How can the name of a container tag id matter?

Question: I am writing a GWT/GAE(Java) app.  The auto-generated hello word example that comes with GWT generates code like this:

    Please enter your name:

In the client-side Java (to JavaScript) it accesses the HTML elements like this:
final Button sendButton = new Button("Send");
final TextBox nameField = new TextBox();
nameField.setText("GWT User");

I added a container field to show that I could programmatically add a link using an HTML element: someStuffContainer.  I also added another field to be filled in by a call to an RPC service for a logout URL: logoutUrlContainer.  (Yes, I know now there is a simpler way to do this: GWT/GAE(Java): when combined with GAE, app.yaml / web.xml user authentication and login/logout not really working .  I just wanted to see if I could get it to work.)  Note that the someStuffContainer was just there to make this a controlled experiment: to separate the programmatic adding of a URL from filling in that URL with a logout link generated on the server side; this will be relevant below.

In the client-side Java (to JavaScript), I did this:
// make it clear that we can add something to the page
final HTML someStuffHTML = new HTML
  ("some stuff 3");

// provide the user with a logout URL; FIX: do this by just
// providing a link to a generic logout servlet, rather than by
// proactively creating the logout link here.
final HTML userStatusHTML = new HTML();
GWT.log("userStatusService.getStatus()");
userStatusService.getStatus
  ("/", new AsyncCallback<UserStatusServiceResponse>() {

    public void onFailure(Throwable caught) {
      GWT.log("userStatusService.onFailure()");
      LogUtil.logThrowable(caught);
    }

    public void onSuccess(UserStatusServiceResponse result) {
      GWT.log("userStatusService.onSuccess()");
      if (result.loggedIn) {
        userStatusHTML.setHTML("log out");
      } else {
        // FIX: we should actually redirect to the base page
        userStatusHTML.setHTML("log in");
      }
    }
  });

RootPanel.get("someStuffContainer").add(someStuffHTML);
RootPanel.get("logoutUrlContainer").add(userStatusHTML);

This all works in the sense that the programmatic HTML shows up and clicking on the logout url logs the user out.  (To see this work, you have to open the logout url in another tab; the GWT devmode plugin freaks out if you go to another page; it seems to get into a state where it just keeps complaining that the app needs to be recompiled and you can't out of that state.  Further, you have to hit reload for app engine to demand that you log in again; if you are logged out and the client-side is still running, you can just keep using the app unless on the server side you are checking the user is logged in.)
It seems to me that the name of the container field "logoutUrlContainer" should not matter at all.  Therefore, before checking in I thought I would clean up the code and rename it to something more general that reflected the fact that I might use that container for a more general User Status widget.  So I renamed "logoutUrlContainer" to "userStatusContainer"; I renamed it in the .html and in the client-side Java (compiled to JavaScript).  Now instead of working, this line gets a null pointer exception:
RootPanel.get("logoutUrlContainer").add(userStatusHTML);

I'm a rather experienced coder: I was sure to copy and paste so that the strings matched.  I checked using the search feature in emacs.  I used ant clean to clean the whole project.  I used grep to grep for any binary files (such as classfiles) in the whole project that might have been missed by ant clean and somehow still contained the old name.  I restarted the server, killed the browser tab containing the app, etc.  I did all of this repeatedly.  Repeatedly I get the null pointer exception.  I think I did all of that over and over again for at least an hour.  Note that the entire time the someStuffContainer always worked; somehow RootPanel.get() always found it, while not finding userStatusContainer.  Finally, in desperation I just named the container string back again.  Immediately it works.  I checked in.
What the heck is going on?  Is ant clean missing something?  Here is my ant clean target, which I extended myself:
  <target name="clean" description="Cleans this project">
    <delete  dir="gwt-unitCache" failonerror="false" />
    <delete  dir="war/myapp" failonerror="false" />
    <delete  dir="war/WEB-INF/classes" failonerror="false" />
    <delete  dir="war/WEB-INF/lib" failonerror="false" />
    <delete  dir="war/WEB-INF/deploy" failonerror="false" />
    <delete file="war/WEB-INF/appengine-web.xml" failonerror="false" />
    <delete file="war/WEB-INF/web.xml" failonerror="false" />
  </target>

The only reason I don't delete all of war/WEB-INF is that I'm using the optional app.yaml to configure Java Google App Engine, rather than editing the .xml files myself.
Is my ant clean target missing something?  This experience really makes me not want to use GWT.

Update: I think I know what happened: the javascript was recompiling, but it never occurred to me that the GWT development plugin would allow the page to be cached.  Later I changed the welcome file list and the old welcome file was still displaying.  Studying the configuration files, I couldn't think of any way that would be possible.  Finally I just hit reload and the new file displayed.
Anyway, caching would explain the error reported in this question.  I don't know what GWT is doing allowing the page to be cached, especially in devmode.  You think after having been a web developer on and off for 15 years I might have thought of that earlier.  However I can't imagine how it is possible for people to be so sloppy with caching effects, especially in development frameworks.

I'm running an up-to-date version of OS X 10.6.8 (x86).
My browser is Chrome: 16.0.912.63 (Official Build 113337)
$ java -version
java version "1.6.0_29"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_29-b11-402-10M3527)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 20.4-b02-402, mixed mode)
I'm using gwt-2.4.0.
Answer:
it seems to get into a state where it just keeps complaining that the app needs to be recompiled and you can't out of that state

This has to do with the fact that you were debugging, so Dev mode overwrote some of the compiled files with updated versions, and when you didn't recompile (and are launching the app not in dev mode), it notices the missing files and stops. If you want to use dev mode, append ?gwt.codesvr=... to the new page's url, and it will run that page in dev mode as well. Or compile the app, and don't use any page with dev mode (loading that module - other modules are fine).
I suspect if you add that suffix to the url, your entire problem will disappear - the NPE you are seeing if the RootPanel.get("some-id") doesn't match the html page is due to RootPanel.get returning null, and add being called on null.


Handle the same project over multiple platforms in Agile

Question: I'm working in a company that mainly perform mobile apps with their backend systems.
My question is, what's the best practice to handle the same projects over multiple platforms (iOS and Android) and keep them synced together using Agile approach? Should I use a separate project to each one, or handle them in the same project with having duplicate User Stories for each platform? Or do we have another solution for that approach?
Comment: I don't feel like this really counts as an answer, but if you haven't already, take a look at the spotify engineering culture videos on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mpsn3WaI_4k) and there's a good whitepaper to match it. If I recall correctly, the whitepaper speaks more to the cross-platform details. I don't think you can just copy what they do, but there might be some ideas in there.
Answer: TL; DR
You do not necessarily have the same "project" across multiple platforms. You must identify whether you are producing different (but similar) products that form multiple projects, or a single product with multiple front-ends that can be treated as a cohesive project within a single team.
Scrum projects are generally based around a "one team, one product" approach. While there may be edge cases with other frameworks, it is a good rule of thumb to follow with any agile practice unless you have a really solid reason to deviate from it.
Define Your Projects Based on Product Context
From a Scrum perspective, each team should be dedicated to developing a single product from a unified product backlog. This leads to two primary use cases:

A single back-end product with multiple front-ends (e.g. Android and iOS), in which case a fully cross-functional team might be able to work from a single product backlog.
Two separate products (e.g. an Android product and an iOS product) which each have a dedicated project team and separate product backlogs.

In the first case, you have one project. In the second, you have two projects that can be tied together with some form of Scrum-at-scale such as a Scrum of Scrums or SAFe.
Similar Features Aren't Inherently Unified Products
Keep in mind that just because you have similar features in two separate product lines, that doesn't mean you have (or should have) a unified project. For example, you might have a common feature such as "user logins" in both products, but the products themselves are still different, and the implementation details of each feature are unlikely to be identical across products.
As a result, you must carefully decide whether you truly have one project or two, as defined in the section above. Similarity of features, or the existence of common user stories, is never sufficient by itself to merge separate products into a single project.
Answer: A lot depends on how the Product Owner sees the development for the two platforms.
Do they view the development of a feature for iOS and the same feature for Android as two seperate pieces of work that can be prioritised alongside other backlog items? For example, the search feature is a high priority on iOS, but a low priority on Android.
Or do they believe that a feature is only complete once it is available on both the iOS and Android platforms?
I would suggest that if every feature must be complete on both platforms it would make more sense to have a single backlog item per feature.


Gentle introduction to graph isomorphism for bounded valance graphs

Question: I am reading about classes of graphs for which Graph Isomorphism ($GI$) is in $P$. One of such case is graphs of bounded valence (maximum over degree of each vertex) as explained here. But I found it too abstract. I would be thankful if anybody can suggest me some references of expository nature. I do not have strong background in group theory, so I would prefer papers which use group theory in a gentle way (my background is in CS).
Comment: @TsuyoshiIto: While that's an excellent book that gives a good introduction to GI and to a fair bit of general structural complexity, it does not contain much (if anything) about the bounded degree case. I do not know of a gentle introduction to the bounded degree case, but it is so intimately tied with group theoretic methods that I doubt there is an exposition that uses group theory "only gently" (as requested by the OP).
Comment: I do not have the book (unfortunately), but _The Graph Isomorphism Problem: Its Structural Complexity_ by Johannes Köbler, Uwe Schöning, and Jacobo Torán may contain a proof for the case of bounded degree.  You might want to check it.
Comment: I am keen to give an Overview, I will do that soon!
Answer: The algorithm for bounded-degree graph isomorphism is so closely tied to (permutation) group theory that I doubt there is an introduction that uses groups "only gently." However, you might consult Paolo Codenotti's Ph.D. thesis for more complete background. He doesn't cover bounded-degree graph isomorphism exactly, but covers the tools needed for it (and the rest of the thesis is about bounded-rank hypergraphs, extending the best known algorithm for general graph isomorphism to the bounded-rank hypergraph case).
You may also find the book Group-Theoretic Algorithms and Graph Isomorphism useful, as it covers most of the background necessary (Chapter 2, "Basic Concepts", is 47 pages) and is a much more leisurely exposition than most of the published papers on the topic.
Answer: Notation:
 Let $X = (V,E)$ be graph, $e = (v_1, v_2) $ an edge of $X$.
The vertex set $V_k$ be the set of vertices of distance $k$ from $e$, and let $h$ be the height of $X$.
According to definition of $V_k$,
$V= V_0 \cup V_1 \dots V_h$ and $V_{(h+1)}= \emptyset$. Let,  subset $E_k$ of edges of $X(0 \leq k \leq h)$ is defined as-
$E_k = \{ (u,w) | u \in  V_k, w \in  V_ k \cup V_{(k+1)} \}.$
The subgraph $X_i$ is defined as-
$X_k= (V_0 \cup V_1 \dots  \cup V_k,  E_0 \cup E_1 \dots  E_{(k-1)} \}$
For example,  $X_2 =\{ (V_0 \cup V_1 \cup V_2,  E_0 \cup E_1)\}$
$Aut_e(X)$ is the automorphism group of  graph $X$ where $e$ is fixed. If $B$ is a generating set of $Aut_e(X_k)$ , we write $\langle B \rangle = Aut_e(X_k)$, for example,   it is clear that  $Aut_e(X_0)=\langle(v_1,v_2)\rangle$ where $ (v_1,v_2)$ is a permutation of vertices $v_1,  v_2$ of $X$.
Principle
Constructing generating set of automorphism group of $X$ is a GI (graph isomorphism) complete problem [1]. So, if we can compute generating set of automorphism group of $X$ (which has bounded valance in polynomial time), we can solve GI in polynomial time. So, we wish to determine $Aut_e(X)$.
Technique:
We will construct $X_0, X_1..... X_h$. For each, $X_k$ we will construct $Aut_e(X_{(k)})$
Note that, a permutation of $Aut_e(X_{(k) })$may be
extended to an automorphism of $Aut_e(X_{(k+1)})$.
So, generators of  $Aut_e(X_{(k+1)})$ can be obtained from generators for $Aut_e(X_{k})$.
To construct  generator, structure-type of $E_k$  is manipulated. The structure-type of $E_k$   can be divided into finite classes.  For example, in the trivalent case, there are only six type  (only five of those cases can actually occur).
We will classify the edges in $E_k$  into types and will group them into families . This helps to create a number of unique labels.
For a fixed valence,  the number of labels is small. At this point, we use the concept of setwise-stabilizers  to find  permutations which acts on particular label. In the process, we find the generator of $Aut_e(X_{(k) })$. Then, we use  the generator of$Aut_e(X_{(k) })$ to find the generator of $Aut_e(X_{(k+1) })$, as stated earlier. Proceeding in this manner, we obtain, $Aut_e(X)$ .
Comment: [1]Mathon, Rudolf. ,A note on the graph isomorphism counting problem, Inform. Process. Lett. 8 (1979), no. 3, 131–132.


Is cooling needed to be able to overclock the Pi further?

Question: I've only managed to overclock my Pi to 1.3 GHz, but this guy here http://www.overclock.net/t/1404207/extreme-cooled-raspberry-pi got it up to 2.4GHz. Is it the cooling that makes it possible to get up to that high? I couldn't overclock my Pi any more because, if I increased it more, it would crash at startup. Would cooling help with this too?
Usually, it seems that you only need cooling to keep the CPU cool as overclocking heats it more then normal, but if it crashes at startup would more cooling actually help?
Comment: The cooling definitely had a positive effect, and as you mention variations in the production and assembly will mean that the amount of overclocking will vary between boards. The bigger question is how stable is the final system. Great it runs at 2.4GHz, but if it only runs for 30 seconds it is useless for its intended purpose. Since someone has already gone to 2.4GHz you don't even get bragging rights (no one remembers who finished second).
Comment: As I understand it, it is the cooling however impractical those methods seem ;) I guess that an Atom based Micro PC running at 2GHz or so is way more handy and easy to use... I wonder how many cooling cycles the RPi's SOC will survive.
Answer: Extreme overclocking has always required extra cooling or some. Mainly USA PC users have even resorted to water cooled systems.
However, I would suggest, if the stock Pi can't handle whatever you are trying to achieve, chances are you shouldn't be using the Pi.
If you MUST use a Pi, go for the quad core ARM 7 Pi 3B+. (it's said to be 7x times faster)
Comment: "7x faster" is a bit of an idealization.  As with other multicore systems, the fastest it can go is still whatever the base Hz is.  You cannot do one task four times faster on a quad core; but you can do four things four times faster, because they will all get done at the same time.  So it all depends on the nature of the task.
Comment: Yup. Upto x times faster. As demonstrated here. http://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/27813/should-i-provide-additional-parameters-for-make-on-raspberry-pi2
Comment: One core is about 3x faster on new Pi


tearing out tub/shower surround

Question: I live in Vancouver, and my condo is about 25 years old.  A couple of the tiles in the tub/shower surround are cracked, and I know that when I take them off I'm going to find soggy drywall.  I'm committed to taking the surround down to the studs, but I'm not sure about putting it all back together.  The bathroom has no outside walls, and the only fixtures are the tub/shower and the toilet.  The tile is only on the tub/shower surround.  Do I need a vapour barrier, or do I "just" replace the drywall in the surround with cement board and then tile over the cement board?  Thanks for your help!
Answer: Yes you do need a vapor barrier. Replace the sheetrock with cement board and use Redgard waterproofer over cement board following instructions. Install tile and seal grout.

tearing out tub/shower surround


How can you make custom skills for Fate?

Question: How does creating custom skills in Fate core work? Can you just say "I want this skill" and get away with it or is there some sort of preset rules such as designing stunts and such for the skill before adding it to the game? To be specific, I want to create a skill called Magical Engineering as my character will not be knowledgeable about lore or be able to craft most of the things.
Answer: The Fate SRD deals with creating new skills in its System Toolkit section. It goes into considerable detail including modifying the basic list by addition or removal of skills and grouping skills into "modes" or "professions".
You might want to define a "restricted access" skill as an extra.
Comment: Are you sure the options in that toolkit are meant for a *player* to apply? It seemed more like they were designed for use by the GM to adjust skills to match the game's intended setting/playstyle.
Comment: The general expectation is that the skill list is determined at the campaign level (GM assembled with player input). That said if the GM is open to someone creating a custom skill, it's not prohibited, tho I'd counsel close examination in case it's broader in scope than the skills already available in the game; you want to avoid someone creating an always-applicable "omni-skill".
Comment: See also Custom Skills from Atomic Robo: https://fate-srd.com/atomic-robo/custom-skills
Answer: Alternately, if your entire vision for this skill is "Lore, but it can't do as much", you might want to consider one of the following approaches:

Take Lore at a low rating, or perhaps don't at all, depending, and a Stunt that gives you +2 to use Lore for things that fall under the auspices of Magical Engineering. It should probably be narrow enough that it's reasonable for a Stunt to boost it under those circumstances.
Take Lore at the rating you want Magical Engineering to have, and also the Aspect I'm An Engineer; I Solve Practical Problems. Whenever you're in a situation where it would be useful to know something about magic or history, darn the luck if that ain't one of those conundrums of philosophy.


What 2D/3D engines and game SDKs are available?

Question: What 2D/3D engines and game development SDKs are available that run natively on Ubuntu?
Please limit one engine/sdk per answer - and include why you enjoy the engine/sdk.
Comment: This is a very broad question, can you be more specific in the kind of game engine you want?
Comment: Please be aware that this might be a duplicated question, although SDL answer provided here is not present in the previous one. See: [http://askubuntu.com/questions/34200/what-2d-3d-engines-and-game-sdks-are-available](http://askubuntu.com/questions/34200/what-2d-3d-engines-and-game-sdks-are-available)
Answer: SDL
Simple DirectMedia Layer is a cross-platform multimedia library designed to provide low level access to audio, keyboard, mouse, joystick, 3D hardware via OpenGL, and 2D video framebuffer. It is used by MPEG playback software, emulators, and many popular games, including the award winning Linux port of "Civilization: Call To Power."
SDL supports Linux, Windows, Windows CE, BeOS, MacOS, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, BSD/OS, Solaris, IRIX, and QNX. The code contains support for AmigaOS, Dreamcast, Atari, AIX, OSF/Tru64, RISC OS, SymbianOS, and OS/2, but these are not officially supported.
SDL is written in C, but works with C++ natively, and has bindings to several other languages, including Ada, C#, D, Eiffel, Erlang, Euphoria, Go, Guile, Haskell, Java, Lisp, Lua, ML, Objective C, Pascal, Perl, PHP, Pike, Pliant, Python, Ruby, Smalltalk, and Tcl.
SDL is distributed under GNU LGPL version 2. This license allows you to use SDL freely in commercial programs as long as you link with the dynamic library.
Installing sdl library in ubuntu

Install bulild essentials
sudo apt-get install build-essential
Install sdl libraries
sudo apt-get install libsdl1.2-dev libsdl1.2debian
Answer: OGRE
This is one of the most professional Open Source 3D engines available. It is a bit difficult to set up, but it is rather powerful. The standard API is in C++ but there are bindings for several other languages.
More info at the OGRE Wiki.
Answer: OpenSceneGraph
It has a C++ interface too and it's quite powerful. There might be some Ubuntu packages in a PPA available, but i recommend to download the source code and build it manually.
Answer: LibGDX
offers something like Google GWT integration, which offers you to develop games in Eclipse (just by using the library) which you can than export to Android, iOS, Java, HTML5 Canvas
Answer: v-play
V-Play provides reusable components for handling multiple display resolutions and aspect ratios, animations, particles, physics, multi-touch, gestures, path finding and much more, allowing you to prototype and build games in just days.
V-Play also comes with ready-to-use game templates for the most successful game genres including tower defense, platform games or puzzle games. Just replace graphics and sounds with your own and you're ready to publish your own game!
Develop your game in a declarative way with JavaScript & QML for iOS, Android, BlackBerry 10, Symbian, MeeGo and also for Windows, Mac OS X & Linux, thanks to a native engine core every single one with best performance.
Comment: Incredible Engine!
Answer: Panda3D
Python & C++ interface. Quite a tool.
Comment: Panda employs both a Python and C++ api, and the irc community is quite strong and helpful. Panda had received significant development support from Disney.
Answer: Stencyl
Stencyl is a 2D game engine/creator. It has an easy to use drag and drop method to design your games. It is suited for non-coders with basic programming knowledge and also has a code editor for advanced users.
It has a native version for Ubuntu (requires the non-free JVM). You can make your games on Ubuntu and publish for iOS, Android*, Flash, HTML5*, Windows and Mac (* as of Stencyl 3.0).
The full featured free version is available for download and can publish to 'Flash'.


Wedding invitation Hebrew abbreviation

Question: What do the letters ayin, bet, gimmel stand for between the groom's name and the bride's name on a Jewish, Hebrew wedding invitation?  In the past, I've seen ayin, bet, lamed which I believe stands for "im bechirat libo" or "with the one chosen by his heart"
Comment: Hello and welcome to J.SE! Please stick around!
Comment: could it be as listed on this page http://www.kizur.co.il/search_word.php?abbr=%D7%A2%D7%91%D7%92
Comment: Related: http://judaism.stackexchange.com/q/34388/3
Answer: "Im Bat Gilo" -- very roughly, "with a woman suited to his nature."
The Gemara Nedarim 39b says that a hospital visit is especially efficacious for the sick fellow if the visitor is "ben gilo" with respect to the visitee. Rashi (or whatever medieval commentary there pretends to be Rashi) says simply -- "roughly the same age, not a young man visiting an old man or vice versa." Rosh, however, says the visitor needs to be born under the same astrological sign as the visitee; presumably otherwise, I guess the karma (or the personalities?) don't "click" the same way.
So let' just leave it loosely as "with the person suited to him." My impression is this was the more traditional wedding notation, at least printed in the direction from the groom to the bride.
"Im bechirat libo/liba", "with the one his/her heart has chosen", as you indicated, sounds easier to our modern ears; it's gender-neutral; and it avoids the spooky stuff; so many modern invitations simply put this in both directions.
Answer: A rav explained to me that the word "Gilo" come from "gil" related to "gilah" meaning "joy". So, "Im bat gilo" means "the daughter of his joy".
The concept seems slightly Kabbalistic, in the sense that one's true fullest joy is hidden until he gets married. When a man finds his Kallah, she draws out his inner joy, so that is the sense of being "bat gilo".

Wedding invitation Hebrew abbreviation


Can redox reactions involve only non metals?

Question: When non metal react they form molecule, and whether the bond is polar or not, the elements in the molecular compound will not have charges what so ever, because they are not ionic. But can non metals be the only that is involved Ina redox reaction ?
Answer: A redox reaction is one in which oxidation state of some atom changes, and such reactions need not involve metals, nor any ionic species. Oxidation state is the idealized charge that a given atom would have if all its bonds are treated as completely ionic. Thus, strictly for the purpose of calculating oxidation state, the electrons of a covalent bond are typically assigned to the more electronegative atom. (I'd note, however, that IUPAC provides a different set of rules for calculating oxidation number.) Hence, in order for a redox reaction to occur, there does not need to be a complete transfer of electrons (in the sense of ionization). Examples of redox reactions involving molecular compounds are numerous.
For example, consider the reaction $\ce{N2 + 3H2 <=> 2NH3}$. This is the Haber process for the production of ammonia. Here nitrogen is reduced from an oxidation state of $0$ to $-3$, while hydrogen is oxidized from $0$ to $+1$. Again, nitrogen being the more electronegative atom, is assigned the electrons of the bonds. This idealization is useful in that it provides some rough idea of electron distribution, and hence has some utility in predicting reactivity.
Edit: Also, the statement "[...] the elements in the molecular compound will not have charges what so ever [...]" is inaccurate. There is a concept of formal charge that applies to neutral molecules as well as ions.
Comment: Related: http://chemistry.stackexchange.com/q/10944/4945
Comment: @Martin, yeah, I can understand that. I do feel that this is one of their more egregiously bad decisions, however. Maybe their objection is to the fact that electronegativity has many definitions. That said, I'm fairly sure the various different major scales preserve the same relative ordering the overwhelming majority of the time.
Comment: @Martin, thanks, and +1 for your answer to that question. The IUPAC choice of seemingly arbitrary rules is indeed bizarre.
Comment: Thanks. I find it a kind of reassuring, that the IUPAC sometimes makes mistakes too/ does not choose the most convenient pattern.
Answer: A redox reaction is any reaction in which the oxidation states of the reactants change. There are certainly reactions involving metals which fit that classification. A relatable example would be the rusting of iron (one of the possible reactions involved in rusting):
$$\ce{2Fe + O_2 + 2H_2O -> 2Fe(OH)_2}$$
Here iron is oxidized and its oxidation state changes from 0 to +2.
Comment: Well, iron is a metal. So...
Comment: All imma asking is could there only exist $non metals$?
Comment: If that doesn't answer your question, I don't know what you're asking...
Comment: If elements in a molecule do not have charges, how will the redox reaction go on? Since there is no way to know the increase or decrease in charges.
Answer: Yes. Apart from Greg's answer there are many more examples.
But since you asked specifically about a redox reaction that may produce ions, I am glad to provide an example. This reaction is very common chemistry, as it is used in public pools. It is the redox dissolution of chlorine in water (coupled with an acid-base reaction). It is also a disproportionation reaction.
\begin{array}{lcll}
\ce{1/2 Cl2 + e-  &-> & Cl-}                &\text{reduction}\\
\ce{1/2 Cl2 + H2O &-> & HClO + H+ + e-}     &\text{oxidation}\\\hline
\ce{Cl2 + H2O     &-> & HClO + HCl}         &\text{redox}\\\hline
\ce{HClO + H2O    &<=>& H3+O + ClO-}        &\text{acid-base}\\
\ce{HCl + H2O     &<=>& H3+O + Cl-}         &\text{acid-base}\\\hline
\ce{\overset{\color{\green}{0}}{Cl2} + 3H2O
                  &<=>& 2H3+O + \overset{\color{\green}{+I}}{Cl}O-
                              + \overset{\color{\green}{-I}}{Cl- } }
                                            &\text{total}\\\hline
\end{array}
Depending on the concentration and the $\ce{pH}$ of the solution, the extent of ionisation will vary.


How to remove these nails (no access to head)?

Question: Installing closet doors. Had to knock these guys out of the way (first image). Realized after doing that the magical hidden nails are sticking out. Didn't expect that. Thoughts on how to get rid of that without having to remove the whole framing situation going on?
Comment: Not sure why you edited out my solution in the original post whilst posting your own solution. But Ok.
Comment: Because answers don't go in the question. [Take the tour](http://diy.stackexchange.com/tour) if that's news to you. I invited you to write your own answer.
Answer: Grab them with a locking plier and bend them back and forth a few times. They'll fatigue and snap off. Or use a rotary tool with a cutoff wheel. Then use a nail set to drive them below flush.
Answer: Without removing the framing lumber from the door, consider the brute force method. If you have a rotary tool such as a Dremel, an abrasive blade will make short work of cutting the nails at or slightly below the surface.
I've done similar work, gouging a bit into the wood, then covering it with wood putty/filler to make an invisible repair.
Without a rotary tool, one may be able to accomplish the same with an oscillating blade with an abrasive edge, although it's likely to be slower.
As noted in the answer that popped in while I was composing this, side cutters to nick and bend the nail will likely work.
Answer: Next time, consider using a reciprocating saw with a framing blade to remove the board itself (I wouldn't try on the hanging nails as they are now). Chews through wood and metal. Just lean the blade more on the wood block side so you don't gouge the frame as much.


What is latae sententiae?

Question: I heard that some things (like getting an abortion or attacking the pope) have the penalty of latae sententiae excommunication. What is that?
Answer: It generally means 'automatic excommunication'. Most people conceive of excommunication as something that happens to people, rather than something they do to themselves. That form of excommunication indeed happens (it recently happened when the Pope excommunicated an Australian priest), but is relatively rare. You cannot expect the Pope or the church to look at all our lives and make sure nobody does something naughty. Thus, latae sententiae came to be, which means excommunication that does not need an 'act' excommunicating them. Literally, the term means 'done excommunication' or 'excommunication as it is', as opposed to excommunication that has to be pronounced. A significant difference is that excommunication latae sententiae happens from the moment of the act onwards (meaning that for instance certain ecclesiastical acts become invalid but sometimes licit) while excommunication ferende sententiae takes effect upon pronouncement, regardless of when the offence has been committed.
For reference, Canon 1314 describes the difference between the effect of latae sententiae and ferende sententiae. Also, to clarify, it is procuring an abortion (i.e. it includes the person carrying it out and many more) and any use of force against the Pontiff. Also note that latae sententiae is not so much a form of excommunication but rather a general criminal doctrine of Canon law, meaning it applies to other forms of punishment, for instance some acts attract a latae sententiae interdict (Canon 1370§). Other things that incur latae sententiae excommunication include: heresy/schism, as well as the offence generally known as 'profanation of the Host' (throwing away a consecrated Host or retaining it for a sacrilegious purpose), which is regarded as an offence against God directly.
Comment: This is a great first answer for the site!  The user who asked the question hasn't been around recently so he might not accept this as the answer, but it's definitely a more detailed answer, thanks!
Comment: Welcome to the site!  This next has nothing to do with the quality of your answer (which was good), it's just standard to help new visitors avoid misunderstanding the site (as I did at first.)  As a new visitor, I'd recommend checking out the following two posts, which are meant to help newcomers "learn the ropes": [the help page](http://christianity.stackexchange.com/help) and [How we are different than other sites?](http://meta.christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/1808/how-we-are-different-than-other-sites)
Answer: Latae sententiae excommunication means that the person becomes automatically excommunicated as soon as the offence is committed.
From the Catholic Encyclopedia:

Excommunication, especially a jure, is either latæ or ferendæ sententiæ. The first is incurred as soon as the offence is committed and by reason of the offence itself (eo ipso) without intervention of any ecclesiastical judge; it is recognized in the terms used by the legislator, for instance: "the culprit will be excommunicated at once, by the fact itself [statim, ipso facto]".

The same immediacy applies to any other penalty marked latae sententiae; the term is not limited to excommunication.

What is latae sententiae?


Emblematic analog synth sounds/artists in music production ?

Question: Dear SSD,
for the purpose of an instructional video about analog synthesis, I am looking for musical examples that make use of analog substractive synthesis in an iconic way.
JM Jarre, Kraftwerk, Messiaen, Herbie Hancock, Pink Floyd, Lady Gaga... Such artists are in my list but I count on your collective brain to help me expand it ! All musical styles welcome.
Thanks.
Answer: You can cross Lady Gaga off your list! Utter sheep and nothing original.  And Messiaen didn't use substractive synthesis.
The obvious ones are:

Walter/Wendy Carlos (Switched on Bach)
Vangelis (highest profile being Chariots of Fire & Blade Runner soundtracks)
Stevie Wonder, esp his collaborations with TONTO
ELP (Lucky Man)
The Beatles (Here Comes The Sun)
Erasure's "Chorus" and Depeche Mode's "Violator" are both benchmark classics.
If you are considering Messiaen then you should also throw in The Beach Boys (Good Vibrations) and Joe Meek/The Tornados "Telstar", but none of these are strictly subtractive synthesis.

There's obviously a LOT more.
Comment: Thanks analoghell. Don't you think the ondes Martenot used by Olivier Messiaen in many pieces (like "Turangalila symphonie") is an analog synthetizer ?
Comment: yes, the Ondes Martenot is of course analog but it's not a subtractive synthesiser, as per your question. Same goes for the Tannerin on Good Vibrations.
Answer: In the Industrial and EBM-scene we have DAF and Nitzer Ebb being very iconic having a sound based in pretty pure analogue synthesis. Though also avid users of the Emulator line of samplers, Front 242 too are known to us a lot of  subtractive synthesis in a pretty unique way, though it's quite frankly a mixture between analoge waveforms and PCM-wave-based. And of course the samples :-)
Comment: Thanks Christian. I am not familiar with Industrial. What do you call EBM ? (Currently enjoying/discovering Front 242;-).
Comment: @Xavier: De nada :-) Industrial music is groups like Nine Inch Nails, Rammstein, Skinny Puppy, Laibach, Einstürzende Neubauten, Das Ich, and such. A very hard and often dissonant collection of styles that can be very different from each other. EBM, Electronic Body Music, is a derivate from Industrial that focused more on beat and being dance-able. Front 242 is considered the founder of the style, though Kraftwerk was first to coin the word :-)


Did Genesis 2 occur all in one day?

Question: A comment to this answer prompted this question. Was Adam created, naming the animals, and married in one day, or did these events take place in a larger time span?
Comment: Sadly, the only answer you'll get here to the "was it all one day" question is a lot of disagreement and unless you're REALLY lucky, a bunch of snipes back and forth between the young-earth creationists, old-earth creationists, atheists, and others in-between.

Perhaps I'm getting too cynical for this site now.  At any rate, how literally Genesis is to be taken is about as "settled" here as it is in the wider world.
Comment: For this to be a good question, I believe it needs further clarification. Perhaps by asking what a particular faith tradition believes on the matter, or for the evidence that it did all occur in one day, or the evidence that it did not.
Comment: Perhapse you could ask, "According to young earth creationists..."
Comment: @JimG. I don't believe that believing the story to be literal or not changes the story or the things to be learned from it.  Do you have some examples where the Vatican dictates that it should be taken literally?
Comment: Why do we ponder such things?  What is there to learn from the story of Genesis? :P
Comment: @DanAndrews: I largely agree with you; but the Vatican doesn't want to edit the Bible, so I have to accept Genesis as truth. Sorry - I don't have any choice.
Comment: @DavidStratton: Just curious - Did you mean that you were getting too cynical for this site? Or are you getting too cynical *about* this site?
Answer: Short answer: A literal reading of the text would indicate that yes, Adam was created, named the animal, and married all in one day.
Gen 1:1-2:6 gives an overview of the creation of the world. Gen 2:7-25 then goes back and gives additional detail about the creation of Adam and Eve. (There's nothing odd about this, it's a common enough literary technique: first give an overview, then go back and give details about the part you're most interested in.)
Gen 1:26-27 says that God created humans on the sixth day. It specifically says male and female. Gen 2:7 describes the creation of Adam and 2:21-22 describes the creation of Eve. So the plain reading is that 2:7, 2:22, and everything in between therefore happenned on one day.
I don't see any difficulty in supposing that Adam and Eve were both created and married to each other in one day. It's not like they had a lot of choice about potential marriage partners.
Perhaps you struggle with how Adam could have named all the animals in one day? That depends how many animals he named. You often hear how there are millions of species in the world. But the vast majority of those are microscopic, most of the rest are insects or arachnids, and a hefty percentage are sea creatures. The text says Adam named cattle, birds and "every beast of the field". There's no mention of Adam naming fish, insects, or microscopic creatures. If you just count mammals, reptiles, birds, and amphibians, there are about 30,000 species. Genesis does not spell out how broad or narrow the categories where that he named, and species is pretty narrow. Like did Adam name "dogs" (in whatever language he spoke, of course, not English), or did he name every individual breed? Or for that matter did he just give a name to the broader family that includes dogs, wolves, etc? Realistically, Adam probably named a few thousand animals, maybe as little as a few hundred. If he just went down the line and said, "Okay, I'll call that a 'dog', that's a 'cat', that's a 'moose' ..." etc. he could have named each one in a second or two. At 3 seconds per animal he could name 20 per minute, 1200 per hour, 9600 in an 8-hour working day. Okay, I doubt he kept up a rapid-fire pace of naming for 8 straight hours, but he could have named several thousand animals in a day.
If you want to take the story symbolically or allegorically, then the whole question becomes moot. If it's all just a symbolic story and none of it really happenned, then it's meaningless to talk about how long it took.
Comment: Perfect. I had the same question myself regarding Chapter 2. Makes sense that it's really a further explanation of what was created on days 5 & 6 - namely, animals and mankind.
Answer: Genesis chapter 2 is a telling of the creation account from the perspective of Adam; that is to say it was Adam-centered. First God thought to create man, man needed a home, man needed food, man needed work (taking care of the animals, among other things). The chronological order of creation is found in Genesis chapter 1. Therein we find that creation took 6 days, with God resting on the 7th day.
Since the concept of day doesn't have to mean one 24-hour period, especially since these days started being counted before there was a 24-hour day as we know it, this period of 6 days could be thousands or millions of years. The scriptures relate a day to a year (Eze 4:6), a day to 1,000 years (2 Pe 3:8), a day to a period (day's of Noah, Luke 17:26), or a day to a period corresponding to an event (day of fury, Zeph 1:15). Furthermore, the creative account in the Bible of 6 days doesn't even take in to account things that were created before the 6 days began.
As to the 'evening and morning' part of the verses, consider that it says that even about the first 'day' in which there were still no luminaries (though there are day and night by that time). Additionally, if you note 2:2-3 it mentions that God proceeded to rest (note the original verb tenses here, many translations read 'God rested') implying that the resting has continued. Furthermore, at Heb 4:1-11 Paul indicated that God was still in the 7th day of rest, some 4,000 years after Adam's creation. Also, it seems that the 1,000 year reign of Christ will also be included in God's day of rest as Jesus is called "Lord of the sabbath" (Mt 12:8; Re 20:1-6).
Simply put, the creation of all things took longer than one 24-hour day, but it could be said that all creation occurred in Jehovah's creative day.
In response to your comment on this question consider that Ge 2:23 records Adam as saying 'This is at last bone of my bones...'. That would certainly imply that Adam had been alive for much longer than a single day before Eve was created. Additionally, Adam had to name the creatures on the earth. This job could have taken quite some time, especially since the account mentions that Jehovah brought the animals to Adam to see what Adam would call them, which could imply a period of observation. Then the text adds that there 'was found no helper as a complement of him' further implying that time had passed for the search and for Adam to notice that all animals had a helper/complement but he didn't.
Comment: But the text says, "There was evening and there was morning, one day." That would seem to rule out the "days" of Genesis 1 being long periods of time.
Comment: @Jay, I've updated my answer to include information addressing your comment.
Comment: Genesis says that the first thing God created was light. It doesn't say how this light was distributed, it what direction the light rays -- if there were light rays -- moved, etc. The Sun was not created til later, but so what? The Sun is not the only possible light source. Right now I'm typing this under the light of an electric lamp. From the fact that it says that there was evening and morning on the first day, that implies that the Earth was rotating by that time and light was coming primarily from a single direction, so that the rotation caused day and night. (continued ...)
Comment: (continued ...) Whether God created some temporary light source to fulfill this role until he created the Sun, whether he created a stream of photons with no conventional source, or made some other arrangement, is beyond the scope of the text.
Comment: I'm not sure how you conclude that the words "at last" imply more than one day. I'm not sure what the connotations of the original Hebrew are. New King James simply translates it "now". But even applying the English connotations, I've had plenty of times that I've said "At last I'm done with this job" or similar words when it took me several hours. Someone having trouble breathing or suffering a heart attack might well consider their trouble to "at last" be over after a few minutes. (continued ...)
Comment: (continued) I don't see why it would take more than a few hours for Adam to observe that all the animals God was showing him had a mate but he did not, or that no animal was a companion whom he could consider an equal. There's no reason why such an observation would require years of study.

Did Genesis 2 occur all in one day?


Storing lemon juice with crushed mint

Question: I really enjoy grinding mint with lemon, then adding that to various drinks. I buy fresh mint but mint leaves wither pretty fast. I thought about grinding the entire mint bundle in lemon juice at once and keeping it in fridge. For how long would it be safe to store it like that?
Answer: I'd make it into ice cubes.
They'd add decorative interest too.
Fridge, maybe a week, freezer, more like 6 months.
There's a full list of storage times in How long can I store a food in the pantry, refrigerator, or freezer?
Answer: I would like to add that you can just freeze the mint leaves without grinding them too. Wash and dry them well, then... Put them in the freezer. If they're fresh and dry, then they won't stick together, and you can pull out as many as you like at a time.
That said, if you let the leaves thaw, they'll look and feel like they've been blanched. The water in the leaves will burst the cell walls while freezing, as surely as it would while boiling.
Answer: I've had experiences in the past where herbs + lemon juice ended up getting a kind of "pickled" taste because of the acidity of the lemon. I might just grind the mint and freeze that on its own, and freeze lemon on its own, without combining the two.
Answer: Another idea:  Make a tincture/ cold infusion.
Wash and dry your lemons and mint.  Dice and freeze the lemons; freeze the sprigs whole in a bag.  Beat the bag about a bit to detach the leaves.  Place frozen lemon chunks and frozen leaves in blender.  Whiz to powder.  To make a cold infusion, add water; to make a tincture, add vodka (well, not really a tincture, due to the high juice content).  Whiz some more.  Strain out the solids by pushing the goop from the blender through a sieve with the back of a ladle; use a muslin cloth or simply your bare hands to squeeze out the last drops from the pulp.  Bottle the liquid and keep it in the fridge.  Fine particles will settle out over time, yielding a clearer liquid.  Add to drinks as required.
The quasi-tincture will have a long fridge-life due to its alcohol content.  The infusion not so, but this can be helped by adding sugar or super-concentrated syrup at the time of bottling.
Answer: Thank you to rumtscho for helping me to improve this answer in terms of clarifying its relevance to the question, partly by expanding upon the other respondents' reasons for having suggesting alternative strategies (freezing rather than refrigerating; not combining reactive ingredients).

The answer to your question as posed (storing the two ingredients, mixed, in the FRIDGE) is about 3 or 4 days, or as Tetsujin advises, max. a week. If you're doing this often, that may be sufficient for your needs. It is worth noting, however, that the period of freshness would depend on a) the temperature setting of your fridge, b) how closely sealed the container is, and c) how much air is also inside said container (the more there is, the faster the contents will oxidise). Best strategy would therefore be to use the smallest possible container for the amount you have to store, seal it well, and keep your fridge relatively cold. Taste to test.
That said, all four answers offered so far (including this one), ultimately recommend not using a fridge but a FREEZER instead. kitukwfyer also recommends leaving your mint leaves whole until you're ready to use them, rather than crushing them, to whose prescription of making sure the leaves are fully dry (as in 'not wet', not as in 'dried herbs'-dry) when you freeze them, I'd further specify freezing them in a bag rather than in a rigid container. You can then crush them, still frozen, by whacking the bag a few times on the countertop; the leaves will detach from the stems (saving much time-consuming leaf-picking, assuming your desire for 'crushed' mint precludes the stems) and naturally crumble into a coarse powder or meal which you can then shake out easily into a glass or their other ultimate destination without them melting and turning into mush.
The ice-cubes-alternative has the advantage of making your drink sharper-tasting as the juice-cubes melt, which can be balanced by not-quite-fully-mixing any syrups you may also be adding, so the whole thing becomes more concentrated as you imbibe - the opposite of the watery dregs that sipping too slowly can leave one with when using pure ice.
I'd also second Esther's answer, which suggests storing the two ingredients separately. Different foods tend to interact, and you might end up with something more akin to salsa than cocktail aromatics.
So if 'three or four days, up to a week' doesn't meet your hopes, if you possess a freezer, and you don't mind performing the very last steps of processing your carefully-preserved ingredients at drinks-mixing time, here's what I'd do...
Lemons: Freeze them whole, fresh from the shops. Take a lemon out of the freezer and let it soften slightly (about four or five minutes). Use a very sturdy knife (not your best one!), pare off a flat bit on one side so that it sits stably on the board, and then pare off thin slices from one end. Unused lemon goes back in freezer for next time. Personally, I use the flesh, juice, peel, pith, and seeds together; you'll get more flavour (if not more acidity) from each lemon, this way. For a drink without solid particles floating about in it (besides the mint), you can use a pestle or other blunt object to muddle the parings, now fully defrosted, through a strainer to extract the juice, suffused with zesty fragrance and ultra-fresh.
Mint: Store it alive, on the plant. I know this goes a long way outside the ambit of your original question, but the more flavourful result makes it a solution worth considering.  That said, the freeze-and-shake-in-a-bag method isn't bad at all, and great for dealing with large amounts at one time.

Storing lemon juice with crushed mint


How do you make money from html5 games (i.e sponsorships)?

Question: I make games with flash and I am interested in making games in html but I haven't seen any companies or websites which are willing to buy these games (i.e game sponsorships). I was hoping somebody could tell me about a company who would do this or why people don't buy html games?
Comment: It is pretty trivial to decompile and cheat (and usually more importantly, rebrand) Flash clients as well. Practically speaking you can run an obfuscator on either Flash or HTML5. Also practically speaking, all major obfuscators have deobfuscators. So just run something like Closure on it to get the other benefits, and don't sweat it too much.
Comment: @TheCommunistDuck :what do mean you cannot change the source? when you have the full source code it's only law that is preventing you from changing it and there are some crackers who don't mind the law at all! it's just too easy for them to crack games you've developed using html5.
Comment: @TheCommunistDuck : how much of a html5 game is running on server side? if it's only a web client you are correct but when I'm thinking of HTML5 instead of flash it means all the code is running client side!
Comment: maybe because evey one could easily see and chane html source of the game?
Comment: @Gajet you cannot change the source.
Comment: @Gajet You cannot change the code on someone's server. Stuff like Firebug only works locally.
Comment: Hello: i am the person who posted this question. is there a way i can make my source impossible (or harder) to change by hackers?
Comment: But what is wrong with people messing with your game? I simply don't understand, they get the game for free, they can only influence their own, temporary client: there's absolutely nothing wrong! Are you really worried about little Billy the Hacker tampering with your acceleration rates or something?
Comment: @bane the issue would be people changing logos etc. and republish the game as theirs.
Comment: But that's illegal... And you can probably do that with a compiled game too. I guess it would be less of a hassle, but definitely possible.
Answer: As someone who is currently working on a commercial HTML5 game, I can give some possibly helpful insights.
First, HTML5 and gaming is brand new.  HTML5 is really brand new, and WebGL and accelerated canvas are really really brand new.  Mobile platforms for instance still lack WebGL entirely, and accelerated canvas is only available in very recent Firefox and Chrome/Webkit builds.
We're just now seeing the first conferences, books, and panels on HTML5 games.  There's been the stuff at the most recent Google I/O and some panels at PAX 2011, and aside from that there's very little information.
One problem is that HTML5/JavaScript is still not quite ready for games.  There's no way to lock/bind the mouse cursor, for instance, which makes a lot of games impossible to make (FPS style games) or just somewhat obnoxious to play (any fast-paced game, puzzle or otherwise, where a player is moving the cursor around a lot and has a good chance of accidentally going outside the browser content area and clicking).  There's the WebGL support problem mentioned above.  The HTML5 sound API is entirely unsuitable for games, although Chrome has an experimental new API that works better for games.  Linear algebra libraries for JavaScript are largely slow (though they're getting better -- Chrome Canary has some amazing optimizations targeting libraries like Closure and glMatrix.js that make a huge difference) and the copy-by-reference nature of them makes it a pain to use (in a game, you often use vectors more than scalar numbers, so imagine a language where every single value/type was copy-by-reference and then you have an idea of what doing a game in JavaScript can be like).
Things will improve.  There are some really big companies pushing to get the Web into a suitable state for games, which includes new specifications/APIs to correct deficiencies in the platform, browser performance and behavior improvements, and evangelization/education about the platform.  Until then, though, most companies are playing it safe and staying away from the risky, new, and largely experimental gaming platform that is HTML5, which is why you won't see a lot of them willing to invest in it.
Answer: We had an interesting thread in our forum about this:
http://www.scirra.com/forum/how-do-you-make-money-with-html5_topic46184.html?KW=make+money
The obvious ways to monetise HTML5 games are:

Webstores (for example Chrome Webstore)
Advertisments (traditional banner adverts for example)
Inapp purchases (Chrome Webstore is enabling this)
Wrap in an EXE and distribute on Steam
Wrap with something like Phonegap and distribute as an App for Android/iPhone

Lots of ways!
Answer: HTML5 Sponsorship/Publishing
This model is very much alive, especially for HTML5 games.
Check out marketJS, a platform to connect HTML5 game devs with publishers.
Disclosure: I work for the platform.
A good HTML5 game, when optimized for the mobile web can fetch about $500/license. Really good ones can fetch $1500+. Publishers are increasing adopting HTML5 games because they want to move away from the competitive app economy.
Non-Sponsorship
I also wrote this blog post highlights some good ways to make a living for devs
Comment: Hello Ben and Welcome to GD.SE. We ask that people fully disclose their involvement when promoting a site they are affiliated with: http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/faq#promotion
Comment: properly disclosed, thx!
Answer: Like Ben said, MarketJS is a great resource for finding sponsors. If you're familiar with the Flash Game market, it is more or less the equivalent of FGL.
Keeping with the Flash analogy, another model for making money from web games is through distributing to as many places as possible, and earning through ad revenue share. Mochi Media was and is the king of this for Flash.
For HTML5, there is Clay.io. Right now it's primarily mobile-web-friendly games that are picked up, so that should be a must-have when designing your HTML5 game.
Full Disclosure: I work for Clay.io
Other options that haven't found as much success yet are:

Selling the games in the Chrome Web Store or similar marketplaces - however, I'm not sure this will ever work for web games. People just aren't in the mindset to buy games when it comes to games on the web.
In-game purchases. You need a really sticky, addictive game for this to work. Zynga is a company that did, and still does this fantastically well, so if you have a chance, take a look into how they did it.

And of course, advertising is always a fairly easy option - it's just a matter of getting a high quantity of views to your game. In my experience, mobile web ads right now perform much better than traditional web in terms of CPM.
Answer: There's a few reasons that HTML5 games aren't making money via sponsorships in the same way that Flash games do.

HTML5/canvas/javascript is still fairly slow.  For some games (puzzle, turn based strategy), this isn't a huge problem, but it's still a concern, and for a large amount of browser, the canvas tag still isn't hardware accelerated.
There's no reliable way to prevent theft of the code/game/etc, or ways to prevent cheating.  This is a problem with Flash games, too, but it takes a bit more work to decompile Flash than Javascript (since Javascript has to be received as plain text for the browser to handle it)
Similar to the second point, there is no easy way to distribute an HTML5 game.  With Flash, it's a single .swf file.  With HTML5, there's an .html file, and at least one .js file, plus any assets used by the game.  There's some potential solutions to this, but no one has come up with a method to handle this yet.

There's probably some other issues I haven't addressed, but those are the major ones that I see.  Note that there are ways to make money from HTML5 games, but the route is different from a typical flash game.  Chrome's app store is filled with HTML5 apps/games, many of which charge for extra levels or features.  There's also hosting a game on your own server and having ads in the hopes of generating some income.
Comment: Note that "more work to decompile Flash" is simply because you have to download the .swf file and download a flash decompiler, whereas there are online deobfuscators for javascript.
Comment: I'd just like to point out that Javascript is not slow. Javascript, at least under V8, compiles to machine code, and is less than 5 times slower than C! Which is quite fast.
Answer: Many of the above mentioned obstacles for HTML5 game development are quickly being overcome by modern browsers.  Already there is significant support for games in the major browsers. Check out my game I have been building using only HTML5 (http://asteroidsinc.com/) it plays similarly to a flash game but uses only HTML5. As for monetization it looks more time is needed. Currently there are not very many options for HTML5. I have placed some ads on my above mentioned game, however this has proven to not be profitable in the least. But I imagine with time just as with flash larger game portals will eventually emerge to take advantage of the new technology and monetization will become more straight forward.
Comment: -1 You fail on addressing the question. Your game looks nice.
Answer: Of course such sites won't buy HTML 5 games, they wouldn't work for a large part of their users. If you want at least a chance of convincing any of these sites to buy HTML games you better write IE6 compatible HTML 4.01.
But you'd still have a heck of a job talking them to sense, so bring a hit game if you are serious about breaking the wall, they are certainly not going to change their way of business for anything that is merely good.
Comment: Yes, I probably _would_ develop a high quality product which 90% of my customers can use. As for the remaining 10%, since I'm already asking people to install Flash, Shockwave and Silverlight to play this particular game, I might as well also ask them to pick up a more recent browser to play this particular game.
Comment: IE6 is down to about 10% of web users, or less depending on what sort of demographic you're looking at.
Comment: If you were running a successful game site would you want to bother 10% of your users with a link to a game they can't play? They have got games enough, though the loss of disappointing those users a single time may be quite small, the gain of adding a single game to the site is also quite negligible.
Comment: Game portals tend to be quite forward-thinking, as well; see Kongregate's recent addition of Unity to their service as a first-tier product. The main problem with HTML5 as I see it is packaging the games for distribution.


Why is B or B− the minimum passing grade for most graduate courses in US?

Question: I was recently told that in many schools in the US (maybe other countries too), the minimum grade for a graduate course is B or B−. Meaning that B is considered as a passing score. I would like to know whether this is true. Why should it be the case? Does this mean that grading in graduate school is easier?
Comment: [Relevant PhD comic](http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=469)
Comment: I can't speak for every grad program in every school, but at the end of my program myself and most of my cohort got together for a party.  Grades came up and we discovered that pretty much everyone in the cohort was given an A for every class, the WORST anyone got was a B in two classes over the course of the 2+ year program.  Of course, it's possible someone had lower and didn't want to be honest about it, and we were also the set of students who were still LEFT at the end, but... I personally felt grading was easier.  I had a 3.4 GPA in undergrad, 4.0 in grad school.
Comment: Easier than what?  Are you saying you think a B is too low to count as a passing grade, or that it is very high and even lower grades should also count?
Comment: Easier than Undergraduate grading where the lowest grade is F and passing is C- or C depend on the university. I am thinking B is a high grade to be considered as a passing grade so does that mean there is no C, D or F in graduate schools?
Comment: I'd also say in my experience grad-level professors / teachers don't seem to CARE about grades as much as undergrad professors / teachers.  For the most part they care that you are there doing what needs to be done, and most people in grad school are there paying out of their own pockets (grants aside) to do what needs to be done.  It's a bit tougher to get into grad school as well, so the sort of lazy parents paying for everything party all the time undergrads get filtered out.  A bit.
Comment: A general caveat to the comments and answers who are saying that grades do not matter much in graduate school: this is very true *in the sciences*. In the humanities, this is not necessarily the case and there is a great deal more importance placed on getting As. At my university students, humanities students are advised to drop the program if the majority if they get a B into their second year.

Additionally, graduate school is like *always* doing coursework in your major. Undergrad programs can require a C/B- or better in core major classes to maintain standing.
Answer: In some sense grading may be "easier", but it's also just that the effective grading range is compressed, and that grades per se matter less than in undergraduate classes.
In many graduate programs, getting a grade lower than B (or even A-) is considered a warning that you need to seriously knuckle down and start doing better.  To take a random example, UIUC has a campuswide minimum GPA of 2.75 (B-), but most departments set higher minimums (as high as 3.25, or B+) Here's a relevant quote from an old grad school blog post:

My first semester in grad school, my M.A. advisor laid it out for to me: "If you get a B in a grad school class, you should ask the professor whether you should consider dropping out of the program. If you get a C, don't bother asking."

What this means is that the range of grades in grad school is effectively compressed, going from A to C instead of A to F.  Getting a C in a grad school class is, in many cases, practically equivalent to getting an F in an undergraduate class.  This grade inflation probably has historical roots in a sort of academic politeness in which it became considered more and more insulting or embarrassing to give someone low grades.
However, it's not as significant as it may seem, because grades are typically much less important in grad school than in undergrad.  In grad school (especially PhD programs) you are working much more closely with faculty and they monitor your progress at a much finer grain.  It's not just about getting a good grade, but about conducting research, making progress on your degree milestones (e.g., writing an MA thesis or PhD dissertation), and so forth.
In grad school, your class grades are meant to be not just an evaluation of your performance in that class, but a signal as to whether you are developing the skills necessary to succeed in the program as a whole.  It would be unusual (probably unthinkable) for a grad program to suddenly give someone the boot simply because their GPA dropped too low; rather, a series of low grades will lead to increasing concern from the faculty, with meetings, emails, etc., gradually escalating from "Is everything ok?" to "You need to start working harder" to "Get your act together or else".
I've known grad students who received multiple grades in the B range, and this is what happened to them; they were subjected to increasing pressure from the faculty, with increasingly more explicit suggestions that they could be kicked out of the program if they didn't improve their performance.
That said, it is true that in some cases grading in grad school can be "easier" than in undergrad.  My personal experience has been that in some cases faculty members are willing to be somewhat more flexible on grades as related to the actual course content, as long as they are satisfied that you got what you personally needed from the class.  For instance, if you are specializing in Topic X and you take a requred class in Topic Y intended to broaden your background, the professor may give you an A even if your paper in the class is only adequate, if the professor understands that that is not your specialization and you don't need to fully master it in order to succeed.  The flip side of this is that if you take a class in Topic X (your specialty), the professor may hold you to a far more exacting standard, knowing that you really must be on top of that material.
Comment: This is really on point. One comment: every grade does come from an individual professor in the context of an individual course, which may be absolutely critical to the student's future work but also may not. If you get a C, I wouldn't bother asking the professor what she thought of your performance: clearly she thought it was miserably poor. Just because one professor thinks you suck does not necessarily mean you should drop out of a program.
Comment: @PeteL.Clark Though one addendum comment to your comment (in case anyone misreads it), two Cs from different professors means it's no longer them, it's you.
Answer: I can tell you for a fact that people can get worse grades than B- in graduate courses.  People can even fail in graduate courses.  It happens pretty rarely, though, because the population of students in a graduate course are highly selected.
If you read other questions on this site, you'll see that graduate school admission is a strong filter: most people need to be both excellent and a little bit lucky to get in, because there are so many excellent students who want to go to grad school.  That means most grad students are smart, hard-working, and ambitious enough to put in the work to deserve the grade.  As for undergraduates in graduate-level courses: if they weren't willing and able to put in the work, why wouldn't they choose one of the easier options?  Moreover, most schools allow students to drop a course without penalty early in the semester, and the people doing poorly are the ones likely to drop.
Now, grade inflation can certainly happen.  But by the time you're dealing with graduate courses, usually the class is pretty much full of people who want to be there and are capable of making the grade.
Comment: @user59419 And as for why the person might be worried: if it's a subject critical to their research, even getting less than an A is a very bad sign that they may be unable to do the research in their plan.
Comment: I do not agree since students in the class come from different background and some of them know much more than others therefore this still can make a pretty wide curve. My question was why the very last person in the class receives B or B- and he/she is afraid that with this grade his funding is terminated.
Comment: @user59419 Why do you assume that somebody with the appropriate pre-requisites can't learn a B- worth of material?
Comment: @user59419 Regardless of the letter of the grade, the "very last person in the class" is in an unenviable position in a competitive field.
Answer: Part of the answer is in disputing some assumptions in the question, as remarked upon to some degree in the other answers. That is, for one thing, graduate admissions are most often selective enough so that every grad student is probably able to do the work at a level that would, indeed, perhaps be a "B+" in "grading on a curve", if the population in the course were far less selective than it ... in fact... is. This is in contrast to the common conduct of undergrad courses, especially lower-division ones, where there is often no pre-filtering at all. The students self-select, and their own judgement may be flawed.
But then why might a "B+" be considered "a problem"? What is the "problem" if it's not "failure"? Well, it's not-at-all "failure" by undergrad standards, but that standard is far, far too weak for an apprentice professional. Unlike undergrad courses, where a "C+" may fulfill "a requirement", but absolutely not indicate competence, grad students need to be more-genuinely competent. A "B+" is an indication of some gaps in competence.
So, yes, those undergrad "C+"s are not evidence of "sufficient competence", at all. Indeed, that's why people who get that minimal "C+" in calc I invariably have terrible trouble in calc II, etc. The primary reason such grades are tolerated at all is that, in fact, much of the function of lower-division undergrad math is filtering, so that content mastery is nearly irrelevant in many cases.
Again, most often, grad students are not being filtered very much after admission, so the issue is genuine content mastery, not "getting by".
Answer: I think the idea is simply that people who get into graduate programs must have gotten A's or B's in nearly all of their undergraduate courses.  So if graduate courses are graded in the same way as undergraduate courses, it makes sense that most of the students in them should get A's or B's.  Meanwhile, since a C in an undergraduate course would be a strong strike against you for admission to grad school, it is also a strike against your continued enrollment in a graduate program.
Answer: It definitely depends on the program of study...I believe the grading system is harsher for people who study something career specific---AKA nursing, physical therapy, Occupational therapy, med school, law school, etc..These programs tend to have a lot more drop outs/people who are unable to maintain the 3.0 minimum...People who study something like a Phd in Sociology, philosophy, or an M.S in Biology usually get higher grades because these programs tend to put less emphasis on passing tests and put more emphasis on producing research... Which is very different from lets say law school, where there is a huge emphasis on grades and rankings...


Why do humans have relative pitch?

Question: Why does the brain learn to form a strong connection between some pitches and other pitches like having the internal sense that two notes are a fifth apart?
Comment: @CarlWitthoft - In these sorts of questions, I think we universally disregard the tone-deaf and others who cannot acquire relative pitch.
Comment: I deny the question, in that some people do not easily (or at all) develop relative pitch to any accuracy.
Comment: @StefanH I think there was no evolutionary advantage at all. It's far easier for evolution to create a brain that can develop that sense than a brain that can't. The brain notices a pattern that sinusoidal waves of a certain frequency regularly go with sinousoidal waves of double and triple that frequency. Only sinousoidal waves are registered as exactly one pitch. Any continuous periodic function can be expressed as an infinite sum of sinousoidal waves that are a multiple the frequency of the function. Waves of 5 and 7 times the frequency can be very closely approximated by repeated taking of
Comment: fifths and octaves so the bran doesn't put any thought into them. The brain is very adaptable. If we were in a place where we only ever hear a sound wave that is composed of a sinousoidal wave of base frequency and ones that are a fifth, sixth, and seventh root of 2 times higher and it keeps continuously going up and down with time, we might develop another sense of sound while we're there and actually hear a note that's a 210th higher than another note as being gotten from it by repeated multiplication or division of fifth roots, sixth roots, and seventh roots of 2.
Comment: Wasn't the original question: Why do humans have perfect pitch?
If not I've read it wrong - so we are getting older ... ;)
Comment: Most answers refer to physics. But putting all physics aside, on another level. Why do humans enjoy music at all? And why most people lose perfect pitch (I am a friend of the critical period theory)? What is the evolutionary "advantage" of relative pitch, and why not the same principle applies for perfect pitch?
Answer: The reason why we are able to learn relative pitch is found in psychoacoustics.
In order to make sense of the jumble of frequencies that reaches our ear we are able to group certain frequencies and assign them to a single sound source. Our brains use a certain physical property of all natural (harmonic) sounds: that they consist of a certain base frequency and a set of frequencies based on that frequency following the harmonic series. In this way our brain has evolved to use the harmonic series as a filter to distinguish sound sources from each other.
The abstract of this paper gives a better description of what happens:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2885481/

Harmonic complex tones are a particularly important class of sounds found in both speech and music. Although these sounds contain multiple frequency components, they are usually perceived as a coherent whole, with a pitch corresponding to the fundamental frequency (F0). However, when two or more harmonic sounds occur concurrently, e.g., at a cocktail party or in a symphony, the auditory system must separate harmonics and assign them to their respective F0s so that a coherent and veridical representation of the different sounds sources is formed.

So, our brain is already wired to compare frequencies and especially the frequencies of the harmonic series.
Comment: I like that this answer does go into detail on the origins/purpose of relative pitch on a very basic level (speech comprehension, auditory perception). +1
Comment: Well, that appears to explain the ability to separate *patterns* but it's not clear that it explains the ability to identify (or tune your instrument to) precise harmonic ratios.
Comment: There was a YouTube video of somebody hearing for the first time at the age of 29 at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsOo3jzkhYA. I don't think she would have been able sense fifths right when she first started being able to hear. I think the ability to sense it comes from the brain noticing patterns in the first harmonic, second harmonic, and third harmonic always going together what ever the base frequency is. I don't think we would form it if the only sound we ever heard were sinusoidal either.
Comment: I believe that if you never heard anything before, your brain wouldn't have the instinctive ability to sense octaves and fifths. I believe a sinusoidal wave actually registers as exactly one pitch in the ear. I believe the ability to sense fifths and octaves comes from the brain learning by hearing that pitches a fifth apart are heard together when they're the second and third harmonic and ones that are an octave apart are heard together when they're the first and second harmonic. Because of the law of an exponential of a sum, a translation transformation on pitches still preserves properties
Comment: such as the property of being a fifth apart. Now the perception of absolute pitch is a totally undescribable detail so in most people, the ability to consciously recall it is lost after enough time goes by. However, I developed absolute pitch to some extent while I was about 30. It just came without any training. Quite frequently, I play a song I heard before at a pitch that's less than a semitone off. Before I developed absolute pitch, I didn't define it as forgetting the pitch. I defined it as not even being consciously aware of which pitch I'm actually hearing in the first place.
Answer: Why do humans have relative pitch?
I think relative pitch comes with the fact that we are able to recognize certain intervals, which then ties to the question of "why do humans need to be able to hear intervals?".
Intervals base the foundation of music with melody and harmony. One idea of why music exists in the first place, in terms of evolution, is so humans can more aptly socialize with each other. And the humans that can't recognize music are rejected from tribes, etc.
Therefore, relative pitch is more of a "side effect" of humans evolving with music. Pitches are also calculated from hairs in the ear which resonate at certain frequencies. The brain then learns about these intervals.

Why does the brain learn to form a strong connection between some
pitches

This part is more cultural, European music puts emphasis on the 12 tone intervals. You can recognize these pitches because you've had more practise identifying pitches (E.g. perfect fifth). Enough practice with a more rare interval like natural third will yield similar "connections".
Your idea.
Your idea should be part of your question.

I also noticed from my own senses that what really sounds like an F sharp is a tiny bit higher than what really sounds like a G flat.

This depends on your system of tuning. Also in most tuning systems where the pitch of G-flat isn't the same as the pitch of F-sharp, F-sharp is generally lower (not higher).

... that is log of the frequency, then a B and a C

I'm not sure what you mean here but, yes, the relationship between cents and frequency is logarithmic

The brain adapts and starts noticing a pattern in what's entering the ear.

Are you really trying to ask "How does relative pitch work" vs "Why do humans have relative pitch?". Ask a new question if you meant the former.
Comment: I understand the actual answer is here: "relative pitch is more of a "side effect" of humans evolving with music". Do you have any sources to support this? I'm thinking music wouldn't be created if most people didn't already have some relative pitch in the first place. So there must be some other evolutionary advantage of having relative pitch prior to the creation of music.
Comment: @coconochao I never really said exactly how relative pitch came around but more of why it turned out to be a useful trait. Mainly because there's too many theories to pick from. Search up "Evolutionary musicology" and you'll find dozens.
Comment: Whether an F sharp is sharper or flatter than a G flat depends on the context. It is typical on a violin that if you play a melodic line where there is an F sharp which works as a leading tone leading to G the violinist will play a very sharp F sharp. But if he plays the third in a sustained D-major chord he will intonate the F sharp so it fits the chord which means a flatter F sharp compared with the leading tone.
Comment: @LarsPeterSchultz You're right but I just shortened that explnanation to tuning systems - because generally the F# is lower than the Gb. Also, with stringed instruments I always feel the need to play higher for leading notes - so I agree with you with that. But some say that you should player lower, and for just intonation the major seventh is generally 12 cents lower than the equal temperament. I can't really find any specific infomation online about playing the note higher which is confusing because it is a thing in stringed instruments.
Comment: @Vitulus My point is: relative pitch woudn't have come around if it wasn't useful. It's kind of the same question, because if it wasn't useful when it eventually came around, then it would have faded. I think the evolutionary musicology would be the better way to go in the answer, or maybe include something about it if you want. Anyway, I got your point, I'm upvoting it.
Answer: Because there is a mathematical relationship between frequencies, arising from the harmonic series. This is what causes certain intervals to sound "related".
It works out that (from the harmonic series) a fifth corresponds to multiplying frequency by 3/2 (i.e. the 3rd harmonic lowered by an octave), a major third to 5/4 (5th harmonic lowered by two octaves). (In fact we generally use a slightly compromised version of these numbers to allow us to play chromatically in different keys, but they are very close.)
If you have a guitar you can demonstrate this to yourself by playing up through the harmonics and listening to the pitches produced. It's a useful exercise.
Comment: this answer doesn't explain why would these mathematical relationships would be relevant at all for our brains. Why would it be useful, to identify these intervals as related? I think this is what the question is about.
Answer: It would be much easier to answer to the question: Why do most people not have perfect pitch?
The question you're asking can be compared with: Why do some people see colours and some not?
Somehow we are all "blind" when we are born - concerning relative pitch and learning to differ sounds in a melody - and we have to learn to "see" (or hear, better listen) like we learn to see in 3 dimensions.
I would pretend: Human don't have relative pitch, a few have perfect pitch - like most of us can see and differentiate  colors.
So we have to learn the relative pitch like we learn the  mother language. But if our mother and parents don't sing with us baby songs and we  are not taught an instrument - also playing autodidactical  (self-educated) - most of us don't have relative pitch get laid in the cradle - we have to learn relative pitch like the grammar of a foreign language. And this is a long and hard way to go.
If we have grown up with music and baby songs and other songs it will be much easier to  learn the relative pitch as the basic function to this have already been formed.
Answer: I don't actually know the answer to that question so I will just make a guess. Actually the following is a simplifying approximation of my real guess.
I learned that when you go up an octave, the frequency doubles and when the frequency multiplies by three halves, the pitch goes up by what you hear as a fifth.
I also noticed from my own senses that what really sounds like an F sharp is a tiny bit higher than what really sounds like a G flat. The mathematics indeed supports that observation. It can be proven using the math alone without reliance on hearing that an F sharp is a tiny bit higher than a G flat but a lot closer together in pitch, that is log of the frequency, then a B and a C.
A sinusoidal sound wave registers as only one pitch in the ear. When you hear a note with a well defined pitch, it's nearly a repeating sound wave and that can be expressed as an infinite sum of sinusoidal sound waves each of which has a frequency that's a multiple of the frequency of the original sound wave.
The brain adapts and starts noticing a pattern in what's entering the ear. Whenever the first harmonic is a certain pitch, the second and third harmonics will always be a pitch corresponding to double and triple the frequency. It registers two notes as being a fifth apart because those pitches are heard together all the time.
Since the log of 3 to the base 2 is irrational, you can get arbitrarily close to any pitch from a given pitch just by multiply and dividing by 2 or 3. The brain doesn't devote much attention to changes in a factor of 5. Actually, I think a change in frequency by a factor of 5/4 can be misheard as a third but it really isn't. It just differs from one by a factor of 81/80.
Comment: This should probably be part of your question, not an answer.
Comment: @YourUncleBob I wasn't sure anybody else was going to be able to answer this question. I also said at the beginning of this answer that it was all just my guess. I thought maybe it was better to write that in an answer than in the question because then I wouldn't have to worry that it can't be answered because I answered it. A lot of what I wrote in my answer to https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/3102944/existence-and-uniqueness-of-function-satisfying-intuitive-properties-of-distance, I originally wrote in the question. After I fixed up the question to be very similar to the way it's
Comment: currently written, I voted to reopen it and it got reopened then I answered it and my answer got an upvote. Do you think I should delete this answer because it doesn't add anything to the other answers? Also, can you tell me what you think of this comment before I delete this answer?
Answer: The natural speaking pitch for every speaker is different (and may be different depending on time of day and other variables), inflection is relative to that pitch.  Music is processed by the same complex hearing apparatus that has evolved to deal with speech (among other noises with natural pitch relations).  Having to employ absolute pitch in order to be understood would be a nightmare for speakers.
Comment: I downvoted this answer because it doesn't answer the question. Saying we have relative pitch is not another way of saying we don't have absolute pitch although they're both true for almost everybody. I wasn't asking why we don't have absolute pitch. I was asking why we do have relative pitch which means the ability to sense how far apart different notes are when we hear them close together in time. Maybe part of the answer did answer the questions when you hinted that we evolved relative pitch to hear speech. I think that actually what was selected for was to have relative pitch to some
Comment: extent, but the brain is too good and so it can gain abilities there was no evolutionary advantage for, such as the ability to sense fifths. That's probably because those two frequencies actually go together when they're the second harmonic and third harmonic of a sound with a lower frequency so the brain learns that it keeps on over and over hearing pitches that are a fifth apart going together.

Why do humans have relative pitch?


Can slowing down your lifestyle save you money?

Question: If you simplify your life, and slow things down.. can you save money?
I'm looking for opinions and experiences here.
Comment: Isn't this just a discussion question?
Comment: Opinion is generally offtopic; Stack Exchange is designed for questions with practical answers. And as posed, the only possible answer to your question as posed is "it depends on the specifics, so this is too vague to give a good answer to." If you want people to list all the things they have done to save money, you want a discussion site, or perhaps should websearch for articles in the topic; good answers could and do fill multiple books. Try asking one specific question at a time..
Answer: I've found at various times we've spent a lot less when we've been absorbed by "cheap pastimes" or passions, such as:

video games
books
deciding to organize a room
starting a website :)
writing some code

It's incredible how fast some things can burn through your money:

movies
dining out
going out for lunch
get-togethers with friends or relatives
travel
home renovations
procrastination (it's easier to buy an exercise machine than to actually use it)
"hobbies" (scrapbooking, collecting, autos/motorcycles)
Comment: @Zephyr: Absolutely with the exercise.  Actually, just forego the gym membership and buy a really good pair of running shoes.  I find people go out and shop or buy coffee after the gym, but after running, you're back home.
Comment: Good points - it really depends on how one wishes to entertain oneself.  Some hobbies can actually save money as long as they don't require huge regular outlay of cash to maintain them (e.g buying equipment, expensive membership).  Also the watchout is that lively absolutely cheaply may begin to have health trade offs - no exercise, poor nutrition.
Comment: good points.. i guess it's based on your environment.. I had the expensive gym membership, and now I opt for the cheaper one.  In winter it's uncomfortable to go out in -30c weather.
The concept is right though... simplifying takes some thought and practice.
Comment: @montyloree: I do opt out of running in the winter, but I still walk the dog every morning and I'm always surprised to see a couple runners out in the dead of winter.  They're dedicated.
Comment: I really like this response. Short, sweet, simple. Thanks for writing it up.
Answer: Depends what you mean by simplify.
I thought I would save money when I talked the family into dropping cable TV, but it ends up coming out as a wash because we rented more and bought TV shows online from amazon.com.  (Then we bought a new computer so I could keep working on my laptop while the family watches streaming internet, we save money, but not as much as I thought)
We did a great purge of "stuff" from the garage and closets a couple of summers ago because I wanted to simplify (some clothes, extra pots and pans, a coat rack, unused electronics) and now I am seeing their replacements coming back into the house in the form of new purchases.
I guess my lesson is that you cannot make another person simplify their life.  I love my wife for trying so hard to help me with my plan, and I certainly don't blame her for wanting a coat rack again (it is just who she is, she doesn't see the irony) but I should have considered how my desire impacted those around me.
Comment: good point.. I am a minimalist by nature... It's hard to get the rest of the family to be the same way.. lol.. that's amusing... a coat rack means .... more coats!!  :)
Answer: I think that one change you can make which can make a significant impact to your cash flow is not eating out, if you tend to do so a lot.  My family used to eat out at least once a week, and we've cut it out entirely, saving about $200 a month.
Comment: do you enjoy cooking?  does the family enjoy home cooking all the time?  How times have changed.. 150 years ago people rarely ate out. Now it's expected.
Comment: btw... I think you know my sister, Dr Trina Read!!  Small Internet World.
Comment: Are you kidding me? That is so cool. I *love* her articles!
Comment: @montyloree - 150 years ago (or even 15 years ago, for that matter), there wasn't a McDonald's, Subway, and Starbucks on every corner.  Makes it a lot easier to eat out nowadays :).
Answer: Maybe it's a slightly different interpretation of "slowing down" that you're referring too, but selective procrastination can definitely save you money.  It's basically a technique for advertisement resistance:  When I see some item that I want (but really have no need for), I just procrastinate getting it.   This mostly involves just not actively going out and getting it, waiting for it to go on sale (and then waiting for a better sale), and just generally being lazy about it.  If I still want it by the time I get around to it, then it's usually something that I consider worth its value.   Usually though, after a month or two, I've forgotten about it altogether and moved on to the next thing.
This is most effective in avoiding buying the latest tech gadgets and depending on your gadget consumption can save you hundreds.  I'm currently procrastinating buying an iPad until it either goes down in price, a nice alternative shows up, or I decide that it's worth getting myself to an Apple Store - or I decide it's not worth the hype altogether.
Comment: +1  I do this exact same thing. I have even done this for real-estate.  "I'll make an offer next week if it's still available if it isn't it wasn't meant to be."
Answer: I've seen various blog posts (mostly from Penelope Trunk) refer to "optimizers" versus "settlers."  The optimizers are the go-getters, the ones always on the move, trying to optimize their time, their life, their experience, etc.  They tend to be younger, on average, live in bigger cities, and on the whole, tend to be less happy.  The settlers are the ones who settle for what is, live in smaller cities, and tend to be happier, albeit "less interesting".
Assuming that your idea of "slowing down" refers to moving away from that maximizer lifestyle, yes, I think you'll probably save money.  Apparently it costs money to be unhappy!  Going out for meals everyday, going out with friends every evening, shopping for the latest and greatest whatever, buying the newest gizmo, trading up your car every 3 years, traveling every other weekend to far-off places, making your life "interesting" - these all cost, and far more than their opposites.
Take time to be happy with what you have - enjoy your comfortable and broken-in shoes, enjoy your paid-off car, enjoy some quiet alone time with a good (library) book, appreciate the delicate tastes of a homecooked meal over the in-your-face greasebomb of restaurant food, take a walk, shut off the latest Apple iDevice, and just be.  You'll save money, find calm, and feel refreshed.
*Apologies for waxing philosophical - though the connotations of "slowing down" sort of insist on it :).
Answer: I think you need to have the experience of over-consumption to realize that buying more stuff won't make you happy. And then when you see TV commercials and ads everywhere, you no longer will want the stuff.
When you do that, then you slow down and start to value spending time with the people important to you, doing stuff and going places with them. It's the experiences that count, and some of the most fun and memorable stuff you can do is free or cheap.
Answer: By simplifying my hobbies, I have more time for money-saving activities such as researching deals, creating an effective coupon-clipping system, and making more foods from scratch (which doubles as entertainment since I enjoy it).  When I run frantically from activity to activity, I tend to mindlessly throw away more money, too.  By living more intentionally, I think about my purchases more as well.
On the simplifying note, never underestimate the power of less stuff in terms of being able to fit into a smaller home.  That leads to less space to heat and cool, which leads to savings.  Everyone has their comfort level with less, of course, and some people love space.  There are just trade-offs to more stuff.
Answer: Depends, sure you could save a buck or two here and there but maybe that time could be used for better things - i.e. earning a side income
It's all situational and relative to you and where you are in life - try things, don't be afraid of mistakes