Teaching a toddler to say "sorry" and mean it

Question: What's the best way to teach a child to say "sorry" and mean it without just creating a mimic? I don't truly believe that simply forcing a child to say they are sorry for hitting another kid or taking a toy is going to teach them how to have true remorse for their actions and make corrections to their behavior. For context, my daughter is 19mo. Is it possible at her age? When is a good age to expect they are cognitively able to understand this concept?
Comment: You couldn't with me. If I hit another kid it was because they deserved it.
Comment: @bjb568 I'm fairly sure you're not currently a toddler ;)
Comment: @Erica Well, "couldn't" is past tense :)
Answer: A 20 month old who said "I'm sorry" because he was told to wouldn't mean he had internalized sorry at having done wrong.  It just means he is willing to do whatever he needs to get you to stop being upset at him.  But most of our manners are made up of custom and repetition.  When someone tells you "I'm sorry" does it necessarily mean that they are actually sorry to the point something has fundamentally changed inside them and that the thing they did (and had to apologize for) is something they wouldn't do again?  Probably not.
Haven't you ever said sorry for something you didn't think you needed to apologize for?  Courtesy and respect needs to exist apart from how we feel about the actions and objects that they act upon.  If someone is upset by something we said or did, saying sorry isn't necessarily an admission that they had the "right" to be upset.  Sometimes it is just a way to live in harmony when you disagree.
As children, we learn to say please even when we think the object of our desire is ours by right.  We say thank you even though we don't actually feel gratitude.  We say sorry when we don't feel any real sorrow at our actions.  Later on, as we mature, hopefully we internalize the concepts behind the courtesies.  But if we are never taught the habit, the internalization is less likely to occur.  If we only behave with respect or courtesy toward people who we felt "deserved it", society would disintegrate, or at least become a much more contentious place.
Think about millions of people, many of them living so close to strangers whose lifestyles and appearances are offensive to them that if the walls of their apartments were to disappear they could spit in their neighbor's morning cup of coffee.  We don't have to agree that our neighbors deserve our courtesy, but we all need to buy into the social contract that says we all must learn to have manners just because manners are good for all of us.
Comment: When reading the question I thought back to what I can recall of my own childhood. There were definitely times when I was made to say an apology I didn't mean, but I do feel that being forced to say the words, even if I didn't yet understand the concept, helped me recognize that there was _something_ important going on there, thus establishing a foundation for when I eventually did become capable of understanding empathy and remorse.
Answer: I've witnessed my own children not truly display an understanding of apologies, picking up after themselves and other topics that I want them to be more empathetic about.  This has been frustrating for me, but I have found it is normal.  Here are some resources you can use as references.
From Janet Lansbury:

Over the years I have heard many of these forced apologies. I
  understand the parent's need for them, but I have to admit they always
  make me squirm. To truly apologize requires empathy, and empathy
  develops in its own way and time, at a different pace for each child.
  So, often the child is not developmentally ready to understand, much
  less own the words she's saying.

From Carleton Kendrick, Ed.M. about toddler apologies:

Q: We make our two year old say, "I'm sorry," when she hits someone,
  like her mother, brother or sister. She refuses at first, so we make
  her stand in a corner until she's ready to say it.
Does a child this age know what it means to be sorry? Is she just
  saying the "magic" words? Should we continue to make her say she is
  sorry?
A: Your two year old does not yet have a hard-wired, internalized
  conscience. Nor is she intellectually at an age of reason (which
  usually begins at around two-and-a-half). Therefore, making her say
  "I'm sorry," and putting her in a corner until she does will have no
  long-term effect.

Follow the link above to continue reading
Finally an except from parents.com

Before a child can apologize, she has to realize she's done something
  wrong—a concept preschoolers and even 5-year-olds don't always grasp.
  "Preschoolers are still in the 'me' phase, so they're not considering
  what's right or wrong," says Sherry Siman Maliken, a parent educator
  with the Parent Encouragement Program, in Kensington, Maryland. That's
  why parents and teachers often need to step in and point out when an
  apology is in order. With kids 2 and under, just focus on enforcing
  the rules—by learning them, your child will have less to apologize for
  later—and don't worry about coaxing a "Sorry."
Answer: Children typically begin to develop self awareness between 15 and 24 months old which is the skill necessary to begin to develop empathy , so your daughter is at a good age to be learning this. This is also the age where they well through imitating others, especially adults,  so one of the best ways to teach them is through modeling the desired behavior.
It's my experience that it is important that you model your interactions with your child as well as other adults. This can make it easier for them to understand as they have better access to their own feeling that those of others and learning the first is an important part of learning the second. My daughter gets very upset if you raise your voice to her so we have learned to say sorry to her when this happens, as a way of modeling the behavior, and use it as a way of talking about what people might be feeling. This helps give context to why we are sorry and helps her come up with ways to avoid this in future.
For example:
"I'm sorry I shouted at you. I can see it makes you upset. Daddy was worried that you might get hurt if you kept doing that and I get frustrated when you don't listen when I am trying to keep you safe. What could we do differently next time?"
Answer: Demanding a specific action from a toddler always bears the risk of escalation if both toddler and parent are strong-willed. Ask yourself wether you are willing to enter into a battle of wills and humiliation over a matter of manners/morals. I've been there and don't want to go there again.
From my experience, it's easier and more effective to concentrate on being a role model. Demonstrate (without explaining) to the child that saying and feeling sorry has good effects and is an honorable thing to do. And do the obvious: repair the damage, comfort the injured before even turning to the injurer.
It's hard to witness a child refusing to say sorry, but it makes me cringe to hear them say a forced sorry. And often, if you let them be, they will come back later and apologize in an honest and touching way. Conscience grows in children and doesn't have to be built.
Comment: "It's hard to witness a child refusing to say sorry, but it makes me cringe to hear them say a forced sorry. And often, if you let them be, they will come back later and apologize in an honest and touching way. Conscience grows in children and doesn't have to be built." -very well said. My thoughts exactly.


Recall and AUC of a binary classifier

Question: Is it possible for a binary classifier to have a recall of 0.0 for one of the classes and
at the same time an area under the ROC curve (AUC) of 1.0 for the same class?
Comment: I know a lot about classification but I have never heard the term recall.  Could you give a definition?  No practical classifier will have an AUC = 1. That amonts to perfect specification and perfect sensitivity.
Comment: Thank you @MichaelChernick for the info. In Recall–precision curves, recall = number of documents retrieved that are relevant /
total number of documents that are relevant. ( / is divided by)
Comment: @MichaelChernick TP/(TP+FN) or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recall_%28information_retrieval%29
Comment: ROC is true positive rate(recall-pd) vs false positive rate (false alarm) graph.
Comment: -1. An AUC is not a classifier - it represents a collection of classifiers, differing by the cut-point of the predicted variable. As such, you can't have an AUC *for the class* - an AUC represents both classes.
Answer: Bit late to the party, but I think the chosen answer is wrong, so here's my reasoning:
I think the confusion comes from using the "a classifier" with two different meanings:

The ROC of "a classifier" considers a function that yields a continuous score as output which indicates the class. The ROC is generated by varying a threshold above which the label of the positive class is assigned.
On contrast, recall (or sensitivity or true positive rate TPR) implies that this threshold is fixed. So the recall of "a classifier" implies one further step: the dichotomization or hardening of the continuous output of "a classifier" in the ROC meaning.

The 2nd meaning classifier is one working point of a set of points (not entirely sure about term: the German term would be Schar) that together form the classifier in the first meaning, the parametrization being the threshold.
To generate the ROC, the threshold is varied from below the lowest observed score ("start") to above the highest observed score ("end"). This makes the curve start at (TPR 1.0; TNR 0.0) and end at (TPR 0.0; TNR 1.0). Note that these two points correspond to trivital classifiers (2nd meaning) that always predict the positive and negative class, respectively.
So each ROC contains at least one point (and "a classifier" in the 2nd sense)  with recall 0.
Here's a graph produced from 4 cases with "predicted" scores 1, 2, 3, 4 and the first 2 cases and "reference" classes negative, negative, positive, positive. If you look at classifiers (2nd meaning) with threshold anywhere > 4, you end up at the red operating point which has recall 0, although the AUC is 1.0 for the classifier (1st meaning).

So far my example may look artificially constructed. After all, why would one in practice choose a threshold outside the predicted range?
However here are some points that come to my mind how one could be faced with such a situation in practice.

There are classifiers where the predicted scores actually have an interpretable meaning. Therefore, the threshold may be chosen according to some "external" principle. Consider a classifier like logistic regression which predicts class membership probability. Now consider a situation where you need to have rather specific predictions. For example, you decided that you'll raise the hurdles a bit and yell "positive" only if the predicted probability is above 90 %. Now if for some reason the predicted probabilities never reach the 90 % mark, you end up with the situation in question.
The same would apply if the classifier was set up first as a chemical calibration, e.g. a quantitation of fasting blood glucose level. Prediction should be "diabetic" if the quantitation yields more than 126 mg/dl. Now assume that unfortunately, your recovery is bad: it predicts systematically far too low and 126 mg/dl is never predicted. A similar situation would result if you looked up the official threshold as 126 mg/dl, but calibrated mmol/l (126 mg/dl = 7,0 mmol/l)
Number two is a classical programming error. Consider programming the ROC by actually looping over a series of increasing threshold values to construct the ROC, e.g. setting some threshold variable accordigly in the loop. If then next step the recall is calculated using threshold which is still set to a value outside the predicted score range, the recall will be 0 (or 1, if high scores predict the negative class).
## calculate and plot the ROC
roc <- data.frame (
         threshold = seq (min (score) - 1, max (score + 1), length.out = 100),
         tpr = NA, fpr = NA
       )

for (i in 1 : 100) {
   threshold <- roc$threshold [i]
       roc$tpr [i] <- mean (score [class == "positive"] > threshold)
   roc$fpr [i] <- mean (score [class == "negative"] > threshold )
}

plot (roc$fpr, roc$tpr, col = rainbow (100))

## now the recall

# **FORGET TO SET A SENSIBLE THRESHOLD VALUE**

recall <-  mean (score [class == "positive"] > threshold)
recall
## [1] 0

I used this R code to produce the graph:
require (ROCR)
perf <- performance (prediction (1:4, 1:4 > 2.5), "tpr", "fpr")
plot (perf, asp = 1)
points (firstname.lastname@example.com [[1]], email@example.com[[1]], pch = 19, col = c(2, 1,1,1,1))

Comment: @AtillaOzgur the red point is not AUC = 0, nor AUC = 1. The AUC is defined by the ensemble of all red and black points.
Comment: Your red point is not AUC = 1, it is actually AUC = 0 point. AUC = 1 means that this point is D point as in my included graph. This point have to be in left uppermost
Comment: Note e.g. fig. 7 in the Fawcett 2004 report you linked: even for a classifiert that does not produce continuous scores but only two distinct values (the class labels coded e.g. as 0 and 1) the corresponding receiver operating *curve* which you need in order to calculate the area underneath extends to the 0/0 and 1/1 points.
Comment: AUC = 0 can only be obtained if the ROC goes through the lower right corner.
Answer: ROC curves are false negative rate vs true positive rate graph. If you have AUC = 1, by definition you have perfect classifier.
From Information retrieval viewpoint ; if you have AUC = 1 then you have perfect recall and perfect precision. You recall all documents which exists about this topic, also all the documents you recall are relevant to your topic.
I would like to add more information for response to commenter.
Following is a graph from "ROC Graphs: Notes and Practical Considerations
for Data Mining Researchers, Tom Fawcett"

A discrete classifier is one that outputs only a class label.
Each discrete classifier produces an (FP rate,TP rate) pair,
which corresponds to a single point in ROC space.
...
The point (0;1) represents perfect classification.
D's performance is perfect as shown.

Comment: (-1) This answer is wrong: each ROC includes a point with recall 0 (trivial model always predicting the negative class). AUC 1 does not imply perfect recall and precision, it implies only that a dichtomization threshold *exists* which yields perfect recall (true positive rate; sensitivity) and fall-out (true negative rate; specificity).
Comment: @AtillaOzgur: yes, AUC = 1 is a perfect classifier. But see my (equally theoretical) exampe: even for that classifier the 0/0 and 1/1 points belong to the receiver operating *curve*. As your quote says: if you have an inherently dichotomous output, you do not get a receiver operating *curve* but a *point* in fpr/tpr space. How do you define the area under a curve if you don't have a curve but a single point?
Comment: Look at figure 4 of the paper you refer to: there you have the receiver operating curve of a perfect classifier with continuous output. The perfect classifier (in my sense 2) is the one obtained with the threshold that leads to 0 fpr / 1 tpr. But the area under the curve refers to all possible thresholds (meaning 1) and these include thresholds (e.g. the marked 0.5 and 0.6) where the working point is less than perfect. And it also includes the corners 0/0 and 1/1. Thus you can have a classifier (1) with AUC = 1 and choose a threshold that leads to a classifier (2) that has recall 0.
Comment: @AtillaOzgur: by no means do I want to offend you, but I want to avoid that other readers with a similar question get off the track by the answer as it is. Please revise your answer, I'd like to reverse my downvote to an upvote! The *practical*  conclusion on which I think we agree anyways is: *something* is wrong and the situation needs to be investigated more in depth.
Comment: I second cbeleites. The key point, as he has stated, is _"AUC 1 does not imply perfect recall and precision, it implies only that a dichtomization threshold exists which yields perfect recall"_, meanwhile this answer assumes that always the best threshold is selected. But as cbeleites has pointed out in his answer, this may not be the case. Nit-picky, but correct :)
Comment: Classifier D in the graph performs perfectly, true enough; but it doesn't have an associated area under the ROC curve simply because it's a *point*, not a *curve*.
Comment: @cbeleites I am sorry :), I just don't wanted to start an in-comment discussion with amoeba. And yes you are right, I should have updated my prior.
Comment: Thank you @Atilla Ozgur. I just need to be sure,  Do you mean that it is not possible for AUC =1  and at the same time recall = 0?
Comment: No it is not possible.
Comment: @cbeleites I am sorry, but I believe my answer is correct. I know that such a classifier is HARD to obtain or impossible in practice but in THEORY it exists. AUC = 1 is  perfect classifier at least in theory.
Comment: @steffen: I believe cbeleites is a lady.
Comment: @amoeba Well, english is not my native tongue, but as far as I know it is completely acceptable (although some may say paternalistic) to use "he" if the gender of something which has a gender is not known. Additionally, without any further knowledge I stick to the prior p(male), which is quite high on this site, I guess. Aside, cbeleites could be a dog ;).
Comment: If you want people you to recognize as female, then you should write it in the profile section. I am just respecting the degree of anonymity everyone requests for oneself by its profile. Certainly no offense here :).

Recall and AUC of a binary classifier


Is it easier to take off against the wind or with it?

Question: I was wondering if it would be better to take off into the wind because then you would need less overall acceleration to takeoff, or with the wind behind you - thereby making it easier for the plane to fly when it's in the air?
Comment: *thereby making it easier for the plane to fly when it's in the air* -- How? Tailwind decreases the climb gradient and decreases the climb weight for the same obstacle clearance.
Answer: Almost always into the wind. The ground roll will be substantially decreased because you've already got a certain amount of airflow over the wings.
Taking off with a tailwind is pretty much never advisable unless it's a one-way strip or runway, or the winds are below the tailwind limitations for that aircraft type.
Comment: you could add that a good reason for using a runway one way only is [runway slope](https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/32694/what-are-the-difficulties-of-landing-on-an-upslope-runway).
Answer: The speeds required for planes to fly are speeds relative to the air, not relative to the ground. You are correct that taking off with the wind will require less acceleration to get to a certain speed, but that speed is relative to the ground, so you might not be at the required air speed.
Picture a runway left to right. A plane on the right side wants to take off to the left, and a wind is blowing. Consider two cases:

The wind is blowing left to right(headwind). Any rightward wind speed can be added to the plane's leftward ground speed. If the plane can take off at, say, 50 kts, if the wind is 10 kts, the plane's required ground speed is only 40 kts. The total airspeed is 50kts.
The wind is blowing right to left(tailwind)
Any leftward wind speed must be subtracted from the plane's ground speed to get airspeed. Again, trying to reach an airspeed of 50kts, a tailwind of 10 kts will require a faster ground speed. The aircraft's speed relative to the ground will be 60kts before it can take off, though the instrument airspeed will only measure 50 kts.

So, for those cases, there is a difference of 20 kts ground speed. It can take a bit more runway to get to 50 kts airspeed if your ground speed is even faster than that. Most pilots don't enjoy running out of runway.


Why are two cameras mounted in paralle in stereo application?

Question: For stereo cameras on the market, two cameras are always mounted side by side and with a displacement that is perpendicular to the cameras' optical axes. I take this setup for granted. One idea came to my mind whether this is necessary? If two cameras are not parallel and have different focal length, camera calibration can correct the difference. Why are two cameras mounted in parallel? My guess is that two cameras can have a large overlapping region. Am I correct?
Answer: Each camera needs to be defined by 6 variables (3 position, 3 orientation). This would mean that during the calibration process, a solver needs to find 12 variables. As this is done usually with an nonlinear optimization process, the solutions are quite sensitive to the initial guess. By making them parallel and giving them a fixed width, you can give the solver a much nicer initial guess (which can converge to the correct solution).
Aside from this of course, we do get large overlapping areas which become important when creating depth maps.
Comment: How can I evaluate the calibration performance If I calibrate one stereo camera? Will it not be a problem if two cameras are not mounted in parallel exactly?
Comment: No it is usually okay for them to be a little off since you are solving for all twelve parameters. You just need them to be as close as possible so that your solver can converge to the correct solution. You can use some object/image as a ground truth and see if your stereo pair can estimation errors when you measure its position/orientation.
Comment: Can I take any measure to improve the results if I don't have good initial guess? For example, I can take more numbers of
images? Can you provide any link to papers about the initial guess and ways to improve results in camera calibration? I hope to learn more about the principle.
Answer: Making them parallel is beneficial for reducing distortion after a rectification. We usually rectify two images for a fast matching. If speed is not your concern you can skip the rectification stage.


How has the hash rate for bitcoin continued to increase despite price drops and miners dropping out?

Question: Despite price dropping in 2018, the hash rate for bitcoin tripled from around 15 EH/s to 45 EH/s. Why is this the case? I am aware that the network difficulty adjusts meaning that if miners drop off, it will be more profitable for others to mine but what are the key factors driving the hash rate increase? Is it related to the increasing ledger, an increased amount of miners, and/or other factors?
Answer:
the hash rate for bitcoin tripled from around 15 EH/s to 45 EH/s. Why is this the case?

Well, at the simplest level, that means more hashing power is being used to secure the network.
This could mean that a larger number of ASIC units are running, and/or that more efficient ASIC units are being created and used. A more efficient ASIC would perform more hashes per second, for a lower cost per hash per second.
Every miner will have their own costs, motivations, etc, so it's hard to speak broadly about 'what miners will do if price is x and the hashrate is y'. For example, a price drop means some miners with the highest costs may no longer be able to operate profitably, but perhaps those miners are ideologically driven, and will take a loss with the hope that the bitcoin they mine will one day be worth more than it is at that time. Etc.


Making coleslaw and potato salad on Shabbos

Question: All of the halachos in regards to lisha on Shabbos have always been difficult to understand. What do the poskim say in regards to making coleslaw (mixing together small pieces of cabbage and carrots together with mayonnaise and other ingredients) and potato salad (mixing together relatively bigger pieces of potato together with mayonnaise and other ingredients.) Seemingly the coleslaw (without making a shinui) would be a problem as by mixing in the mayonnaise it puts together the salad. However with the potato salad perhaps this would be muter (even without a shinui) since mixing together the potatoes with the mayonnaise doesn't actually stick them together like it does to the coleslaw or other mixtures. I'm looking for sources for this two questions with poskim that speak about them.
Comment: It should not be an issue. see here: http://www.shemayisrael.com/parsha/ostroff/archives/shabbos9_10.htm#_ftn9
Answer: The definition of the melocha of losh is that multiple ingredients are converted into one entity (Shmiras Shabbos Kehilchosa 8:1 citing Mishna Berura 321:50). Therefore a mixture of bits or chunks of food that cling together with a liquid or oil is not included in losh, because the pieces do not appear to melt into a single mass, but rather are clumped together by the liquid medium which acts somewhat as a glue. Since the individual segments visibly retain their separate identities, they cannot be classified as a solid, unified mass (the "39 Melochos" book by Rabbi Dovid Ribiat Volume 2 pg. 547 based on Taz 321:15 and Mishna Berura S"K 68). Based on this, Shmiras Shabbos Kehilchoso (8:4) permits preparing potato salad on Shabbos, and the "39 Melochos" book (pg. 548) writes that coleslaw is also permitted. Although the cabbage strips stick pretty well they still remain individually identifiably and not one mass of salad.
Comment: Potatoes I would call "large pieces" however strips of cabbage and carrots that are generally mixed together with the mayonnaise and stick pretty well I'm not sure if I would consider that to be b'geder "big pieces" and not "dak dak"
Comment: +1. See also the comments on http://judaism.stackexchange.com/a/742.


How do I get Visual Web Developer to use IIS, and not ASP.NET development server?

Question: I want to make sure my local is matching the production environment closely and that means running IIS and not the ASP.NET development server that comes with Visual Web Developer express edition. What is the best way to do this?
Answer: In Visual Studio you right-click the project, select Properties then Web and change it to use Local IIS. It seems the process is similar for VWD, but there there is a Properties node you open instead. I don't have VWD installed right now so can't check to see if this method is indeed accurate but the article is recent so I assume that it is.
Answer: First make sure you have installed and configured IIS server. To check whether IIS server is installed: Run->inetmgr press enter.
To know how to install and configure IIS server check the following Link:
http://chalaki.com/install-iis6-windows-xp-professional-sp3-setup-run-csharp-cgi/425/
To develop Website using Visual developer 2008 with IIS instead of "ASP.NET Development Server", In the new website window under "Location" click on "Browse" to see the different Server options including IIS Server. User can select the server as IIS server instead of "File System", then the "Location" option will be "HTTP" instead of "File System".
In Visual developer 2008 under Properties->Start Option->Server->"Use local IIS server" option is not shown, Even though IIS server was installed and configured successfully. the only options shown are "use default server" and " Use custom server with base URL".
So in Visual developer 2008 to run on IIS server(If IIS server is installed), Need do the following:
New Website -> Under Locations Click on "Browse" -> Click on "Local IIS" and then select the "IIS Virtual Directory"(IIS vitual Directory which is directory created by the user while configuring IIS server) -> Open
While Running/debugging, the server which you selected while creating the website, the same server will used to open the website, that is while creating the website if you selected "IIS Server" then the website will be opened though IIS server.
One more thing is, while installing Visual developer 2008 and IIS server, If you installed IIS server after installing Visual studio then you need to do the following before creating new website:
Run ->cmd press enter (then enter the following Command)-> C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\Version aspnet_regiis -i  press Enter then you get message after 3 seconds "ASP.net was installed successfully".
(*Version will be v2.0.50727 in most cases)
Comment: Exact same answer posted for this question:  http://stackoverflow.com/questions/158436/asp-net-with-iis/8345733#8345733


LEGO Mindstorm EV3 Line-With-Gaps Follower? [Robotc]

Question: Trying to create an algorithm / code in order to get my robot to follow a track which it currently can do, using a color sensor and following the inside edge. So I'm wondering how to transition to the track with broken parts: the track has gaps with a max. length of 20 cm and only on straight parts. I also have a distance sensor available. What would be the recommended ideas?
Answer: As you already have a working program for the continuous line, you just need to add provisions for the cases when
<code>(the robot is moving on a straight part) AND (the color sensor finds a gap in the track)
</code>
Depending on your existing solution you might need to code dedicated methods to identify the two sub-cases and then call them repeatedly to see if the robot is

on the track,
off the track or
in a gap but on the track.

The above mentioned provision could include just "hold the current direction and continue forwards" or something more elaborate. It could include measuring the distance traveled and seeing if the gap is indeed shorter than 20 cm (and trying to find the line again if a longer gap was found), or introducing a slight fanning motion to help find the end of the gap, or maybe something completely different.
If you post more about your existing solution, we could give you more specific ideas.


Do you have to consider neighbors when building a shul?

Question: Are there any halachic obligations to consider the averse effects that building a shul may have on Jewish neighbors? This may include things like lowering property value, noise and other disturbances, parking etc.
Comment: חנות שבחצר יכולין השכנים למחות בידו ולומר לו אין אנו יכולין לישן מקול הנכנסים והיוצאין אלא עושה מלאכתו בחנותו ומוכר בשוק. אבל אינן יכולין למחות בידו ולומר לו אין אנו יכולין לישן מקול הפטיש או מקול הרחיים שהרי החזיק לעשות כן. וכן יש לו ללמד תינוקות של ישראל תורה בתוך ביתו ואין השותפין יכולין למחות בידו ולומר לו אין אנו יכולין לישן מקול התינוקות של בית רבן:  Rambam Hilchos Shecheinim 6:12 , seems a shul is different then a cheder.
Comment: @sabbahillel depends on the neighborhood. I can tell you that's certainly not the case in Monsey NY
Comment: property values should go up. Once a shul has been built more frum Jews would move in and the neighborhood would improve. That has been our experience, especially since we built our new shul (with a parking lot where the old building was).
Comment: Speak your name with reverence!
Comment: This is a very important question, as well as one that pushes people's buttons. Offhand, some of the items you mentioned are obviously "Yes" . Noise must be kept to minimal (usually, not aproblem), and parking space must not be impeded. My town requires that every new shul must have a minimal number of parking spots to avoid more cars crowding the streets esp. on Shabbat & Yom Tov. Sadly, though, there is a bit of "payola" going on so that some shuls can bypass some of these rules.
Comment: @msh210 http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/20026577#20026577
Answer: I haven't, yet, located any articles or sources that address this issue directly. However, there is a general rule that "The law of the land is law" - of course hwen the local or gov. law doesn't directly contradict halacha.
Many townships / municipalities have already instituted certain laws that are geared to considering enighbors and maintaining a semblance of neighborly "peace". In my town, a shul being built must follow these rules:

The building structure must not exceed a certain height. This is to preserve the beauty of the neighborhood. One shul in my neighborhood was built to tall, and they did not receive a building permit until they redesigned the shul.
A new shul must provide a minimum number of parking spaces so that people don't park their cars on the side streets during Shabbat and Yom Tov. BTW - This is a HUGE problem in numerous communities, and during a Town Hall meeting, this along with the Eiruv issue are the 2 reasons many people vote against a shul (besides anti Semitism, which has its own problems.)
Since I mentioned Eruv, this is a "causal" problem to building a shul. Many neighbors are anti-Eruv. One of the reasons mentioned is that they don't want people walking in the middle of the road on Shabbat "hogging" the roads. I agree with the neighbors. If you want the shul built, you need to convince the neighbors that you will behave properly and walk on the sidewalks where there is one or avoid hogging the road.
Many shuls in my neighborhood do not allow any form of alcohol which includes wine. Correct! Kiddush is either not made in shul at all, or it is made on grape juice. Certainly, there is no schnapps in the shul anywhere. The reason? Kids got drunk and some of them got loud and rowdy and a few vandalized some cars. Neighbors complained, the kids were arrested. Point being - yes, parents should have been responsible to discipline the kids long before they got an arrest record. But, if the parents won't the shul and or community needs to take over. This policy has worked extremely well.

I've mentioned some of the concerns that I believe are all valid. No doubt, there are others. Overall, yes, I do think that you NEED to consider your neighbors a lot when building the shul. In the end, it will be a huge help.
Comment: We have a large Yeshiva elementary moving in next door which is opposed by the local community since the traffic situation on the road is already both very busy and very unsafe. However, local politics being what it is (the school has deep pockets), the school is inevitable. However, dina d'malchusa dina does not override a Jew's halachik obligations to his fellow (it *adds* obligations; it doesn't detract) which certainly include creating additional sakkanat nefashot, but also basic choshen mishpat torts like hezek re'iyah, affecting quality of life, etc.
Comment: @loewian - I agree with your concerns about 70%. I like having as many yeshivot as possible in any neighborhood that necessitates that. Politics is messy, and, we have our own share of the messy politics, as well, sadly. Nonetheless, if you're part of a democratic process where townspeople vote and / or rally / protest for / against the yeshiva being built or not, you still must follow the process. I've seen and been on both sides of the issue. But if the town forbids you to build, you can't just do what you want, legally. If you do, you create animosity among your neighbors. TBC...
Comment: @loewian The best way is to fight legally and / or expose the "dirty" politics, honestly. Don't fabricate dirt where there isn't any. Doing that, "in the name of halacha" is actually NOT in the "spirit" of halacha.
Comment: I'm not fabricating anything in the name of anything. The nature of the politics where I live is particularly notorious. And the use of that corruption to build a supposedly Torah-oriented institution is particularly egregious (not to mention that those most threatened by the unsafe situation are the talmidim themselves).


Why do passports expire?

Question: Based on this question, why do passports expire? What possible function does it serve to limit their validity in time?
Comment: from philosophy perspective : nothing is eternal in this life, my friend.
Comment: To see the other side of the coin, consider what happens with drivers' licenses. In the EU, countries have to recognize each other licenses and some had no expiration until recently. You have hundreds of different documents with different formats, some from states that do not exist anymore (e.g. the GDR), with a photo dating back decades or that could easily be forged. It's very difficult to control or enforce in any meaningful way, which is why new regulation makes expiration mandatory EU-wide (there is a grace period for older ones).
Comment: Also, beside the good reasons provided in the answer, some countries do seem to use it as a source of income (I know one that charges several hundreds euros for a passport valid for only two years; and don't forget that passports are not only required by occasional travelers leaving the country once in a while, it's also basically a tax on emigrants who need the damn thing to put their visa/get their residence permit somewhere else).
Answer: The simple answer is that it's because the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) - the global organisation that is responsible for settings standards for passports - recommends that they should be valid for no more than 10 years.
For example, the ICAO "Guide for Assessing Security of Handling and Issuance of Travel Documents" states that :

Passport Validity Period
[...]
Recommended Practice 3.16 - Contracting States should normally provide
that such passports be valid for a period of at least five years…Note
1 — In consideration of the limited durability of documents and the
changing appearance of the passport holder over time, a validity
period of not more than ten years is recommended

Of course the question then becomes why does ICAO have such a requirement!
In addition to the obvious reason that the biometric data on the passport (at a minimum, the photo) will be out of date after a period of time, the primary reason for expiring passports is likely to be that it allows the underlying technology to change without there being too many legacy passports in circulation.
For example, most countries started implementing "Machine Readable Passports" in the 1980's. Given a maximum expiry of 10 years, that meant that by the year 2000 it could be guaranteed that people from most countries had an MRP, and thus countries could start to enforce their use - such as how the US did in the mid-2000's.  If passports had a 20+ year expiry, then even today there wouldn't be a guarantee that people would have MRPs.
The same is true for "electronic" passports.  For example, Australia started issuing these in 2005, which means by the end of 2015 countries will be able to enforce that Australian passports must be electronic.
Expiring passports also reduces the number of stolen/forged/etc passports in circulation - both due to the expiry of those that are in circulation, but also by enforcing newer anti-forgery standards for new passports.
Comment: Thank you HaLaBi for your feedback.  I have modified the word "must" to "should" to cover you point that the ICAO "recommends" validity of no more than 10 years as opposed to strictly enforcing it.
Comment: I'd say the last paragraph (expiring forged passports) is the most likely explanation, unless passports had an indefinite lifetime before technological changes started happening with passports.
Comment: -1 I do not know why this answer was upvoted,it is totally wrong. I deal with ICAO annexes a lot and I am familiar with it. The first statement of your answer is wrong, ICAO (annex 9 - Facilitation) section 3.5.4 says: "Contracting States
should issue passports with an initial period of validity of at least five years." There is no mention of 10 years as you stated. Also, this rule is mentioned under the "Recommended Practices" which is not compulsory for countries to follow,therefore there are countries that issue passports for 3 years and some more than 10 years in some cases like UK.
Comment: Just as notice: my father got passport in 2004 and it is valid until 2057 (year when will 100 year from his birth)
Answer: First, the answer that states that passports expire because of ICAO rules is wrong, ICAO annex 9 (Facilitation) section 3.5.4 regarding passports is:

3.5.4 Recommended Practice.— Contracting States
should issue passports with an initial period of validity of at
least five years, valid for an unlimited number of journeys and
for all countries, except in special circumstances.

and section 3.5.5:

3.5.5 Recommended Practice.— Contracting States
should institute simple procedures for the renewal or
replacement of passports and grant the same period of validity
for the new or renewed passport as for the initial issue.

So, there is no global limitation of the passport validity, there is a recommendation of 5 years initial validity. There are some countries issue passports for 3 years, some other issue passports with a validity that exceeds 10 years. It totally depends on the country, still most of them are following ICAO recommendations and issue passports of 5 years.
The reasons are:

As in driving licenses, national IDs and other photo IDs, people's looks change over time. So a fresh photo is required every few years to keep things up to date.

For some countries there are the security measures, the longer the passport design stays the same, the bigger the chance of fraud is.

Economic reasons, making more jobs. Renewing passports is not free, the money for the passports are usually much more than the actual cost of passport while there is another recommendation by ICAO regarding this but few countries follow that:

3.5.6 Recommended Practice.— If any fee is charged
for the issue or renewal of a passport, the amount of such fee
should not exceed the cost of the operation.

finally, ICAO recommends the renewal of passports every few years, which is recommended to be five years as mentioned above.
Comment: You have quoted a single document. Numerous other ICAO documents recommend a maximum 10 year validity, such as "Machine Readable Travel Documents" (Part 1, Volume 2, Section 2.2), and "Guide for Assessing Security of Handling and
Issuance of Travel Documents" (section 6.4.2). Whilst it is true that these are "Recommendations", I'm sure someone like yourself who "deal[s] with ICAO annexes a lot" will know that a recommendation such as this would normally only be ignored if there was an extremely good reason to do so.
Comment: Can sombody please tell the Australian government about `3.5.6`? Or if it really does [cost **$350 bucks** to produce a passport](http://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/20184/are-australian-passports-expensive-in-comparison-to-other-western-developed-co) (with more pages) then how can I get a job there? The passports don't seem to be made of precious materials so I can only assume they pay very high wages to their employees.
Comment: +1 for citing relevant documentation and providing some nuances but I would think the distinction between "recommending" and actually mandating is not as absolute as you make it to be (it's international law anyway, most countries violate it everyday without serious consequences, same things for technical norms…). Yet, those type of rules do matter and it's still one of the reasons passports have limitations (whereas drivers' license often do/did not, incidentally) even if the obligation is not as strong as Doc initial answer would have suggested.
Answer: The biggest reason.  Your appearance changes with age, so the fresh picture is needed.
Comment: @jwenting: Out of interest what countries require a new one for every trip abroad? I've never come across anything like that...
Comment: Also, it is a way to make more jobs and give people salaries... governments need that.
Comment: $150 a pop even for 300000000 people every 10 years isn't much. :)
Comment: Wow I dream of such cheap passports!
Comment: @Karlson not only passports, a bit from passports and a bit from many other things will eventually make some good $.
Comment: @Karlson 10 years? Most countries I know require renewal every 4 years, and there are countries where you need to get a new one for every trip abroad (effectively they're exit visa). And $450 million a year is nothing to sneeze, for the city councils that get it (especially small towns) it can be a nice addition to their budget. And as HaLaBi says, when you add driver's licenses and other expiring permits and licenses it all adds up.
Answer: In addition to the other answers, there may be laws local to the issuing countries.
For example, Germany prohibits creating unique identification numbers for people. If the passport or ID card number would remain unchanged for a greater amount of time, this number could be used as an identification number (as citizens get at most one ID card and two passports), so documents with new, unrelated numbers have to be issued every ten years, and any documentation about the old number deleted from government databases as soon as the document is marked invalid (non-government databases are forbidden from storing the number at all).
Comment: This is incorrect. All residents of Germany have a tax identification number (Steueridentifikationsnummer) which remains throughout the entire life. It has been disputed if the introduction of such a numbering system violates the German constitution, but all court rulings have been in favour of the system.
Comment: @Tor-EinarJarnbjo Good luck trying to shut Pandora's Box after the fact.  ~80 years ago when the US assigned everyone a number for Social Security (govt retirement program) they forbade its use as an identifier for anything else.  Now it's defacto required when signing up for almost anything financial since it's needed to report tax information.
Answer: The main motivation for passports to have an expiry date is to minimize identity fraud. Not all immigration authorities are able to take extra identity check measures, and if passports expire in a reasonable amount of  time, chances of identity fraud such as travelling on stolen passports will decrease.
Another reason is that, if passports expire, people will get new passports. Because passport designs are updated, passport expiry will force people to get the new passports.
Updating the photo probably is not the biggest reason. After all, photos are far from a reliable method to verify identity, and states/regions also rely on other measures to verify the person's identity, e.g. taking fingerprints at visa issuance & checking it at the border control (like the US). Also, identity documents that never expire are not unseen (such as the Hong Kong Permanent Resident Identity Card).
Answer: The ethical reasons are:

To update biometric information (photo)
To permit adoption of new technology
To minimize fraud

Why do passports expire?


Red wine recipies

Question: I'm a new brewer and I want to brew a red wine. Anyone have a good red wine recipie that's easy to make and tastes good? I don't want to buy a kit and I want to use grapes found in the grocery store. I've tried twice to make mead and  it hasn't turned out so I've decided to go to wine
Answer: Recipe:
Grape Juice
Yeast
Making wine is more about process than recipe. With the exception of quality ingredients.  Standard table grapes don't really make decent wine.  This becomes incredibly apparent when you actually taste the juice from a true wine grape.  I've dabbled in some wine making all from kits of different grape musts.  When you taste the juice/must from a wine grape it will blow your mind.
What I am saying is that if you want to make wine don't cast off the kits.  The starting material is pretty important.
Comment: *"The starting material is pretty important"*  this is very true.  Unlike beer where you can get decent grains all year, good grapes are hard to find.
Answer: I tried once to make a small quantity of wine from grapes I found in a grocery store.  I had big hopes because they got a type of grapes that looked a lot like wine grapes (very dark and small).  Even thought my process was good (already made wine from wine grapes), the end result was not good.
So that means the grapes really need to be wine grapes.  Make an extra effort to find some (web/importation).
An other option is to mix some other fruits.  I once made something very good with raspberries, sugar and vodka.  I fermented the raspberries with sugar, and before the end of fermentation, I added the vodka just to kill the yeast. This gives a fortified wine with just a bit of residual sugar.
Answer: My friend has tried this with Concord grapes and it was okay. The recipe he used was on this page: "https://www.baderbrewing.com/content/how-make-wine-concord-table-grapes" Good luck!

Red wine recipies


How does a DM deal with a PC with an abnormally high Armor Class?

Question: One of the Fighters in my party has an AC of 21 at level 5. He wears chainmail which gives an AC of 16, has the Defense Fighting Style which gives a +1 to AC when wearing armor, and a +2 shield (found in an ancient cave) which adds an additional +4 to his AC. As the DM, I am having an issue with any number of creature hitting him. I understand that I allowed this to happen, but I'm starting to regret it. How can I at least give this Fighter an actual fight without being unfair?
Comment: (Re: "abnormally high":) I think it's worth noting that 21 AC is obtainable via completely mundane means for your fighter- since he has that fighting style, he'd only need plate and a shield. (Still a good question, just pointing out that 21 AC is something one might have to contend with even without the specific scenario of lucking into a +2 shield)
Comment: 21 isn't abnormally high. For a lot of characters a couple of magic items is enough to push them past 20.

Now imagine your fighter has the Shield Specialist feat and can avoid damage from anything requiring a dex save and has taken a level of barbarian and halves a lot of the damage you deal.
Comment: @Pyrotechnical, the way I do treasure is I make one player roll a d10. I have a list of nine normal items with one magical item. He managed to get the one magical.
Comment: Also imagine he is a eldritch Knight and has the shield spell + a shield of faith from the cleric. AC beyond 25
Answer: Hit your fighter in the NADs1
AC isn't the only way to cause damage to a fighter.

Utilize creatures that force saving throws. High AC won't save you from a fireball
Give them hard choices. AC won't save you when you have to choose between helping the rogue or the wizard…and you only have time to help one
Talk to your players. Let them know the high AC is making things difficult for you, and you'd like to ratchet it back some. See if they'd be willing to trade in the +2 shield for an alternative magic shield with a property instead of AC bonus

The biggest thing to keep in mind is that AC isn't the end-all-be-all in D&D. Yes, it's important, but there are avenues around it.

1NADs = Non-AC Defenses. In D&D 4e you didn't have saving throws, rather you had static defense values: AC, Fortitude (Str/Con), Reflex (Dex/Int), and Will (Wis/Cha). A common reply to fighters with super-high AC was "hit 'em in the NADs!", meaning that a high AC usually meant a low Reflex and/or Will defense—fighters of course having a high Str or Con meant a good Fortitude defense.
Comment: Point 2 is very important. The Fighter has invested a significant amount of resources into increasing his AC, which means he hasn't been investing into offense. An opportunity attack from this Fighter isn't very scary and even dumb monsters should quickly realize they're wasting their time trying to kill him over the squishier party members. Enemy synergy is important too. A group of wolves can still knock him down with Pack Tactics.
Comment: I'd advice against point 3 unless you have to, but the rest of the answer is solid advice. A high amount of armour does nothing against magical enemies. Put more of those in your encounters and your fighter's AC is a whole lot less useful.
Comment: Smart NPC to his minions: "Kill the one in the dress!"
Answer: Design encounters to target a wider variety of defenses
Bounded accuracy in 5e means that previously small bonuses (like +2 AC from a magic shield) have a very large impact. If they are on already top-of-the-line items for some type of optimization (such as full plate are shield are for AC) this can become game breaking. From my experience DMing for a couple of PCs who've chosen the very tanky path the best way to keep the challenge up is to constantly mix in enemies targeting something other than AC.
Luckily you've got lots of options. Monsters that target AC can be easily converted to target a save without affecting their challenge rating by using table on DMG p.274. Simply look up their current attack bonus and substitute it for a save DC in the same row against an appropriate stat. Next re-fluff the attack so it makes sense story wise that the PC is working to resist something. Some examples:

An adult brass dragon's tail attack is normally +12 to hit. Instead ours will be wicked slap of the tail meant to send the much smaller PC flying. Save DC 21 dex to dodge out of the way or take the listed damage and be knocked back.
A nightmare's hooves are normally +6 to hit. Instead ours will be the soul crushing terror of the devil horse looming over you taxes your mind. DC15 intelligence save to keep your wits about you or take the listed damage (now psychic instead of bludgeoning).
A bone naga's bite is normally +5 to hit. Instead ours has a strange soothing pattern to its motions and only the most perceptive can recognize it is about to strike. DC14 wisdom save or take the damage.

This type of design also makes it very easy to provide effective on the fly results for improvised action. Just figure out what sort of save the victim should be trying to make and use roughly the attackers normal damage. I've also tried mixing in skill contests where the monster is considered proficient in whatever skill they are trying to attack with. This has a nice effect where PC skills matter more in combat and players, now reminded those skills are available, look for more chances to use them.
A word of warning this should not be done one every single monster in every single encounter. AC should still have its time to shine so leave smaller things like goblin crossbows and orc fists as simply targeting it. This lets that awesome magical shield the PCs found keep feeling awesome as it lets them shrug off all but the luckiest of the nuisance creatures.
Also remember turn about is fair play! PCs improvising actions should be given the same (and often better to encourage the practice) chances to target unusual saves in exchange for coming up with interesting interpretations of their attacks. In my games this has led to all around much more interesting combat.
Comment: This feels like an arbitrary rule change to circumvent one who is following the rules. There are plenty of non-AC targeting effects in the game. I'd howl if I spent my resources building a high AC, and the DM decided to change the rules to make that worthless.
Comment: Well @keithcurtis, the truth is that these aren't rules that are being changed - they are stat blocks. All the stat blocks in every book are only *suggestions* of appropriate abilities and bonuses for a monster or NPC. The DM is encouraged to use them either as a quick way to build an encounter, or as a jumping off point for custom creatures and enemies. Deciding that a given monster's abilities should be tweaked isn't changing rules, it's using the rules fully. And you can justify it too - the monster tried an unorthodox strategy when it encountered a really hard to hit opponent.
Comment: While it's not a bad thing to have *some* monsters with unusual attacks, doing it for all important monsters is as bad as doing it for all monsters.  If AC only works on "nuisance creatures" then it's like status effects in a FF game - nearly pointless.
Answer: Don't
Seriously, you shouldn't "deal" with his armor class. Like, at all. As pointed by CTWind, "his AC is obtainable via completely mundane means". He got it. He could've get it anyway.
But even if he would get higher AC than normally possible, let him. Do not make the impression of "We don't need to care or prepare, if we'll find something good DM will nerf it anyway". That's very bad for morale. Making challenges challenging is all good and funny, removing hard/luckily earned advantage can ruin game for many players.
A good campaign will have many different challenges. Traps, magic, diplomatic issues. OK, one kind of challenges is now a bit less challenging for one player. That's not a problem. It'll even out in a level or two. Other characters will seek to get their defenses boosted, he'll start encountering tougher monsters. Big Bad Evil Guys will learn that their opponent is "this guy wielding legendary shield" and plan accordingly. Ultimately, +2 on 20 roll is just a 10% improvement / penalty. If there was ten guys with bows, now you need 11-12 to get roughly the same effect. Shouldn't be a problem, if you explain it in game and it is NPC sergeant who dealt with the problem, not you directly.
In the meantime, it is his reward. Let him enjoy it. If he became unstoppable for goblins, so be it, smile and make it a goblin legend! Just don't forget other players wants to be legends in their fields of expertise, too.
Comment: On the other hand, I don't think the PCs always have to know that the DM made a modification. If the next monster has a better hit bonus than the last, do the PCs know? The PC with the shield might be thinking "thank god I have this, it only hit me half the time, without it I would be dead!" when the DM is thinking "finally, he's taking some hits, glad I added +3 to this monster's hit modifier!" And if a new monster has a bunch of abilities that require saves, will the players actually realize that the DM planned this to get around the high AC?
Answer: I have a similar situation, but also 30+ years experience with D&D, so let me pile on:

Hit him in the NADs (as described above)... Saving Throws, Saving Throws, Saving Throws.
Non-attack type combat actions.  These are my favorite.  Wearing heavy plate armor and a stack of enchantments?  TACKLE!!  GRAPPLE!!  TRIP!!   How about a net?  Ever see a knight in full plate try to get up off his back?
Environmental Hazards.  Make it slippery.  Make it freezing.  Make it on fire.  Make it sticky.  He's HEAVY... make the ledge crumble from underneath him.  Make him cross the rotting, rickety rope bridge over the chasm of doom.
Drown him.  Make him rue the day he was too arrogant to take OFF his heavy metal armor before he got on the boat.  Mine (a paladin) went to the bottom of the ocean when he was washed overboard by a rogue wave during a raging storm.
Use an exotic monster with an exotic effect.  The mudtiger from the old "A0 Danger at Darkshelf Quarry" module was hilarious... an area-effect electrical shock like an electric eel, but it also randomly (and constantly changing) magnetizes metal.  His metal armor, shield and weapons attract one second, repel the next... causing him disadvantage on attacks/saves/skills involving any of the magnetized metal.

You and I wouldn't fight fair if we were faced with a guy in metal armor and razor-sharp weaponry.  Your adversaries shouldn't either (assuming they are intelligent).  But make sure it fits in the storyline why these High-AC Countermeasures are here.  And again, don't use these techniques in EVERY engagement against him... let his high AC work for him most of the time.  Use these ideas every once in a while to keep him challenged.
Happy Adventuring!
-- DM Mike
Comment: +1 for the environmental aspects. We had a new DM that threw AC19 enemies at lv1s, and we were rolling terribly. Luckily there was a river nearby so we gave up trying to hit them and pushed them into the river to drown.
Comment: "*Ever see a knight in full plate try to get up off his back?*" - [Yes.](https://youtu.be/qzTwBQniLSc?t=66) They didn't seem to have much trouble.
Answer: Attack the rest of the party
The fighter has chosen to be hard to hit, and in doing so chosen not to be as damaging as, say a fighter with a two-handed weapon and style. Monsters are less penalised leaving his reach, so can go past him and attack the squishy back row characters.
But what if the party utilises tactics and positioning to prevent that?
Let him shine at doing what he chose to be good at
So the party uses a doorway to stop monsters getting around the fighter - they wail ineffectually at his AC21. This is a good thing, presumably the sort of situation that the player wanted to get into.
Mix things up (but not too much)
The other answers do a good job of suggesting ways of threatening the fighter personally, but I recommend only doing this sparingly if the players are enjoying having a meat shield
Answer: Chainmail?  Oh I love heavy metal!

Heat Metal
2nd-level transmutation/Casting Time: 1 action/Range: 60 feet/Components: V, S, M (a piece of iron and a flame)/Duration: Concentration, up to 1 minute
Choose a manufactured metal object, such as a metal weapon or a suit of heavy or medium metal armor, that you can see within range. You cause the object to glow red-hot. Any creature in physical contact with the object takes 2d8 fire damage when you cast the spell. Until the spell ends, you can use a bonus action on each of your subsequent turns to cause this damage again.
Comment: Is he the only one with metal armor in the party? Even if he is, using the spell once or twice will not solve anything, using it more will feel like harassment.
Answer: Many of the other answers address how to handle this through alternate combat so I'll focus on non-combat options for your situation.
Give the shield a yet undiscovered downside.
Maybe:

its cursed and it attracts undead
when it blocks a natural 19 from an opponent it lets out a loud ear splitting ringing which can be heard for a long distance
in the presence of goblins it shines like daylight

Being a +2 shield it must have some story behind it. Use it as a Macguffin.
It is famous and draws attention (both good and bad) wherever they go.
It is infused with the essence of some ancient bad guy. It needs to be destroyed in a volcano (insert your own trope here).
Other people have been questing for it and don't believe the character is worthy to have the item and demand it be surrendered.
Give the player a reason to swap the shield for something else
Returning it to the local king grants the player a small keep/plot of land/noble title/etc. (Also fits in the Macguffin category.)
If he finds a good magical two-handed weapon (which no-one else in the party can wield) then he can give the shield to someone else in the party to use.
Answer: Rust Monsters in 5e are CR 1/2 with an attack that targets worn armors/shields and requires a DEX saving throw. Each failure causes a permanent -1 AC, until eventually the armor/shield is destroyed. This would not work on that specific +2 shield (as it is magical and thus immune to this monstrous ability), but it would force the fighter to either return to town or continue a dungeon with nerfed chainmail. And if the chainmail is destroyed, the Defense Fighting Style would be suspended because it requires worn armor.
Just pretend that you rolled for them "randomly" on your wandering monster table.
Comment: And after the third rust monster encounter, what do you suggest?
Comment: Offering to pay for the pizza. EDIT: I thought you were suggesting that the players would mutiny.


About self.view = nil in ARC

Question: I'm just wondering about self.view = nil in ARC.

when set self.view = nil, self.view will be automatically released?
When set self.view = nil, all the subviews will be automatically nil and released?

Thanks
Answer: It depends on whether that same view (object being nilled) is being used by some other object or not.
ARC does the object reference counting for you. So if the same object is being strongly referenced, ARC should keep it.
So if no one else is referencing the object self.view = nil will get rid of self.view.
I'm unsure however about what happens to all subviews. I imagine the same thing.
Answer: 1) Yes, assuming no other strong references exist to it (this is a very big if, and this can come up in unexpected places).  The only thing guaranteed to happen is that its retain count will decrease by 1.
2) If your view is set to be deallocated by meeting the above conditions, then the subviews will automatically be released (their retain count will be decremented by 1).  Assuming no other references exist to them (see point 1) they will be deallocated as well.
Everything depends on the number of strong references to an object.  It is absolutely critical to understand that.  An object will be deallocated if and only if its retain count reaches zero.  You don't directly control this as of ARC, but it is still very relevant.

About self.view = nil in ARC


Are "What Apps Should I Get?" Questions Appropriate?

Question: Are questions that belong to the category "What Apps Should I Get?" appropriate Android Enthusiasts? How about if they're asking for specific apps, such as "What are good RSS aggregator apps that integrate with Google Reader and allow offline reading?"
Comment: Whatever the decision, we'd better settle on it soon because we're going to be [swamped](http://android.stackexchange.com/questions/321/what-is-the-best-music-app) [very](http://android.stackexchange.com/questions/133/what-are-the-best-personal-finance-applications-for-android) [quickly](http://android.stackexchange.com/questions/277/whats-the-best-security-anti-virus-app) [with](http://android.stackexchange.com/questions/81/any-good-world-time-applications) [these](http://android.stackexchange.com/questions/275/good-dictation-transcription-software). What a mess.
Comment: It doesn't seem to have gotten any better.
Answer: I think a lot of good points have already been made here but after taking a look at the existing questions, I really think people need to take a good hard look at this:

What's the Best Security / Anti-virus App?
Any good World time applications?
What is the best music app?
Good Dictation / Transcription Software
Are there any good firewalls available?
Is there a good app for monitoring the amount of data traffic?
What is the best alternative to the stock camera app?
Whats the best app for identifying apps or settings that cause performance problems?
What are the best personal finance applications for Android?
What do you use for note taking?
Comparision of Twitter Apps
Alternative keyboards
What Lost Phone finder do you use and why?
What replacements are available for Google Maps?
What Android Apps do you pay for?
What Apps do you have that you have uninstalled for performance problems?

Edit - I missed a few, and more just keep coming and coming...

What is the lightest homescreen replacement / launcher app?
App available for stackexchange on android handset (ok, at least there are only a few of these)
What are the options for Tricorder apps?
Apps for RSS feed aggregator sites
Android app for linkedin integration.
What voice privacy apps are available?

Guys, this is seriously awful.  We are just one day into the beta and out of 109 questions on the site, 22 of them (over 20%) are about which apps are "good/bad/best" - yikes!
Worse, almost none of them are Community Wiki, so people are actually gaining rep for asking and answering the most mundane and subjective questions imaginable.
I think this list very dramatically illustrates the problem with allowing these questions.  There's no end to them.  What's the best compass app?  What's the best flashlight app?  What's the best ukelele simulation app?  Gah!
Is this what we're going to be, just a glorified review site?  Is it really that hard to just go to the market and read the reviews?  The Android developers have already built us this beautiful rating and review system that you can access right on your phone.  We don't need this fluff.
Please, please, let's start closing these questions.  At the very least close them until we have moderators who can properly wikify them, but even then, I don't want to see people's 1-line recommendations taking up 20% of the site.  This is turning into a land grab with everybody wanting to own one of the big bad 500+ upvoted poll questions.  If we don't nip this in the bud, it's going to bite us hard later on.

P.S. I'm not saying every question about an app is bad.  Here are two that are fine:

Is there an alarm clock app that takes account of personal and/or public holidays?
How can I choose between Shazam and Midomi?

In the first example, somebody is looking for a very specific app and has provided criteria to significantly narrow down the list of candidates.  In the second example, the author is asking for a comparison of two specific apps.  I see no problem with either of these.
I just don't want to see two hundred "Post your favourite [X] app" polls by the time we hit public beta.
Comment: @Matt: These *are* bad questions to me.  They have no correct answers.  They have no *wrong* answers.  They add almost no value to the site because you can find this kind of information anywhere.  They're not in fact questions at all, they're just polls.  The votes are invariably useless because everybody will just vote for their favourite(s) which tells a reader nothing except popularity.  These kinds of questions don't belong on a Q&A site; all they do is bump good questions off the front page and distort the mechanics of the voting/reputation system.
Comment: Of all the ones listed, the performance problems one is the only one that I would even consider "OK", but it's still basically useless because everybody answering has a completely different device and configuration, and many people will experience performance problems that other people won't.  And you have no idea *what* the performance issues were or how the submitter determined that it was those apps; for all you know it could be blatant superstition.  Honestly, **why are people so obsessed with making lists of things?**
Comment: I disagree with your contention that all questions that ask for the [insert superlative here] app are subjective and bad.  I'll use a question that I asked and you took exception with for example: What is the lightest homescreen replacement / launcher app?  There is a quantifiable and objective answer to that.  If you read the question and the description I am clearly not asking for your "fav" launcher app. I specifically want to know what launchers use the fewest amount of system resources.  This isn't a poll about what people think, it's a request for real data.
Comment: @matt: You haven't quantified anything at all.  What is "light?" Smallest size? Smallest memory footprint? Lowest CPU time? Fastest speed? These are all completely different criteria and there isn't going to be one app that does them all (especially considering that you can customize how many of these apps run - do you mean out of the box or with all bells and whistles disabled?). "Light" is no better than "best", and voting **won't** take care of bad/inappropriate answers because **people vote for their favourite apps as opposed to the quality of the answers themselves** - that's the problem!
Comment: These questions flirt with the fuzzy boundary we still haven't really defined.  Is this a site to discover apps?  If not, is it a site where I can get help finding an app for a specific function?  I agree this needs to be nipped in the bud, but isn't this kind of the point of the private beta, to make sure we define that line as clearly as possible, and then enforce it?  (Or do we define it BY enforcing it?)
Comment: @keith: If our site is about discovering apps then we add virtually no value to the vast ecosystem of sites that already do this way better than we do.  Searching for specific apps is OK because that requires the Q&A format that other sites *don't* do so well.  Yes, defining the boundaries is what the private beta is for, and that's what we're trying to do here. ;) Obviously we need to (attempt to) enforce them, otherwise they won't be taken seriously.
Comment: I voted to close a few of those. A few of them I'm still a little uncertain about.
Comment: Clarification: By "uncertain" I mean I feel weird being the first to vote to close.  I'm pretty sure they should be closed, but I want to be the first to say so.
Comment: @keith: I don't feel weird being the first, and I've already cast my vote on just about all of them, so feel free to add yours.  The only question is whether to choose S&A or NARQ; I lean toward the latter for obvious polls.
Comment: And it continues: [google calendar app](http://android.stackexchange.com/questions/374/google-calendar-app).  This won't stop until/unless we stop it.
Comment: I think a few of the questions you listed aren't bad at all, including "What Lost Phone finder do you use and why?", "What Android Apps do you pay for?", "What Apps do you have that you have uninstalled for performance problems?" ... IMO none of these are subjective.
Comment: Another one: "Whats the best app for identifying apps or settings that cause performance problems?"  This may be more subjective, but it still should only elicit specific suggestions of a limited # of apps that meet measurable criteria.  Just because someone wants to answer with a thoughtless personal "fav" instead of a reasoned and evidenced answer doesn't mean the question is bad. The voting can take care of bad/inappropriate answers and bad/inappropriate questions. I agree that ?s that can be answered by a simple market search have no place here but the net you are casting is too broad.
Comment: @Aaronaught: I think that "light" is pretty clearly understood as the lowest demand on system resources.  This IS a quantifiable measure.  Yes, you can break it down into more granular factors and debate the individual and aggregate affect of each and all however I think doing so is not necessary and the hypothetically subjective scenario where some one does break it down, does not characterize the merit of the question or outweigh the potential value in recommending a launcher app based on it's meta-efficiency.
Comment: @Aaronaught: "people vote for the favourite apps as opposed to the quality of the answers themselves."  I don't.  No one should.  I know it happens but the fact that people don't always use the system appropriately isn't a very good reason not to ask questions that will ad value to the community.
Answer: No!
Why? Because there's no wrong answer, so anything would go.
Does this mean I just add a bunch of rules to narrow the scope and then it is allowed? Well still no, because answers tend to be valued for how much people like the mentioned app, not the usefulness or quality of the answer.
Wouldn't making it community wiki solve the problem? Again nope! Community Wiki is meant for questions that don't have a definitive answer and thus need some room for discussion or when the answers would benefit from collaboration of the community. The fact that there's no rep, doesn't change the fact that votes no longer equal quality, which is what our engine is designed for.
So what to do? Try asking a question that invites quality answers, that limits the amount of answers (it should be limited to one page of answers) and that explain how the app fits your specific needs.
Answer:
What Apps Should I Get?

Should be closed as not a real question (too vague). Here are some similar questions that I imagine being asked:

What is your desert island top 5 apps?
Which app do you use the most?
Which app has changed your life and now you couldn't live without?
Which relatively unknown app do you think more people should know about?

I think this sort of question could be very popular and attract lots of answers and might even be an interesting read. I'd rather not see this type of question regularly, but it's almost inevitable that we'll get some popular questions of this type.

"What are good RSS aggregator apps that integrate with Google Reader and allow offline reading?"

Yes, I think that's OK. It's answerable and it helps someone solve a specific need. In the definition phase of this site someone suggested this question:

Is there an app/Which app is best that can do [task]?

This question received 6 ontopic votes and 0 offtopic votes. So this sort of question seems like it should be allowed. Also people are asking this type of question a lot, so it's obviously something people want to be able to ask.
Comment: I would qualify your [task] with some task that isn't inherent to the type of program you are running; in other words the question needs to not only ask for X Apps that do X, but further go above the standard needs of X Apps and does some specific Y-functionality. For instance, Twitter clients all tweet, and (although this may be disputable) not all of them also post to facebook. Likewise, the RSS example you have above, all RSS readers can integrate (through import at the least) with gReader, but not all of them do offline reading. The problem remains, how to judge that special thing Y.
Answer: If they are subjective, then they should at the least be community wiki.  Or closed, depending on how "generic" or "specific" the question is.
Answer: Most I have seen are list of X questions, and likely should be closed. Many answers are non-authoriatative and subjective, including my own on a GPS/traffic question.
It seems to be an abuse to simply make this a request board for app suggestions.
Comment: I'm not sure its an abuse. While I don't want to be overrun with app suggestions, I also think these questions are the main ones people are trying to get answered. I don't think we want to alienate those users.
Comment: @mark @matt You are right about not wanting to shut down and alienate users, bicycling.se is facing a similar problem. However, take a note-taking app for example, how can someone expect any kind of a reasonable list that some 8 months down the line will really be of virtue? I think the line of app-listing questioning needs mitigated in a static-post, dynamic answer fashion; but we also can't have comm wikis pointing to dozens of app categories either. Having dozens of responses seems unorganized and messy and the cream won't necessarily rise to the top.
Answer: If the question in subjective, I generally agree with Ivo Flipse's answer, though I think there are usually good ways to re-phrase the question that are not subjective:  Instead of "Which dinosaur app...", you could ask "What are the differences between these three dinosaur apps?" or "Are there any dinosaur apps?"
(Sorry, Dinosaurs were the first random topic that came to mind.  I must be a five year old.)
Comment: I don't agree with "are there any dinosaur apps?" unless you expect the answer to be a literal *yes* or *no*.  The wording very strongly implies an app recommendation, just like "which app should I get."
Comment: Yes, but sometimes you aren't able to find ANY apps that perform a task you want, and this can help you find one, if it exists.
Answer: I don't think it's appropriate to eliminate questions simply because they have a subjective element, especially if there is the question can invite objective answers.  For example, I don't think a completely subjective question like "What's the funnest game app?" has any value.  Questions like that shouldn't be asked, however, a similar app suggestion question like "What is the most effective anti-virus app?" is completely appropriate.  This question invites quantitative responses that will add value to the community.  If you use a particular app and you simply like it, then don't answer.  If you have used several apps and have knowledge about something that makes one app definitively stand out from the rest, then by all means, share. I don't see the harm in this.
Comment: Both of your examples do not have objective answers.  If you want a "list of antivirus apps" then that's objective - but the fact that people will simply vote for their favourites makes it a poll, and polls in large quantities are harmful to a Q&A site.
Comment: I'm not asking for people to tell me their favorite antivirus apps. If you use and anti-virus app and you like it very much, don't answer.  If you have evaluated several and have some quantifiable evidence that one is more effective than another, that is relevant information and not subjective.  Yes there may be more than one answer, and ultimately which one is the best may be subjective depending on the field of options, however, in many cases there are a small subset of "right" answers that can be backed up by data.
Answer: Generic or specific questions should be made community. Like "What's the best traffic app?". Questions like "What apps should I get?" should be closed.
Comment: There is no appreciable difference between those two wordings.  They would both receive identical answers.
Comment: Ah, I see what you mean, you're saying that the question is OK if it's asking for a specific category of app.  I still disagree that those should be allowed; there's an endless variety of them and they're tantamount to polls.
Comment: @Aaronaught All I'm saying is that "What are the best apps?" "I have a new Android what should I put on it?" "What's your favorite app?" "What app couldn't you live without?" questions should be closed. Anything more specific should stay.
Answer: I say yes, if they are phrased properly. "What is the best app?" is not a good question, but "What is the best app in the category Y?"(like email, notes, or fart-noise-making) is very appropriate.
Answer: I think there is value to a generic, community wiki question when it provides answers a lot of people are going to look for.  Phrasing the question, "What should I get?" is a bad idea, but maybe making a CW question that is generically useful for all users is not bad: "What is your favorite Twitter app and why?"
Check out the following CW questions on Stack Overflow.  All of them have multiple "right" answers, but are highly rated and favorited by the community.  In fact, these are some of the highest rated of all questions:

What is your single favorite development tool?
What are your favorite Vim tricks?
List of freely available programming books (1.4k upvotes and almost 2k favorites!)
Comment: These are almost universally considered to be grandfather questions, questions from the early days while Stack Overflow was still experimenting with its identity.  They are highly rated because they are highly-viewed and *easy*; most of these popularity contests would never stay open today.  The one exception is the books question; questions linking to external *information resources* are usually OK because they give users another place to look if they have a question that's not appropriate for the site. Additionally, "app rec" polls are already causing difficulties on other SE sites.
Comment: Interesting, I never realized that.  Found this discussion on the SO meta, which reiterates and adds to what you said: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/57226/should-we-have-a-list-of-x-close-reason/57248#57248


Get specific depth value of a kinect

Question: I'm currently trying to make a hand / finger tracking with a kinect in XNA. For this, I need to be able to specify the depth range I want my program to render. I've looked about, and I cannot see how this is done. As far as I can tell, kinect's depth values only work with pre-set ranged found in the depthStream.
What I would like to do is make it modular so that I can change the depth range my kinect renders. I know this has been down before but I can't find anything online that can show me how to do this.
Could someone please help me out?
I have made it possible to render the standard depth view with the kinect, and the method that I have made for converting the depth frame is as follows (I've a feeling its something in here I need to set)
<code>  private byte[] ConvertDepthFrame(short[] depthFrame, DepthImageStream depthStream, int depthFrame32Length)
    {
        int tooNearDepth = depthStream.TooNearDepth;
        int tooFarDepth     = depthStream.TooFarDepth;
        int unknownDepth    = depthStream.UnknownDepth;
        byte[] depthFrame32 = new byte[depthFrame32Length];

        for (int i16 = 0, i32 = 0; i16 < depthFrame.Length && i32 < depthFrame32.Length; i16++, i32 += 4)
        {
            int player      = depthFrame[i16] & DepthImageFrame.PlayerIndexBitmask;
            int realDepth   = depthFrame[i16] >> DepthImageFrame.PlayerIndexBitmaskWidth;

            // transform 13-bit depth information into an 8-bit intensity appropriate
            // for display (we disregard information in most significant bit)
            byte intensity = (byte)(~(realDepth >> 8));

            if (player == 0 && realDepth == 00)
            {
                // white
                depthFrame32[i32 + RedIndex]    = 255;
                depthFrame32[i32 + GreenIndex]  = 255;
                depthFrame32[i32 + BlueIndex]   = 255;
            }

         // omitted other if statements. Simple changed the color of the pixels if they went out of the pre=set depth values

            else
            {
                // tint the intensity by dividing by per-player values
                depthFrame32[i32 + RedIndex]    = (byte)(intensity >> IntensityShiftByPlayerR[player]);
                depthFrame32[i32 + GreenIndex]  = (byte)(intensity >> IntensityShiftByPlayerG[player]);
                depthFrame32[i32 + BlueIndex]   = (byte)(intensity >> IntensityShiftByPlayerB[player]);
            }
        }

        return depthFrame32;
    }
</code>
I have a strong hunch it's something I need to change in the int player and int realDepth values, but i can't be sure.
Comment: I'm not sure what are you trying to say by "kinect's depth values only work with pre-set ranged found in the depthStream". The kinect camera can sense depth between 1.2m to 3.5m (in the normal mode). The sensitivity of the depth has an 11-bit resolution (2048 values).
Comment: i think you are overcomplicating things. kinect gives you a depth for each pixel. the range this has is a hardware limitation. you can't adjust it. if you only want to look at objects in a smaller range then you just limit it yourself. i.e. if(depthFrame[i] > minD && depthFrame[i] < maxD){ //use this depth range between minD and maxD }
Answer: There is a new example in the Kinect for Windows Toolkit 1.8.0 called Adaptive UI-WPF.  It deals with this directly in the Interaction zone viewer section.  Take a look at the code for adjusting Near and Far Boundary.  It should be helpful for your situation.
.

Get specific depth value of a kinect


How does buying/selling houses affect the GDP?

Question: Suppose I buy a house and sell it off in the same year for the same price, would the GDP for that year increase by twice the value of the house, or only once, or not at all?
Answer: There is only a change in GDP to the extent there are market goods and services used in the sale and only those goods and services are counted. The actual sales revenue are irrelevant. For example, the home inspection, appraisal, brokerage fees, and, I believe mortgage closing costs, would be in GDP. If you and your sister swapped houses in as-is condition without getting the market, bank, or tax authority involved, there would be no change in GDP.
Comment: This is, of course, completely correct. It might be worth adding that if the first purchase of the house was from a builder who had built it for sale, i.e., it was a "new home sale", then the gain booked on the sale of the house would be included in GDP (as would the construction costs).
Answer: Not directly, but if you paid for the house by taking on new mortgage you would create additional money to be spend by the seller.
Imagine before the sale you had $10k savings and both you seller earned and spend nothing more or less than the year before; GDP in this year would not be affected if you haven't exchanged the house.
Now if you took 90k mortgage and handed 100k to the seller you would have kept your income/spending the same so you would not increase GDP.
BUT seller would now have new $100k to spend and if he/she spends all of it GDP would boom.


Facebook Comment Plugin Synced with Page?

Question: I'm using the Facebook Comment plugin for comments on my site. I was hoping that comments made to links shared on my Facebook Page would also show up on my website.
For example, if I share a link to a blog post on my Facebook Page, and someone comments directly to that shared link, that comment does not also appear on the website.
Am I missing something? Is there a way to sync these two?
Answer: I think comments are self-contained. You could maybe use the API to build something that shares comments on your page with comments on your blog.


Are questions asking how some supernatural event/ability/power works on topic?

Question: Example: Why can you look at Medusa in a mirror and not be turned to stone?
It seems to me that such questions, unless the mechanism is explained in the myth, are purely speculative and not definitively answerable. Are such questions on topic?
Answer: I think they should be considered on topic.
The idea that this type of question is bad, and shouldn't be asked, unless there is a good answer described in related material doesn't seem really actionable to me.  That implies that an asker must know the answer to the question before they ask.
If you have done the research to reasonably conclude that the phenomenon has no documented explanation, then I would say write an answer saying as much.
Hopefully that fact that the cited question actually did get a reasonable answer proves to be the rule rather than the exception.
Answer: I would vote no, because all this type of question can generate is a bunch of opinions. Closing as "primarily opinion based" would be appropriate.
The exception being those  cases where it's explained in the myth itself or in a related myth.
One example of a question that would fall under the "close" and do so quickly (which it was) would be How Enkidu was created out of clay and saliva?.
The example of Medusa did, indeed, get a perfectly reasonable answer, and honestly, I think that question was probably OK.  It could be argued that the answer didn't really answer the question, it just pushed it back.  the answer was "It was looking directly into Medusa's eyes that would turn a mortal to stone, not the whole of her face."  The question still remains... Why only directly?  Why would a reflection not petrify you?
The answer still falls short of providing a mechanism, which is at the heart of this meta question.
There are perfectly reasonable possible reasons that looking at a reflection would be "safe"...  A reflection in a polished shield isn't perfect, and the distortion/imperfections could nullify the effect, etc.  But again, that's all just speculation.
We should probably wait and see.  On several StackExchange sites, there's not a lot of concern for THE RIGHT ANSWER.  Several of them accept plausible options.  If that's the case here, I'm OK with that, but if we're going off the StackExchange guideline that real questions have answers, this should probably be considered.

I would say that questions that ask, specifically, for a reference to a legend that explains the myth are OK.

Example: in the Medusa myth, you could ask "Was this explained, and if so, when and how?"  That would be enough to salvage it and make it answerable by something other than opinion.

However, if someone is simply asking for a scientific or other plausible explanation, then the question should be closed as opinion-based.
Comment: Fine point. But, before closing such questions as off topic, how would we know that an explanation/working of the element in question isn't described elsewhere?
Comment: I think we should assume that this sort of question is asking for reference to mythological text/legend/etc, barring evidence to the contrary.  Because, all else being equal, assume people aren't crackpots.