (and children) being stressed." The accepted answer from my first link also mentions the size discrepancy.


Inserting a view in node edit form

Question: In a node edit form i want to display an editable view, so an author can not only edit the node itself but also can alter some values of other nodes represented by the view, which is editable via the editable views module. How can i alter the node edit form in order to display that view?
Answer: It took me a while to find out how to do it in Drupal 8, and since this post is one of the first google hits I'll add the solution here:
function MODULE_form_node_NODETYPE_alter(&$form, FormStateInterface $form_state, $form_id) {
    ...
    $form['my_embedded_view'] = [
        '#type' => 'view',
        '#name' => 'my_view_name',
        '#display_id' => 'block_1',
        '#arguments' => [
            'arg1' => $arg_1,
            'arg2' => $arg_2,
        ],
        '#weight' => 30,
    ] ;
...
}

I used a block display for the view, I don't know if it's relevant.
Comment: Well, that doesn't work either: I was trying to accomplish exactly the same thing as Madam Adam, namely, to be able to edit the node and related entities brought in by the view, using the module [views_entity_form_field](https://www.drupal.org/project/views_entity_form_field). But the latter takes over the submit from the node edit page, so that the node cannot be modified. I made a few attempts to correct this problem, then I had to revert to the use of a custom page.
Comment: You can not use a default or main view. It has be something (embed, block, page, etc) in order for this to work.
Answer: The EmbeddedViewField module is able to render a view, regardless of whether the user is editing or displaying the entity (node) that has the EmbeddedViewField. Here is a quote about that module (from its project page):

... will allow you to render a view as any other field.
It is based on keithm's ViewField module, except that it will always render the view, regardless of whether the user is editing or displaying the entity that has the EmbeddedViewField. The view used for displaying is controlled by the default value set for the view.
This is useful in situations where you don't want end users to control the content being displayed by the view, but you still want a flexible way to insert content (views with text, images, media etc.) along with the rest of the fields in the form.
Context, Panels and Blocks could be used to place views and edit forms in the same page, but not to embed views between specific fields.
Answer: There are a few ways you can do this - if you are using Drupal 7 - take a look at this module: https://drupal.org/project/token_embed_views
Another less desireable way would be to use your PHP filter and the views_embed_view function
https://api.drupal.org/api/views/views.module/function/views_embed_view/7
If you are looking to actually load this view in the edit side, you could possibly do a "hook_form_alter" to allow you to put your own content in the form...
Comment: My problem is not displaying a view, but displaying a view **in node edit form only**. Displaying a view is pretty easy with display suite and views content panes, but it's not possible to show this pane in edit form only.
Comment: Glad you found the answer looks like we both were on the same page - not sure if my views_embed_view helped any our if you were already familiar
Answer: I solved the problem showing the view in the node edit form only by writing a tiny module containing this code:
<?php

/*
 * Implementation of hook_form_alter()
 */

function mymodulname_form_alter(&$form, &$form_state, $form_id){
     // target a single form only
  if($form_id == "mynodeform_node_form"){
      $form['html_markup'] = array(
        '#markup' =>views_embed_view('machinenameofmyview','default'),
        '#weight' => 1
        );
  }
}

Inserting a view in node edit form


Pimcore header snippet

Question: I'm trying to make header snippet on every page by adding this code to layout:
$s = Document_Snippet::getByPath('/snippets/');

if (is_object($s) && is_object($s->elements['header']))
{
echo $s->elements['header']->frontend();
}

In admin panel I created folder "snippets", added snippet "header" and added type "Header" to this snippet, created controller and view.
I want to display this snippet on every page but pimcore don't gets snippet object of "header". If I put this code: echo $this->snippet("header"); it works but I need to drag&drop header snippet every time when creating new page.
In admin panel for snippet element "header" path is "/snippets/" key is "header", ID is "4".
How to solve my problem?
Answer: Oops, I tried to make it wrong way.
The right way is: <?= $this->inc("/snippets/header") ?>

Pimcore header snippet


Why didn't they keep the brakes on when revving the Delorean to 88mph?

Question: In the first movie, they had the Delorean rev up with the emergency brake turned on and the speedometer revved up close to the magical 88mph. What I'm wondering is why they didn't just have the car do a brakestand to 88mph instead of trying to drive the Delorean to the same speed?
Comment: My guess is that it's related to the velocity of the car, rather than the speed. I always thought that the speed of 88mph had to be accompanied by a direction (Velocity is a Speed and a Direction), that's why Marty always had to drive the Delorean in a straight line.
Comment: Yes it was not just an odometer reading they wanted, the actual object of the car had to be moving at 88mph.
Comment: Related question on [scifi.se]: http://scifi.stackexchange.com/q/50913/23386.
Comment: @sanpaco Relative to what? ^_^
Comment: Huh? If it was just a matter of making the dial read "88" they could have just flicked a switch instead.
Answer: The car had to reach a velocity of 88 miles per hour. It had nothing to do with the speedometer hitting 88 miles per hour.
In the animated series episode Gone Fishin` Jules Brown (one of Doc Brown's sons) places a spare flux capacitor in a barrel. When the barrel falls over the waterfall and reaches 88 mph, the flux capacitor activities and moves Jules Brown through time (and space) before crashing at the bottom.
Comment: +1, when they push the car with a steam engine in the third movie they don't care of the speedometer at all.
Comment: @sharptooth the speedometer would work even if the car was being pushed
Comment: @sharptooth They did in fact care about the speed (and thus indirectly) the speedometer in the third movie. When they tried pulling it with horses, Doc had rigged up an external speedometer for them to read while they were driving the horses, and is why he made the explosive logs, to give the steam engine the extra OOMPH! to get it up to the needed 88MPH.
Comment: When you move in space, you're moving in time too. It's a fact.


Masks, layers, solids or multi composition to solve my problem?

Question: I hope that you can first understand my problem ..then suggest me on how to do... I am doing 3D VR videos. in AE i put the 2 footage (Left and Right eye) cut/paste/edit/render etc is not a problem... the problem happen when I in some occasions need to "zoom in" which can be done by enlarging the 2 footage. problem is that when I do that one of the 2 footage overlap the other!! I tried with masks and solid but didn't work (maybe i did wrong) I feel that using different composition maybe is the right way to avoid overlapping ..but I am not so sure how to do. If I could show you some screenshot would be more easy for you to understand... Please Help me!
Answer: The answer to your question is yes. Masks, solids or multi-compositions will help.
What, you want more? Oh ok.
Thing about After Effects is that there is almost always at least two valid ways of doing anything:
To fix your problem you could use masks on each eye. Now because you're scaling the layers, and masks are attached to a layer and scale with it, that won't really work (You could scale down the mask to match the scale of the layer, but getting that right might be really tricky, so I wouldn't recommend it). So if you want to use a mask on the layer you have to pre-compose the layers, with the attributes included, so the scale keyframes are inside the new pre-comp, and then apply the mask in the original comp.

Pros: simpler timeline,
cons: the keyframes are now in two other comps, so you have to be switching between them, and copying-pasting to make any edits (you could synchronise them with expressions though).

Another method would be to make track mattes for each eye. You do this by using any layer–usually a solid–and putting it above the layer you want to mask, and then turning on alpha matte on the layer you want to mask - each eye in this case.

This works a bit like stencil/silhouette alpha mode, except that it only affects one layer. You can either resize the matte layer or use a mask to make the matte the right size.

Pros: everything is on the one timeline, easy to edit.
cons: more layers on your timeline, you have to remember to keep the track matte and footage layer together if you're changing the position of your layers.


Is it possible for research paper to have a similarity of 2 out of 100 using iThenticate?

Question: I'm involved in TPC (technical program committee) task for some international conference. In one paper I'm reviewing, I noticed that the similarity index is just 2% using iThenticate which seems impractical (for me).
Though the type/context of the paper is an essay paper, discussing current status and challenges of some phenomenon/technology/topic, there like no graphs and discussion of numerical/simulation results. I'm suspecting whether the authors  are trying to cheat somehow?
Any tips how to proceed since this is my first TPC task?
Comment: Is this also your first task? https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/122731/72855
Comment: Yes, this it is.
Answer: I don't think I've ever seen an iThenticate paper with 2% similarity. Less than 10% is rare enough.
However: so what? Low similarity isn't a problem, only high similarity is. The latter implies plagiarism, but the former ... I can't think of any way the authors can cheat by having low similarity. If it's a fake paper generated by SciGen then perhaps it would have abnormally low similarity, but you've already ruled that out since you understood the paper. It's also presumably possible to force a paper to have low similarity as well, simply by continuously rewriting the parts that iThenticate flags.
I'd assess the paper on its content and not worry about the similarity.
Comment: _"It's also presumably possible to force a paper to have low similarity as well, simply by continuously rewriting the parts that iThenticate flags."_ I think a slight concern here might be that this result hints that the authors felt the need to do that, which might hint about something fishy.
Answer: A high portion of the similarities usually come from the reference list, because most of the references in a new paper will already have appeared in the reference lists of earlier papers.
For the paper you are looking at, it may be that either the reference list is extremely short, or they only cite papers that have not been cited anywhere else yet. Both would be rather suspicious for the type of essay paper you are describing.
When reviewing this paper, have an extra close look at the selection of references. Do the authors really cover the state of the art? Do they give enough and appropriate references for the things they are discussing?


I want to use spi0 and spi1

Question: I try to use my RPi3 and the RC522 and a touchscreen display as well so i need to put my RC522 on the auxiliary SPI1 right ? How can I do it ?
Answer: Pinout.xyz visual
There's two ways to add a second SPI device to the board. You can add it to the first SPI bus and use the second chip select and access the device at /dev/spidev0.1, or you can add an device tree overlay to access the second SPI bus available on the 40-pin header. spi1-1cs, spi1-2cs, and spi1-3cs only differ in the number of chip select pins available, if you only use the two devices listed in the question spi1-1cs uses the fewest pins.
The biggest thing that comes to mind is that you can only talk to one device per bus at a time. If you use both busses you use up more pins, but managing the devices is easier. If you put both devices on one bus there's a chance you'll have to wait for one to finish a transfer before using the other. How important that is varies a lot by project depending on if you need the pins for anything else, and if you have any bandwidth or latency requirements when talking to the devices.
Answer: Here's a tutorial on how to do it:
https://pimylifeup.com/raspberry-pi-rfid-rc522/

I want to use spi0 and spi1


Configuring Windows Boot Manager w/ GRUB2 and Clonezilla

Question: One of my work tasks is to configure the computers that ship in our products with Windows OS images (Embedded and OEM) with a restore partition. I have been using Clonezilla Live with GRUB2 to implement this process. This worked fine with Windows XP/Embedded Standard 2009. This does not work with Windows 7 and I would presume anything later than Vista due to the Boot Manager changes. The current system image that I am trying to configure is as follows:
/dev/sda1, ntfs, PRIMARY, 62.5 GiB, 3.15 GiB, 59.35 GiB, no flags
/dev/sda2, ntfs, RESTORE, 4.00 GiB, 1.74 GiB, 2.26 GiB, hidden
/dev/sda3, fat32, CLONEZILLA, 4.00 GiB, 115.22 MiB, 3.89 GiB, hidden
/dev/sda4, ext4, BOOT, 1.00 GiB, 53.91 MiB, 970.09 MiB, boot
/dev/sda1 holds Windows 7 OEM (sealed), dev/sda2 holds a clonezilla based restore image (sealed)
/dev/sda MBR is GRUB2 bootloader
I can get GRUB2 to load fine and to restore the windows 7 image. However, I cannot get Windows 7 to boot and receive the 0xc0000225 error. Update: once I modified the boot sector as described below to get sda1 starting section to agree w/ the MBR, the 0xc0000225 disappeared and I started to receive the 0xc000000e error with the winload.exe file being the one it was complaining about to the user. However, this file is present and intact as far as I can tell via other utilities.
Information from Meierfrankenfeld's and Hulselmans's bootinfoscript show problems with sda1 (boot sector shows sda1 at sector 411648 verses fdisk which shows 2048) and sda3 (boot sectors shows sda3 at sector 0 and fdisk, which shows 164628480). I'm not sure what I need to modify at this point or the best tool for doing so. I'm fine with a hex editor if I could a good description of how the BCD and grub2 MBR are laid out. Update: I finally updated the boot sector to get agreement with fdisk for sda1.
Prior to sealing the machine and adding /dev/sda3 and /dev/sda4, I merged the Windows 7 boot partition onto on /dev/sda1. It rebooted and worked fine.
I have tried reading through the BCD materials that Microsoft provides and made sure that the Windows Boot Manager and Loader objects point to the correct partition (they had been using some custom=xyz syntax, which wasn't working either).
This restore worked nicely in the past as I was able to completely automate the restore process, which is a critical need for our end user. A restore disk is not an option here.
I have confirmed that the bcd is using partition=C: to refer to the device/os device/bootmgr device.
So, I have been able to confirm the MBR is present an intact, the VRB on sda1 is present and intact, the $MFT and $MFTMirr files exist at the location indicated in the VBR as confirmed by istat (not lstat) tool in sleuthkit. The winload file referenced in the above error exists at the location given to me by the fls sleuthkit utility and agrees with the filesize from other installations.
As an alternative, if you are an OEM and want to share a restore process that works well in a consumer/embedded environment, I would enjoy hearing that feedback as well. Thank you.
Answer: Sounds like there were problems adding those partitions in the middle.  What partition editor did you use?  The testdisk program as found on PartedMagic.com's LiveCD and Hiren's has recovered some messed up partition problems and dual boot problems on a few machines for me.  I would double check the assumption that "bcd is using partition=C:" means what you think it means since it depends much more on the GUID.


Node specific template with custom html header

Question: From time to time I have pages within the Drupal architecture that I don't want to use the standard page.tpl.php.tpl and html.tpl.php.  I want to create a template for specific nodes that uses a unique one for each.  It cannot have any drupal code in it.  Is this possible?
Answer: This applies to Drupal 7...
page.tpl.php
Make a copy of page.tpl.php from your active theme's directory e.g
/sites/all/themes/your_theme/page.tpl.php

If the theme does not have page.tpl.php file then make a copy of Drupal's default version at
/modules/system/page.tpl.php

Rename your copied file in your theme folder with one of the following naming convention. Use this format for a node content type (example uses a custom content type called 'news'):
page--node--news.tpl.php

Or for a specific node use the ID number (example uses node ID of 12):
page--node--12.tpl.php

html.tpl.php
The same applies for html.tpl.php For a specific content type use:
html--node--news.tpl.php

For a specific node
html--node--12.tpl.php

These will take precedence over the generic html.tpl.php or page.tpl.php if the ID or content type matches.
Answer: You should use theme_debug if you are dealing with Drupal 7.33 or newer. That will give you all the information you need in the html source code, for the active templates used in your page and - most importantly - for suggested template files that would allow you to override as you see fit.
And yes, you can have a tpl.php file without any php code in it, be it Drupal specific or not.
Good luck!
Comment: My biggest issue is using a specific html.tpl.php for a specific page.  Can this be done?
Comment: Is coding an option for you?
Comment: for sure.  Im not the greatest at creating my own, but I can certainly manipulate it.  I activated theme_debug, it works, but Im not 100% sure what I'm doing with it.  In the end I needs to create 2-3 nodes that have zero drupal code in it.  All the other pages can have the standard Drupal header code(css, js), but there pages need to be blank through and through.  If you look at source code, nothing appears.
Comment: You are talking about the source code of the served html page? You want this to be empty? Pardon the subsequent questions, I have the feeling your requirement is different that the original question.
Comment: no matter. I think your theme_debug did the trick.  I didnt quite understadn what it was doing at first.  But once I did, i was able to create the correct html header and thus create a blank page.  Now i can do this for each node i create that I want outside the normal drupal pages.  thank you very much.
Comment: Okay, happy it worked for you!


How do fully dioecious plants determine sex?

Question: I know that a minority of plants are fully dioecious, with adult plants producing either only male or only female flowers. When is this sexual differentiation determined? Is the seed of such a plant already male or female? Is it a simple genetic difference?
Answer: The short answer is that in dioecious plants the sex of an individual plant is determined by its chromosomes.
Several familiar crop plants are dioecious: asparagus, kiwi, hop, papaya, spinach and yam. The evidence indicates that dioecy has evolved independently in different plant families. I refer you to

Matsunuga & Kawano (2001) Sex determination by sex chromosomes in dioecius plants. Plant Biol 3: 481-488.

I have summarised below some of the introductory information in this review.
First some background for context: In mammals there is an XY system in which maleness is determined by an active Y chromosome i.e. the Y chromosome carries male sex determination gene(s). Males are said to be heterogametic. In Drosophila there is also an XY system, with heterogametic males, but in this case what determines sex is the ratio of X chromosomes to autosomes. This ratio exerts its effects through the Sxl gene. In this system the Y chromosome does not carry male-determining genes.
In flowering plants, in dioecious species, the usual situation is that males are heterogametic. However, there is variability in the underlying mechanism of sex determination.  So for example in hop (Humulus lupulus) there is a pair of sex chromosomes that can be distinguished by their appearance. However there is no active male determination but rather the X to autosomal ratio determines sex (as in Drosophila). Conversely, in asparagus (Asparagus officinalis), sex is determined by a pair of chromosomes designated pair 5. The two chromosomes are morphologically indistinguishable but genetic evidence indicates that there is active sex determination in this species - one member of pair 5 acts like the mammalian Y chromosome.


How does the Thruster Pack work?

Question: The rest of the Armor Abilities are really straightforward, but the Thruster Pack just appears to sputter about for a few seconds when I activate it (instead of being "a powerful burst of movement offering the ability to evade or quickly close the gap"). Am I doing something wrong?
Answer: The Thruster Pack, when activated, makes you move quickly in the direction you are holding for a second or so. It can, as described, be used to quickly get close to an opponent or to dodge attacks.
Your problem may have been that you were not holding any direction when you pressed the button to activate it. Since it wouldn't have had a direction to move you in, you wouldn't have gone anywhere.
Comment: A good place to practice is the Flood game types (as Flood).  I find it is very effectively used to by jumping an boosting forwards.  It creates an unpredictable pathing that is hard to hit.  It can also allow you to jump to higher areas in a way that's unlike previous Halo antics (grenade jumps, crouch jumps, etc).
Answer: In some gametypes, the Thruster Pack has a dramatically reduced boost. You're not doing anything wrong. EBongo brought up the flood gametype; in that the Flood team's boosters are much more powerful. There is a silver lining to using the Thruster pack in normal games though; If you activate it as an enemy is assassinating you, you break free of the assassination!
Comment: That's an awesome tip, I'll have to try that.  I think in fact the booster are not more powerful in Flood per say, but rather the movement physics of the Flood team is different (they are very fast).  The net result is that the booster is much more effective though.
Answer: I was also fairly dissapointed when I used the thruster pack in War Games and Campaign and other armor abilites are more likely to take it's place. I do have one loadout with it, a plasma pistol, and plasma grenades as an equivalent to Halo: Reach's Armor Lock - if an enemy ghost or vehicle is lining up to ram you it's possible to use the thruster pack to evade them. It requires a bit of timing i.e. at the very last second, or it would be possible for the enemy to change their course and splatter you. After it goes past I used a charged plasma pistol to disable it, and stick grenades to it before it re-activates. If you have a sticky detenator it's even more satisfying to stick the vehicle and detonate it a couple of seconds later.

How does the Thruster Pack work?


How to render lightning in Cycles

Question: How can you render a lightning bolt using Cycles?
Comment: http://www.blenderguru.com/tutorials/how-to-create-a-lightning-storm/
Comment: Granted part of this lies here http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/1875/how-to-create-an-animated-electric-arc-or-lightning so any answer need only concern rendering.
Comment: Okay thank you for the info l hope this will help me l hope  and sorry for the small details why do l need to create a lightning bolt because this week l'm busy l have lot of things to do l'll try edit my question as soon as l can and l hope the people are not mad  at me
Comment: @someonewithpc That tutorial is in Blender Render, not Cycles.
Comment: The hardest part is really not the Cycles materials, as you can make them similar to how is shown
Answer: To create your lighting start with a mesh, you will need to add thickness to it, so apply a skin modifier, enter edit mode, and use CtrlA to scale the "thickness" of you mesh until your satisfied with you lighting.
There are now to approaches, the not so great looking and very very slow  material only approach, or the materials and composting approach which will go much faster and look way better
Material Only
Approach
Lighting lights up the whole sky, since what it is in essence doing, is illuminating dust and water/mist in the atmosphere with its very intense glow. In this solution we will replicate that by using volumemetric rendering. For this we will need two materials, lightning and atmosphere
lightning materal
For the lighting, we will only need a simple two node shader:

The emission will create a very bright white mesh, and it will have a blue cast on surrounding objects.
Atmosphere material
The atmosphere will have a "haze", in order to do this, we need to give the world a volume by adding two nodes, volume scatter and volume absorption. The volume scatter will cause the light to spread inside the world, while the volume absorption will cause the light to fade, stopping our lighting for illuminating the entire atmosphere. Balancing the density of the volume scatter & volume absorption is the key too a good result. Having the volume scatter be two dense will cause the lighting to white out the sky, while having the absorption two dense will cause the lighting glow to all but disappear. The ratio between them controls the spread of the lighting glow.

Result
Rendered at 50,000 samples, taking 50 minutes

Approach Downsides
Renders will appear noisy even at sample counts as high as 50,000, and render times can take hours. it also just doesn't look that good.
Material & Compositing
Approach
Because of the incredibly time consuming render times of the previous approach, and the difficulty of fine tuning, this in many ways is the superior approach. Instead of using volume, we will try to fake the light spreading by using blue nodes in the compositor.
The lightning material will stay the same as above, but this time we won't modify the world material at all. Instead we will go into the compositor to add the glow
Scene setup
Set the lightnings material index to 1, instead of 0.

Next check the Object Index pass in the Scene properties

Node setup

I used the Object index here, since its values were  1 - 0 vs the render had values of several thousand for the whites, since the lightning was set to realistic brightness levels. I then used curves to raise the brightness to acquire more glow. I then used the glare node to blur (thanks, gandalf3 for the tip), which gives the best blur, to add the glow that occurs in the lens. Atmosphere can also be a factor, but not in this case. Finally I colorized it by raising the blue channel using the curves, as well as the green channel (to a lesser extent).
Result
Rendered at 1 samples, taking 0.9 minutes (including calculating the compsiting)

Approach Downsides
The main issue with this is that the lighting will still appear as a white line to surrounding object in the scene.. this answer details workarounds for that issue, but be aware that this may complicate the scene
Bonus: Awsome lightning gif by gandalf3 (creating using the compositing technique)

Bonus #2: I rendered the volumetric lightning at One Million Samples, taking 15 hours, 14 min, and 26.9 Seconds... and it still has some noticeable noise:
Comment: @meed96 I was going to try a million samples (just  'cause)... but I figured it might take well over a night, and I needed my computer...
Comment: Hold up, 50,000 samples? 50,000 samples? Rendering the default scene with 50,000 samples on my GPU and Blender is telling me it's gonna take an hour and a half. And yet with lightning your render only took 50 minutes?
Comment: @meed96 What system do you have? I was on a Nvidia GTX 670... could make a difference...
Comment: Well I have a GTX 750TI so I suppose that makes sense. I've just never heard of anyone rendering at 50,000 samples. It's like someone casually telling me that they rendered at a million samples.
Comment: @meed96 Also blender time est can be widely out somtimes.
Comment: A million samples would look pretty cool...
Comment: Also, for some reason I cannot tag your name in the comments.
Comment: @meed96 Yes, that is because I get pinged anyways.... kinda annoying though, not being able to ping.
Comment: @meed96, Rendered it at One Mil samples! :D
Comment: o_o This is madness.

How to render lightning in Cycles


Why is there an 'About me' panel?

Question: When I go to System -> Preferences -> About me, I am able to give all sorts of informations, like my name, my e-mail address, an avatar, et cætera.
What is it made for?
Comment: Yeah, I'd like to know the answer to this as well.
Answer: If you change your login screen to list users instead of making you type in your username, it'll show the avatar you set next to your name.  It'll also show your real name instead of your username if you set it in there.  I think this real-name-versus-username thing also affects the Me Menu (at least, it affected the equivalent applet a few releases ago...).  As ayan4m1 mentioned, you can change your password there, too.  Finally, I think some of this data is auto-filled-in in your Evolution address book if you set it here.
Answer: It seems there are several ubuntu brainstorms on this subject. About Me is a simple way to store a bunch of common personal information. It is part of GNOME. Some people no doubt use it in hopes that if their laptop is lost, someone may use the information to contact them. I believe it also allows users to change their password, which is essential if they are not an administrator and do not have access to the Users and Groups control panel item. As far as I can tell, no applications have programmatic access to the information fields in About Me.
Answer: There was a plan to simplify the About Me window so that it would only be used by the Me Menu, but I don't know what happened to it.
Answer: They put it their for an LDAP server to use.
Or that other one Active Directory used by the Bad Guys
Obviously not the window it self but the data in the file.

Why is there an 'About me' panel?


How to automatically log in a user after they've clicked the confirm registration link?

Question: I have a site that requires users to register, which is pretty standard.  On registration the user is sent an email with a registration link.  They're fully registered when they click it and they can log in, but they're not logged in when they're directed back to the site by the link.  Is there a way to automatically log in the user when the click the registration link?  If it's relevant, the log in form was made with Chronoforms.
Answer: I'm not real familiar with Chronoforms anymore, but if you can get this code in there somewhere, the user should be logged in:
<code>$credentials = Array('username' => 'MyUsername', 'password' => 'MyPassword');
JFactory::getApplication()->login($credentials);
</code>
Answer: In theory, you can develop an authorization plug-in to authenticate the user with a confirmation link, detecting the change onUserBeforeSave / onUserAfterSave.
However, you have to be very careful to avoid multiple logins based on a generic string sent by mail. Remember, there is no stored plain password in Joomla.


Is reputation important?

Question: I'm wondering how much a reputation score would make people trust an answer or not?  Does my current (167) make it more likely that you believe me or distrust me?
Answer: Reputation is how much the System Trusts you.  That is all.  There are some high rep people who regurgitate other people's answers.  It is common for me to come across an answer that has been upvoted that does not answer a question or is wrong.
It's a problem caused by voting up 'cause you like the answer vs. voting up because it is the right answer.
The issue I have is when an answer is wrong or has one line that is wrong, you can't edit it.  The only people who can edit it are people who have the wrong answers.
Comment: Good answer. I think there is a conflict between a "correct" answer and a "well explained" answer. "Me too" posts should be deleted.
Answer: I'm less likely to base my respect solely on your reputation score, but more on if I've seen you post/answer questions before, as well as your rep. It also depends on whether I know you're right or not. I had 1 rep when I posted my first answer (obviously) but it was  voted up and accepted within the same day. It's all about a) confidence, b) correctness, c) and finally reputation.
If I have absolutely no idea if your answer is correct or not, I'll judge yours based on the surrounding answers, whether I recognize you, and finally your rep.
Answer: @Brian

Reputation is how much the System Trusts you. That is all.

This is true -- we need the system to trust you, so that you guys (and gals) can run it. In a perfect world there should be almost no difference between the "moderators" and highly trusted users.
If Geoff, Jarrod, and I have to moderate, the site is a failure, because we don't scale. The community does!
(oh, and I voted Brian's response up, of course)
Comment: I think that this is the whole point and I am now careful when voting up a response to make sure it's as solid as possible. As Jeff says this is what will make SO work in the long run!
Answer: In all honesty I think the reputation system is worthless, almost as worthless as the badge system.
I'm not looking for an answer from someone who is deemed an expert by this community! As a programmer I am looking for one thing when I find a question that interests me.
THE RIGHT ANSWER!
Some people are here to get involved with the community and to build up a high reputation, and when some features are locked down by reputation (voting down) it is important to answer a few questions from time to time to become a more established member. Other than that, the majority of visitors of this website will come here to find a correct answer.
Comment: Without reputation, the system cannot see how trusted the user is. Would you give a web browser root privileges, and allow someone to surf on it? No; so don't give reputation gamers, spammers, etc a chance to mess StackOverflow up. And there are other reasons, too, of course.
Answer: Time will tell.
I'm not sure if rep, or badges might make more sense down the road. I think we've all belonged to message boards where people with tons of posts are often not the best resource at those boards.
You can already see that you can get a lot of rep for answering simple opinion questions in popular threads, and no rep for a good, detailed answer that is very useful and based on years of specialized knowledge.
Comment: I agree. There is this thing called quality that people often prefer over quantity.
Comment: True. It's all gaming for a lot of high rep people at the moment (not all!).
Answer: All I have to do to find out if your answer is good is to try it. The great thing about programming is that "trust" really has nothing to do with it. I try your solution, and it either works or it doesn't. If two people answer with competing solutions, I compare the pros and cons.
We're not dealing with politics here. It's computers. They work, or they don't.
Answer: Pretty much repeating the opinion of others here, but I base my judgement on the quality of the questions and answers of posters. I've seen some bad answers from high rep people and good answers from low rep people.
One thing I'd say, however, is that somebody with a higher rep is probably far less likely to be completely clueless as they have proven they can ask and answer questions sufficiently competently to gain the respect of the community.
Answer: These are the types of questions that will lose you rep, so yeah, I suppose so.
EDIT:  Well, maybe I was a bit too blunt, sorry.  This forum is intended for programming questions, not questions related to the forum itself.  As we are still in beta, maybe I am a bit wrong on this one (As the upvote shows).
Answer: At this point, in the beta, I have not found myself trusting people even with very high (3000+) reputation any more than someone who is new -- everyone in here is pretty knowledgeable and engaged, and we all know how the beta is being populated manually by request.
That may change, I guess, as the site is opened to the public and there are more fly-by users.
Answer: I agree SO is too new to establish much any trust and name recognition.  I imagine, over time, the badges may be a better indication of trust.
Answer: I think rep will play a role eventually.
One of the other forums/boards I used to frequent was perlmonks, they seemed to have a pretty good balance with their rating system, sure there were lots of people at the top tier that were not the best on the site, but to make it to the top tier you needed to participate frequently.
Given a community moderated rep, I think that the people that participate frequently almost have to pick up at least some knowledge, either by reading other answers, or by having their answers corrected, or accepted, etc.
So, yes, a high rep will make a difference on how I view your posts. It doesn't mean I'll blindly accept what you're saying, but someone with a high rep presenting a different point of view will probably be taken more seriously because of the rep.
Answer: I have a ton of rep, but I've posted my fair share of dumb answers.
My take on it is that rep means "This person knows stuff," however, it doesn't mean they know the particular stuff you are asking about!
Comment: I don't think it even means that as a lot of people are just posting links without explanation. If there is no explanation as to why they gave an answer, how can you trust the answer?
Answer: Reputation is not meant to measure expertise in a particular area. Reputation is an incentive for those with expertise in a particular area to share their expertise with others. To the extent that questioners and other users of the site are able to judge for themselves whether a particular answer is correct and helpful, the reputation of an expert who gives such answers will tend to increase over time.
So, given two people who have answered a similar number of questions of similar difficulty in similar topic areas, if one has, say, double the other's reputation, that will indicate his answers are correct and helpful more often than the other's. Otherwise, don't put much stock in reputation per se. If you are going to compare reputation, do it per month per question answered in the topic area.
Comment: +1 for spelling *per se* correctly
Answer: The reputation of a member is indicative of two things: quality of answers and length of membership.  If someone gives a detailed and well-written answer to a question, I'm not even going to look at their reputation.
Everyone starts with a small reputation, and it takes a while to build a higher reputation.  Still, it's not a good indicator.  You lose very few points for a down-vote compared to an up-vote; so long as someone only gets less than 8 down-votes per up-vote there is a net positive gain.  So, someone with 100,000 reputation could have 10,000 up-votes and 0 down-votes or 100,000 up-votes and 450,000 down-votes.  Still, those 100,000 up-votes are good answers and the person deserves credit for them.  Both members' reputation represents an immense contribution to stackoverflow and it would be foolish to ignore either.
So my answer is no; the only time I look at reputations is when I see two identical answers; if the time difference is a matter of 2-3 seconds I favor the person with lower reputation.
Answer: I don't think the reputation system holds much water. It doesn't tell you how good their answers are, more that they are "keen" and have given popular answers. I think it just encourages people to rush in and post answers whether they know what they are talking about or not. The problem with this is you then have to sift through the "me too" posts to find useful information.
Also, I'm noticing some people plagiarising answers from other sites without attribution.
I think voting on individual answers is good, and over time this will hopefully lead to later, better answers rising above the quick answers the initial people have given. As for reputation, the number means next to nothing.

Is reputation important?


What is my 3/8" concrete drill bit hitting in the basement wall and not penetrating when I try to mount a TV?

Question: I have a 48" flat screen TV that I'm trying to mount into a pre-assembled  then-installed permanent basement shelves.  It appears that the back wall of the shelves was glued onto the cinder blocks.  Across the top of the shelves is a support beam and air-ducts.  I took the template that comes with the TV mounting kit, after centering the TV and removing the shelving in that area, and drilled the first two upper holes and they penetrated the cinder block for the 3" needed well.  It actually drilled into airspace after about 2 1/2" in.
 The 3rd hole will not let me drill farther than 1/2 ".  Even relocating the template higher or lower by a hole size, involves losing the ability to use one of the holes.  What could be about 3" wide around neck level behind the cinder block wall and impenetrable going horizontally across the wall?  House was built in 1984 and I'm certain is cinder block throughout the basement as it is visible anywhere support walls belong and the other 3 walls and areas that meander around the shape of the basement shape are cinder block.  There is a furnace room about 10 feet to the right and a separate cinder block room about 5 feet to the left.  The other side of the wall is simply the foundation outside.  So with all that, what gives?
Josh-U
Comment: Have you considered drilling an alternative hole in the tv mount? If the instructions specify 4 bolts, it's not really that critical they be exactly where the mount says they should be...
Answer: You could be dealing with a vertical cell filled with concrete or a vertical piece of rebar. If you are not using a hammer drill, try that first and see if it starts going deeper. If not, take a loot at the hammer drill bit and see if it looks like it's dulling. If it is, you will need to try a Carbide Rebar Drill Bit.
Answer: First thing to check is that you are using a hammer-Action Drill or Impact Action Drill.
the Rotary/Immpact drill is much more powerful for drilling holes in walls (cinder/concrete/brick) but not so cool as a general all purpose drill, since they use special SDS bits which dont scale to small drill sizes very well.
once you have one of those drills, make sure its running the correct way (clockwise rotation) and at the hammer action is engaged (you will know it is when you depress the bit onto a hard surface and the drill makes a MUCH louder sound) Lastly.. check that you have inserted a masonry bit  (that's the one with the wings at the tips)
now.. i have used hammer drills which are just too weak for the wall (i.e the wall is nice and old and the bricks are super hard) - in this case, you just drill and drill, and end up with a nice red tip and completely melt the bit into a blunt bit... I would recommend getting a good hammer action drill if you can. Personally, i would stay away from battery drills if you are looking for a large diameter hole... im happy to use a chord for the extra reliability and power.


Force Social Marketing for users

Question: We offer weekly deals in our website. We would like to engage a social experience by offering bigger discounts if a user invites 3 his/her friends to the site. I wonder if there are special services which offer such functionality to integrate to your site.. We could implement it, but we prefer to safe some time and pay for such service if it exists. Thanks.
Answer: I would recommend making a referral system with PHP using a MySQL back-end. These are relatively simple to make so the cost of developing one should be fairly low. Do a Google search for a 'PHP Referral/Invite System' and see what you can find.

Force Social Marketing for users


Smart Group searching event participants not saving

Question: We use CiviCRM 4.7.8. My organization hosts a childrens' activity every year during the summer. For this I created smart groups to see which children are signed up and who of our volunteers have responded/signed up.
As we are preparing for the new event this year, I wanted to update or make new saved searches for this year's event. But when I try to update the smart group's criteria or even when I try to make a new smart group from an advanced search, the criteria get reset to just 'participant is not test' and everything else I selected is removed from the search.
The only way to get my information now is to re-do the searches by hand every time.
I tried to reproduce the issue on the demo site, but was unable to do so. The demo-site however is running 4.7.10, which is not available for download.
I've tried clearing caches to no avail.
Can anyone else using 4.7.8 confirm this issue? My search is for contacts that are listed as registered or present in the role of volunteer at a specific event.
Answer: You can try to use Search Builder to make your Smart Group as a work around for this problem
Comment: Thank you for this suggestion. It's not as intuitive as the advanced search but at least I can create smart groups again.
Answer: There has indeed been some work on smart groups fairly recently - check to see if it's fixed in 4.7.9 (by upgrading a stage copy of your site) with one of these release candidates: http://dist.civicrm.org/by-date/latest/4.7.9-rc/
PS demo runs 4.7.10 - which is master so in this case it would be 4.7.9rc + a couple of bits that were not ready to make it into 4.7.9 in time.
EDIT: if this issue still persists in the newest release - the next step is to reproduce the issue on the current demo. If you can -> file a bug report on JIRA. If you can not -> then this is specific to your instance/config - either continune using the workaround OR find a few hours of time to pay for a consult by a CiviCRM partner in your area.
Comment: Before I found time to create a staging site to test the rc, 4.7.9 was released so I upgraded the regular site (we don't normally use a staging site). Unfortunately the issue with smart groups from advanced searches is not resolved in that version so I'm stuck with the search builder for now.


What is Sitecore MVP Cloud category?

Question: I noticed this year Sitecore MVP has a new category called Cloud. What is it for? and which areas you can work or contribute to become one of the MVP under Cloud category?
Answer: Sitecore MVP Cloud it's a brand new category for Sitecore MVP, and looks for an individual who is an expert in Cloud solutions, using Sitecore cloud services, experienced to deploy Sitecore platform in the cloud and who is actively participating in online and offline communities and events.
I believe you should cover areas like Sitecore deployed and hosted in cloud environments (for example: Sitecore on Azure), troubleshooting, improvements, comparisons between on-prem vs cloud (pros vs cons), automation using the cloud, security, PowerShell utilization, and so on.
Comment: You are very welcome @MrunalDaftari. Let us know if you have other questions.
Answer: I was lucky enough to receive this award - here's why I think I got it.

I have presented at Sitecore user groups and a while ago now, admittedly, at Sitecore Symposium in Australia (they only had the one)
I am a co-organiser of the Sydney Sitecore User Group
I am very active on all the community channels: Slack; Sitecore Community site; Stack Exchange, etc
I wrote two whitepapers on transitioning on-prem solutions to the cloud that Sitecore published
I have architected, deployed, and continue to maintain some of the largest Sitecore Azure implementations in the country
Over the last few years I have actively promoted Sitecore on Azure
I have created several modules that facilitate the use of Sitecore on Azure
I am working with Sitecore's internal cloud teams on features and strategies that will help develop the product with "field use" experience

I should mention that I have also held a Technical MVP award for 5 years, and transitioned this year.
FWIW, I have a number of blog articles that are in various stages of completion that I never seem to get around to publishing :( but there will be a bunch through as soon as I find a couple hours one day.  Everything from setting up Ubuntu for MongoDB and Solr, to Azure ARM template best practices, to Git multi-tenant branching strategies.
Answer: From http://www.sitecore.net/en/events/public-mvp-site/about-mvp

The Cloud MVP award is being awarded to individuals who are experts in
  Cloud solutions, using Sitecore cloud services, experienced to deploy
  Sitecore platform in the cloud and who are actively participating in
  online and offline communities and events.

Looks like it's a new category to help push Sitecore use in the Cloud specifically with the new Sitecore Azure PaaS support

What is Sitecore MVP Cloud category?


SharePoint on internet

Question: Is it safe to host my website portal.mycompany.com on internet. It will have a maximum of 5 pages and it will be available to everyone. Is it wise to do this? I am not sure about the security impact it will have. We have a farm solution installed and hosted in our servers. Is SharePoint safe enough to connect it to World wide web ?
Answer: There are many options in exposing a SharePoint site to the Internet. You could set up a dedicated server in your DMZ totally disconnected from the LAN and host your website there. Or you could go with a reverse proxy-topology. Check the following for info: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263199(v=office.15).aspx
Next there are some security hardening guidelines that you should take, not limited to Internet-scenario's. More on this:
Security planning for SharePoint 2013 farms
Plan security hardening for SharePoint 2013
SharePoint Security: Server Hardening
And finally, make sure to minimize the attack surface by avoiding installing a lot of different components on this server. There is an Analyzer tool as well but I have not tried it yet: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=24487
Answer: How do you mean "Is SharePoint safe enough"? Many people build public websites on SharePoint, and SharePoint in Office 365 is "on internet". I should say it is up to you if you are comfortable of storing that information outside of your own network.
Otherwise you could use TMG or similar for making sure people have to sign in to reach your content
Answer: sharepoint is safe enough, I tried it to build my website www.broadbandchandigarh.info and it is a successful method.

SharePoint on internet


Show questions (with answers) that a user has answered

Question: Is there any way to display questions (and all the answers) that a particular user has answered.  That is, select all the questions that a particular person has answered and display 10 (or whatever number) of questions and all the answers per page.  Since I'm hoping for the world here, being able to specify a user and a tag would be even better.
Answer: Does searching for user:nnnn [tag] do what you want? e.g.
user:6177 [vms]
cliky linky
Answer: You could try to run a query on the StackExchange Data Explorer:
http://data.stackexchange.com/serverfault/query/new
I'm not very familiar with the database scheme, but this could be a start:
select top 10 q.Id, q.Title, q.CreationDate, a.Id, ...
from Posts a, Posts q
where a.OwnerUserId = <USERID>
and q.Id = a.ParentId
order by q.CreationDate desc


How can I get merkle proof in Ethereum?

Question: I am trying to figure out the check of existence and the immutability of the transaction in the Ethereum block, but I do not know how to get the Merkle branch. With the help of web3j, I can get the block number by the hash of the transaction, and then get the full list of transactions by the block number. But there must be a way to get only those transactions that are needed for verification - Merkle proof. How can I get only needed hashes? I will be glad to any help!
Answer: The Patricia trie used in Ethereum is different from a Merkle tree, so the Merkle proof is different as well.
In a Patricia trie Merkle proof, you need to know the key being accessed and a full list of nodes accessed to get to the value.

How can I get merkle proof in Ethereum?


How to make VLC play a .vlm configuration file in "With no interface mode"?

Question: How to make VLC play a VLM configuration file (.vlm) in "With no interface mode" on Windows?
So I have a VLM configuration file that should stream audio from mic to localhost so no VLC user interface is needed. If I say to Windows "play VLM file with VLC" it plays correctly, starts the server where I need and streams data. But how to do such a thing manually from the command line (so we suppose we can call vlc.exe by VLC and we are now in folder with the vlc.exe and vlcConfig.vlm files)?
Answer: try this :
vlc.exe --vlm-conf=vlcConfig.vlm -I dummy


Do I need a new or a repositioned TV aerial for freeview?

Question: One of our tenants would like a TV in their room. The aerial in question hasn't been used for over 10 years, way before the switch over to digital. We don't even know if it still works. I was wondering would we need to have it repositioned in order to receive freeview channels? Or is it a case of sticking on a connector then connecting it to the TV. The actual antenna is just above the window of the room in question so the cable would be quite a short run; a few metres at the most.
Comment: FWIW, I'm using the same antenna for receiving terrestrial broadcasts on my new (digital) TV that I had on my old (analog) TV.
Comment: For those outside the UK, NZ or AU, "Freeview" is largely a marketing term for digital terrestrial television.
Answer: The antenna should be fine, the frequencies are still the same, it is the format of the information being transmitted that has changed.
If that antenna is to be attached to a TV that hasn't been used for 10 years, odds are good that the TV will require a digital to analog converter box.
Answer: Antennae are just metal structures of some form. Short of rust, they don't really wear out. They may be tailored for particular frequencies, however.
With digital TV, the signal isn't as strong as it was with analog, so it helps to have a bigger/better antennae whenever you can.
Anyways, the best way to figure this out is to plug the antennae into a TV (or, as Edwin states, if the TV doesn't have a digital receiver, you'll need a converter box).
If it works, great! If not, you may want to look at getting an HDTV antennae. They're about $50 and depending on your location, may work fine inside the room itself, or could benefit by being up in an attic or the like.
Also, if you happen to be located in a major Television market, and don't live next to a mountain or in a tunnel, you might find that good-ol rabbit ears will work just fine.
ADDENDUM:
I just noticed you use the term 'freeview'. In North America, we refer to TV broadcast over the air waves ('free' TV) as "OTA" or "Over The Air" and is what my answer above refers too.
However, in the UK, 'Freeview' is a specific term for a type of OTA. As far as I can tell, it's pretty much the same, but I don't know if there is a particular device you may need in addition to the receiver and antennae.


How Do The Fairies In Irish Mythology Spend Their Time

Question: I have heard that they are "merrymaking and lovemaking" the entire time. But if there is someone more familiar with the lives of fairies, I would love to learn about their culture...at least some sources about it.
Answer: Check out: Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland by Thomas Crofton Croker
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/39752
The Brothers Grimm translated Crokers Fairy Legends and provided a summary in the beginning of their translation. Below is what they said, loosely translated and paraphrased:

Fairies always live in large groups, never alone or in pairs. They are invisible to humans. Their houses are in rock cracks, caves and old giant hills. They love music. They celebrate under roomy mushrooms. They disappear at first light. They love to play ball, which they play with great eagerness, sometimes they come into dispute when playing.

There is of course much more.
See also: Lays and Legends of the North of Ireland by Cruck-a-leaghan, Slieve Gallion.
https://archive.org/details/laysandlegendsn00gallgoog
Answer: In Irish mythology, the fairies called the Aos Si (the People of the Mound), fairies would protect their homes in fairy rings, hawthorn trees, and the woods. They would also spend their time kidnapping trespassers or replacing children with changelings if they break fairy law. These fairies mainly came to the Mortal World between dusk and dawn. Some fairies like the bean sidhe would announce the coming death of mortals by wailing and keening.


Changing amp tubes

Question: I currently have a custom built amp which have 6V6 tubes. I think the sound is sooooo sweet that every time I plug in my Strat, my body starts to shiver :).
However, recently, I bought an Ibanez JEM7V guitar. This guitar sounds better on my old amp which has EL34's. Now I am thinking about changing my tubes in my custom built to EL34, EL84 or 6L6 tubes.
However, I don't know how much it will change my sound... How much will this take effect on my sound clean and driven?
The only thing I notice right now with my 6V6 tubes, is that the gain doesn't crunch that much as my old amp with the EL34's. Is this only due to the tubes, or could there be an other explanation?
Would it in the end be smart to change my tubes from 6V6 to either 6L6, EL34 or EL84 (or perhaps something else?)?
Comment: Either (1) try it, or (2) install an inline effects box.
Comment: Presumably you're talking power amp tubes; what about the preamp?
Comment: I was told that the preamp tubes don't make that much of a difference. It could be wrong, I don't know.
Comment: It depends - preamp tubes will certainly dominate at lower volumes, and the power amp tubes are amplifying whatever comes out of the preamp tubes. See e.g. http://www.tdpri.com/forum/amp-central-station/81641-more-important-tonally-power-tubes-preamp-tubes.html
Comment: What's the amp? More info on your sound and the sound you are looking for would be helpful. "Better" is very subjective. Also, changing preamp tubes will make a difference- that's where the sound starts.
Answer: My first move would be - on condition the valve bases are compatible - to take out the valves from one amp, and use them in the second. Of course, I'd make a recording of each, to have an A-B comparison. There is going to be a difference in the circuitry between the two, mostly in the pre-amp side, appertaining to eq. as much as anything, so a direct comparison (valve to valve) is almost impossible. Sadly, getting a set of replacement valves isn't cheap - but you'd end up with some spares.
Comment: Tubes can be matched , so if you need more than one, get them as a matched set.
Comment: Great idea in fact! Thanks for the hint!
Is there a difference in buying 2 tubes separate or buying it in pairs? Somehow the pairs are more expensive at our local music store (it's huge) than buying the same twice separate...
Answer: Changing tubes requires a re-biasing. If you don't know what this means and don't have the proper equipment, then do not try anything like this. For your safety and your amp's safety. Simply being an octal power amp tube does not automatically make any two tubes 'switchable' and 'comparable'. Some amps have a built in bias switch to allow switching between el34s and 6l6s, most don't. The sound difference between the two mentioned is described, amongst other things, as being one of the defining differences between an old Fender Bassman and a first generation Marshal (not the sound you and I associate with a Marshal).
Enjoy your two distinct amps! Use each for it's specialty. Get an a/b switch to choose between the two instead of trying to turn one into the other.
Comment: Glad to help. You may want to consider playing with the preamp tubes if you are really in the mood to play around (as we all are). Most likely both amps have 12ax7 preamp tubes. But different make and company can sometimes sound different to certain ears. Or if you want to have less gain (distortion and volume) you can switch them for 12at7 12au7 or a compatible tube. This type of stuff has alot of info on the web. Too much actually: )
Comment: Thanks for your great advice! I didn't know that changing tubes is more than just "screwing in a light bulb". I will most likely start using both amps then. The only struggle is transportation though :P.

Changing amp tubes


When is Singleton appropriate?

Question: There is a widely accepted opinion that Singleton is an anti-pattern. As usual, there are always exceptions to the rule. Can you explain why Singleton is a bad choice in general and give an example of some valid use cases for it?
Comment: For now, I prefer [this link](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/218322/4261) for all discussions regarding Singletons.
Comment: See also http://stackoverflow.com/a/138012/246724
Answer: I agree that it is an anti-pattern. Why? Because it allows your code to lie about its dependencies, and you can't trust other programmers to not introduce mutable state in your previously immutable singletons.
A class might have a constructor that only takes a string, so you think it is instantiated in isolation and does not have side effects. However, silently, it is communicating with some sort of public, globabally available singleton object, so that whenever you instantiate the class, it contains different data. This is a big problem, not only for users of your API, but also for the testability of the code. To properly unit-test the code, you need to micro-manage and be aware of the global state in the singleton, to get consistent test results.
Comment: Wish I could upvote more than once!
Answer: The Singleton pattern is basically just a lazily initialized global variable.  Global variables are generally and rightly considered evil because they allow spooky action at a distance between seemingly unrelated parts of a program.  However, IMHO there is nothing wrong with global variables that are set once, from one place, as part of a program's initialization routine (for example, by reading a config file or command line arguments) and treated as constants thereafter.  Such use of global variables is different only in letter, not in spirit, from having a named constant declared at compile time.
Similarly, my opinion of Singletons is that they're bad if and only if they are used to pass mutable state between seemingly unrelated parts of a program.  If they don't contain mutable state, or if the mutable state that they do contain is completely encapsulated so that users of the object don't have to know about it even in a multithreaded environment, then there's nothing wrong with them.
Comment: So in other words you are against any use of a database in a program.
Comment: @KendallHelmstetterGelner: There is a difference between state and secondary storage. It is unlikely you can hold a whole DB in memory.
Comment: @KendallHelmstetterGelner how so? You can still use a database that *isn't* named in global scope, so long as it is passed to you.
Comment: There is a famous google tech talk video that echos your opinion  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FRm3VPhseI
Answer: The two main criticisms of Singletons fall into two camps from what I've observed:

Singletons are misused and abused by less capable programmers and so everything becomes a singleton and you see code littered with Class::get_instance() references. Generally speaking there are only one or two resources (like a database connection for example) that qualify for use of the Singleton pattern.
Singletons are essentially static classes, relying on one or more static methods and properties. All things static present real, tangible problems when you try to do Unit Testing because they represent dead ends in your code that cannot be mocked or stubbed. As a result, when you test a class that relies on a Singleton (or any other static method or class) you are not only testing that class but also the static method or class.

As a result of both of these, a common approach is to use create a broad container object to hold a single instance of these classes and only the container object modifies these types of classes while many other classes can be granted access to them to use from the container object.
Comment: I just would like to say that you can mock static methods in Java with JMockit(http://code.google.com/p/jmockit/). It's a very handy tool.
Comment: Some thoughts: the container is a Singleton, so you haven't gotten rid of Singletons.  Also, if you're writing a library with a public API, you can't force the user of your API to use *your* container.  If you need a global resource manager in your library (protecting access to a single physical resource, for instance) then you need to use a Singleton.
Comment: @Scott Whitlock why does it need to be a singleton? Just because there's only a single instance doesn't make it so. Any IoC library will manage this kind of dependency...
Comment: This solution proposed it also known as [Toolbox](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/218322/4261)
Answer: Why do people use it?
I have seen quite a number of singletons in the PHP world. I don't remember any use case where I found the pattern to be justified. But I think I got an idea about the motivation why people did use it.

Single instance.
"Use a single instance of class C throughout the application."
This is a reasonable requirement e.g. for the "default database connection". It does not mean you won't ever create a second db connection, it just means you usually work with the default one.
Single instantiation.
"Do not allow class C to be instantiated more than once (per process, per request, etc)."
This is only relevant if instantiating the class would have side effects that conflict with other instances.
Often these conflicts can be avoided by redesigning the component - e.g. by eliminating side effects from the class constructor. Or they can be solved in other ways. But there might still be some legit use cases.
You should also think about whether the "only one" requirement really means "one per process". E.g. for resource concurrency, the requirement is rather "one per entire system, across processes" and not "one per process". And for other things it is rather per "application context", and you just happen to have one application context per process.
Otherwise, there is no need to enforce this assumption. Enforcing this also means you cannot create a separate instance for unit tests.
Global access.
This is legit only if you have no proper infrastructure to pass objects around to the place where they are used. This could mean that your framework or environment sucks, but it might not be within your powers to fix that.
The price is tight coupling, hidden dependencies, and everything that's bad about global state. But you are probably already suffering these.
Lazy instantiation.
This is not a necessary part of a singleton, but it seems the most popular way to implement them. But, while lazy instantiation is a nice thing to have, you don't really need a singleton to achieve that.

Typical implementation
The typical implementation is a class with a private constructor, and a static instance variable, and a static getInstance() method with lazy instantiation.
In addition to the problems mentioned above, this bites with the single responsibility principle, because the class does control its own instantiation and life cycle, in addition to the other responsibilities that the class already has.
Conclusion
In many cases, you can achieve the same result without a singleton, and without global state. Instead, you should use dependency injection, and you might want to consider a dependency injection container.
However, there are use cases where you have the following valid requirements remaining:

Single instance (but not single instantiation)
Global access (because you are working with a bronze age framework)
Lazy instantiation (because it is just nice to have)

So, here is what you can do in this case:

Create a class C that you want to instantiate, with a public constructor.
Create a separate class S with a static instance variable and a static S::getInstance() method with lazy instantiation, that will use class C for the instance.
Eliminate all side effects from the constructor of C. Instead, put these side effects in the S::getInstance() method.
If you have more than one class with the above requirements, you may consider to manage the class instances with a small local service container, and use the static instance only for the container. So, S::getContainer() will give you a lazy-instantiated service container, and you get the other objects from the container.
Avoid calling the static getInstance() where you can. Use dependency injection instead, whenever possible. Especially, if you use the container approach with multiple objects that depend on each other, then none of these should have to call S::getContainer().
Optionally create an interface that class C implements, and use this to document the return value of S::getInstance().

(Do we still call this a singleton? I leave this to the comment section..)
Benefits:

You can create a separate instance of C for unit testing, without touching any global state.
Instance management is separated from the class itself -> separation of concerns, single responsibility principle.
It would be quite easy to let S::getInstance() use a different class for the instance, or even dynamically determine which class to use.
Answer: Personally I will use singletons when I need 1, 2, or 3, or some limited amount of the objects for the particular class in question.  Or I want to convey to the user of my class that I do not want multiple instances of my class being created for it to function properly.
Also I will only use it when I need to use it almost everywhere in my code and I don't want to pass an object as a parameter to each class or function that needs it.
In addition I will only use a singleton if it does not break another function's referential transparency.  Meaning given some input it will always produce the same output.  I.e. I don't use it for global state.  Unless possibly that global state is initialized once and never changed.
As for when not to use it, see the above 3 and change them to the opposite.
Comment: -0 but i nearly -1. I would rather pass it everywhere in my code instead of use a singleton BUT if i am really lazy i may do that. I'd use global vars instead if i am able to or static members. global vars are really much preferable (to me) then singletons. Globals dont lie
Comment: Global variables have their destructors called when the application exits, in unpredictable order. That means it is possible to try to access the singleton after it has been destructed.

When is Singleton appropriate?


How can I direct attention on an breath without consciously breathing?

Question: In every guided meditation or in the books I've read on meditation, I've been told to observe and hold sustained awareness towards the the 'meditation object', that is my breathing. When I do that, though, I stop breathing automatically and instead have to control my breaths. Can someone explain to me what's going on? Is this okay? Or is there a way I can observe my breath whilst automatically breathing?
Answer: These books are wrong, which is why relatively few Buddhists are stream-enterers or reach jhana.
To observe the computer screen in front of you, you do not have to do anything with your eyes. The seeing of the computer screen happens automatically, as long as your head is pointed in the direction of the computer screen & your mind is not asleep.
Similarly, in meditation, feeling & knowing the breathing happens automatically, as long as the mind is quiet, still & gentle. All that is really needed is to sit upright with a still, quiet, gentle, awake mind.
The difficult part is the quiet clear mind. If this can be done, the breathing part is easy because the body breathes automatically & the mind knows breathing automatically when the mind is quiet.
The path of the Buddha is the giving up of craving, which includes not craving when meditating.
The Zen masters say: 'The silent mind can listen to grass'.
Answer: (Ānāpānas)sati-kammaṭṭhāna=mindfulness, on breath, meditation. It is not breath meditation.
There for, the practitioner training mindfulness, not breath.
The breathing is always automatic. The practitioner doesn't have to control it.
The problem is that the natural of breath is soft and little, so people who never train mindfulness on breath have not enough mindfulness power to notice it.
To fix this problem, return your focus back to point at nose tip, when you find their, without worry, your mindfulness will meditate up to see your breath.
Trust the buddha that breath is automatic. Don't worry about breath. It is certainly automatic. So just find it only at nose tip. Shortly after that, a breath will appear to your mindfulness.
Summary each step of meditation:
http://22.214.171.124/revata/download/Books/Pa-Auk_Eng_Books/Mindfulness%20of%20Breathing.pdf
Ᾱnāpānassati (Mindfulness-of-breathing) - An Introduction:
http://www.pamc.org.sg/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=14&Itemid=32
The Meditation Practice of Pa Auk Forest Monastery 1-3:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMQBXmaSFTM
Answer: You can't not breathe, it's automatic. All you have to do is be aware that you're doing it and keep  bringing the mind back to it. You're only controlling it if you feel you try to change the breaths for example making them longer or shorter which by the way is useful in some circumstances. Don't over think it. Just sit and breathe
Answer: Only mindfulness will bring everything in order. Just focus on breathing. Knowing out-breath, knowing in-breath is enough. Whenever the mind wander, just pay attention on out-breath, in-breath. In the early moment, one cannot focus on it as mind wander outside. As time goes by, concentration arise and it is very clear. Dhamma will show by itself. Some people may think, it is the beginning of meditation. But later he/she will know this out-breath in-breath noticing is all the way from beginning, middle and the end, the only way to nibbana, no two.