Piano and Theory Terms- Syncopation?

Question: Can anyone give me a good definition for syncopation? (As in a rhythm.)
Answer: This seems pretty good:
The FreeDictionary by Farlex, Encyclopedia: Syncopation

Syncopation (sĭng'kəpā`shən, sĭn'–) [New Gr.,=cut off ], in music, the
  accentuation of a beat that normally would be weak according to the
  rhythmic division of the measure.
Although the normally strong beat is not usually effaced by the
  process, there are occasions (e.g., the second theme in the final
  movement of Schumann's Piano Concerto in A Minor) when the natural
  rhythmic structure is entirely altered, the syncopation being so
  elaborate and persistent that the actual metrical structure is
  obliterated aurally. Occasional syncopation is present in music of all
  types and in all periods. It predominates, however, in African music
  and therefore in African-American music through which it became the
  principal element in ragtime (see jazz).

Here is the Schuman piece referred to there:

This is not piano music, but try counting how many different syncopated rhythms there are in this piece. (The vocals also count.) At around 4.5 minutes in, the band stops, and then they come in one by one as JB calls them - you can hear how things develop:

From comment by @jdjazz :

It might be worth pointing out that, for the 4/4 time, the emphasized
  beats are usually the 1 and 3, so the syncopation is heard when Brown
  emphasizes beats 4 (or the 'and' of 4, etc.).

James Brown's compositions and arrangements are harmonically simple, but he was a world-class master of rhythm and syncopation.
Comment: @jdjazz - On that cut I think there is syncopation on every beat relative to some other beat. I just grabbed one example - as I'm sure you know, there are 100 others - he was **amazing.** Check out this one - and how he works the vocals : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKpb0GInIJU - that's one of his best bands on there - Bootsy Collins on bass, his brother Phelps on guitar - those recordings launched their careers.
Comment: Nice answer and awesome examples. +1 It might be worth pointing out that, for the 4/4 time, the emphasized beats are usually the 1 and 3, so the syncopation is heard when Brown emphasizes beats 4 (or the 'and' of 4, etc.).
Answer: It is an emphasis on the weak part of beats, the weak part of the beat differs from Time Signature to Time Signature. So for instance...
In 4/4 time the weak part is the 2nd and 4th beat and every second part of the subdivision of the beat, So when you have quavers every second quaver of the crotchet beat.
In Compound Time Signatures you have three parts to the beat, the weak part of the beat is the 2nd and 3rd division of the beat so any emphasis on these parts will be a syncope.
Just a few examples.
Comment: I don't think 'Syncope' is a musical term.  It means 'a temporary loss of consciousness usually related to insufficient blood flow to the brain.'.   Fainting.
Answer: "The accentuation of a beat that normally would be weak" only really covers the jazz and rock 'backbeat'.  Syncopation is more about accented notes that AREN'T on a beat.   A quick definition could be 'An unexpected rhythm, with its accents not aligned to the basic pulse of the music'.
There are lots of inaccurate or confusing definitions out there!  And it's quite hard to construct one that would be useful to someone who didn't know what syncopation is already.

Piano and Theory Terms- Syncopation?


Drawbacks of Black-Scholes option pricing model

Question: Will highly appreciate if anybody can provide logical financial proof why the Black-Scholes option pricing model overestimates the value for long-term options as described in this paper "Warren Buffett, Black-Scholes and the Valuation of Long-dated Options" by Bradford Cornell.
Comment: Over-estimates or misprices? Can you provide the source where you saw that statement?
Comment: http://www.hss.caltech.edu/~bcornell/PUBLICATIONS/2009%20Warren%20Buffet%20Black-Scholes%20and%20Long%20Dated%20Options.pdf this is the emprical research.
Answer: Instead of a logical proof, would you accept a little bit of hand waving?
Think about these two constants in Black-Scholes:

$r$, interest rate
$\sigma$, volatility

Also think about a long-term option, say, one whose expiration date is a year from now. Will $r$ and $\sigma$ be the same over the year? Probably not. And yet a constant interest rate and volatility are two assumptions. That's the source of the mispricing.
---EDIT---
Here is a salient portion of Buffet's strawman argument:

Considering everything, I believe the probability of a decline in the
  index over a one-hundred-year period to be far less than 1%. But
  let's use that figure and also assume that the most likely decline –
  should one occur – is 50%.

Here, I believe, is the assumption that makes Buffet think that B-S pricing would produce "absurd results." Buffet is attacking "geeks bearing formulas" (which means you, dear reader of this thread). On what basis is he taking issue with Black-Scholes? Cornell explains.

This means that Buffett has two possible beefs [with the lognormal
  diffusion model from B-S]. First, the equity premium, and therefore,
  the drift should be larger. Second, something is wrong with the
  volatility.

Cornell dispenses of the first horn of the dilemma: "The culprit is unlikely to be the drift." He points his finger at volatility:

The final candidate, other than the arbitrage argument on which the
  model is based, is the volatility. If Mr. Buffett is criticizing the
  use of the lognormal diffusion assumption when pricing long-term
  options, he is not alone. Recall that the lognormal assumption implies
  that volatility increases linearly with respect to the horizon over
  which it is measured as shown in equation (1) [lognormal distribution of B-S]. There is empirical
  evidence which indicates that the linearity assumption fails to hold at long horizons. For example, Siegel (2008) reports that the variance of real returns on the S&P 500 historically have failed to rise linearly with the horizon. If the long-run volatility is lower, the value of long-term put options will be less. For instance, a
  volatility of 15%, instead of 18%, reduces the estimated value of Mr.
  Buffett's hypothetical put position to $1.5 million. It also reduces
  the probability that the index will be lower at expiration than at
  initiation.

(emphasis mine)
In short, Cornell is citing Siegel to say that the reason Buffet is getting "absurd results" is because his estimation of volatility is too high for the long run.
Comment: @rajah9 I honestly think you are making some philosophical statements here, without having read the paper which OP as asking about. The question is: Why does Cornell think longdated options are overvalued under Blackscholes? I would usually think the contrary, that the BS-Options were undervalued, as they do not include fat tail risk.
Comment: Thank you for your answer. The question is not what is the reason of mispricing, the question is what is the reason of Overestimation?
Comment: In Buffet's opinion, *very* long-term options (his example was 100 years) are overpriced by the B-S model. He needs to remember that B-S is predicated on log-normal prices, that is, the ratio of today's price to a future price. Index prices can't go below 0, but they can go down to a tiny fraction of a penny. If I were to engage the Oracle of Omaha on this topic, I'd ask: Who will take the other side of your $1B option with 100 years to expiration and a strike of 930?
Comment: Or here's another vein that I might leave to the OP. Constructed a 100-step binomial tree, and assume the index goes up or down by sigma each year. Start at 930. What will the put be worth in year 100? In *many* cases it will be 0, but in the rest it will be > 0 but <= 930. (By the way, I put this into DerivaGem, S=930, K=930, r=1%, q=2%, vol=25%, T=100. For continuous dividends, the 100-year puts should cost $300.32 each.)
Comment: Oh, and another question for the Oracle. Was that an American or European put? Any way I can exercise it before I die?
Comment: @emcor, I have edited to quote salient portions of Cornell's paper and added my commentary.
Answer: BS is a purely mathematical construction, not based on economic fundamentals. For the SPX to fall to zero or close to it would require a lower probably than stipulate by BS (extinction event might do it, in which case both parties would fail, as well as all humans so it wouldn't matter anyway), hence BS is overestimating the probability. Setting a hypothetical reflecting barrier at, say, p=300 (the SPX is at 2050 now) and then taking the time to 100 years when pricing the option can have great ramifications. This is can also explain why selling put cash covered options tends to be a superior strategy


Late answers queue dramatically increased in size

Question: I understand why this is happening, however there aren't that many people working on these queues, and this will definitely put them off if it never shrinks. So will there be any way implemented to make the shrinking of this queue faster, such as a reviewing event where the 20 per day limit is disabled or at least lowered (as suggested in @ByteCommander's comment)?
Comment: Stop asking questions about it!  If the queue is larger then 1000, you can review 40 items per day: get to it!  **;-)** (I am and finding lots of excrement!)
Comment: +1 to signalize protest against this overnight action from the Meta.SE developers. I would love the limit to be lowered again, maybe to 30 as a compromise. You should however edit your question and instead of asking whether it will ever shrink (which depends on us - the reviewing community), you could rather ask whether there will be anything to work on that queue faster, like a reviewing event, disabling the 20 reviews per day limit for a while or a decrease of the limit again....
Comment: @ByteCommander: Ok, thank you for your feedback, I have updated my question. :)
Comment: @Fabby 40 is still not much compared to almost 4000 items in the to-do list. That are 100 reviewer-days. And now tell me how many users really take advantage of all of their 40 review items?
Comment: @ByteCommander I do!  You should too!  **>:-)**
Answer: The threshold, being the queue currently bigger than 1K, "has been increased" to 40 already; this is clear just by looking at the daily late answers review stats, however: How come my vote cap for "First Posts" is lower than others?;
Also, it will shrink: since when I asked about why the queue increased yesterday, it shrunk by ~800 questions already;
Assuming the current rate, it should be empty in about 4.5 days.
Answer: The first thing to clarify is that the overnight increase happened because all the old answers that matched the new criteria were added to the queue. Once reviewed, they will be ineligible to reenter the queue. So this won't be a perpetual problem; it's just a temporary increase that will dissipate as people complete review tasks.
Second, as long as there are more than a thousand tasks in the queue, the per-day limit is raised to 40. You can see several people have already taken advantage of that.
Third, Late Answers can be quickly dismissed by a single user taking an action that can be as simple as upvoting a comment. (Please don't just do the easiest action: try to review honestly.)
Finally, the queue is often empty because there aren't so many late answers in a typical day. I'm convinced that there are many people on most sites who would like to review more late answers, but can't because the queue is normally empty. People lucky enough to spot them get to late answers quickly. When the queue is filled, there are people willing to jump into the fray. We should see the number of completed reviews scale with the number of available reviews. Certainly that's been the case so far:

It wasn't my intention to cause this disruption. But now that I have, I expect we'll be able to learn quite a bit about how reviews impact other parts of the site.
Comment: This is disappointing. I have already mentioned that a lot of posts will be flagged, there will also be a lot of edits suggested. By refusing to acknowledge the effects on vlq and edit review queues, you show incompetence, nothing else.
Comment: @muru: Oh, I acknowledge incompetence. Several times, I believe. The trick now that I've caused this disruption is to learn from it so that I will be a little better at my job next time. There are certainly going to be pressures on other parts of the system (don't forget people will likely run out of votes more quickly too). I'm not "refusing to acknowledge" as much as looking at different things. There is a lot to look at.
Comment: there is a lot to look at, true. But when you enumerate points and, say, "finally" and none of those points relate to the effects on other queues, it does look like you're refusing to acknowledge them.
Comment: @muru: There are currently 40 tasks in the Low Quality queue and none in the Suggested Edit. That's  compared to 3535 in the Late Answer queue.  (For the sake of completeness: 514 Close Vote and 2 First Posts tasks. No Reopen Votes.) I guess I'm not sure what I'm supposed to say about the other queues.
Comment: And yet I exhausted my quota of edit and vlq reviews early on today. So clearly there is a gap here. That there is currently (late into the day) none, doesn't say much about when everyone's limits are fresh at the start of the UTC day.
Comment: @muru: Ah. I see where you are coming from now. I'm far more stymied by the vote quota, but I can see how that would be frustrating in addition. However, I take considerable comfort in my first paragraph which reminds me that this will all be over in a few weeks. The steady state will be a slightly higher level of late answers which will have a quite marginal influence on other queues. I also hope people are taking advantage of this opportunity to clear out (old) low quality answers and edit ones that need improvement. I hope there are a few hidden gems that deserve an upvote or two as well.
Comment: Thanks for reminding of upvotes. I've been letting "good enough" posts by with "no action needed", maybe I should upvote some.
Comment: Thanks for being honest and admitting a mistake.  And now for a bit of wisdom: "Errare humanum est, sed perseverare diabolicom est".  **;-)**
I'll be back tomorrow to do some more reviewing as I ran out of [all kinds of votes today](http://i.stack.imgur.com/40DbZ.png).  Is there an easy way (without risk!) of doubling votes for all users until this gets cleaned up?


Does ought imply can?

Question: It's been a common staple of philosophy that this holds. Thus, on determinism, is moral ought even possible? Assuming determinism is true, does saying "You should do X" make sense? For if things are determined, whether the person addressed will or not do X is out of their control.
Comment: ["Ought implies can"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ought_implies_can) is Kant's formula, and on his understanding it is vacuously true because we do not call impossible "duty" a duty. As for determinism, comptibilists simply define what "in control" means (basically, not physically impeded)  so that one can be "in control" even under complete and total determinism, see [SEP's Compatibilism](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism).
Comment: So how can we have an "ought" then?
Comment: True. Unless an action is physically impossible, I think it remains valid to say that someone could do it (whether or not they would).
Comment: Christianity says we can't naturally do anything which we ought to do.
Comment: Also pretty sure better questions have been answered on the same topic that are more answerable in an SE-style.
Comment: You appear to have gotten the gotten the formula backwards: **ought implies can** is not a prescription for the "can", but for the "ought". It means that if you set up a moral rule (the "ought"), you must make it so that it is possible for people (the "can") to follow it.
Answer: The principle that "ought implies can" is called "Kant's law".  It is used as a law within many systems of deontic logic.  It can be formulated using a implication statement, and in the standard slogan, or it can be expressed by its contrapositive: "If something is impossible, then it cannot be obligatory".
This law is a sensible desiderata for deontic logic so long as the "ought" is a normative requirement that takes account of all surrounding circumstances.  The law breaks down when we formulate an "ought" that makes prima facie prescriptions and does not take account of the surrounding context, so that it allows normative claims without consideration of the possible actions.  For example, we might say, "You ought to return my property when you borrow it", and this is a decent prima facie normative claim.  However, this normative prescription does not consider what you should do if you borrow my property and then it accidentally gets destroyed, or some other circumstance makes its return impossible.
In cases where we make "ought" statements that defy Kant's law, like the one above, the problem is not really with Kant's law, but with the fact that we are formulating "ought" statements that do not give a full prescription of the desired normative claim in all circumstances.  Hence, it is reasonable to say that Kant's law is a desirable law of deontic logic, but we sometimes make ought statements more loosely than is strictly required, where we put forward a general normative claim that does not prescribe the desired behaviour in all possible circumstances.
Answer: Your thought that you 'ought' to do something is just one of the deterministic forces that cause it to happen. The question then becomes that of whether the thought that one 'ought' to do it is itself determined. A Buddhist would say it is the result of conditioning, therefore is determined. Here is a conversation with Gurdjieff...
"I asked G. what a man had to do to assimilate this teaching.
"What to do?" asked G. as though surprised. "It is impossible to do anything. A man must first of all understand certain things. He has thousands of false ideas and false conceptions, chiefly about himself, and he must get rid of some of them before beginning to acquire anything new. Otherwise the new will be built on a wrong foundation and the result will be worse than before."
""How can one get rid of false ideas?" I asked. "We depend on the form of our perceptions. False ideas are produced by the forms of our perception."
G shook his head.
"Again you speak of something different," he said. "You speak of errors arising from perceptions but I am not speaking of these. Within the limits of given perceptions man can err more or err less. As I have said before, man's chief delusion is his conviction that he can do. All people think that they can do, and the first question all people ask is what they are to do. But actually nobody does anything and nobody can do anything. This is the first thing that must be understood. Everything happens. All that befalls a man, all that is done by him, all that comes from him - all this happens. And it happens in exactly the same way as rain falls as a result of a change in the temperature in the higher regions of the atmosphere or the surrounding clouds, as snow melts under the rays of the sun, as dust rises with the wind.
    Everyone finds that nothing is being done in the way it ought to be done. Actually everything is being done in the only way that it can be done. If one thing could be different everything could be different. … Try to understand what I am saying. Everything is dependent on everything else, everything is connected, nothing is separate. Therefore everything is going in the only way it can go. If people were different everything would be different. They are what they are, so everything is as it is."
This was very difficult to swallow.
"Is there nothing, absolutely nothing, that can be done?" I asked.
"Absolutely nothing".
"And can nobody do anything?"
"That is another question. In order to do it is necessary to be. And it is necessary first to understand what to be means."
P.D.Ouspensky
Conversation with Gurdjieff
In Search of the Miraculous - Fragments of
an Unknown Teaching (1949)
Answer: This is not the case. Telling someone they aught to do something is just one more factor that will be taken into account when the choice is made by the person's mind. Whether or not you tell them they aught to do it is deterministic, and part of the chain reaction which results in their decision being made, but it plays a part in that decision making process.
The person may have no true choice over which outcome they pick, but they believe they do, and act like they do, so it is worth treating the situation as if they do. You're just introducing a new element into the calculation.
Simply telling them they aught to do something is unlikely to be enough, however, unless they hold you in high regard. You're best offering more variables for their calculation - explaining why you believe they aught to do it - that will increase the likelihood that their eventual conclusion will fall in line with yours. Unless they distrust everything you say, but again, that's another variable that needs to be taken into account.

Does ought imply can?


Applications look ugly when using third-party "Arc OSX themes"

Question: I'm using elementary OS Loki 0.4 with the Arc OSX themes for GTK+ but the UI in apps is very ugly, can someone help me?
Comment: Hi Simon, would you please clarify your issue? You changed the theme but don't like it? Or you don't like the interface of FileZilla? The theme can only reach so far into a program's interface if it isn't specifically designed to match elementary OS's aesthetic, if that's what you mean
Comment: Theme is modern, but in apps (VLC and others) are buttons like buttons in Win 98 :D
Comment: Right, but if you don't like the theme you installed (and want FileZilla to look closer to [this](http://i.stack.imgur.com/gBt6H.png)), you either need to continue customizing the theme or revert back to the defaults. Unless you have a specific question about changing an aspect of a theme (as it relates to elementary OS), the only answer can be find a new theme that you think is less ugly
Answer: You have installed a theme which generally only applies to applications which use GTK+ 3, for example all default apps in elementary.
There are other toolkits used by developers for Linux apps where GTK+ themes will not be applied at all or at least differently. Here is a (non comprehensive) list of toolkits and notable examples of apps using them:

XUL is used by Firefox and Thunderbird
Qt is by used by VLC and apps from the KDE project
wxWidgets is used by FileZilla
VCL is used by LibreOffice
GTK+ 2 is generally used by older apps and its themes are not compatible with GTK+ 3 themes

QGtkStyle (link for general info, might not apply to elementary) imitates the look of GTK+ 2 themes in Qt apps.
I'm not really sure, but I believe the way the FileZilla version available in Loki is compiled, it also tries to imitate the given GTK+ 2 theme. So in order for the app to look better, you have to find an appropriate GTK+ 2 theme and install it as well.
Answer: Try installing gtk2-engines-pixbuf and moving the Ark-OSX folder to /usr/share/themes if it isn't saved there yet, that fixed it for me.
Comment: This is the answer (!) to my similar question here: https://superuser.com/questions/1538704/gtk2-widgets-have-pointy-corners-dark-shadow-w95-style/1538733#1538733 Thank you! I think this should be the accepted answer!
Answer: According to the README.md of the arc theme you need to also install the gtk2-engines-murrine package.
https://github.com/horst3180/arc-theme
Quote:
For the theme to function properly, install the following

GNOME Shell, GTK 3.14 - 3.22
The gnome-themes-standard package
The murrine engine. This has different names depending on your distro.

     gtk-engine-murrine (Arch Linux)
     gtk2-engines-murrine (Debian, Ubuntu, elementary OS)
     gtk-murrine-engine (Fedora)
     gtk2-engine-murrine (openSUSE)
     gtk-engines-murrine (Gentoo)


Hyperlink in PowerPoint 2007

Question: Suppose, on the left hand side, I have about 10 symbols and on the right hand side, there is some text for details of the said symbol. After clicking a particular symbol, the corresponding text should appear in the same slide, i.e. on the right hand side. How can I do this in PowerPoint 2007?
Answer: There are probably any number of insanely complex ways of doing this.  I'd do it the easy way ...
Create your first slide with the symbols on the left and some text on the right.
Duplicate the slide ten times.  Change each of the duplicates to include the necessary detail text.
Now go back to the first slide, make each symbol a link to the appropriate details slide.
Finally, select all the symbols, press Ctrl+C to copy them, then go to each of the detail slides, select and delete the symbols, then paste in the ones from the first slide.  The ones that have the links ... now you don't have to create the links on each of the details slides.

Hyperlink in PowerPoint 2007


what would be a example in a general metric space about closedness and boundedness not imply sequential compactness?

Question: Unlike in $R^n$, closed and bounded doesn't guarantee sequential compactness. Textbook examples includes sup metric and R^infinite metric. I am wondering what would be a example of closed and bounded doesn't imply sequential compactness in more general Metric space $(X,\rho)$?
Answer: Take any metric space $(X,\rho)$ which is not sequentially compact (= compact, for metric spaces), and replace $\rho$ with the standard bounded metric $\rho_1(x,y) = \min(\rho(x,y),1))$.  Then $X$ itself is closed and $\rho_1$-bounded but not compact, despite the fact that the induced topology $\tau_{\rho_1}$ is the same as the induced topology $\tau_{\rho}$ of $(X,\rho)$.
I hope that this example drives home that the Heine-Borel Theorem is fundamentally a metric result and not a topological one.
Answer: Take the space $l_2$ (ie, $d(x,y) = \sqrt{\sum_n |[x]_n - [y]_n|^2}$) and the set $C = \{ e_n \}_n$, where $e_n$ is the $n$th unit vector (ie, zeros everywhere except for the $n$th position which is one).
Then $C$ is bounded, closed but not compact (or sequentially compact).
Answer: The closed unit ball in any infinite-dimensional normed space is not compact. This is an easy consequence of Riesz's lemma.


How can I remove sticker labels on the glass bottle?

Question: I want to reuse those bottles at home, but I don't want the label on it. I am planning to paint them with nature design. So how can I remove those labels in the fastest way possible?
Answer: If you have pencil eraser, try rubbing it on adhesive part. I tried this once and worked for me.
You can also try to soak it into hot water for a while. After that, rub it with a cloth and adhesive part will come off.
Answer: To remove sticker with glue from a glass bottle, it is better you use less sharpened knife along with water.First, try to tear apart the sticker using your hands.Then soak the left overs on glass with enough water so that it could be easily peeled off from the bottles surface using knife. If you are dealing with a sharper knife, be careful.But less sharper one will do the trick.
Answer: Most paper labels on glass bottles (at least on commercial products) are glued with a water soluble glue.  I've found soaking for a few minutes in the hottest tap water available lets me peel them cleanly, or scrape them with the back of a table knife.  A quick scrub with a plastic wool pad will then remove the glue residue, then a rinse in hot water lets the bottle dry clean and clear.  I've cleaned fifty-plus beer bottles (for brewing) with this method in well under an hour.
Answer: If the label is put on with a sticky/gummy adhesive, it is probably what they call a "cold flow" adhesive. I have found that warming the adhesive (fill the bottle with warm water) and peeling it off SLOWLY by pulling the label straight away from the glass works fairly well.
Watch the line where the adhesive is separating from the glass. If you see a bit of adhesive remaining on the glass, or the label delaminating, STOP and use a knife or razor blade to get the edge repaired. Then continue pulling the label away from the glass. If you get all but a few spots of adhesive or adhesive and paper removed, use a mild solvent like lighter fluid or alcohol to remove the last bits. The solvent makes the adhesive even gummier, so reserve this for those last few dots. If you put solvent on the entire label, you will have to use a lot of solvent and a lot of time getting it all off.
Another trick that seems to help with large cold flow adhesive labels is vinegar. The acid in the vinegar seems to break down the cold flow adhesive and make it easier to clean off. I've used this to remove the new car window stickers in one piece (they have valuable information you may want later). Be careful not to spill vinegar in your new car; the smell takes a long time to go away. I dampen a pad of paper towels with vinegar and press it against the label.
For conventional adhesives, water works best. If the label has a foil layer that keeps the water away from the adhesive, try scoring or scratching the label in a few places to let the water through.


API for time and distance between two addresses?

Question: The Google TOS appears to limit the use of API for time and distance between two addresses to use in conjunction with a displayed map. Does anyone know of any other mapping data source that offers a similar API without that limitation? I need JUST time and distance, for use in driver scheduling and management, not directions and such.
Answer: The OSRM project has an API, but they have restrictions. You may want to consider building your own instance.


What plants will keep ladybugs happy?

Question: What plants/grasses can I plant to entice the ladybugs in my garden to stay? They are great for controlling aphids, but seem to move on pretty quickly.
Comment: Need more ladybug food -- get some aphids! ;)
Comment: Thus the problem: the more effective the ladybugs, the more likely they are to look for greener pastures.
Comment: I think it takes about a season before an aphid infestation starts attracting ladybugs (we had loads of aphids almost all year and are just now seeing an increase in ladybugs). So, if you want them faster, it might be a good idea to order some, water your garden a bunch and release them at night, in an aphid-infested area. Supposedly, they don't fly away at night, and they come thirsty (so if they don't have water, they may fly away).
Answer: It's going to be difficult to keep them in your garden over the breeding season if there isn't a constant food source.  However, if you find out what species of ladybug you would be likely to find in your area, you should be able to learn if it has a preferred habitat type or host plant.  For example, the UK ladybird survey has posted this useful information: Seasonal habitat preference (adapted from Majerus and Kearns, 1989).
If ladybugs overwinter in your climate, you can encourage them to stay in your garden by providing shelter over the cold season.  Last winter I left small piles of sticks, bark, rocks and leaves at a few sheltered areas in my back garden and found many ladybugs emerging in the warm spring sun.  I've found that they especially like hunkering down in dried, hollow stems of dill and fennel, so if you grow them, or have some hollow bamboo canes, add them to your ladybug winter shelter.
Answer: Plants ladybirds like looks promising:
According to this site, ladybugs have trouble obtaining nectar from many plants because they have small mouths. It mentions that the flowers on the herbs dill, angelica, cilantro, fennel, celery, caraway and tansy are all easily accessible to them.
If you are willing to avoid killing your weeds, the site also mentions that wild carrot, dandelion, lambsquaters and clover have flowers that ladybugs can obtain nectar from.
For vegetables, the site mentions parsnips, beans, peas, and cabbage, and notes that some ladybugs will even eat these plants if food is scarce.
Finally, "spirea, buckwheat, cosmos, coreopsis, scented geraniums and yarrow are other types of flowering plants that ladybugs are drawn to." It also mentioned that white cosmos is especially attractive to them.
Answer: Sweet peppers. I see ladybug larvae all over my sweet peppers (more than anything else in the yard). Don't expect to see ladybugs on them much the first half of the season, though, if your climate is like mine. I don't see lots of ladybug larvae on my tomatoes or hot peppers, though.
Peppers tend to attract pests that ladybugs like to eat. The peppers I mentioned are actually kind of shaded (which attracts even more pests, by the way).
The varieties I'm growing that I see them on include Georgescu Chocolate, Ozark Giant, Yellow Monster and an unidentified pepper.
Make sure your ladybugs have a water source. They do get thirsty, from what I hear, and may stick around longer if there's water for them.
Also, you may just not have enough ladybugs. Buying some more will probably help to fix that. I bought some early this season. I didn't notice much of a difference until later on, though. You can expect them to leave your yard, but if there are enough in the area, you'll probably benefit from them. I probably should have gotten more.
Comment: I just wanted to add that ladybugs and their larva were abundant on my sweet peppers, again, this year (and on the chile peppers, too), but they came earlier this time. I grew a whole bunch of varieties this year (none of the same as last year). I grow tomatoes and lots of other Solanaceae members, but ladybugs love the peppers most, it seems.

What plants will keep ladybugs happy?


Block Heater Honda Civic

Question: How do I know the block heater in my 2009 Honda Civic is working?  Does it make anoise when connected to a power source?
Comment: Is it the kind which is actually installed in the block or inline with the heater hose?
Answer: I know of two block heaters which actually get the job done (there is a kind which attaches to the oil pan to heat the oil, but I do not see this working very well).
The first type is the kind which replaces a freeze plug in the engine block. I believe this is the main kind which you can get for Hondas from the manufacturer (at least I've seen them offered by Honda for their vehicles). These do not make an inherent noise when working. You should be able to feel them heat up right after you put power to them though. I don't think I'd keep a finger on them for too long, though, because I bet it would burn them for you.
The second type is the kind which goes inline in the heater coolant hose. Once this type is working for a while and the coolant starts getting warm, you'll hear it as coolant is being pushed by the heating action. There will be an intermittent boiling bubble sound coming from it (don't know how else to describe it).
In either case, there isn't any motor or anything which pushes the water around, so you'll hear no motor or pump making any kind of whirring noise. These heaters use convection to move the coolant around.
Answer: If you can follow the power cord back to the heater you should be able to determine what type heater you have. A true block heater will be installed in the block, usually in place of a freeze plug. You may also have a coolant heater which in typically mounted in a radiator hose. The hose is cut, the heater is clamped between the hose ends. You may also have an oil heater. Oil heaters come in several types. The simplest is a dipstick that contains a heating element that replaces the factory dipstick. It may also be  attached directly to the oil pan either on the outside or internally. How long it needs to be plugged in to feel a temperature difference will depend on the size of the heater and the outside temperature. I would think  an hour of being powered on will result in a noticeable difference that you can feel with your hand.

Block Heater Honda Civic


Is it possible to replace Internet with LEO satellites?

Question: Bulk information regarding anything in this world is available in a single touch through Internet. My question is whether it is possible to replace this Internet with a constellation of Cubesats in low Earth orbit for transferring data all over the world more securely than over Internet?
Comment: Elon Musk seems to think so. SpaceX is working on basically what you're saying, but I don't think with CubeSats. http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/spacex-founder-files-with-government-to-provide-internet-service-from-space/2015/06/09/db8d8d02-0eb7-11e5-a0dc-2b6f404ff5cf_story.html
Comment: Replace, no. Augment, yes. There are actually devices that have some internet connectivity out there already, although it's very limited. Will it be worthwhile to use for general purpose, that's the question.
Comment: There are already a number of satellite internet providers; a Google search for "satellite internet" will show them.
Comment: I wouldn't replace the internet. IP can be used over any communication medium, so if such satellites were to be used, we would likely use them for IP traffic. In principle it could even reduce latency compared to what we have now, because light travels faster in vacuum than in optical fibers. However the drawbacks of using satellites would likely outweigh the advantages for most usages.
Answer: You can't replace the Internet like that since Internet is also a collection of protocols for routing and addressing, and transmitting users' data. You can try swapping fiber optic links for LEO sat comm ones, but throughput will invariably suffer and connection will be less reliable.

Satellites' transponders are the bottleneck - instead of an hierarchy of ISPs and various telecom companies with widening link capacities as you go up the "food chain" you have to put maximum imaginable downlink/uplink capacity into each satellite - while now a satellite may be servicing Boise, Idaho, an orbit later it will fly over Los Angeles and will be swamped with traffic.
Expanding capacity is much more costly and risky. You have to plan a year or two in advance, book launches, pay hefty sums to sat manufacturers, launch providers, insurance companies, sweat about some doofus  dropping your sat from a table. That doesn't mean land links are cheap - rights-of-way, and actual construction cost money, but much less than satellites. One must say a large scale satellite constellation has its advantages, especially if you can lower launch costs and create reliable satellite-to-satellite laser interconnections. If a huge company like Google goes into a price war with ISPs to win over part of the mobile user base, it may well establish a beachhead, drive some ISPs to bankruptcy and lock in many users.
Comms will be patchy - heavy rain and magnetic storms will bite into your link budget and sometimes block communications over whole continents. While sat-to-sat optical links will be unaffected, customers will suffer.
Alaska, Canada, Norway, Sweden, Greenland, Iceland, Finland, Russia, and the Antarctic penguins may be worse off after the switch - first because high-latitude connections need high-inclination satellites in a separate constellation (which is not profitable), and second because of aurora borealis/magnetic storms. (Please bear in mind this point is about small and mid-sized townships, not nomadic settlements/geological parties).

Security will be actually much worse - fiber optic cables are intercepted by advanced teams and state-level agencies, while satcomms are much more easily intercepted, jammed, and triangulated. Much like the mobile vs. fixed phones.

This said, here are some afterthoughts/nice tricks (that haven't been covered elsewhere) to improve link budgets and make a LEO satellite comms constellation more competitive:

There are usually many smartphones in a given urban locality. One can exploit that to do some heavy preprocessing (stealth bomber-style) to correct for multipath propagation and raise downlink speeds. The number crunching will have to be done in the satellite or, less likely, in the ground control center.
Again, many nearby emitters (smart phones) may kind of be made to coordinate with each other to act as a distributed phased array to get higher uplink speeds. This would make use of the fact that statistically not everyone is uploading a Youtube video (in normal situations).

I'm specifically not discussing latency - a variable well covered in other answers and comments. Nor do I touch upon the mass/size/energy budget of satellites in a global constellation.
Comment: most of canada's population is actually around the same latitude as most of europe. (Edmonton, which is the most northern of Canada's large cities, is lower than the north-most part of Germany).
Comment: `most of canada's population`. Also, the antartic penguins are already using satelite internet connection.
Comment: @njzk2 - what about the Inuits and the First Nations?
Answer: Cubesats won't work. Because they're so small, you need powerful transmitters and receivers on the ground, plus large and complicated tracking dish antennas. If you want to use a small antenna on the ground, you need a large satellite.
Satellites have far less bandwidth (=how much data can it send per second) than a fiber cable. And you can upgrade a fiber cable to have more bandwidth easily (just replace the equipment at both ends, no new cable necessary).
Comment: And even if a new cable *is* necessary, it stands to reason that putting that into existing tubing is less complex than to possibly design, and definitely build and launch, a sattellite.
Comment: As well as low bandwidth, the latency to a satellite is awful compared to fibre.
Comment: Missed the cubesat bit in my own A. +1
Comment: @DavidRicherby - not necessarily. We're talking about 400-500 km AGL, not geostationary satellites. Fiber has speed of light at $2/3 c$, and cables aren't laid often along shortest routes.
Comment: @DeerHunter: On the other side of that argument, many major web presences (like google) actively engage in geolocation, decreasing response times for their servers, so there's precedent for companies already optimizing that issue.
Comment: @CortAmmon - do you reckon Google plans to implement true "cloud hosting" (i.e., servers aboard the satellites) :) ?
Answer: A significant drawback to satellite based internet connectivity has nothing to do with the satellites but connection hardware, and the restrictions you'd have using the technology. Satellite communications requires line of sight, so you'd only be able to use a service like this if you had access to unobstructed sky. High-speed satellite communications requires a dish, and significant power requirements.
Any mobile devices using a satellite based internet service would be very limited in access and bandwidth - you'd have to be in clear space outside to use it and as you'd be stuck with directionless antennas your access speed would be very, very slow.
Comment: @DeerHunter Collective coordination of pocket antennas? That's surprisingly clever. That kind of concept sounds much like how biology does communication (unradio). Biology is btw hardwired, I've learned. Life loves threads. That's how the right thing gets to the right place all the time. Of course impractical for spaceflight, so these long distance photons are an interesting challenge to what has happened on Earth during the last billion years of engineering.
Comment: Yeah, the cubesats certainly have to communicate omnidirectionally because of their LEO speed and the distribution of ground based counterparts. And that's bad. So is Elon Musk and his Google investors stupid or what? I hesitate drawing that conclusion because of their tremendous success. @Hobbes My comment is as much relevant to your answer.
Comment: @LocalFluff - please see the tricks section at the end of my [answer](https://space.stackexchange.com/a/10313/168).
Comment: @LocalFluff: A good many people live, or would like to live, in areas that are long distances from the nearest population center.  Would it be economic to run say 10 miles of fiber to serve a single house, or a village of a few dozen people?
Comment: @LocalFluff: Musk's plan doesn't involve cubesats, they will use full-scale satellites which mitigates the problem somewhat. Satellite phones can get away with using a small rod antenna these days.
Answer: One thing that many previous answers aren't taking into account are ways that a LEO satellite constellation could significantly enhance the internet for people who live in rural areas.
Roughly 45% of the world is in a rural area (20% of the US), and for them internet currently kind of sucks. It would be prohibitively expensive to connect rural clients to fiber. Even for those who do, there is usually only one broadband provider, so prices are often completely unaffordable for many people. This means that for a large number of customers, LEO satellite internet could be significantly faster than status-quo -- even if the only thing it did was bounce the signal directly up and down to a nearby building with fiber.
The other big advantage of such a system is it would add a competitor to a market that has a lot of monopolies. If everyone has an alternative choice, it could go a long way to keeping the telcos in line.
Comment: These are good points!
Answer: Wikipedia defines LEO as 100-1200 miles above the earth's surface.  Let's assume 1,000 miles, since it's a nice round number, and we want to stay well clear of the atmosphere for fuel minimization.
Your minimum round trip distance is now 2,000 miles. If you previously had a fiber connection to a server 100 miles away, your latency has just degraded by an order of magnitude!  And this assumes assumes a satellite directly overhead.
It is common for major websites to be hosted at multiple physical servers to cut down on latency - when I check BBC News from the East Coast of the US, I am not waiting for my packets to travel to Britain and back.  The BBC has set up a mirror in the States - probably within a few hundred miles of my location.
Additionally, industrial grade routing equipment is big.  A Google search for "industrial router" turned up this site:
http://www.juniper.net/us/en/products-services/routing/ptx-series/ptx5000/
It lists the router as over five feet tall and weighing over 1,200 lbs - and it is plugged into grid power, and kept in a climate controlled room.  If you start adding solar panels, altitude management, thermal control, RF comms equipment, radiation hardening - this is a multi-ton comms sat, not a cube sat.  The market for routers this size is large enough to support several companies, each with several different models offered.  There are likely many hundreds to thousands of routers this size currently in use.
You could leave the router on the ground, and turn the satellite into a "dumb" repeater - passing the packets on to other satellites and finally a ground station in a pre-set path, determined by the router on the ground.  This exacerbates the latency issues.  Now, any time a bit error or lost packet occurs, the satellite must send a message back through the chain all the way to the ground site to ask for a re-transmission - round trip minimum is now 4,000 miles.
I don't have stats to address power requirements, but I wouldn't be surprised if RF transmissions were an order of magnitude (or more) more energy expensive than fiber.
In the end, I think you've massively underestimated the amount of traffic that the Internet carries, the size of the hardware required to handle it, and the speed at which packets are required to move.
Comment: From your own example, the latency would only have increased by a factor of ~ 5, so not _an order of magnitude_. Why? Simply because RF travels at the speed of light, and light in fiber-optical cable on average about half that. When you consider longer distance relays, this shifts substantially in favor of LEO based systems, assuming that switching at each node costs the same amount of time. Ground laid cable will also have to be substantially longer than a direct line, but even discounting that and more relaying, you'd already get a lot better ping time at the distance between NY and London.
Comment: True, but with smart routing, you can even substantially reduce the total distance that a packet would have to travel, than from your own example where the satellite is _straight up_, if you select a satellite between the two points. Say, if we're fine with max range to satellite of 4,000 km, then your ping time between NY and London decreases from ~ 74 ms for a direct fiber-optical cable to ~ 57 ms for a satellite based system. Of course, you can always select a lower constellation's altitude and further decrease that. 1,000 miles seems a bit much. I think they're aiming for about half that.
Comment: So if each of those satellites have to be capable of routing all Internet traffic between the East Coast of the US and Western Europe, how many tons will the total constellation weigh?
Comment: @codeMonkey Elon Musk was talking about this in some talk that I don't have the time to find now (I think it was at the MIT centennial aero-astro symposium, or maybe during the constellation announcement in Seattle) and if I remember correctly, said they'd be looking at roughly 9-12 satellites deployed per launch. That seems like 1 ton per satellite then, if he had Falcon 9 in mind (range seems to correlate nicely with Falcon 9 v1.0 to v1.1 payload to LEO capability). So about 80 tons? Let's round it up to 100. Not that bad, that's just shy of the mass of a single loaded Space Shuttle Orbiter.
Comment: @uhoh - OP asked about *replacing* the internet with LEO sats. I can see a business case for *supplementing* the internet with LEO sats - for very rural areas, disaster relief, ocean going vessels, etc. But I don't see putting the whole net in orbit any time soon. Guess we'll see!
Comment: Fair - I had assumed fiber was close to c, but wikipedia confirms your number (0.55c).
Comment: But your LEO system won't be using a straight line either: a single sat won't have NY and London in it's footprint from LEO - It'll require one or more sat to sat hops, plus an extra 1,000 miles on each end, plus slant distance (the sats likely won't be directly above the cities)...  And in the end, I stand by the idea: minimum hop with fiber is my house to next door at 0.55c.  Miminum hop with LEO sat is 2,000 miles at 1.0c.  Fiber has a significantly lower minimum latency.
Comment: How many sats would be required in this constellation to ensure that one is always between NY and London?
Comment: Well, many, but all the proposals I've seen seem to work with over 80 anyway. My back of the envelope calculation tells me that you'd need about 44 separated at same distance to ensure there's at least one between NY and London at any given time (that's for a constellation of 800 km altitude).
Comment: Tidal, even with your best case scenarios, the "why" question remains unchanged. For most use cases, fiber (or wire, or cellular) is lower latency, higher bandwidth, lower energy, and lower cost. Satellite remains a niche.
Comment: `+1` for raising and exploring some important issues, but five years later now I think several companies have bet against your conclusions!
Answer: Possible, yes, feasible no.
The number of satellites required, and the cost, would far exceed any possible benefit.
LEO statellites, at best, are just very expensive 4G towers with fewer dead-spots. However they're vastly inefficient because they each only cover 3% of the internet market at any time, which puts the full bandwidth on 3% of the satellites, wasting 97% of the network.
And on top of that, it only serves the areas not covered by other ISP's, while costing more.
Likewise, the LEO satellites can't intercommunicate like internet hubs.
So the LEO networks like Starlink and Oneweb, can connect to the internet, but can't replace it.
Comment: As you are an invester in a competing service, your post comes across very much like trying to smear your competition. Please re-read our [about] and [answer] pages - specifically around self-promotional behaviours!
Comment: Since answers are not supposed to be opinion based, including IMHO in the answer is problematic. Suggest pruning it back to maths on coverage per base station and why that is a problem. It is also not clear what the link to your GEO proposal is about other than as a place to put you sales pitch? Having it 'as discussed by me here' would look less spam like, even better would be linking to the sources you worked from to make the video where relevant to the facts of the answer.
Comment: I calculated the figures myself, they're pretty basic.
I was showing a GEO internet vs. an LEO.
Comment: I'm answering the question with facts.
Both LEO and GEO satellites have comparative advantages, but the current market does not offer significant demand for LEO satellites, due to the availability of ground-coverage for less cost.
 Meanwhile GEO satellites have problems pertaining to distance; however there are methods of  circumventing this problem.
Comment: You're going to have to define what you mean by 'very expensive,' and please provide sources for your claim about 3 percent of the Internet market. Even if that number is accurate, once Starlink introduces laser interlinks that will no longer be valid.
Comment: Snoopy's comment was not "bad manners", it was honest, constructive feedback. Telling him to "take a long walk off a short pier" (which is what your last comment originally said) is just downright rude. We're just trying to help you improve your answer. You don't need to take our advice, but there's no need for you to react to it with hostility, either.
Comment: You have different ideas about good manners than most people, if you think it includes giving orders and making demands.


taking moon shots

Question: I have a Nikon d3400. I'm using a 70-300mm afp lense and my moon shots look like someone is aiming a flashlight at me. No craters so I thought I needed a filter. After reading some of what's here I see I don't. Obviously I'm a beginner and I've been shooting in auto. I've tried a couple of the settings and I'm getting the same result. Any help would be appreciated.
Comment: Also related:http://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/41722/can-you-photograph-the-milky-way-with-a-full-moon-out
Answer: You did not post your moon images; however, you should know that shots of a full or nearly full moon are frequently disappointing.  This is because the moon's craters are ringed by mountains. At the time of the full moon, it is high noon on our nearest neighbor. That means the sun is directly overhead and the mountains cast no shadows. We need to see the shadows of the mountains on the moon, as this causes them to stand out in bold relief.  It's a fact that the moon's surface as seen from earth is mostly a mundane white; thus we need shadows to give depth to the terrain.
Don't be discouraged! Reshoot at first and last quarter. This is when the shadows of the mountains of the moon are long. Do use a tripod, and keep the exposure as short as possible. Also, do bracket your exposure by shooting repetitive exposures at different aperture settings. This technique insures success.
Comment: That's a great point. I didn't even think about the lighting conditions on the moon. It's so far away that you don't notice it with the naked eye.
Answer: What happens is that your camera tries to expose the whole frame properly and since you have two very contrasting elements, the camera does not know what to do. You have a black (or almost black) background, but the camera does not readily know that - it probably falls out of its metering range. If this was a night landscape, exposing a little more than the lowest thing the camera can meter can get you somewhere even in Auto. But since you're shooting [for] the Moon, it comes out overexposed.
The simplest thing you can do is switch to spot metering. If you don't know how, look at page 9 of the manual - it should work even in Auto. Don't forget to switch it back to Matrix when you're done shooting the moon - spot can give you some unexpected results in "normal" shooting situations.
If you're willing to try manual mode, go on. An example starting point would be ISO 100, f/7.1, 1/320 (but that's, of course, just a wild guess). From there, depending on if it's under- or overexposed, start increasing or decreasing the shutter speed until you have proper exposure. The slower you go, the bigger is the risk to introduce blur from camera shake; use a tripod and a remote shutter if you can (and turn off VR if you do).
Comment: The trouble with spot metering is that you then have to get the moon right in the middle of the frame, and it's going to be moving at a non-trivial rate. You're much better off just doing things in manual.
Comment: If you're using single point AF, the spot will be linked to the selected focus point.
Comment: @K.Minkov That all depends on the specific camera used. Some advanced models do that, many other cameras do not.
Comment: @MichaelClark The author mentioned a Nikon D3400. To my knowledge, nowadays all Nikon DSLRs including the low end feature spot metering linked to the active focus point (when using Single point AF area), but indeed, it's different with other manufacturers. I was recently surprised to know that in Canon camp, this feature is still reserved for the very high end, i.e. the 1D series.
Answer: its looks flashlight because, moon alys moving and on the situation of max level zoom your camera also be shaky. so capturing moon shoot is best combination is shutter priority mode. put your camera in shutter prourity mode and take shoot in fast shutter like 800/1000. Though you get grain but you get your desired shoot.
Comment: Wellcome Shahrier Shuvho. The problem is probably about exposition. The use of a tripod works to avoid the shaking problem, not the priority mode.

taking moon shots


Why isn't the DAO attack repeated, after the first proof that it works?

Question: As of 18 June no hacker repeated the DAO attack, even if for a certain time (until the network is spammed and the recursion is stopped) the hack would work the same way the first attack worked.
What are the reasons that this does not happen?
Answer: The attack exploits splitDAO.  (More specifically, withdrawRewardFor  which is inside splitDAO.)
But first a newProposal must be invoked, then a minSplitDebatePeriod of 7 days must elapse before splitDAO can be invoked.
An attacker can also join an existing split to invoke splitDAO per @Roland's comment.
EDIT: Multiple attacks were performed, including a "White Hat attack" named Robin:

... Robin detected that there was a
  new attack going on. It was draining slowly, a few ether per round,
  but it had already amassed a few thousand dollars. It seemed to be
  someone testing the waters and seeing if it could drain more.
Having our hands forced, the group decided to go forwards with the
  attack. I donated 100k dao tokens to the process with the full
  knowledge that it could be burned in the process. The more tokens the
  Robin contract had, the faster it could syphon the ether to protect
  it. The attacker picked up the pace and other attackers joined in.
  Some of the most efficient hackers were able to do up to 30 recursions
  with up to 200 ether moved in each, so it became clear that if we
  didn't do anything the DAO would be drained before anything could have
  been done.
We contacted some "whales" who were happy to donate to the effort and
  we were able to secure about 6M DAO tokens. We made it clear to
  everyone that we were not sure they would be able to recover these
  tokens, but these generous friends were happy to contribute to the
  effort. Thanks to this we were able to outpace the attacker, doing
  4,000 and then at up to 40,000 ether per round, totaling up30 rounds
  of recursions.
Comment: Whitelist asked in http://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/6229/have-the-curators-emptied-the-whitelist-of-all-splits-after-the-17-june-attack
Comment: @RolandKofler  Thanks, fixed and found the correct variable.
Comment: is the whitelist now empty?
Comment: Your assertion of 10d seems disputable @eth : see http://vessenes.com/deconstructing-thedao-attack-a-brief-code-tour/  >>As Martin Köppelmann noted, the attacker actually just joined an existing split with a new wallet contract two days ago. There was no need to wait 7 days, any available split contract would do.<<
Comment: If attacker joined an existing split then what about the one who made available that existing split. I mean the person who made proposal for the split will also be the member of ChildDAO. So did we see any action from him/her.
Answer: It will happen again, and again, and again. You can do it also over every pending split proposal, it's not needed to wait 7 days for a new proposal. You can join the split and when the proposal is over, you can launch the attack. By the way, to launch a good attack, you need to be a solidity developer and to have some money to spend (you need to have or to buy DAO tokens).
And note that because split proposal are faster then normal proposal (7 days vs 14 days) your child DAO with stolen ETHs can be attacked the same way. And so on.
Comment: Yes, the exploit is actually described very well. I replaced "smart" developer with "solidity" developer ^^
Comment: DAO tokens are cheap now, but OK the more the better. Smartness is not required as the exploit is described extensively.
Answer: Well, it happened at last.

The DAO is being drained again, it seems to be a different attacker.
  So far there have been 2 transactions:
  0x201c0253a6fd5d5e7efb0617acb115dcbd39731869bfba796d7f9656eda3c5f2
  0x0f6994bd16df20f0d0992a607ab78e8be1a05cb07b411437fed2fec83be1bc9c
This time, only 0.85 ETH are drained each split.
Additional links: The child dao, The attacker, The contract used for
  exploitation
edit The attacker only stole 22 ETH yet, probably only testing the
  exploit


Expanding the client management console to get server functionality?

Question: This is an assignment I have in college. The description is so vague that I've come here in frustration.
We have an environment of 4 virtual machines. 2 windows 7 Professional clients, 2 windows Server 2008 R2 servers. All 64-bit.
The assignment reads as follows: "Normally, you can't manage your servers using your client operating system. What should you install on your client computer to make the consoles to manage server specific tasks available? (I.E.: active directory users and computers module, IIS management, ...)"
I've asked and it's nothing to do with remote desktop. It needs to be something in the Management Console.
I've tried googling for "expand client management console functionality" and things like that, but I'm getting nothing. I don't think I fully understand the question even.
EDIT: solved.
Future reference: Needed to install the Remote Server Administration Tools
Once installed: it's disabled by default. Click start, type "Windows features on or off".
It'll give you an item like that, click it. There, you'll get a list of features. The remote administration tools are off by default. Turn them on. I did not have to restart.
After this is done, MMC showed a lot more snapins: for IIS, Active Directory, etc...
Answer: Do you mean snapins?  IIS is manged in mmc via the Internet Services Manager snapin, for example.


Why does rudder cause roll?

Question: In the few rudder incidents with the B737, rudder-freeze caused the airplane to roll. From what I know, the rudder causes yaw while the aileron causes roll. Why in the case of these accidents/incidents would the rudder cause a roll?
Comment: Think about the [Dutch roll](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_roll) that can be the result of a yaw perturbation. Yaw causes slip, slip causes roll, roll is reversed by the yaw stability. The yaw damper minimizes this sequence. Good article on stability and how effects are interlocked: [Flightlab Ground School - 4. Lateral/Directional Stability](http://www.flightlab.net/Flightlab.net/Download_Course_Notes_files/4_LateralDirectional%232BA14D.pdf). Related topic, page 4-13.
Comment: This has already been [asked on physics.SE](http://physics.stackexchange.com/q/49905) although not here, strangely.
Answer: There are many higher-order effects. For example, yaw causes a slight increase in airspeed over the outer wing of the turn and a decrease in airspeed over the inner wing. As a result, the outer wing will generate more lift than the other, introducing a rolling motion.
Yaw also causes side-slip which triggers several effects. Wings that are swept backwards, as on the B737, contribute to the roll towards the direction of the turn, because the outer wing gets effectively longer (visual explanation) and produces more lift. Further contributing to this roll is the outer wing having a higher angle of attack due to the dihedral effect (visual explanation).
Similar effects apply to other control surfaces. It's not true that rudder only causes yaw and ailerons only cause roll. Those are simplifications, even though aircraft are usually designed for these simplifications to hold fairly well.
There is also a direct effect. The image below didn't show the center of mass; I drew in a guess as a yellow circle. It's clearly below the rudder, which is true for most aircraft. This means applying rudder introduces a rolling torque, roughly equal to the sideways component of the force on the control surface, multiplied by the distance between rudder and the longitudinal axis. The magnitude of this product is visualised as the area of the red rectangle.
Comment: @BrianDrummond: On many aircraft, in many flight conditions: yes, the direct effect is in the direction of the turn and the net torque of indirect effects is in the opposite direction, but that's not true in general. E.g., some less orthodox aircraft designs have a tail fin below the longitudinal axis. This tail would cause a plane to roll left when yawing right and vice versa. Also, many fighter aircraft have anhedral wings, reversing the dihedral effect to reduce stability. My guess is such exceptions are rare, but I don't have the numbers to back that up.
Comment: " It's not true that rudder only causes yaw and ailerons only cause roll." that's why we call them *coordinated* turns
Comment: The two effects - direct and yaw-induced appear to oppose each other, right?
Comment: Agreeing with @Marcks Thomas.  If you look at the Predator drone, you'll note that it uses an "inverted vee" tail, where the control surfaces are part elevator, part rudder.  If you deflect both surfaces to port, it will do two things: a) cause you to yaw to port, because the deflection is aft of the center of gravity, and b) cause you to roll to port because the deflection is BELOW the center of gravity.  In that regard, the Predator typically doesn't need to use the ailerons to achieve a proper, coordinated turn.
Answer: The reasons can be split in two categories: Direct and indirect.
Direct reasons are rolling moments which are created directly due to the rudder deflection and the side force on the vertical tail:

Offset position of the vertical tail: Since the rudder is above the longitudinal axis of inertia, a side force will also cause a rolling moment. This is the main reason for the anhedral of the Lockheed F-104.
Once the yawing motion starts, the forward-moving wing experiences a slight increase in dynamic pressure, so lift is increased on the forward moving wing and vice versa. This effect is inverse to flight speed and small in general.

Indirect reasons are caused by the resulting sideslip angle once the aircraft starts to yaw:

Dihedral: Once the rudder-caused yaw produces a sideslip angle, the relative difference in angle of attack between both wings creates a rolling moment. This is proportional to the dihedral angle in flight, so you need to add wing bending to a static view of the aircraft to get an idea of the effective dihedral angle.
Wing position: On a high wing, the changed flow around the fuselage in sideslip will create a difference in angle of attack at the root of the wing. This effect needs to be considered when selecting the proper dihedral angle; therefore high-wing aircraft have less dihedral than low-wing aircraft.
Wing sweep: The reduced sweep angle of the windward wing will increase its lift curve slope, and the reverse happens on the opposite wing. This creates a strong rolling moment which is proportional to the sweep angle.

Once the sideslip angle increases, the rudder-induced side force will decrease until the aircraft reaches the trim point where the sideslip angle fully cancels the rudder deflection. But the aircraft is still yawing, so it will exceed the trim position and now the side force will act in the opposite direction. Proportionally to the side force, the tail-induced rolling moment will also change due to the buildup in sideslip.
Comment: I kept looking for your name, I knew this one would attract you! Love that it's a simple comprehensive list of causes. Wish I could upvote more than once.
Comment: @egid: I am currently at CES Unveiled and have little time for edits. Typed it this morning in the hotel room when I wasn't satisfied with the other answers.
Answer: After stopping by at our physics friends, it's probably because of the swept wings (causing a lift differential) of the B737:

[...] if you introduce a yaw to the aircraft, one wing will extend out more directly into the wind-stream, while the other wing will be even more swept. This effectively makes one wing longer, and the other wing shorter. [...] The longer wing will generate more lift, and the shorter one will generate less lift. And since there is unequal lift around the roll axis, the airplane will roll, and continue to roll.

The whole answer:
Physics: What causes an aircraft to roll when rudder is applied
Note: Regarding the comments, this effect even occurs without swept wings. Swept wings only amplify the effect.
Comment: Although it does have an effect, even an aircraft without swept wings experiences a roll force when rudder is applied.
Comment: Note, that A320 mechanical law (the last fallback when all electricity fails) only has elevator (stabilizer actually) and rudder control and relies on this effect for making turns. The aircraft was demonstrated fully controllable in this mode.
Comment: This is an incomplete answer, possibly misleadingly so. The lift differential is the key here, not the wing sweep.
Comment: Agreed with the other comments. The wing sweep plays a part, but it's only a part and this happens in aircraft that don't have swept wings. For example, I've been in a Cherokee that was flown around the pattern with no aileron input.
Answer: When an aircraft yaws, one wing travels faster than the other creating more lift on that side. On a swept wing aircraft the lifting effect is even more pronounced. The extra lift on one side will cause it to roll.
Comment: And the right wing is better exposed to the airflow than the left wing which is partially in the shadow of the fuselage.

Why does rudder cause roll?


Biased Random Walk Converging to a Brownian Motion with drift (Donsker's Theorem)

Question: Fix $N$ and suppose $\{X_n\}_{k=1}^{N}$ are i.i.d steps that are $\pm 1$ with equal probability. Then $S_n = \sum_{k\leq n} X_k $ is a simple random walk, and (with the right scaling) we know that the path $S_n$ converges to a Brownian motion as $N \to \infty$(This is an application Donsker's Theorem).
I want to consider a related, but slightly different set up. Fix $N$ and suppose $\{X_n\}_{k=1}^{N}$ are i.i.d steps that are $+1$ with probability $\frac{1}{2} + \frac{\lambda /  2}{\sqrt{N}} $ and $-1$ with probability $\frac{1}{2} - \frac{\lambda / 2}{\sqrt{N}}$. Then and $S_n = \sum_{k\leq n} X_k $ is a biased random walk. I want to show that (in the same scaling as above) $S_n$ converges to a Brownian motion with drift $\lambda$ as $N \to \infty$.
My attempt:
I think we can do this by some manipulation and then applying Donsker's Theorem. Let $Y_k = \sqrt{1 - \frac{\lambda^2}{n}}\left( X_k - \frac{\lambda}{\sqrt{n}} \right)$  so that the $Y_k$'s are mean $0$ and variance $1$. Then applying Donsker's Theorem to the $Y_k$'s gets us very close to the result I want. However, there is a pesky factor of $\sqrt{1-\frac{\lambda^2}{n}}$ that is in front.
I think the following is true and can fix the problem:
If $f_n \Rightarrow f$ are distributions in $C[0,1]$ and if $c_n \to 1$ are constants, then $c_n f_n \Rightarrow f$ in $C[0,1]$ too. My "proof" of this involves tightness and Prohorov's Theorem, so I'm hoping for an easier alternative.
Comment: Do you know proofs of Donsker's theorem without Prokhorov theorem?
Answer: Yes, $f_n \to f$ in distribution and $c_n \to 1$ implies $c_n \cdot f_n \to f$ in distribution. A short proof of this assertion is found here.


Unroasted coffee beans in La Paz, Bolivia

Question: Is there a place in La Paz where I could buy beans straight from farms, before they are processed? I have a couple of friends who'd want to roast their beans up to their liking, so I'd like to buy them some beans as close to the source as possible. I don't have much time to travel, so places in La Paz are preferred. I've done some research, but to no avail.
Comment: Oh I checked almost every stand at Villa Fatima markets, also all the markets around San Francisco plaza... nada. They even laughed at me frequently.
Comment: In Mexico in the 1980s, many big Public Markets in the center of cities sold unroasted coffee beans and cocoa beans. They also roasted them to your desires. If no one answers, try looking at the markets and reporting back as to what you find.
Answer: My best tip for La Paz would be to find a decent taxi driver and ask him to take you to some place where they have the beans. Offer him a bonus if he makes you happy.
Remember not to wrap the beans in plastic. They should be stored somewhere dry and cool. I forgot to take some beans I bought out of their plastic bag and ruined them.
Also remember that unroasted beans in some countries might be considered fresh agricultural product and as such can be forbidden to import to some countries..


An error when I open a .eps from Wolfram Mathematica in Illustrator

Question: I created a graph with Wolfram Mathematica and exported it as .eps file. Then I want to open it with Illustrator to do some amendment. But when I read it with Illustrator, it gives me an error:MPS analytic program can not analyse this file. How can I resolve it? I doubt it is due to the resolution because the other simpler graph(.eps) can be opened by Illustrator.
Comment: Is there any option when saving the eps file in Mathmatica? May be try with the most basic output settings.
Answer: Place figure instead of importing
Illustrator is able to place EPS and PDF figures inside of a document without importing them. If you only need to add some elements to the figure and you do not need to edit it, this feature allows to avoid all the headache associated with importing it into Illustrator in the editable form.

Related questions: "Embedding pdf in illustrator", "Placed image
  doesn't show when saving as PDF", "Mathematica-exported PDFs placed in Illustrator documents keep disappearing".

Note that CorelDRAW is also able to place EPS, but this functionality currently (version X6) is still buggy and of little use.

Use another intermediate vector format
It is usually better to Export figures from Mathematica as PDF for the purposes of importing them into such programs as Illustrator, CorelDRAW or Inkscape. From my experience the PDF format is the most supported vector format in Mathematica.
In the cases when PDF gives inappropriate results one can try Exporting into EMF or SVG. Sometimes none of these solutions gives appropriate result but every of them allows to import correctly a subset of the original objects from Mathematica into vector drawing program. In such situations the correct result often can be obtained by combining correctly imported objects obtained through different intermediate vector drawing formats.
See also this answer for an explanation of differences between vector formats.
Answer: You should try to use a PDF export instead of EPS, it should do the same thing except that it should work better with transparencies etc. While so far i have mostly the same answer as Alexey Popkov who is worth listening to theres something more you can do:
In the case that you absolutely have to have an EPS file and none of the other files work, you can try to circulate the file trough eps2eps that comes with GhostScript. It will make your file simpler but will give it a much better chance of not failing.
Another approach is to convert the eps to PDF with acrobat distiller this works slightly better in some corner cases.
Answer: You should try exporting to SVG instead: here is how.
Comment: Hi, could you please explain how to do the export instead. As it stands this is a link only answer which is frowned upon. If you don't want to explain than Delete this and leave it as a comment on the question instead.


What is this groundcover?

Question: My neighbor's landscaper planted this groundcover (in southern California) which she told me was a thyme.  It spreads like wildfire and has a tiny white flower with a raised purple center, but it neither looks nor smells like any thyme I have ever seen.  Any idea what it actually is?  It is evergreen, with jagged edged leaves roughly half an inch long.
[groundcover leaf with jagged edges
Answer: This is Phyla nodiflora, also sometimes called Lippia repens, and apparently lots of other names (matchweed, etc...). According to Native Florida Wildflowers website, it is a Florida native. No it isn't really thyme as we know it, although maybe one of its nicknames could be "thyme". Wikipedia puts it in the verbena family.
I have it in my lawn (Northern Calif.), and yes it does spread well. As you say, like wildfire, or if you prefer, it is invasive. It seems to propagate mostly by creepers that root into the ground if undisturbed for a while. In the middle of the grass it keeps low to the ground and makes the grass look a little lusher and greener, but around the edges where there is less competition it can get tallish and rangy looking, less like a ground cover and more like a scrubby weed. That said, it is pretty easy to pull out in places you don't want it. (Not sure how easy it is to completely eradicate if you decide you hate it). Once established it doesn't seem to need a lot of water to survive, but looks nicer if it gets some.
Also please note in the spring/summer (at least in my climate), it is absolutely covered with those little white flowers which attract bees like crazy! (FYI...if you happen to have serious bee-sting allergies in your family, you might want to avoid it.)
Comment: Do you have cool season grasses for lawns?  This is a succulent that stores water.  Ugh.  Otherwise it would be easy to 'suppress'.  short root systems.  I'd get my lawn cut at least 3 1/2 inches no shorter.  That should shade this plant enough to dissuade it from making your lawn its home?  Maybe?  Watering deep deep deeply when your grass needs water will cause that stuff to get root rot.  I got stung by bald faced hornets...attacked, actually.  The doc pulled out 47 stingers still pumping away.  That put me in anaphylactic shock.  Duh.  Getting stung a few times later was no prob
Comment: Oh, no Stormy, I put it in my grass on purpose because I think it is nice. My front grass is primarily Bermuda, and this stuff (matchweed) can live amongst the other grasses and make everything look green and alive. I was hoping it would eventually crowd out the Bermuda, which I thought I saw it doing in the place I brought it over from, but it's been like 6-10 years, and Bermuda is still there (that's the "Ugh" part). ...Succulent? Ronke's photo makes it look like one, and it may technically even *be* one, but its little leaves just look like regular leaves down in the grass.
Comment: Warm season grasses, not cool season.  I was thinking how to manage a plant out of place like this, not at all saying this is UGH other than it would be lots of work.  It is pretty.  Warm season grasses and this plant should do real well together!  Bermuda is a weed.  I would like to see the two growing together from a few feet away.

What is this groundcover?


Suggestion for cheap and efficient way to shred compost ingredient?

Question: Everyone who has done composting would probably agree small particle size of compost ingredients is essential for quicker composting. Is there any way to shred compost ingredients without using machine (shredder/lawn mower)?
Comment: Hey, thanks for all your answers! Now I notice a dilemma, if you dont shred the materials by yourself (as some suggest the speed gain is minimal if you manage the compost properly in some other aspects), you would want natural shredders (e.g. arthropods) to take over your compost right? But then would turning the compost discourage them to live in your compost?
Answer: Well, it's a machine but not one you specified - leaf blower. The ~$80 Corded models for Toro and Worx have vac attachments and metal impellers. I use them in the fall for my maple leaves. They'd work fine for kitchen scraps.  (To anyone who might read this - use a 12 gauge cord, and the gutter cleaning attachment is a gift from heaven).
Dry leaves you can just walk around on.
Honestly though, if my carbon pile wasn't on the other side of my lot from my maples, I don't think I'd shred them anymore (the vac attachment to my blower shreds, and vacuuming I to a bag is a lot faster than blowing 500+ cubic feet of leaves 100ft to the pile). The gain in decomposition speed from shredding is minimal if you turn properly and have a bit of an aeration element in the compost. (I break apart a stick or two, or use loppers to cut it if it's green - only need a handful. Doesn't matter if it's not rotted at finish BC it's there for aeration).
So the cheapest way to shred waste is to not do it. You'll be tumbling/pitchforking it 5-8 times as it rots, and that's enough.  When you sift the final product, anything too large goes right back in the pile anyway.  I think you'll be surprised by how little difference there is. Handful of inch long 1/8 - 1/2 inch diameter aeration sticks and a handful of dirt for every ~3 gallons of compost is how I do it.
I'm a fan of http://www.vegetable-gardening-with-lorraine.com/homemade-compost-bin.html - but a black locking-lid plastic garbage can with holes drilled all over is just as good, less work to make, and a lot less work to tumble. And a barrel is better for short term applications like potting mix recyc.
Wow I went off-topic.  Actual answer summary: cheapest way to shred waste is don't do it, just turn/tumble your compost properly.
Answer: There is a way without using any powered machine, but it's very time consuming and not terribly efficient; a pair of loppers and sharp secateurs and shears will be necessary. Cut the larger woody stuff into small pieces with the loppers; use the secateurs to further reduce the size, and to reduce the size of smaller twigs and stems; use shears to chop through soft stuff. It won't be as effective, and it will take some hours if there's a lot, so it's only worth doing if someone has absolutely nothing else to do, or finds it therapeutic. Personally, I'd prefer to watch paint dry, so I'd rather just chop up the big stuff and wait longer for the resulting compost...
Comment: Lock cutters, AKA Bolt cutters, may also be used. LOTS of hard work, though.
Comment: Bamboo, I am totally bent over with your statement you'd rather watch paint dry...seriously!!!
Comment: @stormy actually what I wanted to put was 'I'd rather remove my eyeballs with a fork' but I thought that might be a bit too strong...
Comment: You, Bamboo made my day TWICE!!  Wish you could see this idiot, me, just guffawing...oh my gut hurts.  Glad you still got it out there.  My daughter sent me a picture as she sat between my granddaughters on the patio doing kid stuff, coloring or whatever.  She had a fork to her eye and I've never stopped laughing about that picture...Such simple pleasures!!
Answer: Other than ripping stuff that can be ripped by hand (most of which does not particularly need to be, as it will break down easily anyway) any shredding is going to involve a machine, unless you can find an animal that wants to eat your compost ingredient and thus "process" it for you.
Some people do, in fact, use a flock of chickens this way, but it's a roundabout route to composting. They will eat and to some extent shred with their feet (scratching) and excrete processed material (manure) onto the stuff they don't choose to eat. But they won't have much interest in (say) wood waste unless it's crawling with bugs (and it's the bugs they will want, in that case.)
Otherwise it's going to be some kind of machine - Bamboo's loppers and secateurs are machines, Paul's leaf blower is a machine, various mechanized compost processing devices that range from the well-established and expensive but reliable (hammer-mills) to well-meaning attempts to make "low-tech" machines that may not work so well (I've found a trip-hammer machete with a chute to feed it and a cast concrete grindstone in my surveys of this subject in the past. Both looked like a lot of work to use. I can't currently find either one on the web.)
In the very low-tech line, this is described as a compost chopper, but it's still a machine (albeit a simple one) - that looks like a lot of work to use.

Alternatively there is always time, as Paul & Bamboo both mention. I like to help time - I have, via experience, decided that I really don't enjoy feeding a brush chipper (or listening to it, or trying to make sure that I end the day with as many arms/hands/fingers as I started the day with.) I have found that I can markedly increase the rot-rate of a pile of brush by encapsulating it within a pile of horse manure, which maintains a moist environment and supplies some nitrogen. The hugelkulture folks simply bury the woody stuff under the planting beds and let it rot in place, which also works. Another way to use woody material that breaks it down is to turn it into charcoal.
Answer: Anything that was once alive is IMMEDIATELY attacked by decompose-rs.  They do all the work for you, all you need is patience, add nitrogen to the compost to feed the decompose-rs, keep the compost turned once a week so the decomposition is aerobic not anaerobic (p u) and protect from critters.  While you are cleaning up debris the more time you have to break sticks into little pieces the better...if you are in some kind of hurry.  I make different piles; one for herbaceous stuff and food scraps (never meat) and one for woody debris.  I add more nitrogen and leaves and other herbaceous stuff to the woody debris and keep turning both.  Takes a bit longer, but really not that much...months not a month as it takes for the herbaceous stuff.  Moisture, nitrogen (there used to be a kitty litter made from alfalfa that was cheap and worked extremely well) and air...oh, I also added soil into both because that helps inoculate your piles with even more decompose- rs.
Answer: I've had some success using a hedge trimmer on a pile of cut (thin) branches, brmables etc., though the aim was mainly to compact them rather than  to speed up composting.  You can even do this in the bin to save having to tidy up so much afterwards.
For brittle material (like dried-out canes) you can chop downwards with a spade, so long as your spade has a fairly flat end.
In fact, depending on how your composting is structured, you may find that shredding too finely impedes drainage.  I use a dustbin (actually 2 of them) with drainage holes added, and the lowest holes block quite easily unless there's a twiggy layer at the bottom.
Answer: In the compost bin I put the old dead tomatoes vines and lay them across all in the same direction and then take the chain saw to them cutting them up into 4 inch lengths, this hells them compost especially by putting on top of the cutting lots of tasty vegetable compost cuttings from the kitchen.


How does one pace the weaning process?

Question: After you've determined it is time to begin the weaning process, how long should it take to finish weaning and how many steps or stages are involved?
Answer: There are two important factors in the pacing of the weaning process. The first is the mother's health. A mother's body has to be told slowly enough that milk no longer needs to be made. Otherwise she is at an increased risk of engorgement, mastitis, and other unpleasant side-effects. If immediate weaning is required for some reason, a prescription for medicine which will dry up her milk supply may be needed. In the normal case of a mother weaning an infant or toddler at the end of a nursing relationship, waiting between 3 days to a week to drop another feeding is sufficient. A week is generally recommended for the mother's health, but some women find they can easily drop feedings faster.
The other factor is the infant's comfort. Usually in weaning there are 3 big changes going on.

The change from mostly nursing to not nursing at all.
The change from breast milk to cow's milk or formula
The change, for an infant between 12 and 18 months, from a bottle to a cup of some sort.

It is wise to approach one change at a time. For example if you are weaning a 1 year old who already drinks breast milk or formula from a bottle and switching that child to cow's milk, try mixing cow's milk with breast milk or formula in a bottle and slowly increasing the amount of cow's milk over time. Once your child is comfortable with cow's milk in a bottle then begin to drop feedings, replacing them with cow's milk in a bottle instead. Once you have dropped several or all feedings you can switch to cow's milk in a cup at meal time. Switching from a bottle to a sippy cup is it's own concern. If you are switching an infant from nursing to bottles of breast milk or formula then hopefully you introduced the bottle at the appropriate age, which is 3 weeks old before bottle refusal sets in, and kept up at least 1-2 bottles weekly. If you did not then you will need to work on finding a bottle your infant will accept before weaning nursing sessions.
Many mothers find that their children who enjoy nursing do best with a greater-than-one-week-between-dropping-feedings spacing. For example  I know of many women who found 2 weeks at each number of feedings was best. Others even spaced it out to a month.
If you are looking to do child-led weaning then you can practice don't offer, don't refuse. In this weaning practice you never offer your child a nursing session. However when your child asks you either nurse right away or, if the time is not right for nursing, nurse as soon as possible after your child asks. This form of weaning can take a significant amount of time but may be right for a mother who is not set on weaning immediately.

How does one pace the weaning process?


Oh no, a Simple puzzle

Question: It should be simple to find an answer to this puzzle.
Answer: Step 1

 There's an image link inside the question (click the "edit" link to see it). It leads to this image.

Step 2

 The previous image has five characters in the top left, in a darker color than the rest of the background. Replacing the five before the .png in the URL with those five leads to another image

Step 3

 The QR code in the previous image scans to V8bzu. This leads to yet another image:

 The "key" needs 5 letters, and looking up those five in the table should give another image. As the question text suggests, those five letters are "simpl". (The "e" in the question is crossed out, though it's hard to see.) This leads to the fourth image, which just seems to be a very blurry image of the word "Yes", so I assume we're done here.
Comment: Yep, that is right so far. Look at the question text precisely to find out how to continue (and the error message in the question confirms that the bsod is a correct picture)
Comment: Ok, this is correct. Oh and why are you always so ... fast? I rememeber some feature request on meta here ...
Answer: In the

 edit screen is the following link link saying "You Got It!"
Comment: Yeah, this would be too simple ... But it's not true (at least not complete...)
Answer: I'm not sure if all the other gibberish was just a diversion but...

 https://i.stack.imgur.com/vY0kZ.png was found in the question comment seen if you click on edit

After some research, I noticed that that link was something else in the original article the paragraph was taken from.

 https://support.microsoft.com/en-ca/help/294807!

But that only leads to a 404 page, so it must be an old article.
I also noted that the "e" in simple has a strike in it. The "S" in the title is also wierdly a capital letter.
Comment: See my comment on El-Guest's answer...

Oh no, a Simple puzzle


DMZ server unable to connect through SQL Browser

Question: I have a Web server in my DMZ, I have a SQL Server 2008 R2 server inside the LAN, this database server has named instance with a NO dynamic port. I have set as firewall rules the connection from my DMZ server and the database server in the SQL Server instance port and the UDP port 1434 for SQL Browser.
I thought this will be enough to allow the connection between the two servers, however I created a UDL file in my DMZ server and tried to connect to the SQL server instance and it failed, but when I included the Instance port in the string, it worked.
Please can you help me, I want to be able to connect to the named instance without including the Instance port, instead use the SQL Browser as it would be for other serves inside the LAN.
Thanks
Comment: Do you have another SQL Server instance running on the server?
Answer: Although what you described should work as configured, another option would be just create an alias for your named instance.


Why do we need to close eyes to sleep?

Question: Out of all our sensory organs, we need to stop taking signals explicitly only from eyes in order to sleep. Even interestingly, those who are not able to receive signals from eyes (i.e., the visually challenged people) also need to close their eyes in order to sleep. I wonder what is the relation of closing eyes with sleeping. I think the reason might be related to the state of the muscles related to the eyes. Of course, even if it were the case that one could keep her eyes open while sleeping, the brain would stop paying attention to the signals received by the eyes -- just like the brain stops paying much attention to the signals received by the nose or the ears while sleeping even if these organs are not physically closed or prevented from receiving signals. But in the case of the eyes, they are physically closed while sleeping,  which makes me curious.
Comment: Possible duplicate of **[Why do our eyes close when we sleep.](https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/17386/why-do-our-eyes-close-when-we-sleep?rq=1)**
Answer: Unlike our underwater ancestors, land animals have evolved eye lids or nictitating membranes to protect our eyes and keep them moist periodically by blinking. During the sleep state, closing our lids protects the eyes from drying out and getting damaged while unconscious.  In addition to the lids themselves blocking light stimulus (not totally), our eyes also roll back to attenuate light stimulation.  Fish also sleep and don't need eyelids to do so, thus closing eyes is not a prerequisite for the sleep state.
Textbook Source: Butler, Ann B.; Hodos, William (2 September 2005). Comparative Vertebrate Neuroanatomy: Evolution and Adaptation. John Wiley & Sons. p. 215. ISBN 978-0-471-73383-6.

Why do we need to close eyes to sleep?


Withdrawing income from a self-managed super fund holding a rental property?

Question: Do I need to sell my rental property (fully paid for) in my Super fund to start withdrawing from the funds on a monthly basis to live on at 60 years of age, or can I keep renting it and just access the rental income?
Comment: @Brythan - the OP is concerned because the minimum yearly amount withdrawn from super pension may be more than the net yearly rent.
Answer: When you start accessing an income stream from your super there is a minimum amount you must withdrawal each year depending on your age. Basically the older you get the higher the percentage of your account balance you must withdrawal as a minimum.

Under 65 - minimum 4% of account balance
65 - 74 - minimum 5% of account balance
75 - 79 - minimum 6% of account balance
80 - 84 - minimum 7% of account balance
85 - 89 - minimum 9% of account balance
90 - 94 - minimum 11% of account balance
95 or more - minimum 14% of account balance

So depending on how much your net rent is (after all expenses), will determine whether you can keep renting it out and just live on the net rental income. But obviously, as you get older and the minimum percentage increases, you will need to eventually sell the property in order to access the higher percentages.
An alternative way of owning the property, and a method I am interested in, is to have your SMSF purchase the property through a Unit Fund. That is, you set up a Unit Fund and your SMSF purchases all the units in the Unit Fund (or you can buy some units and your SMSF buys the remainder of the units). Then with these funds the Unit Fund purchases the rental property.
When you get to the pension phase and the minimum percentage becomes more than the net rent you can pay yourself in units from the Unit Fund. This way you don't have to sell the property and slowly transfer the property from your SMSF to yourself unit by unit.
Also, if you have other assets in the super fund in addition to the rental property you can cash those assets out instead of the property as your minimum percentage grows.