Can I keep Google from stealing my cursor in Firefox?

Question: I have iGoogle as my home page. Every time that I start up Firefox with the intent to go to a specific page, I end up typing half the URL in the Google search box when iGoogle steals focus away from the URL bar. Is there any way to hack Firefox (or iGoogle) to keep the page from stealing my cursor on load?
Answer: Similar to Bevan's answer, but a little different. Two options you have.
In your Firefox options, Main tab, General section, set Firefox to start up with a blank page. Set your homepage, however to iGoogle. Whenever you open up Firefox, you'll be greeted by a blank page that doesn't steal your focus. If you want iGoogle, just click Home or hit Alt+Home.
Alternatively, which may or may not be better or for you, is to set your homepage to be

about:blank|http://www.google.com/ig

This will essentially load a blank screen in the first tab for you to go anywhere you want while iGoogle loads in the background. Want to just go to iGoogle? CTRL+F4 to close the blank screen, or a CTRL+Tab to switch tabs. I take it there's a reason you have iGoogle as your home page, which is why I mentioned this alternative.
Other than that, there's no Firefox option to prevent a page from taking focus; while there's a userscript called Focus Killer that says it'll prevent such behavior, my own tests indicate it only does this after the fact; i.e. iGoogle took focus away from the address bar, then a bit later Focus Killer took focus away from iGoogle. In the end, there was no focus on the address bar.
Only other option would be to disable scripts from running, but I don't think you'd want that at all.
An annoying problem, I feel your pain (they'd do this during Gmail sign on while I was typing my password, so that it'd mess up both fields and show a large portion of my password due to me not stopping in time). This is the best I can come up with.
Comment: According to https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=125282 this should now be fixed.
Comment: obnoxious grammar nazi tip: 'erstwhile' means 'formerly', you mean 'while'.
Comment: Doh, can't win them all. I blame the Internet!
Answer: Don't need to change your homepage. Here's a trick:
Find the Firefox prefs.js file according to your OS:
For XP:
C:\Documents and Settings\<user>\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<profile>\

For Vista:
C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<profile>\

Below the comment area, directly above the existing directive lines, add the following 3 lines (swap yahoo.com with your offending page):
user_pref("capability.policy.policynames", "nofocus");
user_pref("capability.policy.nofocus.sites", "http://www.yahoo.com");
user_pref("capability.policy.nofocus.HTMLInputElement.focus", "noAccess");

If Firefox was open when you did this, it will overwrite your changes, so save it when Firefox is closed. Then reopen - good to go.
Comment: Open a new Firefox tab and enter `about:config` for the URL. Add the values there. Same thing, no file browsing or overwriting.
Answer: One thing you could do is hit Esc before the rest of the page loads.
This will stop it loading the rest of the page and by that, any JavaScript that will come along and start the focus of the browser on an input.
Then carry on with Ctrl + L or F6 for the location or Ctrl + K  if you wanted to use the search plugin.
It's a temporary fix and you'll still be able to keep your default homepage without having to set it to about:blank.
Answer: Here's a workaround:
Set your Firefox homepage to "blank" - then you can type a URL to your hearts content.
Add the Google page to your links bar, so it's available just a click away.
(Or, maybe not; you could just rely on the search built into Firefox)


What were Garrett and Coulson drawing?

Question: In the season finale of Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D we saw Garrett was drawing something like a universe or multiverse like thing. Later Coulson saw that and inspired to draw again in wall. So what was that?
Comment: Based on the electrical engineering design, it's the schematic for Ultron.
Comment: It might be some kind of Kree code. http://www.dailydot.com/geek/agents-of-shield-season-finale/
Answer: It was revealed in The Writing On The Wall (S02E07) that Garret, Coulson and a number of other former agents were drawing segments of a map.
The segments fit together in a three dimensional space, which no one had noticed until now.

Once put together, it appeared to be a map of a lost city or large temple of some sort.

During the events of The Things We Bury (S02E08), the team learns that the lost city is located below San Juan, Puerto Rico.
The assumption by most fans is that the lost city is actually Attilan, which figures heavily into the backstory of the Inhumans, but there has been no confirmation of this fact as of yet.
Answer: The simple answer: we don't know.  Yet.  This is likely to be part of Coulson's Season 2 story arc.
I think Garrett drew it first because he had more samples of GH-325 put into him than Coulson did.  I beleive once Coulson saw Garrett's drawing, it triggered it in his mind.  I personally think this is what drives people mad (as Coulson alluded to in his report to Fury).
Some of the comments over on io9's review of the season finale recall that this formula was seen before in the episode "Eye Spy."

What were Garrett and Coulson drawing?


What was the original cost of a Sharps Rifle?

Question: In 1850, when the Sharps Rifle was made, how much did it cost?
Answer: From a letter, concerning the purchase of breach-loading rifles by the United States Army, dated May 14 1857:

After preliminary trials of a great number of breech loading rifles
  presented by inventors the following were reported as giving
  sufficient evidences of merit to authorize a farther practical trial
  in the hands of troops and orders to supply them for that purpose to
  the extent and on the terms specified opposite to each were given by
  this office with the sanction of the Secretarv of War viz 200 of
  Sharp s at $30 each ordered July 28 1854 200 of Perry's at $25 each
  ordered February 24 1855 200 of Green's at $30 each ordered May 24
  1855 200 of Gibbs's at $30 each ordered November 17 1855 170 of
  Merrill's at $35 each ordered July 20 1855 200 of Burnside's at $30
  each ordered April 21 1850 201 of Syinmes's at $40 each ordered July
  18 1855 100 of Howe's at $32 each ordered January 28 1857 200 of
  Maynard's breech loading arms at $30 each were also recommended by
  this office after the preliminary trial to be purchased

(emphasis mine).
This, however did not specify a production model. Note the price is what the US government paid, so may not reflect civilian prices.
The next record I find for prices is for Sharps rifles ordered during the civil War.

The model 1859

The model 1859 was ordered for Berdans Sharpshooters during the civil war. The slightly modified model,made to Berdan's specs, cost $42.50.
Source:Sharpshooting in the Civil War, By Major John Plaster

The model 1874

The model 1874, the model made famous in Quigley Down Under, could be bought in  1878 for $44.00.
Source:Mastering the Art of Long-Range Shooting, By Wayne van Zwoll
To put that in perspective, farmers in 1860 earned $10-$14 per month, and a private in the Union Army earned $11.00-$13.00 per month.
Comment: In Blood Meridian. a character bought one in the 1850s or so and according to the book there was a huge surplus (maybe due to buffalo dying out) and they were not worth mucj.
Comment: Good answer, but the upvote from me was earned by the Quigley Down Under callback alone.
Comment: private made $13 in union army


Advisory action/utility patent

Question: Can you still get your patent granted when they issued an advisory action? I'm curious as to what comes next. I've amended claims in the first office action and the final office action. The examiner has been late to respond but I responded on time within what they allow. Now I'm curious why I just got this advisory action!
Comment: VERY IMPORTANT. responding to a Final office action does not stop the clock.  At six months from the mailing of the Final office action, your application goes abandoned, unless the Examiner issues a regular office action or a notice of allowance or if you filed a notice of appeal or an RCE.
Answer: An Advisory Action is to explain to you why your after-final amendment or argument or affidavit did not put your application into a state of allowance. You can appeal, try to get an interview with the examiner, file a continuation application or let it go abandoned.
Comment: RCE - Request for continued examination is also an option.
Comment: Thank you, RCE is probably the most common next step
Answer: The Examiner works and is paid for their time. When you get to Final the Examiner is only budgeted to put very little attention into what you have to say.
I consider Final to mean "time to put another token in the game machine, but you have a last ditch attempt ". So, Advisory action means you failed and need to put in another token if you want the Examiner to do any real work. RCE is such a token.
That said, the USPTO has an after final pilot program, whereby the Examiner is allocated time to consider what you have to say in more detail than they would in an advisory. It often works and includes an interview.

Advisory action/utility patent


Why do we need the com.salesforce plugin for cordova apps?

Question: I have a lingering question. For Hybrid Salesforce Apps, why do we need the 'com.salesforce' cordova plugin? We are able to fetch the Salesforce data using the ForceJS library as it is? :)
Answer: The Mobile SDK is more than just database functionality. It gives you access to offline storage, camera, advanced gestures, notifications, device contact and calendars, and so on. You'll want to read more in Native, HTML5, or Hybrid.
Can you access the camera with ForceJS? How about device notifications? Can you access the native contacts and calendars? Mind you, if all you need is literally Salesforce access, feel free to use ForceJS. If you want anything more complicated than that, like a fully functional application, you'll need more than just Salesforce connectivity, which is where the Mobile SDK comes in play; there's no need to import a half-dozen libraries when you can just import the Mobile SDK and be done with it.
Comment: hi @sfdcfox . Exactly. I thought the various cordova plugins - camera, notifications, contacts, calender, etc. - would take care of that. So you're saying that few cordova plugins are already part of the Mobile SDK? Is there a list of these in-built components? I could find the following mention in the link you shared:
"Built-in components - The camera, address book, geolocation, and other features native to the device can be seamlessly integrated into mobile apps. Another important built-in components is encrypted storage, but more about that later.
"
Comment: @KanavKhurana My point is that the Mobile SDK gives you everything you need to get started. It includes Cordova, Force.com REST API and authentication, as well as SmartStore (encrypted offline storage) and SmartSync (automatically push/pull data when connected to the Internet). Yes, you could go out and get Cordova and ForceJS, but you'd still be missing some features that Mobile SDK offers. And nobody's telling you that you have to use Mobile SDK, it's your choice.
Answer: There's a few things that you get from the Salesforce SDK, over-and-above what you'd get with just using the forcejs. The big things, in my opinion, are the support of the SmartStore (the encrypted local SQLite DB) and the authentication management. I say this as security is hard, and I'd not advise doing this yourself when there's a team already building it, and it's the same as used in SF1.


How can I have lettuce growing year-round?

Question: I've got this lettuce, similar to the red leaf, ruffly variety. It seems to grow only during summer and autumn. I can't coax it into sprouting from the seeds I harvest at any other time of year, which is pretty disappointing as I really want to have part of my salad greens come from my garden. Halp.
Edit: I live in the center of Mexico, where climate is warm, hot and dry during the day but cools down quite a bit when the sun sets (desertic and semi-desertic environment). Spring is very dry, summers "moisten" towards the end, autumns are the middle ground between hot-cold and dry-wet, and finally, winters are quite cold, with a hail or two per year. Overall, low natural humidity. My lettuce plants are outside, although I also want to know if growing veggies inside is an option.
Comment: Try keeping the seeds for *longer* than their natural annual cycle, rather than planting them earlier and wondering why nothing happens. In the wild, the seeds  are *meant* to sit in the ground doing nothing right through the winter.
Comment: Where are you in the world (need to know what your winters are like)? You probably need to choose different lettuce to sow in autumn/winter - have you checked out winter lettuce?  are you growing indoors or outside?
Comment: The new sproutlings actually came up bu themselves, I kinda figured they only grow when they want because they had been sitting in my yard for a whole year before they finally decided to say hi. They must come from last year's lettuce.
Comment: Got a refrigerator? It's cool season for sprouting in there, all year long.
Answer: In winter time you can grow lettuce indoors using artificial light. For lettuce both LED or T5 light will work. Here an example on youtube.
Edit. Okay for Mexico maybe artificial lights are not necessary. I was assuming a temperate climate.
Answer: Yes, you can do it. In fact on market in present days, we see lettuce all year around.
How? It depends on where you live. @b.nota wrote about artificial light, but this is needed only if you live very north, and for sure Mexico do not have such requirement.
To do it, you may need a green house, or an hotbed, especially for the seedlings. You may generate seedling all months. Depending on the climate, you may keep the lettuce on open field. Maybe with right soil preparation: on some place, stones are used to keep day heat for night, on other maybe just hay, Now it could be simpler just to use some plastic to keep heat during night. You may experiment some methods.
As Bamboo wrote in comment, also the variety could help (and could remove the "greenhouse/plastic" requirement).
Note: "lettuce all year" is possible, but it is also more "professional" type of gardening: it requires some more tools (e.g. plastic cover), but also more control on fertilizers (your soil will never sleep), and more control on diseases and insects/birds (they will learn soon where there is good salad all year around).
From your climate, I think you may plant in autumn the last seedling, and many lettuce varieties should survive your winter, without much extra care. I think the problem is for the late winter and early spring (so preparing and keeping the seedlings on late autumn, early winter), and keeping the young plants from freezing.
I recommend you to ask this group also for alternative vegetables (e.g. arugula, spinach, Swiss chard, etc could be used in similar way, but they have less requirements on winter heat/light)
Answer: Much as others have said, to grow lettuce year-round you'll probably have to use a temperature-controlled greenhouse, or else grow the lettuce indoors. Or do different things different times of the year.
If you don't like the idea of that, my advice to you is to grow other kinds of greens that taste like lettuce, too, but that have a bigger harvest window (not necessarily all year long, but much longer than lettuce). The closest taste to lettuce I've found in a green might surprise you (but the plants are related; so, it makes sense they might taste similar): Mary thistle (Silybum marianum). Let me explain how to use it:

Grow it in an at least partially shaded area. The sunnier the location, the more prickly, crinkly, firm, and hard-to-use the leaves will be. In the right light, they're closer to the shape of horseradish leaves.
You can eat the leaves young, or let them grow huge and cut out the veins. The veins get fibrous, but the rest of the leaf is quite tender, even when large. The veins are easy to remove.
When harvesting large leaves, use scissors to cut the prickly perimeter of the leaf off. It's pretty easy, as long as the plant wasn't in full sun (if it was in full sun, it'll be hard to avoid the prickles during harvest and when you're preparing the leaves).

Mary thistle leaves are checkered green and white, and very ornamental. Be sure to read up on any interactions they might have with any medications you're taking, or conditions you might have.
Mary thistle is supposed to be a bienniel.
Other plants that taste like lettuce probably exist, too. So, I recommend investigating. It's more common to find those that taste more like spinach or cabbage, though.
Chicory tastes like lettuce before it gets bitter (in the early spring), but although it's easier to grow than lettuce (in my opinion), the non-bitter season for it isn't longer than the lettuce season. If you like the bitterness, you can eat it during the whole frost-free growing season. Also, check out other chicory relatives and derivatives: endive, puntarelle, radicchio, radichetta, sugarloaf, and witloof. I'm not sure if they taste like regular chicory or not. Regular chicory is a perennial.
If you don't mind other flavors, and just want tasty greens, I might recommend trying the greens of these plants: Kale, collards, chard, and kohlrabi (kohlrabi is not known for its greens, but they're exceedingly delicious, and the flowers are even better). Some of these are rather cold hardy. Some grow very well in hot weather.


What is the difference between a certificate and a key with respect to SSL?

Question: Whenever I try to understand anything about SSL I always have a hard time keeping track of what "key" and "certificate" refer to.  I fear many people use them incorrectly or interchangeably.  Is there a standard difference between a key and a certificate?
Comment: Certs used for SSL is heavily based on PKI http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-key_cryptography
Answer: A certificate contains a public key.
The certificate, in addition to containing the public key, contains additional information such as issuer, what the certificate is supposed to be used for, and other types of metadata.
Typically, a certificate is itself signed by a certificate authority (CA) using CA's private key. This verifies the authenticity of the certificate.
Comment: The gibberish you are looking at is Base64 encoding.  It's done that way probably for a similar reason that email attachments are converted to that - basically to ensure they can transport through protocols and mechanisms designed for ASCII only without casual modification and without worrying about things like newlines, brackets, etc.  The `openssl` command can decode and parse these or you can use an online utility such as this: http://lapo.it/asn1js/
Comment: @Zoredache If a certificate typically only has a public key, is there a good name to call .p12 or .pfx files that contain certificates and private keys together?
Comment: Where is this additional information buried? I was looking at some certificates and it's all gibberish to me
Comment: A pkcs12 is an archive format.  It may contain a key, or maybe not.  I usally try to always be specific when refering about what a particular file contains, or just say pkcs12 file.
Comment: Is the certificate signed by a CA or the server being communicated with?
Comment: Signed by CA.  The server is configured with the certificate itself, which has the public key, and the private key which is not shared or part of the certificate, but it doesn't itself sign anything.
Comment: Technically this means you can generate a keypair without a certificate. Later you can generate one **or more** certificates out of this keypair.
Comment: A digital certificate **certifies the ownership** of a public key by the named subject of the certificate. - from Wikipedia ;-)
Answer: These two pictures together explained everything to me:
Source: linuxvoice

Source: infosecinstitute
Comment: The first link, to https://www.linuxvoice.com/masterclass-secure-your-website-with-ssl-encryption/, gives a certificate error. Ironic.
Comment: [Relevant xkcd](https://xkcd.com/1354/)
Comment: Nice. 1 clarification: the 1st pic is standard (1-way) TLS auth; the 2nd, mutual (2-way) auth.  And 1 extra call-out in the 1st one would further help explain how the trust is actually established (all in that 1 friendlier-looking pic): after the client gets the server's public key cert, the client verifies that the CA that signed the server's cert is contained in the client's private list of trusted CAs (establishing that now it also trusts that CA).  Then, it's safe to send the server the session key, w/ which each can now both encrypt and decrypt subsequent communications.
Comment: Why does the server also verifies the client's certificate using the CA?
Comment: @RonyTesler This is only a guess, but assume two servers are communicating, e.g., say this is a Github webhook connected to Discord, now both ends need to verify they are who they say they are. As galaxis said this is more formally known as a 2-way TLS authentication. It's probably not the case for normal users navigating websites using their browsers. (but again as I said, take these all from me with a grain of .)
Answer: Lets say company A has a key pair and needs to publish his public key for public usage (aka ssl on his web site).

Company A must make a  certificate request (CR) to a  certification authority (CA) to get a certificate for his key pair.
The public key, but not the private key, of company A's key pair is included as part of the certificate request.
The CA then uses company A's identity information to determine whether the request meets the CA's criteria for issuing a certificate. If the CA approves the request, it issues a certificate to company A. In brief CA signs company A's public key with his(CA's) private key, which verifies its authenticity.

So company A's public key signed with a valid CA's private key is called company A's certificate.
Comment: After above formalities. Company A will have a valid SSL certificate on his web site. Any visitor (browser) communicating the web site will use the certificate public key to encrypt his message. Company A having the private key of the SSL certificate is the only one who can decrypt the message.
Comment: Does Company A any point associate its (Company A's) private key with its (Company A's) certificate?
Comment: No. a private key remains privet for A.
Comment: So where is the private key of company A used?
Comment: around once in two years I have to deal with certificates... this answer, coupled with [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4Df5_cojAs) helps me refresh my understanding.
Comment: If certificate is signed with CA's private key, why it can be decrypted with Company A's private key.
Comment: @DeepakMishra a certificate is not encrypted by CA, it is signed by CA, these are different concepts. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/454048/what-is-the-difference-between-encrypting-and-signing-in-asymmetric-encryption
Comment: yes got it after posting comment, thanks for help
Answer: Let me explain with an example.
In normal key-pair based PKI, there are private key and public key.
In a certificate-based system, there are private key and certificate. Certificate holds more information than the public key.
Demo (You can generate a certificate and private key): http://www.selfsignedcertificate.com/
You can download open the private key file and certificate file, you see certificate file contains much information as shown below.

You can match your generated certificate (opening by a text editor), and private key (opening by a text editor) from this site: https://www.sslshopper.com/certificate-key-matcher.html
If the certificate matches client's private key, the client is sure, that certificate is given by the client or given by client's trusted agent (CA).
However, there are problems in only private key and certificate-based communication.
Because, anyone can generate their own certificate and private key, so a simple handshake doesn't prove anything about the server other than that the server knows the private key that matches the public key of the certificate. One way to solve this problem is to have the client have a set of one or more certificates it trusts. If the certificate is not in the set, the server is not to be trusted.
There are several downsides to this simple approach. Servers should be able to upgrade to stronger keys over time ("key rotation"), which replaces the public key in the certificate with a new one. Unfortunately, now the client app has to be updated due to what is essentially a server configuration change. This is especially problematic if the server is not under the app developer's control, for example, if it is a third party web service. This approach also has issues if the app has to talk to arbitrary servers such as a web browser or email app.
In order to address these downsides, servers are typically configured with certificates from well-known issuers called Certificate Authorities (CAs). he host-platform (client) generally contains a list of well known CAs that it trusts. Similar to a server, a CA has a certificate and a private key. When issuing a certificate for a server, the CA signs the server certificate using its private key. The client can then verify that the server has a certificate issued by a CA known to the platform.
However, while solving some problems, using CAs introduces another. Because the CA issues certificates for many servers, you still need some way to make sure you are talking to the server you want. To address this, the certificate issued by the CA identifies the server either with a specific name such as gmail.com or a wildcarded set of hosts such as *.google.com.
The following example will make these concepts a little more concrete. In the snippet below from a command line, the openssl tool's s_client command looks at Wikipedia's server certificate information. It specifies port 443 because that is the default for HTTPS. The command sends the output of openssl s_client to openssl x509, which formats information about certificates according to the X.509 standard. Specifically, the command asks for the subject, which contains the server name information, and the issuer, which identifies the CA.
$ openssl s_client -connect wikipedia.org:443 | openssl x509 -noout -subject -issuer
subject= /serialNumber=sOrr2rKpMVP70Z6E9BT5reY008SJEdYv/C=US/O=*.wikipedia.org/OU=GT03314600/OU=See www.rapidssl.com/resources/cps (c)11/OU=Domain Control Validated - RapidSSL(R)/CN=*.wikipedia.org
issuer= /C=US/O=GeoTrust, Inc./CN=RapidSSL CA

You can see that the certificate was issued for servers matching *.wikipedia.org by the RapidSSL CA.
As you can see, because of this additional information sent by CA to Servers, the client can easily know whether it is communicating with its server or not.
Answer: An SSL certificate is obtained from a trusted Certification Authority, which vouches for secure connection of the website . SSL certificates usually contain the logo of authentication and also the public keys necessary to encrypt and decrypt data that is to be sent to the computer.
SSL Keys Functions
Several SSL keys can be generated during a session. They are used to encrypt and decrypt the information being sent to and from the computer.The keys are used to verify that the information has not been modified or tampered with.
Lifecycle Difference
Certificates last longer than SSL keys. SSL certificates are obtained from Certification Authority, which can be renewed regularly by banks and businesses. SSL keys or session keys, on the other hand, are uniquely generated during the session and discarded when the session ends.
Read more here
Answer: OK, let's break this down so that non technical people can understand.
Think of it like this.  A Certificate is like a safety deposit box at your bank.  It contains a lot of important stuff; generally stuff that contains your identity.  The certificate has a public key and needs a private key to open it.
Your safety deposit box takes two keys to open too, just like a certificate.
With a safety deposit box, the banker's key is like the public key since it stays at the bank and the public key stays with the certificate.  You have the private key, which is needed to "get your certificate" and in the example of the safety deposit box, your private key is needed in addition to the public key as well.
Before you can actually open your safety deposit box, you must first verify your identity (kind of like a certificate request); once you have been identified, you use your private key along with the public key to open your safety box.  This is a bit like making your certificate request, and then getting your certificate from the certification authority (as long as you can be identified (trusted) and you have the right key).
Answer: The whole subject area is bamboozling.
Several reasons for this:

Lack of understanding of what an RSA key is. Most examples start with creating a private key. You end up wondering, "So, where is the public key?" Read this:
https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/172274/can-i-get-a-public-key-from-an-rsa-private-key
Next, is all the PEM, JKS, PCKS12 etc. Would drive anyone mental understanding what the heck these are and how they are interchanged? They are different formats for storing keys and certificates. Don't stress. Have a beer and relax now.
Okay...download an ancient tool called: portecle its French for door key. Its a Java app and a Swing UI which is from the ice age...but it works and allows you to look inside different types of files, and to also use it to change JKS files to other formats and vice versa (but not all...see later)
Next...the next thing that is going to really drive you mental, is that portecle does not for example open a PEM file containing a cert or key or both.
So, you start banging your head against the desk, you squeeze the hampster just a little too much, and then you discover: openssl and you wonder where the heck to get that from...well, download Git, and make sure you get the console that comes wif it:
Right. Now you have access to openssl. Meanwhile you have aged a few years. The latter command comes with gitbash. It allows you to look at a PEM file internals...god help you with that one too...cause the verbosity is just mind blowing. Instead just use cat [yourfilenamehere].pem to look at the internals of a file, later lookup openssl commands
Now, you have to understand the difference between a key and a certificate, for that you can look at this diagram:
You now understand why a key is just a key (part of a cypher key pair) and encoded in base64, and why a certificate is what it is (oh before i forget, -des3 is an encryption switch for creating a key...there is about a zillion of them too...hahahaha...take a Tylenol...)
Good. Finally, take this brilliant example, and write a localhost integration test, to try it all out for yourself: https://www.section.io/engineering-education/how-to-get-ssl-https-for-localhost/
It has taken me, from scratch on and off about 10 days to try to wrap my brain around it all. Don't forget, you can sign a certificate with a private key. That is what a CA is for. Anyway, enough of my vernacular...I sincerely hope this helps!
Oh and get this right, in the above brilliant example, you can see, that simply adding a CA.pem to your browser (the one you created to self sign a server certificate) can just do away with ANY security issues, when reaching out to localhost...security my derrier...that is French for ;=)
Comment: So, if you have a .pem file with a private key, you don't need to specify a public key, right? It sometimes confuses me, and I end up with the question of if I need to add a `BEGIN PUBLIC KEY/END PUBLIC KEY` statement. With the`CERTIFICATE` and `PRIVATE KEY` statements is enough right?
Comment: The PEM file is an instance of an .X509 certificate that vouches for a person or organization, and includes the public key of that person or organization. The latter certificate is then "signed" by a CA certificate to vouch for its authenticity. Therefore the PEM does not include the private key. That key is private to the person or organization. When a message intended for the person is encrypted with their Cert public key, they can then decrpyt it, after receipt.


Can 話して歩いた be the same as 話しながら歩いた?

Question: I have read in many grammar books that the te-form of a Japanese verb is the equivalent of "and" in English. However, the problem is that "and" has many meanings such as how it can mean consecutive action like in "he got shot and died" or simultaneous action like in "we talked and walked." Most grammar books I've seen have examples of the te-form being consecutive action like in sentences such as 葉を磨いて寝た, but I am curious if the te-form can also mean that both verbs started at the same time. In this case, can 話して歩いた mean the same as 話しながら歩いた where talking and walking occur at the same time?
Comment: in general A~te,B~ means (did ~A, then ~B) and can be as long a construction as is relevant; A~te,B~te,C~te,D~te,E~te.  With just one A~te,B it can mean "doing at the same time" but adding more to the list tends to imply an ordering.
Answer: Both usages are equally common in the real Japanese-speaking world, if not in the world of Japanese-as-a-foreign-language.
Which one it means would totally depend on the context.
「[歯]{は}を[磨]{みが}いて[寝]{ね}た」 would naturally mean "(I) brushed (my) teeth and went to bed." because brushing teeth and sleeping could not take place simultaneously.
The same goes for 「[映画]{えいが}を[観]{み}て、レストランで[食事]{しょくじ}をして、[家]{いえ}に[帰]{かえ}った。」.  Just cannot do all three or any two of them simultaneously.
「[話]{はな}して[歩]{ある}いた」 is clearly different in that almost everyone talks while walking.  It is more than just possible; It is a human custom.
If you want to express clearly that a conversation took place first and only after it was finished, you walked, you could say:
「話した[後]{あと}で歩いた。」、「[会話]{かいわ}してから[散歩]{さんぽ}した」, etc.
In the video below of the well-known song, Kyu Sakamoto is not saying "Let's look up towards the sky and then take a walk!"  He is, instead, saying "Let's do both simultaneously (so that tears won't fall)."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAW0Vd9XVA8
Comment: When you mean simultaneously, do you mean to start both at the same time? I don't see why "Let's look up towards the sky and then take a walk!" doesn't work since you can first look up at the sky and, once your eyes are in the sky, start walking.

Can 話して歩いた be the same as 話しながら歩いた?


How can give weight to feature before PCA

Question: I wonder how can I give weight to my feature before employing PCA. I mean somehow weighted PCA. Because I know that one of the features is better than others and want to give importance to it in creating components (It is not possible to select only that feature. I should have others impact too)
Answer: PCA is unsupervised method for finding the most important components. I don't see a reason why you should want add a weight. If you know what features are important, why use PCA at all? Or perform PCA on the features where you are unsure about the importance.
Further, components are created in directions with highest variance and the importance is measured by eigenvalues. So I can imagine you can somehow increase the variance (like Jan van der Vegt proposed). But that's a sorcery with very questionable output.
Comment: Thank you. Yes you are right but my problem set and application is a bit different. I have labels and know the importance of this feature but I should deploy a unsupervised method.
Comment: @HonzaB, PCA is an unsupervised feature selection algorithm. It reduces dimensions by finding redundancies in the data. There are supervised methods of feature selection which reduce dimensions by finding which variables relate better to the data. I think his idea is an ingenuous approach to introduce some of the advantages of supervised feature selection into PCA.
Answer: After standardizing your data you can multiply the features with weights to assign weights before the principal component analysis. Giving higher weights means the variance within the feature goes up, which makes it more important.
Standardizing (mean 0 and variance 1) is important for PCA because it is looking for a new orthogonal basis where the origin stays the same, so having your data centered around the origin is good. The first principal component is the direction with the most variance, by scaling a certain feature with a weight of more than 1 will increase the variance on this axis and thus give more weight to this axis, pulling the first principal component in it's direction.
Comment: First of all you should standardize it (mean = 0, variance = 1) due to the nature of PCA, it only makes sense if your data is centered around the origin. I'll explain a bit more in an edit
Comment: Thank you Jan. I have already normalized my data (0-1). Now, you mean if I multiply my feature values with say 0.7, is somehow giving importance to it?  Actually increasing variance is equal to giving weight to PCA?


Costs of a professional audio streaming solution

Question: How much does a professional hardware solution cost, for streaming 8 audio channels to 100 concurrent listeners?
Do you have any suggestions on suitable solutions?
Answer: 100 concurrent listeners total? Or 100 per stream (800 total)?
100 concurrent listeners * 384kbps very high quality MP3 stream = 38.4mbps. You could do that on a computer from the late 1990's without breaking a sweat. I remember performance-testing servers back then and any 200MHz processor could saturate a 100mbps Ethernet.  If this is all on one campus and your backbone/core has ~50mbps to spare (the rule of thumb is that if you over-provision your network links by ~33%, you don't need to mess with QoS), then save your money, just load your favorite SHOUTcast-equivalent MP3 streaming server on any box you have lying around and see how it does. Or better yet, if this is all one campus, and you have influence over network configuration, make sure they've got multicast working everywhere, and just multicast out a single stream.
If this is for streaming to unknown locations across the Internet, you'd need to make sure that at your colo or wherever this box is going to live, that you have guaranteed ~50mbps of dedicated bandwidth. Or see what someone like Akamai can do for you.
Let's look at the insane high-end possibility: 800 concurrent listeners at full uncompressed CD-quality stereo.
800 concurrent listeners * 44100 samples/sec * 16 bits/sample * 2 channels = 1.1gbps. Okay, I could see you needing professional hardware for that. And a super nice Internet connection as well. Actually unless this is just for listeners at one building or campus with a really nice backbone/core, you probably wouldn't want to source that all from one place, you'd probably want to pay someone like Akamai to host it for you. But I doubt you really need to go anywhere near that.
Answer: You can start with buying a quality analogue to digital.  Then connect this to a Mac Mini and capture/convert the streams to your preferred format(s).  Use an internet connection that can handle 100+ listeners at your chosen bitrate.  A Mac Mini has more than enough horsepower to encode the audio and server it as an IceCast stream.
Estimated Price: $2,500 hardware, $50 per month internet fees.
There are companies like StreamOn that will sell you a subscription to their services.  If you mean "8 concurrent stereo streams," then you can buy 8 of these services.  If you mean "8 channel surround-sound audio," then you are pretty much destined to go with the setup in paragraph 1.


Chess client for e-(g)mail

Question: I'm looking for something that would let me store the board setup and move the pieces manually so that I can play with a friend via email/msn. It doesn't have to handle mailing or anything for me as long as I can move the pieces around :)
Comment: Your title is deceptive, if it doesn't have to handle e-mail, aren't you just looking for a web-client?
Comment: Well preferably it'll handle it by email obviously but as a second hand choice I'm fine with anything that can just remember the layout of the chess board. The game either way will be played via email regardless of weather we are sending move or the "client" handles it for us. End of the day the app/client/webpage I want to find is a helper for chess games via email.
Answer: GamesByMail
Scott Michtell just introduced me to GamesByMail to play Axis & Allies, and I noticed that it has chess as well.
All you need is an e-mail address to create a small profile, same thing for your opponent, and you're ready to play.  You should get e-mail reminders when it is your turn.
I haven't tried chess there yet, but if it's anything like A&A was, you should be in good shape.
Comment: Currently trying it out, just need my opponent to make a move and see how goes.
Answer: There are many options for online chess.
A very simple site I use is itsyourturn.com.
You get email reminders and it just does what you need if you want play chess with a friend.
For more advanced options look at freechess.org. There are several different clients for it.
Answer: Time for Chess*?
It also has a great iPhone optimised site.
a.k.a. Red Hot Pawn ;)
Comment: +1 I used to use RedHotPawn for correspondence games, before I learned that I'm too impatient for that :)
Comment: Redhotpawn is great!

Chess client for e-(g)mail


Is there any way to get Stack Overflow swag through competitions or challenges or any other way?

Question: I am a newcomer with skills in C++ and Java, also holding hands on HackerRank and HackerEarth. Any quick ways to get swags through Stack Overflow or any other sites?
Comment: You were supposed to review what was on and off topic prior to posting your first question.  Guess you cared so little for us that you didn't even pay attention :( Why do you not like us?  We're here to help!
Comment: You get swag at [100k](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/291797/2970947). Currently waiting on mine.
Comment: @UmeshKumhar It's off-topic on Stack Overflow main because it is _not_ a programming question as defined in the [help]. It's _on-topic_ here at Meta Stack Overflow because it is about Stack Overflow or the Stack Exchange network. And yes, Stack Overflow _is_ just a Q&A site- A Q&A site _only_ about specific programming problems. The [ask] page tells you what questions you can ask on Stack Overflow. (And no, you can't post on Meta until you have 5 rep. That's by-design and _does not_ mean you can ask questions like this on Stack Overflow main.)
Comment: @Will - That needs to be prefaced to every closure alert section :D
Comment: Yes, but if you ever ask an off topic question on stack overflow you're permanaaaaaaaawwwwwwwwwww, too bad.
Comment: okk @will nd kemdra
Comment: okk help me to remove this question..??
Answer: Sometimes there are contests or giveaways, like the semi-recent 10,000,000 questions give-aways.

How Did Stack Overflow Help You?
10 Million Questions - Let's Share Some Stories That the Number Doesn't Convey
Choose your own swag - the craziest contest idea ever! What were we thinking?

These are not regular, so you have to wait until they are held, and the "6-8 weeks" for delivery is ague-ably not quick (I think I just got my last package from that in the mail today).
Alternately, people who get 100,000 reputation on a site get a box of swag, but that's not a quick feat.
There used to be a swag shop a while back, but not anymore, so the only way you could buy swag would be through another user who is willing to part with theirs.
Comment: I didn't know about the third. Why am I always late to the swag parties?
Answer: You can use your skills to post great answers and reach 100K reputation.
According to Where is my box of Stack Overflow swag?, you will receive an email from SO:

It's not often I get to reach out and thank someone individually for
  their contribution to a site, but I wanted to congratulate you
  personally for reaching 100,000 reputation on Stack Overflow! [...]
  You've worked hard, and you deserve a lot of credit for what you
  accomplished. I hope you've found the experience rewarding in your own
  way. But getting a big ole box of cool stuff from our sites is also a
  fun way to mark the occasion, so I put together a collection of swag
  for you.

According to What do I get with 100k reputation?, that swag is

One email , a T-Shirt (with stack overflow logo), one coffee cup, few
  Stack Overflow stickers....and of course six digit rep
Answer: Occasionally, there will be special events or contests in which you can get swag. For instance, we had the 10 million question special event "contests" just a few months ago. (Both of these have ended now, though I'm sure if you wanted to answer either question you still could...)
There's also swag awarded for certain achievements on any of the sites. For example, elected moderators receive some swag after being elected, and users that reach a certain reputation level (100k rep) are sent swag.
There's no place where you can buy swag, currently, from Stack Overflow Inc. There used to be a swag shop, but it has been shut down.
Contests and special events in which swag is awarded are generally announced on meta, for any given site. Check meta for your sites of choice on occasion, and keep an eye on the "Community Bulletin" (The box with "Featured on Meta" and "Hot Meta Posts" in the right sidebar.) if you're interested- But keep in mind that these don't happen regularly. It may be a good, long while between events/contests on any given site.


Open source library to remove motion blur from video frames?

Question: I have a set of frames extracted from a video and want to remove motion blur effects (that are primarily in one dimension only). Are there any open source libraries that do this? I couldn't find anything in OpenCV. I've found a lot of academic papers on the subject, but was hoping there might be a library.
Answer: avisynth, I think, can do this.
Sorry, spoke too soon. avisynth can do frame interpolation, good for changing sampling rate. And it can do frame repair, to interpolate what a frame should be based on its neighbors. I do not recall an exact de-blur option.
Answer: You can find Matlab/C codes for a motion deblurring algorithm here: http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/~aagrawal/MotionBlur/index.html
You will need to port Matlab/C codes to OpenCV.
Comment: the link says www.umiacs.umd.edu page is not found!
Answer: Blind deconvolution using alternating maximum a posteriori estimation with heavy-tailed priors is one of possible method, but it is very slow. See http://zoi.utia.cas.cz/deconv_sparsegrad


What does the percent CPU mean?

Question: I am watching my CPU percent utilization by a process. How does a process use only 50% CPU? Doesn't a process use 100% then 0%, then 100%? Its not like every other instruction is a different program.
Comment: Got a dual processor by any chance?
Comment: Definitely a question for SuperUser.
Answer: It only polls totals about once per second.  You're looking at how much of the last second it used.
If you see a cpu sitting at 50% for a little while, what's likely going on is that it's using 100% of one cpu in a dual cpu system.
Comment: "one core of a dual core system" -- ... or even a single CPU with 'hyperthreading'.
Comment: @ChrisW: fixed.
Comment: CPU usage percentages are often reported out of 100% for each CPU individually, so the total amount of CPU power to be used in a dual core system is 200%, in a quad core 400%, etc.
Comment: Not in windows task manager they're not.
Answer: Technically you are correct.  At any given time, the CPU is either being used, or not used.  But displaying that in a graph wouldn't be very helpful, so the graph is averaging CPU utilization over some period of time, probably each second.
Answer: The OS schedules the process for a certain time period. So if the process is scheduled for (say) 1ms out of 10ms, then it will be using 10% CPU.
It's a little counterintuitive, since (in a single-threaded, single-CPU system), the process is either running, or not running. i.e. it's using 100% or 0%. The percentage that you see is measured over a time window and is a measure of the OS allocating time slots to your process to run.
Note that your process will not contribute to this if you're accessing I/O. So if you're doing a huge calculation, you'll register 100% (assuming nothing else runs). If you then wait for a network packet/disk access etc. your CPU figure will go down, despite the fact that your process is still running.
Answer: At a very low level, you're basically right.  At any given instant, the processor is either executing an instruction for a given process or it isn't.
But your OS is sitting in between your processes and the processor, making them share time.  The percentage you see is the percentage of recent processing time the OS has granted that process.
Answer: It based on the average time. Despite all threads can have the same parcel of CPU time (based on priority), the threads can just say "thanks but I'm idle", and pass it's turn to the next thread. Thats why programs are not always using the same % time, and most programs are consuming 0% CPU, and programs which really need CPU can take near 100% of time for itself.
Why is it capping at 50%? You probably have two CPU cores, and its using only one.
Or, as suggested, it is using hyperthreading, but I don't know how this one behaves exactly.
Answer: You program might be doing a lot of I/O (disk or network reads/writes). That would keep the program busy but need little to no CPU time.
Answer: System utilization is sampled and averaged, which is the only sensible thing to do.
E.g. a record of how much time a process/thread spent running during 1 second is kept.  If it spent 1 second on the CPU, that's 100% CPU (or 50% if you have 2 CPUs and so on), if it spent 100ms that's 10% CPU utilization.

What does the percent CPU mean?


Features confilict with content types

Question: I have 3 different environments such as Dev, Test and Stage. I'm currently facing an issue when trying to propagate my changes from Dev into Test and Stage envs. In order to propagate the changes i use the Features module. Within features i export all my Content Types. Some of them (e.g. Basic Page) are already exist into Test and Stage environments. When i'm trying to install the feature export from Dev into the other environments, the Basic Page content type of Test and Stage actually seems to be overridden. This means that the predefined fields that already has are not erased by the feature but it just adds the new created fields. How can i solve this issue. The desired functionality is to have the same fields after importing the future to all environments.
Answer: If I'm not mistaken, Features doesn't delete fields it only synchronizes the configuration and creates new fields if they are not present. So, deleting obsolete fields is one of the processes you have to do by hand (or write an update function in a custom module).
Features is a handy tool, but certainly has some limits (for instance when you want to synchronize blocks).
Comment: or i can manually delete the content type on my Test or Stage envs and then re-import the feature.. Thanks for you help!
Comment: Make a backup of your database and try it on your test server. See what happens ;) However, don't forget that you will lose all stored information/data/nodes of the particular content types when you delete them....
Answer: I believe 1 approach using features do manage your setup like your doing is to use hook_update_n() to delete fields you no longer want in versions of your module. So some tidying up code is in an update function assure only the fields you want in your content type exist at a certain version.
For Drupal 8 Dries has a recent blog post describing the Deploy, Replication and other modules to help move content around:
http://buytaert.net/improving-drupal-content-workflow

Features confilict with content types


Major Block Ciphers between DES and AES competitions

Question: DES was announced as a standard in 1976. AES competition started in 1997 and Rijndael was selected as standard in 2000. What are major block ciphers and block cipher designs made/proposed from 1976 to 1997?
Answer: IDEA and CAST-128 (aka CAST5) first come to my mind as widely deployed/used ciphers. Blowfish and TEA are next. The first two (and to some degree the third) got support in PGP early on.
Update per comment: RC2, RC5, and GOST 28147-89 (in the Eastern block) also have been widely used.
All 7 are 64-bit block ciphers; that's typical of the era, and made these block ciphers a painless substitute for DES and 3DES (the dominant ciphers). They stood the test of time quite well, with no practical attack better than brute force by more than very few bits (except for GHOST, but when used with its full 256-bit key it remains safe enough). While TEA is involved in a notorious incident where a game console misused it for hashing, that's hardly a problem attributable to TEA itself.
Note: I'd have included RC4 if is was a block cipher; that used to be widespread in quite a few commercial applications.
Comment: PES (successor of IDEA) and FEAL also come to mind. Square (1997) was definitely important (origin of integral attacks). Skipjack is probably also relevant (but was classified until 1998). Same goes for GOST. Of course, the length of the list depends on what we will consider as "major". e.g. many designs succeeded Rijndael (including Square, 3-Way and BaseKing).
Comment: RC4 may not be applicable, but [RC2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RC2) and [RC5](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RC5) definitely are. RC2 was designed specifically to be used in Lotus Notes. On the Soviet side, [GOST 28147-89](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOST_(block_cipher)) was pretty major. Merkle's [Khufu and Khafre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khufu_and_Khafre) are noteworthy as early software-friendly designs, but unclear what their actual impact was.
Comment: I'd include 3DES in the list.
Comment: @Aleph: [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Data_Encryption_Algorithm) says PES is an early version of IDEA. I've heard more about attacks than uses regarding FEAL.
Comment: @fgrieu Should have been "predecessor" rather than "successor" (same for Square, 3-Way and BaseKing). I'd argue that being used isn't necessarily the only argument for importance.


Simple Relation between Put Price and Zero Coupon Bond Price

Question: Consider your standard European Put Option, with strike price $K$ and maturity $T$, and denote by $P_t(K,T)$ the price of this option at time $t$. Moreover, consider a standard Zero-Coupon bond with maturity at time $T$ and face value $1$, and price $Z_t(T)$ at time $t$. Why is it necessarily the case that:
$$
P_t(K,T) \ < KZ_t(T)
$$
for all times $t \neq T$? I know equality occurs at the terminal time $T$ if $S_T = 0$, however I am unsure how one obtains the above relation. Moreover, I believe this is a model-independent result, however I am not entirely sure.
Comment: For this to be true you have to assume  that $S_t$ cannot go to zero before $T$ and then stay there. Without this assumption you can prove only $P_t\le K Z_t$. In this sense it is somewhat model dependent.
Comment: I see, how would the proof for the non-strict inequality work?
Answer: Your question is answered by the no-arbitrage principle. The payoff of your put option is $\max\{K-S_T,0\}\leq K$. Thus, their time $t$ prices need to have the same relationship (everthing else creates arbitrage opportunities), i.e. $$ P_t(K,T)\leq KZ_t(T).$$
This statement is kind of related to the law of one price which is implied by assuming an arbitrage-free market. As Alex said, if you know that $S_T>0$ almost surely, then $\max\{K-S_T,0\}< K$ and you get$$ P_t(K,T)< KZ_t(T).$$
The question is whether $S_T$ may be zero or not. This is indeed model dependent, for instance it is impossible in the Black-Scholes and Heston model. To sum up, the $\leq$ case is model-independent, the slightly stronger version with $<$ is model-dependent.
Please note that these inequalities derive from a lot of financial intuition: a put option gives you the right to purchase the underlying asset for $K$, so this claim can hardly be worth more than $K$ discounted since $K$ is the most you can get out of it.


Etymology of "Shtiebel"

Question: Is there an etymological connection between the Yiddish word "shtiebel" and the English word "steeple"? They seem to overlap a lot in usage and pronunciation. A cursory search reveals that "shtiebel" may be a diminutive of the Yiddish word for "house", but perhaps the two derivations converged at some point?
Answer: The only meaning of "shtibl" that I know of is "a little house".   There is a song performed by the Barry sisters that begins: "In main shteitl shteit a shtibl mit a grinem dach..." - "In my village stands a little house with a green roof..."
The word for "house" in both the Galician and the southern (Ukrainian) dialects of Yiddish is "shtib".  It would be "shtub" in the Lithuanian dialect.  "Shtibl" is a diminutive of "shtib".
Comment: Right, but it's come to mean a small synagogue.
Comment: Really?  Not that I am an expert, but I have never heard of that meaning.  Could you be confusing it with "shil", which is the Ukrainian or Galician pronunciation of "shul"?
Comment: No. See also http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%A9%D7%98%D7%99%D7%91%D7%9C .
Answer: There's no reason to believe that the two are related. Though I recall hearing (in my youth) that the name of Country Yossi's "Shteeble Hoppers" album was a take-off on a Steeple-related band name.
[Update: I emailed CY, and he said the name "just sounded cute" and had nothing to do with steeples. So much for that myth!]
Comment: Another point: The German word for room is "stube," which is quite different from the word "steeple." It's not expected that the Yiddish pronunciation-shifts which converted "stube" into "shtieble" were duplicated in other languages.
Comment: Plus one for the extra email research.
Answer: I'm guessing Yiddish shtibl is actually related to English stove, which may be from Vulgar Latin, whereas steeple is apparently from a Germanic root and completely unrelated.
Comment: Cool! Why would shtiblach be named after bathrooms?
Comment: Well, steambaths, apparently. Perhaps because they get crowded and hot, and people wear thick talisos? :-) No, seriously, that root descended into German via Old High German 'stuba' which apparently referred to any heated room, so my guess is Yiddish 'shtub', "house", is also a descendant. (Yiddish is also from Old High German.) From there it's a short hop to 'shtibl'.
Answer: Now guess this:
room in German is Stube. Diminutive: Stübchen or: in dialect: Stüble (little room).
The diminutive in Yiddish ususally ends in -lach. -ü- not existing in Yiddish, it is transformed into -i-.
So simply Stüblein becomes stiblach (pronoucenced shtiblakh) in Yiddish.
DHL
Comment: DHL, Welcome to mi.yodeya, and thanks very much for this convincing etymology! We'd love to have you as a fully-registered member, which you can accomplish by clicking on register/login, above.
Comment: But Yiddish, though it's closely related to German, and though it doubtless borrowed a number of words from German, is not _descended_ from German. Do you have any particular reason to think that this word was borrowed from the German _Stube_, rather than that (as my answer suggests) it's cognate to (descended from an ancestor shared by) the German _Stube_?
Comment: Also: I believe _-lach_ or _-lech_ is the _plural_ diminutive suffix (with _-l_ being the singular). (_-lech_ or _-lich_ is also another suffix, forming adjectives, as in _mentschlech_, but that's another story.) This doesn't detract from the thrust of your answer at all, though, of course.
Answer: Shtiebel is usually a Hassidic type synagogue, which was/is often in a house, as opposed to being a larger, free standing building, as is more common among non-Hassidic Shuls.
Perhaps it is that often the (Hassidic) Rebbe of the shtiebel lives in the same building, which he often owns, which is not usually the case in a standard Shul, where the Rav usually lives elsewhere and does not own the premises.

Etymology of "Shtiebel"


Attach a visible light telescope to the outside of the ISS

Question: Visible light imaging of the heavens is limited on Earth primarily due to the atmosphere. I know the ISS is moving at 17000mph, but given the delays to the James Webb telescope, is there any merit in attaching a space-rugged visible light telescope to the outside of the ISS? Could it ever approach the visible light performance of Hubble?
Comment: Why attach it? That just adds vibration from the space station and pollution from gases and particles released by the station.  If you could lift a telescope into orbit you may as well put it in its own orbit.
Comment: Power is a valid concern, but radio transmission for control and data is easy and cheap.
Comment: It needs to be attached because it needs to be powered and controlled, and to send its image results somewhere. A self-sufficient orbiting telescope is basically Hubble mkII and would never get off the ground, literally and metaphorically!
Comment: Related: [Is there a telescope on board the ISS?](https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/13769/is-there-a-telescope-on-board-the-iss) (Yes, inside.)
Comment: The problem is that to be useful, the telescope needs a large mirror (or multiple mirrors).  So you have to build it - and you want to build it to the highest precision possible - and launch it.  Power and data transmission are solved problems.  Attaching it to the ISS creates all sorts of pointing, light pollution, and debris problems.
Answer:
A self-sufficient orbiting telescope is basically Hubble mkII and would never get off the ground, literally and metaphorically

Hubble was expensive because it was state-of-the-art, requiring development of many new systems. The systems it needed to function as a standalone satellite (compared to being attached to the ISS) were cheap by comparison (reaction control, power, communications) because they mostly didn't require new development.
So a Hubble successor attached to the ISS would not be much cheaper than a free-flying one.
Any telescope attached to the ISS has to deal with:

high vibration levels which degrade performance
outgassing which degrades performance
severe pointing constraints because it's surrounded by a large structure
bandwidth constraints because it has to share a transmitter with ISS operations
end of mission in 5 years when the station reaches the end of its life.

The advantages of attaching to the ISS:

easier servicing,
you get the option to store lots of data on the ISS and bring it down on a capsule. Downside is a latency of several months.

IMO you'd be better off building a standalone space telescope.
Comment: While the idea of having the lifespan tied to that of ISS remains the same, some quick research shows the projected lifespan of the station to be more than 5 years.
Comment: I doubt that ISS would be simply let fall in 5 years. The political price would be many times higher that price of destruction of the Mir, and there would be no promised "it will be yet better" replacement.
Answer:
Attach a visible light telescope to the outside of the ISS

This is a reasonable idea and it has been thought of before, but usually for other-than-visible light. Other answers do a good job of explaining why the disadvantages substantially outweigh the advantage. The cost to put something on the ISS large enough to outperform the top few dozen telescopes on Earth or approach the performance of the Hubble would be... Astronomical!
However, there is a moveable telescope mounted on the outside of the ISS right now but read further to see why.

Had the Apollo missions gone on longer there might have been an Apollo space telescope. See answers to How would the Apollo telescope have worked in the Apollo command module? Where would it be located and how would it be operated? and the YouTube video Missions we Lost When Apollo was Cancelled
The Skylab space station did have a space telescope!
See for example How did Skylab's electrographic camera work?. This telescope took advantage of being above Earth's atmosphere in order to photograph using ultraviolet light, something that you simply can not do on the Earth.
The Apollo astronauts also had an ultraviolet telescope on the Moon (see answers to How was the Moon's first telescope used? (Apollo 16))
The Chang'e-3 lander also has an ultraviolet telescope! (see also GBTimes' China's telescope on the Moon is still working, and could do for 30 years)
The ISS also has a space telescope!
Finally, NASA has indeed attached a robotic, point-able telescope to the outside of the ISS. It is called NICER or Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer and it is an X-ray telescope, also something that you can't see from he ground and need to put your telescope in space.
See this answer and links therein.
Comment: @Sean ya I know just what you mean, perhaps to defend against alien invaders? ;-)
Comment: The NICER looks remarkably like some sort of rocket launcher.
Answer: I think there is nothing wrong with your idea in principle, there is already a modified Boeing jumbo jet specifically for the purpose of carrying a large telescope above the densest layers of the atmosphere in order to minimise atmospheric interference and absorption by atmospheric water vapor.
However, the telescope and the personnel who man it use up a considerable amount of space, though  on the aircraft there are no competing activities going on beyond those necessary to fly the aircraft. On the ISS the main problems would be in finding the space to accommodate the telescope and its crew and making the necessary modifications to the fabric of the space station.
I don't think such a telescope could compete with Hubble, but that doesn't mean it couldn't do anything useful.
One advantage would be that if anything should go wrong,it could be somewhat easier to repair than it is with Hubble. Now that the Space Shuttle is no longer available, a crewed mission to Hubble would be extremely challenging and a robotic mission would require technology not yet available.
Comment: `+1` and I am not sure why others have down voted.


How to link to scientific articles on Biology.SE

Question: This FAQ covers how best to link to scientific articles when answering and posting questions on Bio.SE.

How can I easily include a table of references at the end of my answer?
How do I use the DOI project to prevent future dead links?
How can I make sure that my use of references is valuable to the community?
Answer: I have created a CSL citation style for the convenience of users. It can be used in Zotero, Papers, Mendeley, and Qiqqa.
It's an author-date style presenting the bibliography as a marked-down bullet list. If the citation contains a DOI, this is used to construct a dx.doi.org link. If there's no DOI, any URL associated with the citation is used. If no URL is found, the item is presented without a link.
The style is demonstrated below, and can be downloaded here (at the top-right of the code display, right-click the <> symbol and save as...).
To use the style from Zotero, you must first install it. Then you just select the items you want to include in the reference list, then right-click and choose 'Create bibliography from selected items'. Next choose the 'Biology.SE' from the list, ensure 'export to clipboard' is chosen, and press OK. Now you can paste the reference list at the end of your post.
Example references

 Carmell MA, Girard A, Kant HJG van de, Bourc'his D, Bestor TH, Rooij DG de, Hannon GJ. 2007. MIWI2 Is Essential for Spermatogenesis and Repression of Transposons in the Mouse Male Germline. Developmental Cell 12: 503–514.
Castanotto D, Tommasi S, Li M, Li H, Yanow S, Pfeifer GP, Rossi JJ. 2005. Short hairpin RNA-directed cytosine (CpG) methylation of the RASSF1A gene promoter in HeLa cells. Mol Ther 12: 179–183.
 Joshua-Tor L, Hannon GJ. 2010. Ancestral Roles of Small RNAs: An Ago-Centric Perspective. Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology.
 Kawasaki H, Taira K. 2005. siRNA Induced Transcriptional Gene Silencing in Mammalian Cells. Cell Cycle 4: 442–448.
 Morris KV, Chan SW-L, Jacobsen SE, Looney DJ. 2004. Small Interfering RNA-Induced Transcriptional Gene Silencing in Human Cells. Science 305: 1289 –1292.
 Volpe T, Martienssen RA. 2011. RNA Interference and Heterochromatin Assembly. Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology 3.
Comment: nice! can't believe I've only just read this. I use Mendeley, and this is a great idea to encourage proper citations in answers. Going to go try it out
Comment: @fileunderwater sorry about that - have put it on Github and updated the link.
Comment: :) I haven't tried it with Mendeley, so please let me know if anything needs tweaking...
Comment: The download link seems to be dead now.
Answer: How do I use the DOI project to prevent future dead links?
The Digital Object Identifier System (DOI) is a method of linking to digital material (in our case primarily scientific literature).  DOI links are advantageous as if the content linked to is deleted at one host in the future, the DOI will automatically resolve to another host without having to change the link.
The DOI number for an article is often included on the abstract page.  This should be then appended to the end of the link http://dx.doi.org/.
Example
The article "The tomato genome sequence provides insights into fleshy fruit evolution" from Nature 485, 635–641 (31 May 2012) has a DOI of 10.1038/nature11119 - as given on its abstract page.
The link that should be included in your question/answer should therefore be to:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature11119

Which is resolved as such.
Usage
This system should be used wherever possible.  Users are encouraged to suggest edits to change static links for their appropriate DOI style links.
Comment: For those without a subscription would the pubmed ID be an appropriate alternative or should we always resort to the DOI style?
Comment: The best that you can do is enough in my opinion so pubmed ID ok in that case if do not have a subscription.
Comment: You don't need a subscription to see the doi for any journal article.
Comment: It's worth mentioning that of course, dx.doi.org is as likely to disappear as any publisher's site. The strength of the doi system is that anyone can host a doi server and to make the switch we could just search and replace all dx.doi.org addresses with the address of the new server. Pubmed etc. don't have that open standard.
Comment: I would have thought that if the worst came to the worst the Dev team would be happy to replace every instance of `dx.doi.org/` with a new DOI server xD
Comment: Exactly, so it gives us a future-proof system. It would be useful to have some automation for references. I will have a go at a Zotero style.
Comment: @RichardSmith Zotero looks great, I think I'll have to give that a try!
Comment: Ah, now if only DOIs weren't also prone to disappearing (happened to me already) …
Comment: Interesting @KonradRudolph, I've not seen that before.
Comment: @Richard [Here's an example](https://twitter.com/neilfws/status/252526241045954560). Hard to judge whose fault this is but it seems to be a relatively common problem.
Answer: How can I make sure that my use of references is valuable to the community?
When available, provide a link to a PDF that is freely available without subscription.
For many popular articles, a freely available PDF version of an article can be located, e.g. by:

Searching google for the article title in quotes + filetype:pdf
Searching google scholar, and when the article you want shows up, click the 'all 3 versions' and see if one is in pdf format

Add the url to the pdf alongside the properly formatted citation, like this; the citation itself links to the doi, followed by a link to a free pdf.
 - [ **Carmell MA, Girard A, Kant HJG van de, Bourc'his D, Bestor TH, Rooij
DG de, Hannon GJ**. 2007. MIWI2 Is Essential for Spermatogenesis and Repression
of Transposons in the Mouse Male Germline. Developmental Cell 12: 503–514.]
(http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.devcel.2007.03.001)[[free PDF](http://exmaplepdflink.pdf)]

Which looks like this:

 Carmell MA, Girard A, Kant HJG van de, Bourc'his D, Bestor TH, Rooij DG de, Hannon GJ. 2007. MIWI2 Is Essential for Spermatogenesis and Repression of Transposons in the Mouse Male Germline. Developmental Cell 12: 503–514.
[free PDF]
Comment: While certainly convenient, I feel that pdfs are dynamic and may drift. I'm personally much more comfortable linking a pmid or the doi.
Comment: @bonthejoe The pmid or doi can also be added to the reference. I will adjust the answer. I agree that doi is the 'standard', and i use it in my own database because it reduces error in automated queried (within my database that doesn't have fuzzy matching) but for many without institutional access this is more useful. And having author, year, title, and journal is just as capable of uniquely identifying an article as a doi.


How to interpret odds ratio?

Question: Suppose we have a baseline exposure group and 2 other exposure groups for a case control study. Suppose the odds ratio for the first exposure is $1.5$ and the odds ratio for the second exposure is $1.8$. Does this mean that cases are $1.5$ times as likely to have exposure 1 than the controls? Also does this mean that cases are $1.8$ times as likely to have exposure 2 than the controls?
Comment: For example, you could have $90$ cases out of $100$ members of the control group i.e. $\frac{90}{100}=90\%$ of them with odds of $\frac{90}{10}=9$,  and $27$ cases out of $29$ of the exposure 1 group i.e. $\frac{27}{29}=93.1\%$ of them with odds of $\frac{27}{2}=13.5$, and this would give an odds ratio of $\frac{13.5}{9}=1.5$ but would not mean "cases are $1.5$ times as likely to have exposure 1 than the controls".  Arguably, more than three-quarters of the $90+27=117$ cases come from the control group
Answer: It means that the odds of a case having had exposure #1 are 1.5 times the odds of its having the baseline exposure. This is not the same as being 1.5 times as probable: odds are not the same as probability (odds of 2:1 against means a probability of $\frac{1}{3}$).  So it comes down to what you mean by 'likely'.
Answer: In answer to the second part of your question, what you say is correct (assuming that by "likely" you mean in terms of odds not probability). Both odds ratios should be relative to the controls.
However, you should check carefully the definition of the exposures - it is possible that having the second exposure is only possible if you have already had the first exposure, in which case the second odds ratio is not the relative odds of having an exposure at time point 2, but rather of having two exposures. If you can provide more information on the methods, I can give a clearer answer specific to your case.
Answer: Your language, "cases are 1.5 times as likely to have exposure 1 than the controls" is a fine description of the interpretation of an odds ratio. As some have noted "likely" is something of an ambiguous phrase, though I doubt anyone in epidemiology is going to raise an eyebrow at your language.
You might consider either "The odds of having exposure 1 in cases was 1.5 times that of controls" or some such as a slightly more precise wording.

How to interpret odds ratio?


How to determine the number of coin tosses to identify one biased coin from another?

Question: If coin $X$ and coin $Y$ are biased, and have the probability of turning up heads at $p$ and $q$ respectively, then given one of these coins at random, how many times must coin A be flipped in order to identify whether we're dealing with coin $X$ or $Y$? We assume a 0.5 chance that we can get either coin.
Comment: You can't say for sure, you can say with some probability, 90% for instance...
Comment: This sounds like a question where you should compare the difference of the mean of $X$ and $Y$ with the standard-deviation of the mean.
Answer: In @LoganHodgson's (+1) notation, it is a little risky to use a normal approximation
unless $p$ and $q$ are close enough to $1/2$ that $np, n(1-p), nq$ and $n(1-q)$ are all
larger than 5 or so, whatever $n$ turns out to be.
My own version of the computation for a normal approximation is to say we
are comfortable with a 5% error probability and then to say that for
some cutoff point $c,$ we would like to have $P(X \le c) \ge .95$ and
$P(Y \le c) \le .05.$
It might be best to pick $c$ very precisely as @DjuraMalenkov's $m,$
but I think it is not far off in practice to pick $c$ as halfway between the two binomial means as $c = (np + nq)/2.$ Also, let $\delta = |p - q|.$
In terms of a normal approximation for $X,$ we want $\mu + 1.645\sigma$ to be below $c$.
With $\mu = np$ and $\sigma = \sqrt{np(1-p)}$ and some algebra this
amounts to $n = 1.645^2p(1-p)/\delta^2 = 2.71p(1-p)/\delta^2.$
A similar argument for $Y$ gives a similar result with $q$.
Two examples: if $p = .3$ and $q = .7,$ this interpretation of the normal approximation gives $n \approx 17;$ for $p = .4$ and $q = .5,$ we get
$n \approx 271.$
Let's see how well these approximations hold up under
exact binomial computations.  The R code below does a grid search for
the smallest $n,$ called n.min, giving 5% error on both sides of $c,$ prints a table
of relevant results for nearby values of $n,$ and makes bar charts of the two
binomial distributions to illustrate the overlap.
 p = .3;  q = .7
 n = 1:10000;  c = n*(q + p)/2
 cond = (pbinom(c, n, p) >= .95 & pbinom(c, n, q) <= .05)
 n.min = min(n[cond]);  n.min
 ## 17
 cbind(n, c, pbinom(c,n,p),  pbinom(c, n, q), cond)[(n.min-2):(n.min+7),]
     n    c                      cond
 ## 15  7.5 0.9499875 0.05001254    0
 ## 16  8.0 0.9743265 0.07435155    0
 ## 17  8.5 0.9597231 0.04027694    1
 ## 18  9.0 0.9790320 0.05958588    0
 ## 19  9.5 0.9674466 0.03255336    1
 ## 20 10.0 0.9828552 0.04796190    1
 ## 21 10.5 0.9736101 0.02638994    1
 ## 22 11.0 0.9859649 0.03874479    1
 ## 23 11.5 0.9785520 0.02144800    1
 ## 24 12.0 0.9884977 0.03139365    1

x = 0:n.min; pdfp = dbinom(x, n.min, p); pdfq = dbinom(x,n.min,q)
mlb = paste("BINOM(",n.min,", ",p,") and BINOM(",n.min,", ",q,")", sep="")
plot(x-.1, pdfp, type="h", ylab="PDF", xlab="Successes",
     ylim=c(0, max(pdfp,pdfq)), col="red", main=mlb)
  lines(x+.1, pdfq, type="h", col="blue")
abline(v=c[n.min], lty="dotted"); abline(h=0, col="green2")

In the table 1s signify that the condition about 5% errors has been met.
Because of the discreteness of the binomial distributions and the rough
way we picked $c,$ we have $n = 17$ as the smallest valid sample size,
but notice that $n = 18$ doesn't exactly work, and that values $n \ge 19$
do work. But $n = 17$ happens to match the value from the normal approximation.
[I include the R code for the graph in case someone wants to experiment
with it.]
Here, without further detailed comment, are the table and the plot for the example with $p=.4$ and
$q=.5,$ where the normal approximation also works reasonably well.
##   n      c                      cond
## 266 119.70 0.9488177 0.04882243    0
## 267 120.15 0.9558623 0.05569961    0
## 268 120.60 0.9507442 0.04945401    1
## 269 121.05 0.9575457 0.05637062    0
## 270 121.50 0.9526008 0.05008491    0
## 271 121.95 0.9472245 0.04438981    0
## 272 122.40 0.9543900 0.05071511    0
## 273 122.85 0.9491926 0.04498017    0
## 274 123.30 0.9561140 0.05134455    0
## 275 123.75 0.9510903 0.04557024    1

Comment: For $n = 1.645^2p(1-p)/\delta^2 = 2.71p(1-p)/\delta^2$ with $\delta = |p-q|$, the examples for $p = 0.3, q = 0.7$ and $p=0.4, q=0.5$ do not work out. However, $n = 2.71/\delta^2$ works fine to get the reported $n$. What's going on? Am I missing something?
Answer: Some factors to think about:

How different are the probabilities?
How sure do we want to be?

If the probabilities of heads are close together, like $p=.501$ and $q=.500$, it will take many trials to really see any difference, but if the probability of heads are drastically different, like $p=.9$ and $q=.4$, fewer trials are needed.
All we need is to tell if our statistical significance overlaps at all.
Doing the math:
Mean number of heads for X->$n*p$ | Standard Deviation X$=\sqrt{n*p*(1-p)}$
Mean number of heads for Y->$n*q$ | Standard Deviation Y$=\sqrt{n*q*(1-q)}$
In order to determine if we have one coin, we need to be sure we DON'T have the other coin. If we do enough trials and our head success count is outside of our allowed parameters, we decide it is the other coin.
For example, X has probability $.3$, Y has probability $.6$. We will use an $a=.05$ significance value. Therefore,
Mean X$=.3n$
Standard Deviation X$=\sqrt{.3n*(1-.3)}\approx.46\sqrt{n}$
We run $n$ trials and get a proportion $g$.
test$=$normalpdf$(.3*n,.46*\sqrt{n},g*n)$
If this test probability is more than $.05$, we can determine with an $a=.05$ significance that the coin's bias is not different enough from coin X's bias to prove that the coin is not coin X.
But if the test probability is more than $.05$, we fail to prove with an $a=.05$ significance that the coin's bias is different enough from coin X's bias to not be coin X.
Does this help?
Answer: If you know beforehand that $p=1$ and $q=0$ or vice versa then one flip is enough.
If you know beforehand that $p=1$ and $0<q<1$ you will almost certainly find out, but it may take an "infinitely" long time (i.e., for any given $n$, the probability that it takes at least $n$ flips is non-zero).
In the general case where $0<p<1$ and $0<q<1$ you will never know for sure, as both coins may produce any possible series of flips. As others have mentioned, you can achieve some degree of (bayesian) certainty, but you can never be certain.
Answer: We should find the percentage of heads that is equally probable for both coins, let that be $m\in(0,1)$ Let say $p<m<q$. So we have:
$$p^m(1-p)^{1-m}=q^m(1-q)^{1-m}\\
(\frac p q)^m(\frac {1-p}{1-q})^{1-m}=1\\
(\frac {p(1-q)} {q(1-p)})^m=\frac {1-q}{1-p}\\
m=\log_{\frac {p(1-q)} {q(1-p)}}\frac {1-q}{1-p}$$
We are looking for such $n$ that probability that number of heads is bellow $mn$ when you picked X, is for $P$ larger than same probability if you picked Y. Where $P$ is the wanted accuracy for claiming which coin it is.
$p_n(k<mn|X)-p_n(k<mn|Y)>P$ Which also implies $p_n(k>mn|Y)-p_n(k>mn|X)>P$
For finding $p_n(k<mn|X)$ we can use approximation to standard Normal distribution, it will be
$$\Phi(\sqrt n\frac{m-p}{\sqrt{p(1-p)}})-\Phi(\sqrt n\frac{m-q}{\sqrt{q(1-q)}})>P$$
So problem becomes: find $x$ such that $\Phi(ax)-\Phi(bx)>P$ where $a,b,P$ are known


How to replace the style of the inline cell in a StyleSheet

Question: I would like to change a StyleSheet in such a way that any text that is typed into the inline cell (the one created by Ctrl+9) is shown in a different font (e.g. the font of my choice). At present I do not see, what definition should I change.
Comment: I have the impression that the code-related styles have a harder-coded font setting. There is some logic to this, as this style has to be able to display all kinds of mathematical symbols, usually not present in text fonts. It is easy to change the header fonts. The default.nb file says:"The cells in this section define styles used for input and output to the kernel.  Be careful when modifying, renaming, or removing these styles, because the front end associates special meanings with these style names. Some attributes for these styles are actually set in FormatType Styles. "
Answer: Using the Option Inspector:
In the Format menu choose Option Inspector, select Cell Options > New Cell Defaults and edit the value of the option DefaultNewInlineCellStyle.
In the screenshot below, I changed the value of this option from {} to "Subsection" using the drop-down menu.
The first two cells on the left notebook show the inline cell styles before and after changing the value of the option  in the Option Inspector.

Using SetOptions:
To change the for the new inline cells for the active notebook, use
 SetOptions[EvaluationNotebook[], DefaultNewInlineCellStyle -> "Section"]

Example cell containing an inline cell:

For the style change to apply to all new inline cells in the current front-end session, use
 SetOptions[$FrontEndSession, DefaultNewInlineCellStyle -> "Section"]

If you want to have the changes to persist across sessions, use
 SetOptions[$FrontEnd, DefaultNewInlineCellStyle -> "Section"]

Finally, to reset any of the changes, use
 SetOptions[xxx, DefaultNewInlineCellStyle -> Inherited]

where xxx is EvaluationNotebook[], or $FrontEndSession or $FrontEnd.
Setting your own custom styles:
 SetOptions[EvaluationNotebook[],
 DefaultNewInlineCellStyle -> {FontFamily -> "SketchFlowPrint", FontSize -> 24}]

Comment: Thank you, that is, indeed, the possibility. However, my question is still valid: is it possible to change the StyleSheet in such a way that using this StyleSheet I never should think about fixing this style for each new notebook? It would be great, if such a possibility exists.
Comment: @A.Boulbitch, I agree that your question stands. I am hoping someone more comfortable with style sheets will come up with an answer.
Answer: To do this via a StyleSheet add this to your stylesheet:
Cell[StyleData["InlineCell"],
 TextAlignment->Left,
 LanguageCategory->"Formula",
 ScriptLevel->1,
 StyleMenuListing->None,
 FontFamily->"Helvetica",
 FontSize->16]

Cell[StyleData["InlineCellEditing"],
 StyleMenuListing->None,
 Background->RGBColor[1,0,0]]

To create your stylesheet you could follow these steps if you prefer doing things programmatically:
Quickly editing the stylesheet and saving it
or if you prefer a more "standard" way of adding a stylesheet you could follow the steps outlined by @kguler in the comment below.
Comment: Never edit Core.nb. What you should do in all cases is add the relevant style to your specific stylesheet. The stylesheet will have a dependency on Default.nb which in turn uses Core.nb.
Comment: +1 @Mike, thank you! This works great. I had come across these two cells in `Core.nb` stylesheet but was afraid to edit that file:) It would be useful to add the steps to be followed: eg. select  `Edit Stylesheet` from the `Format` menu; copy/paste the two cells separately into `Style Definitions for Untitled-x.nb`; and then click the `Install Stylesheet` button etc
Comment: Thank you, that is exactly what I looked for. Alexei


Dependent Object Serialization

Question: What's the recommended way to serialize dependent objects, especially when objects are being freshly constructed (to avoid malicious byte streams, or whatever)?  For example....
After creating a (genericized, but setup through Spring for my company) fiscal calendar based on JodaTime, I'm creating the next version based on JSR310 (using the back-port for development) in preparation for Java 8.
Currently, I'm working through serialization; how am I supposed to serialize dependent objects?  Most of the existing stuff has a 'single' chronology, but I don't get to rely on that (for instance, the fiscal year can start on any day during the ISO year, which means a new FiscalChronology).  Something like this:
public class FiscalDate implements Serializable {
    private final long epochDays;
    private final FiscalChronology chronology;

    // Many of the other 'date' instances also have a reference to their 'era':
    private final transient FiscalEra era;
}

public class FiscalChronology implements Serializable {
    // These two control year/month patterns.
    private final YearPattern yearPattern;
    private final MonthPattern monthPattern;
    // This should be derived during deserialization, for safety reasons.
    private transient final FiscalEra[] eras;

    private Object readResolve() {
        return FiscalChronology.create(yearPattern, monthPattern);
    }
}

What do I do for the 'derived' era?
public class FiscalEra implements Serializable {
    // So that eras can be singletons, per JSR310 documentation/recommendations.
    private static final ConcurrentHashMap<FiscalChronology, FiscalEra[]>;

    private final int eraValue;
    private final FiscalChronology chronology;

    public static FiscalEra of(FiscalChronology chronology, int era) {
        return putIfAbsent(chronology, makeEras(chronology))[era];
    }
}

Should I just remove serialization?  Only serialize eraValue (and rely on the serialization graph including the Chronology on its own)?

EDIT:
Related to this, what am I supposed to do for the output of toString() - should it just be the name of the era (which I'm linking to the ISO eras), and expect people to include chronology information if it's important, or always include information about the chronology?
Answer: Maybe you can use XStream:
From their website it supports:

Full object graph support. Duplicate references encountered in the
  object-model will be maintained. Supports circular references.
Comment: Due to the way serialization already works, I'm not concerned about the 'circular' reference.  It was more along the lines of, 'what _should_ I store?'
Comment: @Clockwork-Muse if your code works you should put it on CodeReview instead. I think that's what you need

Dependent Object Serialization


how to insert data in couchdb for cross domain

Question: i am using couch db and i want to post data in local host, i want to pass data append to couch db URL without open the couch db my data is save couch db database how can do this process.like i want to save name url=http://127.0.0.1:5984/address/_design/addressbook/index.html?name=lovesrivastava this URL pass through local-host and save data in couch db database. and return true or false
Answer: That question is very hard to understand, but I think your question might be this:
You have 2 CouchDB databases, one on the localhost, and another on a "server".  You want to serve a CouchApp from the localhost, but you want saved documents to be saved on the server.  You can't save directly from the browser to the server because that would be "cross domain".
Your idea to "pass through" the local database to the server is not the right approach.  You always need to save your document back to the database where you got it.
What you need is "replication":
You save the document to your local CouchDB, and then "replicate" it up to the server.


Is a Mac Mini G4 capable of 1080p MP4/H.264 playback?

Question: Looking for a HTPC, and I noticed the G4 Mac Minis are relatively cheap to get. I just wonder, do they support 1080p playback for MP4/H.264 files?
Answer: As CanuckSkier said, it won't be reliable, even if it does Full HD. I have a Early 2009 lowest spec Mac Mini and it skipped enough frames to make a Full HD video unplayable when the bit rate was high enough, so i'm guessing a G4 Mac Mini would be far worse.
Answer: I don't have any first-hand experience, but I'd guess not. At best you could probably get it playing but with lots of dropped frames. The graphics card is too old to have built in h.264 decoding, and I think even G5s couldn't do 1080p reliably.