Effects of future technology on education

Question: Assuming a technology is developed that allows people to either eliminate the need to sleep or study/work subconsciously during their regular sleep cycle, what kind of effect would this have on the amount of time it takes to finish your classical education? Could someone finish college and earn multiple phDs by the time they're eighteen if they had an extra 4-8 hours a day to study? I'm writing a bit of a throwaway bit of worldbuilding and wanted to know if this seemed unrealistic but now I'm honestly very curious about the impact of future technologies on education and learning.
Answer: Personal anecdote
I am a computational statistician. I would generally be judged to be very good a math and computer science. I got a 1600 on my SAT. I graduated with a 3.8 from one of US News' top 10 engineering schools. That was when I was 27. But when I was 20, I failed out of college with a 1.8.
You see, the first time I went to college, I had no idea why I was there. Everyone else went to college, so I guess I should too. I had a vague notion I wanted to build rockets, but had no idea what that entailed. Consequentially, instead of studying or getting interested in research, I joined a fraternity and got interested in Tekken and weed. I was pretty good at Tekken, but that didn't do much for my GPA.
After I failed out, I got a job as a ranch hand and spent half a year mucking stalls and digging fence post holes. Then I enlisted to go invade Iraq. It was a long way back to college, and and even longer road to a Masters degree. I will probably never get a PhD since I wasted so much time shoveling horse crap and bombing Iraq.
Conclusion: Education technology does not matter as much as motivation. If you don't have a good reason to do well in school, you might find yourself smoking weed and failing out, no matter how smart you are. The problem with (most) 15 year olds, especially boys, doing advanced studies has always been and will always be maturity. Therefore, it is going to be hard to push all but the most exceptional students to PhDs so early in life.
Answer: Brain development still takes time.
If you effectively use sleep to "double up" on school time, handwaving the mechanism that allows this, and do so just during the school year - of course you will save some time. This method probably will allow for somewhat faster graduations.
But time is not the only limiting factor here: there's brain development to consider. If you give a six-year old a normal curriculum, but double the pace (assuming they can keep up with "sleep-learning" which is a whole different discussion), the 12 upcoming years of high school education will be finished in 6 years - at age 12.
If you try to teach a twelve year-old pre-calc, they will not just fail because of a lack of prior knowledge - to some extent, they will fail because of development. Even if you increase the learning speed, the brain will grow at about the same rate - there is no evidence to suggest a twelve year-old who does twice the work will have the brain of an eighteen year-old, which encompasses creativity, reasoning, and a host of other things that we only know possible at certain ages.
<code>┌───────┬──────────────────┐
│  Age  │ Work age level   │
├───────┼──────────────────┤
│ 5-6   │ 5-7              │
│ 6-7   │ 7-8              │
│ 7-8   │ 9-10             │
│ 8-9   │ 11-12            │
│ 9-10  │ 13-14            │
│ 11-12 │ 15-16            │
│ 12-13 │ 17-18            │
└───────┴──────────────────┘
</code>
Additionally, you will be graduating people without developed social skills, few long-term memories (a consequence of taking up sleep time), and weaker physical builds - who may not be fit to drive or work.
Answer: An ordinary someone or a special someone? There are 11-year-olds auditing university mathematics courses as we speak, and the youngest PhD recipient I have heard of was 15, I believe (Except Karl Witte in 1813, but we have no way to gauge whether what he did was equivalent to a modern PhD.)
So that is multiple normal humans, with normal human limitations, achieving at least one PhD by age 18. I would say that you could save enough years to get in a second PhD by age 18 if you could learn in your sleep, but an even better time-saver would be an AI research assistant to do your literature review for you! And write up the method and results sections, for that matter ...
As people have pointed out, a PhD is less about absorbing information and more about actually doing some original research/development. That takes as long as it takes.
(Yes, yes, I know that in the US and some Asian countries, they have a Frankenstein's monster called a "PhD by coursework", but that is regarded by everyone else with the same degree of horror as a "surgeon" who has read all the books but never actually done an operation.)*
*I am a former University lecturer at one of the top universities worldwide (The University of Sydney), and this assertion is based on that experience.
Answer: Consider this reasoning:

Assume the sleep trainers include some sort of AI technology. Surely there isn't a human teacher whispering into the ear of the sleeper.
Anything that can be taught by AI can be done by AI cheaper and better. Depending on how the economy is organized, humans might have a hard place doing that in the workplace.
If your setting has jobs for humans which are not busy work, they must be doing something an AI cannot do (possibly requiring creative thinking). It is generally assumed that a PhD takes several years of original research and not just parroting what a computer told you.

AI-trained skills may be the basics for non-AI-trained skills. Teach basic numeracy before going to really interesting maths, and so on. So that might save a couple of years during K-12 education, but only a couple of years, not several decades. It won't save much at university, and nothing at the graduate level.
Answer: The points about development are valid.
But our present education system is seriously upwhacked.
At young ages kids are sponges for language.  There is no reason why a kid can't be fluent in a hatful[*] of languages by age 8 or so.
At elementary age, kids are sponges for data.  They don't think well, but they are good at storing trivia.  Some of us never grow out of that. (Or maybe we just don't grow up.)
At high school age, kids are questioning values, and start to use logic.
I suspect that getting an education wouldn't take any less time.  But it could be far wider reaching.  See Dorthy Sayer's "The Lost Tools of Learning" for some other insights.
[*] hatful: A bunch of severals
Comment: +1 for wider. From the rise of internet we can expect educational system change to expand on the subject that you can choose to learn. But how mature your thought process not entirely rely on how much you've learn the subject. I guess that's why a child prodigy may behave like a child, albeit he/she knows more than the majority of average adult.
Answer:
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." - Albert Einstein

We really don't know much about the brain.  We're just barely starting to plumb its secrets.  However, we do have plenty of evidence to show difficult it is to push brilliant children through our current education system.  It's really hard to put everyone in the same box and then shuffle that box through the grades.  A system which could work individually with each student could do things we consider miraculous.
However, not everything is just knowledge to be learned.  There's a major factor called "maturity" which plays a key part.  You can cram all the knowledge of biology into a 12 year old's mind, and they won't be ready to serve as a PhD in biology unless they are very special.
Also worth noting is that rest is an essential part of learning.  They've found that kindergarten classes which remove recess to add more teaching soon fall behind their fellow schools, while kindergarten classes which add more recess somehow accomplish more (teachers say the children are far more focused, so they get through the material quicker).
Answer: Sleep elimination technologies keep popping up in science-fiction, aren't people and especially writers aware of the problems of sleep deprivation? Besides Nancy Kress has worked this concept over in her Beggars in Spain sequence of novels.
There are studies that show intellectuals and knowledge workers spend more time sleeping than ordinary mortals. Sleep appears to be higher beneficial for people who a lot of brain work. Sleep, in general, seems to be universal among animal species. We may not fully understand why we sleep but it seems to be there for a good reason. It seems foolish to assume a fancy piece of technological kit is going to get rid of it.
It might be far better to assume a technology that rather than eliminating sleep, enhances its beneficial properties. Perhaps this won't reduce the amount of sleep people need, but it might do a better job of integrating memories and knowledge in our brains. Thus improving general knowledge acquisition.
It's time to send sleep elimination technology the way of the videophone and other gizmos everybody imagined everyone else would want, but turned out they didn't. Better sleep, better brains. You know it makes sense.
Answer: I think when we would not need sleep we would use most of that time for other things than education.  I guess some people would use that time to study but probably that would not be the norm.
I am almost certain that if we could literally learn in our sleep we would completely stop learning while being awake. It just does not seem time efficient anymore.
Also there would be a lot more people with higher education and time to work. Which would mean less people work or more people work less time (which is already a trend now due to automation). I think the whole economy would be changed along with the education system.
Also life long learning is a trend (at least in Europe) and I can imagine that being amplified.
Answer: Depends on the tech.
VR + weak AI
 : An immersive visualization that goes at the speed you need.
brain implants : Learning even faster, things you haven't learned yet still a thought away.
strong AI : Humans are looked after and many do very little learning. People focus on play.


How Does Production Possibility Curve Shift (Partially)?

Question:
Textbook:
"Suppose that a new pizza assembly line improves the pizza production process and that the development of the new assembly line does not require the use of more of society's resources.
Although the ability to produce wings has not changed, the new pizza making technology causes the production possibilities frontier to expand outward from $PPF_1$ to $PPF_2$.
It is now possible for society to produce more of both because the improvement in pizza making technology allows a redeployment of the labor force that also increases the production of wings."
My question:
I understand that improvement in pizza making technology will allow the same amount of workers to produce more. But why is it assumed that workers can be allocated to make more wings?
If for example, at point A, we produce 200 wings and 70 pizzas with 10 workers making wings and 10 workers making pizzas. Why at point B, do we produce 220 wings and 80 pizzas? I think it could be 200 wings and 80 pizzas because how do you know that its not still 10 workers making wings and 10 workers making pizzas (just more efficiently)?
Answer: Perhaps in order to produce 80 pizzas you don't need 10 workers but just 8 and the extra 2 workers can now produce wings.


Resources for Nine Men's Morris

Question: I just started playing Nine Men's Morris. I have tried playing with both the computer and on online multiplayer settings and have been doing abysmally. I tried finding some good resource on the net that could give me some in depth study of useful strategies for this board game but I found very basic guides that were basically just a rehash of the rules. Could somebody help me in my dilemma, I want to start winning at least a few of the games.
Answer: There's some information available in German. The game's called "Mühle" (= mill) in German,
and there exists at least one book on this subject.
The book can be found online here: http://www.hubbie.de/
Click on "Mühle", the book can be viewed in html or as an applet.
It's a beginner's book, but contains even some advanced strategies.
It should be possible to understand a lot of the strategies even without knowledge
of German, but with "Google translate", or dict.leo.org you should be able to make
sense of most of the text.
There's even an organization which organizes (European) championchips, see
http://www.muehlespiel.eu/
It might be possible to get information from there, too.
Answer: I realize you are searching for a human strategy, but it might be useful to look at this:
ftp://cs.istu.ru/public/docs/other/_Unsorted/new/books.pdox.net/Math/MSRI@2520Volumes/Games@2520of@2520No@2520Chance/gasser.pdf
Problem was solved by Ralph Gasser for an AI player.
Answer: With respect to basic strategy, I'm assuming that you've found this, which seems to have scraped the text from this page (or vice versa).
In the early '90s, at least one person believed that the strategy you are seeking was not possible to describe.

What is an optimal opening strategy (for humans)?

I must admit that I have not examined the opening moves for any easily describable patterns. However, the examination of mid- and endgame databases has repeatedly shown optimal play to be beyond human comprehension. Therefore, I very much doubt that any such
simple-to-describe strategy exists.

I've not found anything to contradict him, so unless someone else has more recent experience to share, you may be out of luck.

Resources for Nine Men's Morris


"Install Xcode" in Applications, necessary after I've installed Xcode?

Question: Do I need the Install Xcode after Xcode is installed?
Do you know of any reason it installed an installer to Applications?
Answer: You may want to keep it in order to be able to download delta updates instead of the full version when updating via the Mac App Store.
If you don't care about that or care more about disk space, you can delete it (you'll be asked for the administrator password) and continue to use Xcode.
Answer: It's not necessary to keep the XCode installer file after XCode is installed. However, you may wish to consider keeping it stored somewhere as the XCode download is relatively large.
It's probably in the Applications folder because this is where the App Store puts downloaded packages by default.
Answer: The Mac App Store is setup to install in /Applications, but some applications, like Xcode, are way more complicated to be contained in an .app file.
So they need to use an installer, which is going to add the /Developer folder which itself contains multiple applications (Xcode, Dashcode, the iOS simulator, etc.).
Answer: I found the App Store download put an xcode installer into /Applications. I then had to run that installer. Situation complicated by recent upgrade/fix to App Store installer [ itunes error message ]. So had to repeat process using upgrade [ 4.1.1 ]. This way only way I could get g++ to run.


Why can't we propose a solid theory regarding origin of life?

Question: What  information is greatly lacking which does not allow us to propose a  solid theory for origin of life ?
Comment: I think this greatly overstates our understanding of the origin of life. I'm certainly not an expert on this, but as far as I know there are large gaps in all current hypothesis.
Comment: The problem is not that scientists are baffled as to how life could have arisen. Rather, the problem is that scientists have *many* explanations as to how life could have arise, to the point that the appearance of life seems almost trivially obvious; it's just unclear which of the many possible routes was actually followed, and it's difficult to find clues that sort that out. It's as if you found a quarter at the bottom of a hill. The question isn't "Could that quarter have possibly rolled down the hill?" It's "Which path did the quarter follow when it rolled down the hill?"
Comment: The first animal must have produced only 1 simple protein/product in large numbers... like mucus for example... in a long chain with no end, and then the second animal must have been when the long chain of mucus incorporated a copy of the first animal in it. they would have had no cells, no nucleus, just a complex molecule that made a huge amount of mucus, or another simple product which served as protection and food simultaneously. that's a fairly good theory for the first animal. the first animal was perhaps just a 50 atom molecule that made mountains of mucus out of heat and co2 and water.
Comment: Because the planet was sterile, the first animal didn't have to defend itself against anything, it just required the right PH of pure water, and an energy source, like sulphur, or volcanic vent compounds, it didn't need an outer shell that much, because everywhere was pure minerals and water.
Comment: What do you mean by "solid theory" because supported theories do exist.
Answer: First of all, we do have some solid theories to explain the origin of life. That said, the main thing missing in order to be able to accept one of these theories with a decent amount of certainty is the ability to run a planetary scale experiment for a few billion years.
The theories are fine, the problem is that we cannot really test them. In order to test a theory that describes the origin of life, we will have to recreate the original conditions (think of a test tube the size of the Earth) and then pump energy into the system and watch what happens over the next few billions of years. This is not really feasible, for obvious reasons. I really doubt you will be able to get funding for an experiment that will run that long.
Comment: The mice are working on it as we speak...
Comment: @Amory I just hope they finish before the Vogons get here.
Comment: @Amory I am certain it is 42
Answer: The reason for no single, solid origin of life (OOL) theory is that there are
many and none of them explain or resolve the overall or the detailed issues of OOL, encompassing wide differential and even conflicting approaches, e.g., reproduction vs metabolism, and RNA vs DNA. Further, all are using naturalistic processes, requiring validation by the laws of physics and experimentation. While there are numerous theories, they are either geochemically irrelevant or outside the laws of physics. Whether RNA world, panspermia, hydrothermal vents, small warm ponds, all embrace various levels of chemical evolution for the initial, intermediate and ultimate biochemical assembly of increasingly more complicated levels of organic elements considered vital to OOL. No viable processes have been found to naturalistically create life.
Increasingly, wild speculation of geochemical conditions and trivialization of biochemical assembly, metabolism and reproduction are being proposed. The intractable problems that apply to naturalistic theories begins with the fact that chemical evolution of non-living compounds produces no viable pathway to increased complexity, that is, there are no cosmic evolutionary processes capable of the complex structure, design, order and operation of biochemical systems required for even the simplest organism.
The universal challenges that must be fully resolved in all theories include:
1. The homochirality essential in nucleotide amino acids,
2. The homopolymerization of the DNA side chains,
3. The nucleotide coding using information design,
4. The cell membrane formation essential encapsulation.
5. The chicken and egg issue of proteins and complex structures.
These are affected by requirements for colocation. coincidence, contamination mitigation and concentrations that are absolutely precise.
Finally, lab experiments must accurately reflect geochemically relevant conditions and not overly manipulated by experimenters, which would simulate intelligent design but produce questionable results.
The number of sources that could be listed is extensive. A simple search internet of the main descriptive words would provide detailed definition and additional detail. Regarding the 5 universal challenges: 1. homochirality relates to the right/left handedness of the amino acids since they are not symmetric. DNA amino acids must be 100% left handed or DNA will not work. One of the challenges to get comprehensive sourcing is due to the reluctance of present biological entities to fully acknowledge the delineated intractable issues.
Comment: Welcome to Bio. Can you add sources to your answer?
Comment: The high number of sources that could be listed are very extensive. A simple search internet of the main descriptive words would provide detailed definition and additional detail. Regarding the 5 universal challenges:
Comment: If there are so many sources to find it shouldn't be too difficult to put a few in your answer. Your answer is downvoted because it lacks references. Sources allow other users to background-read on your post.
Comment: "DNA amino acids" do you mean nucleotides? With errors like this sourcing becomes even more important.


Do auxiliary verbs always express different aspect/mood/tense?

Question: Do auxiliary verbs always serve to express a mood or aspect that is different from simple indicative (or a tense)? Or are there cases where a sentence is in simple-indicative-present with the presence of an auxiliary verb?
Comment: We don't use the term "indicative" since it does no work. We talk of "declarative" clauses which may contain an auxiliary verb: 'She can swim' and 'Ed is a teacher' and so forth. Auxiliary verbs are verbs with the NICE properties, not verbs that help other verbs: you couldn't identify them by asking whether or not they help the following verb. They are called auxiliary verbs because they characteristically express meanings similar to those expressed (either in the same language or in other languages) by verb inflection.
Comment: @BillJ Why does indicative "not work"?
Answer: No, auxiliary verbs don't always express something other than simple indicative.  Yes, there are cases where a sentence with an auxiliary verb is in the simple indicative.  For instance, "Hal is a fisherman."  The "is" is an auxiliary verb, since it inverts with the subject in the corresponding yes-no question "Is Hal a fisherman?", and it is a simple indicative.
Comment: You are not alone in admitting as auxiliaries only those verbs which accompany a main verb.  Indeed, that view is built into the very term "auxiliary".  The trouble with that is there is no evidence that it's true about English.  Beginning with Chomsky's **Syntactic Structures**, linguists have made auxiliary status independent of whether there is a main non-auxiliary verb present.  Our analysis of a language ought to be based on facts about that language, not facts about traditional terminology.
Comment: It seems my definition of auxiliary verb is off. I was strictly referring to cases where the auxiliary verb exists in addition to the main verb (as in "I will sleep").
Comment: I understand that. I'm not an academically trained linguist, just a software engineer with a passing interest in grammar. Naturally evolved concepts just don't lend themselves well to strict categorization.
Comment: Right. And strict categorization has little use for describing naturally evolved phenomena. Which is why Greg's answer is right, for any grammatical use of "auxiliary verb"; grammatical terms are determined by form and not meaning. If you call _be_ an auxiliary when used for the Progressive or Passive construction (a neutral term), then you should call it an auxiliary when used for the Predicate Adjective or Predicate Noun construction. The forms are identical and so are the usages; if you don't call it an auxiliary because it's the only tense-carrying verb, you're assuming the consequent.
Answer: No, the use of auxiliaries is not directly linked to aspect, mood or tense in the first place. This may be so in some or many cases by coincidence when morphological or syntactic marking is not available, but the link between auxiliary verbs and TAM is not a logical necessity.
On the one hand, there are (even in English) cases where the use of auxiliaries does not change aspect/mood/tense:

They charged him --> He WAS charged (change to passive voice, but not indicative or tense)
You realize --> You DOn't realize (negation, same tense and mood)
He responds --> DOES he respond? (qustion formation, grammatical change but not about mood, tense or aspect)
I think --> I DO think (enforcement, no kind of grammatical change)

On the other hand, there are numerous cases where TAM is expressed other than by an auxiliary verb:

I play --> I playED (morphological marking of tense)
You wash the dishes --> Wash the dishes (imperative mood by syntactic marking)
French: Tu pars --> Je veux que tu PARTES (subjunctive mood)
langauges with evidentiality, apectual, ... affixes

And there are even cases where an auxiliary is used for indicative present, namely present progressive (if you take this as the "normal" present) in English:

Mary IS cooking

So the answer is no, auxiliaries do not always express TAM differing from "simple indicative present", not even necessarily grammatical features.
Comment: Thanks for the answer. As for your last remark, does that not depend on the set of features you consider? One could define Voice, Polarity and even "Enforcement" as extra features and extend my question that way.
Comment: @Wouter Lievens You question only mentions tense - aspect - mood to which these extra features don't belong. If you want to extend it to grammatical features, voice would belong there too, yes. But I don't really see where semantic enforcement could fit in; this is not a grammatical, but a rather semantic feature, and if you want to include that too, then you could include basically everything that auxiliaries could be used for, which makes the question a bit redundant. I.m.o., the insight that auxiliaries are not used solely for grammatical features is the most important one for the question.
Comment: In principle you are of course right. You can keep coming up with (semantic) features to differentiate everything. However, as I posted in another comment, it's a lot harder to invent a grammatical feature that distinguishes "I work today" from "I walk today" than the examples you listed.
Comment: @Wouter Lievens I don't really understand your point. Isn't the *do* example exactly what is desired?
Comment: It's hard to explain what I really meant so my question isn't well states. Your (and some other) examples did offer me insights and that's what I was after.
Answer: A German counter-example is Er wird geschlagen where the auxilliary werden expresses the passive voice, but is clearly simple-indicative-present.
Comment: Excellent example, thanks. So auxiliaries can also express a change in *voice*. I guess that broadens my question: do auxliaries that support a main verb always modify some grammatical feature?
Comment: @WouterLievens: Define "some grammatical feature". There is always a reason for using an auxiliary verb. What about negation in English: *He doesn't like it.*? Is ngation "some grammatical feature"?
Comment: In my view yes, it's the *polarity* of a sentence. I'll illustrate further: "I work here" and "I live here" have all the same grammatical features. No difference in tense, mode, aspect, voice, polarity, etc. My question is therefore is it possible to construct a sentence like "I   here" where  is an auxiliary and  is some conjugation of "to work", with no difference in grammatical features. I realize that's a contrived question that probably works only in my head.
Comment: @Wouter Lievens:  "I do work here"?
Answer: No, e.g. in Czech, the past tense is expressed by the copula verb "být" (to be) and the past participle of the main verb. It is the main verb that expresses the aspect (perfective/imperfective).

Dělal jsem - I did / I was doing (imperfective aspect)
Udělal jsem - I did / I have done (perfective aspect)

On the other hand, the mood is expressed on the auxiliary

Dělal jsem - I did
Býval bych dělal - I would have done

So this is language dependent and structure dependent.
E.g. in Czech it is currently impossible for the verb "být" to take over the aspectual function in the past tense as this is one of the few verbs that do not distinguish perfective/imperfective aspects. On the other hand in the future tense, the imperfective verbs form future with synthetic future tense of "být" + infinitive of the main verb, while for perfective verbs, the future is expressed merely by their "morphological present", since there is nothing like perfective present tense:

Dělám - I do / I am doing (imperfective aspect, present tense)
Udělám - I will do / I am going to do (perfective aspect, future tense expressed by "morphological present")
Budu dělat - I will do / I will be doing (imperfective aspect, future tense)

So here, the aspect is kind of expressed by the presence of the auxiliary (if not on the auxiliary, again the copula verb does not distinguish the aspect) - this can be seen with verbs that normally do not distinguish aspect (typically verbs of latin origin)

Informuji - I inform / I am informing (imperfective, present)
Informuji - I will inform (perfective, future - expressed by "morphological present)
Budu informovat - I will inform / I will be informing (imperfective, future)
Answer: In Portuguese, there are at least two different kinds of auxiliary verbs.
First, there are syntactical auxiliaries, that change grammatical features of the main verb. Those are ir (to go), ser (to be), estar (to be, too, but the meaning is quite different from "ser"), ter (to have), and haver (to have, but in different contexts - and, no, it is not a cognate of "have"; their similarity is a mere coincidence).
Ser is used for changing voice, not tense or aspect:

Joana processou José. - Jane sued Joseph.
José foi processado por Joana. - Joseph was sued by Jane. (foi is the past simple of ser.)

The others are used for tense/aspect modification. Ir + infinitive of the main verb indicates future or conditional, estar + gerundive of the main verb expresses "imperfect" (or continuous) aspect, ter and haver + past participle of the main verb express perfect aspect:

Eu vou dormir. - I am going to sleep. (Vou is the indicative present of ir.)
Eu ia dormir. - I was going to sleep.
Eu estou brincando. - I am joking.
Eu havia dormido. - I had slept.
Eu tenho dormido. - I have been sleeping.

Those verbs can also be used as main verbs on their own, with perhaps the exception of haver, whose present indicative, há, seems to be evolving into some kind of particle - to the point that there is generalised confusion with the homophone preposition a.
Second, there are "modal" auxiliaries that change the semantics of sentences, such as querer (to want), poder (can), precisar (to need), parecer (to seem), without messing with tense or aspect (unless they are themselves flexed for tense/aspect).


Weren't there originally going to be nine Star Wars films?

Question: I seem to remember reading that there were going to be three trilogies originally in Star Wars, i.e. they would add episodes 7 - 9.
Was that ever the case? What happened to that plan?
Update: looks like that original plan might be back after all!
Comment: Depends what you mean originally.  From the beginning?  No.  Was there a plan when they made the prequels?  I think there was, but I don't know.  I hope they don't, judging from the prequels, they'll walk all over the canon established by the EU. And I like that canon a hell of a lot better than anything Lucas might come up with now.
Comment: I've heard ["creative consultant"](http://movies.yahoo.com/blogs/movie-talk/star-wars-goes-disney-extent-231113047.html)  rather than head
Comment: Ok, so I know this is an old question, but Disney has bought Lucas Films now and they plan to make more star wars movies with Lucas as creative head.
Comment: I think I read in something to that effect in the Disney Adventures magazine back when there was hype about "star wars episode 1"
Answer: I've done a bunch of research on this topic, and there just aren't many reliable sources on the matter... As with many questions on this site, there's a Wikipedia entry that lists the best sources. Bottom line is this:

Star Wars was originally only going to be a single episode.
The movie was so popular, that a total of 11 sequels were sketched out (according to Time Magazine from March 1978).
The number of planned episodes varied, but the final number of 9 came from a Time Magazine article in May 1983. The prequels were fairly well defined there, the sequels, well, not at all really.
There are some fairly current rumors that sequels might be planned, but nothing for sure, so...

Hope this sets the record straight.
EDIT: Oct 30, 2012
Disney bought Lucas Films, which owns Star Wars. Bottom line is, they are going to produce at least another trilogy, and quite possibly a lot more movies than that. See this news article.
Comment: I'm glad you cited the _Time Magzine_ article, among others.  I do remember Lucas talking about sequels in various interviews, especially in _Time_.  I believe there was at least one more big story on him and the franchise around 1980, when Episode V came out.
Comment: I'm glad you found the Time article too, because I definitely remembered three trilogies (9 films) being mentioned in the media around the time the original three  movies came out, and I was starting to worry about my memory with some saying there was never such a plan.
Comment: Darn, I cannot upvote for that edit, since I already voted previously ... Thanks for the info, anyway!
Answer: Many contradicting claims have been made on that subject:

George Lucas's conception of Star Wars was of a single episode in an unmade serial

Wikipedia, Star Wars sequel trilogy article

But also:

In a 2004 interview, Hamill said: "You know, when I first did this, it was four trilogies. 12 movies! And out on the desert, any time between setups...lots of free time. And George was talking about this whole thing. I said, 'Why are you starting with IV, V and VI? It's crazy.' [Imitating Lucas grumble,] 'It's the most commercial section of the movie.'
starwars.wikia Sequel trilogy article

There is also some rumor that Thrawn Trilogy by Timothy Zahn was an order by George Lucas for the movies 7-8-9, but the same rumor has circulated about Dark Empire.
Comment: This is going to become a SciFi.SE meme, isn't it?  "There's a wikipedia article for that."
Comment: @Daniel Bingham If we keep having question that could be answered like that, I guess it's our destiny.
Comment: It's not surprising about Zahn rumors. Zahn SW books are arguably the absolutely best ones in EU, but a large margin IMHO.
Comment: I didn't think there was anything wrong with this particular question.
Comment: This is going to be asked so much we might end up having to put something in the FAQ saying not to. Use it as an example.
Comment: I am very skeptical of the Hamill quote. Numbering wasn't added till AFTER ANH was already in theaters.
Answer: The one thing about George Lucas that everyone needs to understand is that, since he began working on what became Star Wars in 1973, he changed its so-called "history" countless times.
I will try to do this as spoiler-free and succinctly as possible...
After American Graffiti, George Lucas wanted to make a serial sci-fi film like the ones that he grew up loving as a kid. Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola tried to get the rights to Flash Gordon but the owner wouldn't sell it to a bunch of "unknowns".
Lucas decided to write it on his own. First was a two pages outline known as the "Journa; of the Whills", in which he mentions the Jedi Windu and slowly starts to create some kind of backstory to this new universe.
But from there, nothing… Lucas couldn't come up with a story. He remembered a film he saw while studying film making, The Hidden Fortress by the great Akira Kurosawa. Lucas took the story, characters and most of the locations and changed only some of it. When he presented the first draft to Francis Ford Coppola, his friend and partner was shocked. "This is The Hidden Fortress!" said Coppola. Francis suggested that they get the rights to remake it but they couldn't.
From there Lucas simply reworked some of the elements, but the basic story and final film remained an "updated" version of The Hidden Fortress.
It was only while in principal photography that Lucas decided to change the title from The Adventures of Luke Skywalker to Star Wars. There was no "Episode IV". There was no "A New Hope". The original plan was for only one film, but Fox asked for Lucas to plan for a sequel might be a possibility if the film made some money. With that in mind, both Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher were signed for a sequel. George Lucas asked Alan Dean Foster to write a sequel that could be made for cheap, with the only returning characters to be Luke, Leia and Darth Vader (who could be recast since he's a person in a suit). That "sequel" became the 1978 novel Splinter of the Mind's Eye.
As you all know Star Wars was huge! A phenomenal success. It's then that George Lucas thought of the idea that he could make a new Star Wars film every year, but with someone new as the director. There would be a total of 12 films, just like the serials he loved as a kid.
Work on the sequel started for Lucas. One thing he noticed was that the Darth Vader character was among the most popular of the characters from the film. In fact, he was the most popular right after R2-D2 and C-3PO in terms of merchandise sales.
With the struggle to come up with a solution to introduce the Skywalker father, who at this point in Lucas's mind is someone completely different than Darth Vader, Lucas had to make a choice. In Star Wars, Darth Vader is simply a henchman for the Empire. He is Grand Moff Tarkin's right-hand man. He is the one that goes to war to get the job done. Vader invades the Rebels' ship at the beginning and even participates in the spaceship fight at the end to protect the Death Star.
But with the growing popularity of Vader, Lucas decided to turn things around. By the second draft of what would become The Empire Strikes Back, Darth Vader had become father Skywalker.
It leads to one of the greatest twists in cinema history.
The sequel took so long to prepare that the plan was changed. Lucas decided that there wouldn't be 12 films in total but now "only" 9. With the theatrical re-release of Star Wars, the title was changed to Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. Back then theatrical re-release was a common thing.
With everything taking so long to make the first film, Lucas decided not to direct the sequel. While he refused at first, Irvin Kershner took on the directing chair for the sequel. Kershner had been a teacher and somewhat of a mentor to Lucas.
When The Empire Strikes Back was released, it had the "Episode V" in its title. The film didn't perform as well as the first one, Lucas blaming pretty much everyone but himself for it.
With the next sequel, Lucas decided not direct it but to control everything. Return of the Jedi was more or less a rework of the original film but with a bigger budget, particularly for special effects. The cantina is now Jabba's palace. The spaceship fight is bigger. And the original ending of Star Wars where the Wookiees were to fight the Empire was reworked with the Ewoks.
Lucas's personal life was going down the toilet and this whole Star Wars thing had taken the best and worst of him. After the release of Return of the Jedi, it was announced that the other 6 films, 3 prequels and 3 sequels, would never get made.
The Thrawn Trilogy by Timothy Zahn renewed interest in the Star Wars series in the 1990s. Star Wars was cool again. Lucas decided to return to the series and work on the prequels.
I have been a Star Wars fan since the very beginning. My sources are various articles, interviews and videos. More importantly, any self-respecting Star Wars fan should read the amazing book, The Secret History of Star Wars.
Comment: I will confess, when I saw the length of the answer, all the CAPITAL LETTERS and no references (in the form of links), I wondered what kind of answer it would be. Actually, I think it is very interesting and seems very believable (even without the links). Thanks.
Comment: No problem, it was a great answer!
Comment: Sorry for the caps. I have always typed titles in such ways. As for the links, I mentioned some of the sources at the end. For years I have been doing personal research about all of this but Michael Kaminski did it so much better then I would ever had!
http://secrethistoryofstarwars.com/
Comment: @Arc-Vile Great answer! You should check out mine for a little extra info, below. Gary Kurtz has revealed a bit information over the years, and the impact that RAIDERS had on the STAR WARS universe. It's interesting that you feel Lucas thought EMPIRE was a failure. Sure it did earn half as much as STAR WARS, but that was a freak occurrence in cinema history... right? EMPIRE still make a butt-load of money. Interestingly JEDI, even with Lucas in control, did similar numbers to EMPIRE (maybe he thought it was still EMPIRE'S fault?) RAIDERS did around the same money as SW the sequels, too.
Comment: Back in the late 70's I believed that George Lucas had really planned out a "triple trilogy" but these days I believe he was making it up as he went along.  The first movie had a sub-plot with Luke getting romantically interested in Leia... pretty sure Lucas had not yet decided they were siblings.  Other things mentioned in this answer, and this answer has other evidence that was news to me.  +1, great answer.
Comment: This is a great answer, but you miss a section of the story. The plan during Empire was to make 9 films. When Lucas took back control he changed it to 6 and tied everything up. The original plans for 7-9 were totally undone by this move: Originally Han was to die at the end of Jedi. Luke and Leia weren't siblings. The Emporer was only to appear in person in Episode 9.
Answer: Depending on his plans at the time and when you asked him, George Lucas has variously said there would be one film, three films, six films, nine films or 12 films.
A trilogy of trilogies
It was widely reported in 1980 that there would be nine films: a trilogy of trilogies.
Al Walentis wrote in the May 25, 1980 Reading Eagle:

Lucas originally envisioned "Star Wars" as a single feature, but his 200-page screenplay proved too unwieldy. He then began tinkering with his story line, cutting it apart, sorting our all the various subplots. The script finally was pieced together as three distinct trilogies.
"There are essentially nine films," Lucas said. "The first trilogy is about the young Ben Kenobi and the early life of Luke Skywalker's father when Luke was a young boy. The first trilogy takes place some 20 years before the second. About a year elapses between each story of the first trilogy. The whole adventure - encompassing the three trilogies - spans about 40 years."

Irvin Kershner, director of The Empire Strikes Back (1980), was also on-script with the nine-film plan. Tom Buckley of the N.Y. Times wrote on May 25, 1980's The Spokesman-Review:

"I told George I didn't want to do a sequel," Kershner said."He said, 'I don't blame you. Neither would I, but this isn't. It's the second act of the second trilogy of nine films I plan to make in this theme. I want it to be better than mine.' ..."

On the same page of the same paper, Richard Freeman of Newhouse News wrote:

Three years ago, Hamill signed up for three "Star Wars" films, of which "The Empire Strikes Back" is the second. The third - still in the planning stage - will be called "The revenge of the Jedi," and Hamill worries that these titles will suggest the various Pink Panther sequels to audiences.
If things work out, these three movies will eventually constitute only a third of the projected nine-movie "Star Wars" saga, but Hamill doesn't plan to be in any of the others.

On the following page of the same paper, Aljean Harmetz of the New York Times wrote:

The "Star Wars" George Lucas has created in his mind will take nine movies to tell. "Star Wars" is actually "Star Wars, Episode IV: A New Hope," the first movie of the second trilogy. "The Empire Strikes Back" is "Star Wars, Episode V," while "The Return of the Jedi' is episode VI. The first trilogy deals with the young Darth Vader and the young Ben Kenobi. At the end of the first trilogy, Luke Skywalker is four years old. Only the robots - R2D2 and C-3PO - will be characters in all the movies.
He chose to start in the middle because the first trilogy is, he says, "more plot-oriented, more soap-operaish." He adds that the "central core problem" of "Star Wars" hasn't even been stated yet. Although he originally saw Star Wars as six movies, his "dream" was only for "Star Wars" to do well enough so that he could finish the three movies in the second trilogy. "If people had laughed 'Star Wars' off the screen, I'd have been less surprised than I was at what did happen," he says. "Until the day it opened, I felt it would do $16 million and, if I pushed hard, I could make 'Empire.'"

An interview with Harrison Ford in Lakeland Ledger of July 4, 1980:

Like Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker) and Carrie Fisher (Princess Leia), Ford has already signed up for the third "Star Wars" film, which is tentatively entitled "The Revenge of the Jedi." This will conclude the middle trilogy of the nine-part series, and Ford does not know whether it signals the end of Han Solo. It is up to George Lucas, the creator of the saga.
"He has an idea of doing one (involving what happened to Solo) about 15 years from now, when I'll be 53. That's something I'd like to do."

The Phoenix of June 21, 1980 also mentions the three trilogies spanning 40 years, and:

Thereafter, Lucas will go back to the first trilogy, starting with a story so far back that it does not include Darth Vader.
If interest sustains, Star Wars could be in production well into the 1990s. David Prowse figures he'll get killed off (by Luke Skywalker?) in the seventh or eighth story.

At least one trilogy
And it seems at least one trilogy was planned from the start. One week after Star Wars came out, The Leader-Post of June 3, 1977 says:

[Mark] Hamill said he believes Lucas plans a Star Wars trilogy because all the actors are under contract for two more films.

Reporting on the film's record-breaking success, an AP story in May 26, 1978's Schenectady Gazette says:

Lucas had originally conceived of "Star Wars" as a trilogy. Work on the first sequel is well under way...

12 films
An article by Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times, printed in The Tuscaloosa News of June 15, 1979, quotes The Empire Strikes Back producer Gary Kurtz:

Kurtz says that there are on paper the makings of a grand design of 12 films, including three stories that would historically precede the Skywalker takes (prequels, as they are dreadfully know these days).

A May 5, 1980 article quotes David Prowse as saying "They plan to do 12 movies."
13 movies
Finally, this 1979 promo advert for Kenner Star Wars claims:

"That's right, Star Wars is forever. George Lucas and 20th Century Fox have plans for twelve more block-busting chapters to the Star Wars story.

So does that make 13?
15 and more
Lucas is selling Lucasfilm and the Star Wars rights to the Walt Disney Company who according to CNN (October 31, 2012) will make at least three sequel films, and then another film every two years (which might might not be sequels), and also possibly a television series:

"It's now time for me to pass Star Wars on to a new generation of filmmakers," George Lucas said in a written statement. "I've always believed that Star Wars could live beyond me, and I thought it was important to set up the transition during my lifetime."
Lucas said he will work as a creative consultant on Star Wars Episode 7, the first of a planned new trilogy of live-action Star Wars movies. It is targeted for release in 2015, Disney said.
Disney hopes to essentially relaunch the Star Wars film franchise, which had its last installment in 2005 with Revenge of the Sith. Following the three planned sequels, the company envisions releasing even more Star Wars movies at a rate of a new film every two to three years.
Future movies may not be sequels but movies that focus on fringe characters. Disney also believes there is potential for a television series.
Comment: Great answer and even more detailed than the wikipedia article. This deserves more upvotes.
Answer: Some fantastic answers here, but I thought I'd just add a little more detail, that I don't think has been included in any of the others. Firstly, as has already been said, STAR WARS was only ever one film. Vader wasn't Luke's father, Leia wasn't Luke's sister, no further films were planned.
Even the original 1977 opening crawl looked like this:

That's right. No "Episode IV : A New Hope".
It's difficult to remember now, but STAR WARS was HUGE. I mean TITANIC big. Adjusted for inflation it's actually still the second highest grossing movie of all-time (AVATAR is only number 14).
So Lucas and his friends set to work on expanding the universe, much like the Wachowski's did with THE MATRIX. Lucas's "second in command", from the beginning of his Hollywood career, was a man called Gary Kurtz. Kurtz produced Lucas's first "Hollywood" feature, AMERICAN GRAFITTI, which in itself was a big success (currently 44 on the highest grossing films of all time list), STAR WARS, and THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK.
Lucas worked with Kurtz (and many others) on producing a rough outlines for approximately 8 more movies, making 9 in total. The EMPIRE STRIKES BACK was made according to this plan.
After the success of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (the project Lucas put together with Steven Spielberg), Lucas decided that cinema-goers wanted more of a rollercoaster action movie, and so changed the 9 movie plan.
Kurtz and Lucas were at logger-heads over a lot of things. Some of them technical, some of them artistic. According to Kurtz they agreed they should go their separate ways before RETURN OF THE JEDI began, with Kurtz taking the opportunity to work with Jim Henson on THE DARK CRYSTAL.
However, since Kurtz was so intricately involved in the evolution of STAR WARS into something bigger, he's a great source. According to him, the outlines for the nine movies went like something this:

EPISODE 1: Was to focus on the origins of the Jedi Knights and how they are initiated and trained
EPISODE 2: Introduction and development of Obi-Wan Kenobi
EPISODE 3: Introduction and life of Vader
EPISODE 4: There were seven different drafts of the film. At one point, they pursued buying the rights to Hidden Fortress because of the strong similarities. At one point, Luke was a female, Han was Luke's brother, Luke's father was the one in prison (interesting point for some debates) and the film featured 40 wookies [sic]
EPISODE 5: Once written, the screenplay of Empire is almost exactly what is seen on screen. The only cut scenes were those involving wampas in the rebel base (cut because of time and unsolved technical glitches) and about two minutes of Luke/Yoda Jedi training with no real dialog.
EPISODE 6: Leia was to be elected "Queen of her people" leaving her isolated. Han was to die. Luke confronted Vader and went on with his life alone. Leia was not to be Luke's sister.
EPISODE 7: Third trilogy was to focus on Luke's life as a Jedi, with very few details planned out.
EPISODE 8: Luke's sister (not Leia) appears from another part of the galaxy.
EPISODE 9: First appearance of the Emperor.

(I believe he went into greater detail in an issue of SFX magazine, but I've been unable to find a copy of the text on the internet... I bet it's there somewhere!)
There's also a great interview with Kurtz here, where he goes into a bit more detail:

The one story thread [in Return of the Jedi] that got totally tossed out the window, which was really pretty important I think, was the one of Vader trying to convince Luke to join him to overthrow the Emperor. That together they had enough power that they could do that, and it wasn't him saying I want to take over the world and be the evil leader, it was that transition. It was Vader saying, "I'm looking again at what I've done and where my life has gone and who I've served and, very much in the Samurai tradition, and saying if I can join forces with my son, who is just as strong as I am, that maybe we can make some amends." So there was all of that going on in Jedi as well, that was supposed to go on. So the story was quite a bit more poignant and the ending was the coronation of Leia as the queen of what was left of her people, to take over the royal symbol. That meant she was then isolated from all of the rest and Luke went off then by himself. It was basically a kind of bittersweet ending. She's not his sister that dropped in to wrap up everything neatly. His sister was someone else way over on the other side of the galaxy and she wasn't going to show up until the next episode.

Read more: https://www.filmthreat.com/interviews/8/#ixzz2Fcy0psgB
Comment: Weird Al Yankovic's parody song, "Yoda", came out after TESB, and commented on the rumors:
-I know that I'll-
be coming back someday
-I'll be playin' this part
-'Til I'm old and grey
-The long-term contract
-I had to sign -Said I'll be making these movies-
'Til the end of time....
Answer: What is now Episode IV was originally released as simply "Star Wars". It was chosen out of all the stories Lucas had come up with in that universe because it was best able to stand alone as a single movie. Had it been only modestly successful as the studio thought it would be (most of the people working on it actually thought it'd bomb), it probably would have been the only Star Wars movie, and Lucas would have either moved on with the Indiana Jones stories he had in the works, or faded into obscurity. As it was, the film was so successful that Lucas could afford to bankroll ESB himself (something not normally done especially at the time, though the model has since been replicated by Spielberg, Cameron and several other prominent screenwriter/directors).
Answer: I realize this is long after the fact, but I just happened to stumble across this interview with Gary Kurtz on mashable.com ('Star Wars' Producer Blasts 'Star Wars' Myths) where he says this (The original Star Wars wasn't really supposed to be called "Episode IV" back in 1977):

We were toying with the idea of calling it Episode III, IV, or V —
  something in the middle. Fox hated that idea. They said it'll really
  confuse the audience — and actually they were right. If you go to see
  a film, and it's been touted as this new science fiction film, and it
  says Episode III up there, you'd say, "What the hell?"
We were a bit clouded by the fact that we wanted it to be as much like
  Flash Gordon as possible. Because if you went to Saturday morning
  pictures and came in and saw episode eight of Flash Gordon, you'd have
  the scroll at the beginning, the rollup, which we imitated. So we
  thought that would be really clever. But it was stupid at the time,
  because it'd be impossible to explain to anybody what it meant.

Along with this (On George Lucas' frequent claim that he made Star Wars by taking the first draft, chopping it into thirds — which then became the original trilogy):

That's not true. There were a lot of little bits and pieces that were
  reasonably good ideas and that ended up being in the final draft. But
  once the final draft was actually locked and the Huycks did their
  polish on it, there wasn't enough material to do other movies.
There were some odd ideas that got thrown out, like the Wookiee
  planet; that was a cost factor. There were some other ideas that might
  have been included if there was more budget. Some of those ended up in
  later films. But [George's story on how it is written] is perpetuated
  by the fact that he and I did interviews at the time of the opening of
  Star Wars, saying we took a section out of the middle because there
  was too much material and we want to do more films.
After the film opened, Fox said, "Can you do another one?" And we said
  it's possible, but for cost purposes it would be better if we
  committed to two more because we can amortize the cost of sets and
  everything that way. So that's really what happened. But the story
  material was not fully formed.

There are a lot of other neat little tidbits in there as well, so the interview is certainly worth a read.  But, the gist here is that it looks like, when Episode IV was originally being filmed, there wasn't really a plan for anything else to be made (no sequels or prequels).  There were ideas that were thrown out for Episode IV that ended up making it into the other movies, but it wasn't "planned that way", per se.  They may have "wanted" to do more, but there wasn't a specific plan or outline that already included the framework for anything other than one movie.
Comment: Another great answer. This page is backwards. All the best answers have the lowest scores!
Answer: I suspect some of this is a generational difference. I just bet a student, who was adamant that George Lucas never wrote episodes 7 - 9. I came back from the Peace Corps in 1977 after having read a promotional article about Star Wars in Time magazine, hoping the movie would still be out. My memory is of seeing it, with the "Episode IV: A New Hope" in the crawl. This would have to have been August or September. I suppose this was the re-release described above. Somehow I have always had in my head that we still were not finished with the saga because we needed episodes 7-9 (and thus I had little tolerance for viewing what I saw as prequels in episodes 1-3). My student's generation is all about who wrote what, who directed, and who is making the money from episodes 7 to 9. A different point of view.
Comment: This seems like more of a story of your life than an answer. Although interesting, it doesn't quite work for the Q&A format.
Comment: Do you have any sources to back this up?


Can a gym get free without battling?

Question: I wonder if a gym can get free after some time (like e.G. 2,3,4,..,n days no action) or by removing defending pokemons (i guess that is not possible but i am not sure?) or other circumstances, or only through winning battles against the defending pokemons? Or will the gym be captured forever if noone tries to lower reputation by attacking?
Answer: The only way to remove Pokemon and in turn a team from a gym is by lowering the Prestige of the gym down to zero. Every time you defeat a single Pokemon in the gym, it lowers the prestige by a little bit, with a bonus for defeating every Pokemon in the gym.
To answer your second question, yes, a gym can theoretically be held forever by a single team if no one decides to fight it.
Answer: The only way to get a pokemon out of a gym is by defeating it, that is if it is in an opposing team. If no one lowers the reputation of the gym it will belong to team/trainers in the gym until beaten.
Comment: I wonder why my answer got DV?

Can a gym get free without battling?


How are the masses of celestial bodies determined?

Question: I was scrolling through the list of moons of Jupiter and I wondered how astronomers where able to determine the masses of those objects. When I tried to google it I meanly found results of people deriving the mass of Jupiter from the masses of its moons using Kepler's laws. So the mass of celestial bodies with satellite(s) can be estimated this way. But what about the rest? Or are they all derived from the trajectories of man-made satellites passing near them?
Answer: Newton's analysis of Kepler's laws lets you determine the ratios of the masses of everything in the solar system with quite high precision, but it doesn't let you determine the actual mass.  The actual masses were one of the large unsolved problems of physics for almost a century, until 1798 when Cavendish's work with a torsion balance (described by him as "weighing the world") determined the density of Earth, from which the masses of everything could be computed.
Comment: Good answer. As for asteroids, they are estimated to be similar in composition to the one NEAR flew by. The course deviations in NEAR's path from Mathilde have yielded its mass.


User's of VersionOne - How do you handle requests that impact a current Epic/Product?

Question: Currently, my effort has a few Epics in flight.  One of the Epic's is servicing or enhancing a product in production.  We are starting to use the request feature in VersionOne to intake these enhancements/requests which come in fits and starts.  Most of these requests seem to consist of Business Requirements changes, some of which were found via defects.   How can we manage our business requirement change requests (mostly smaller than an feature or Epic) to a product in production, without having a representative Epic that lives forever, while still angling new stories or features to a business value?
Answer: Move away from Epics and trying to deliver the whole. There is always a PBI from an EPIC that is not as important as other PBIs in other Epics.
So try to change your colleagues' mindsets to focus on delivering the PBIs (user stories) and not focused on Epics.
If you find something as a result of a defect, it is a sign that something is not working properly, you need to look back into your process and see why you missed that.
Answer: Business requirements changes found via defects?
This sounds like that PO's requirement are off course from the customers expectations.
Agile is all about empirical feedback, so if your customer is telling you that there is a defect in the system, you make that a new user story and get the PO to prioritize it for the next sprint. If you add this to an epics then keep the epic focused.
Epic 5: Fix product's feature XXX
is a better option than.
Epic 5: General placeholder for all defects.
Which will never close.
There are a number of other grouping options available as well, if you want to remain to have a general enhancement bucket.
i.e.
Epic: Servicing or enhancing a product in production
Can become
Epic: 2017 Q1 Servicing or enhancing a product in production
Epic: 2017 Q2 Servicing or enhancing a product in production
Epic: 2017 Q3 Servicing or enhancing a product in production
Epic: 2017 Q4 Servicing or enhancing a product in production
Hope this helps ...


After 12.04 release would 10.04 still be LTS?

Question: Silly question, but given that I have upgraded and downgraded from Lucid to Natty and back, and after some months of anticipation, Lucid to Oneiric then back, would the LTS cycle of Lucid end in April?
Answer: You can check here for all the releases and their end of life/schedule and stuff like that - https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases
According to it, the end of life for Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx is

April 2013 for the Desktop version
April 2015 for the Server version

Be clear, that end of life does not mean that Lucid Lynx will be unusable but just that it won't be receiving any active important security updates after that date.
Answer: 10.04 will end it's LTS life cycle (As mentioned in the Ubuntu Wiki: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases) in:

April 2013 (Desktop)
April 2015 (Server)

The reasons behind this life cycle are here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LucidLynx/ReleaseManifest but basically it is 3 years Desktop versions and 5 years Server versions.
So you still have some more time to stay with it and enjoy it.
When 10.04 ends it will be remembered. I enjoyed many weekends with it. He always gave it the best he could.
Long live 10.04!
Answer: 10.04LTS will be supported until April 2013 on the desktop and Apri 2015 on the server. That's 3 and 5 years of support, respectively. New releases doesn't change anything. From 12.04LTS, the support will be five years on both server and desktop, hence it'll be supported until April 2017, though the plan is to release new LTS releases in 2014 and 2016.
Answer: If your LTS is deployed on a work bread and butter machine, its always wise to be slow and steady, hold on for six months and then do a fresh clean install of 12.04 Precise Pangolin.


Do I have "the right" as a grad student to take a class just for fun?

Question: I'm currently doing a PhD in computational biology, but I have other interests like music and ceramics, and I'm lucky enough to be at a university with excellent programs in both. I've wanted to take a course in either of these fields for the 3 semesters so far I've been here, but my advisor won't approve and sign off on them. I have a free slot this spring and I really want to take a course just for fun, and to learn from the world-renowned instructors. I've tried negotiating about just taking an evening class, or having my work for him improve since I'll be happier overall, but he's just stuck on "this isn't your field". Who's being unreasonable here?
Comment: Is there a reason you would have to officially register for or enroll in the class?  Would the instructor be willing to have you audit unofficially?
Comment: Are you paying tuition yourself, or is it being paid by a dept. fellowship, research grant, or similar?
Comment: @AlexanderWoo Auditing is often a good option, but something like ceramics is likely to require hands-on work with materials & equipment that need to be paid for.
Comment: When I was a materials science grad student, courses in any related field were pretty much fair game (engineering, math, and sciences). Outside of STEM, not at all. Why? All the STEM areas knew that they generally had about as many students taking courses outside of their home departments as 'foreign' students taking courses inside their departments, so they basically declared it all a wash on paying tuition. But, for an engineering student to take a course in the music department required a real transfer of money to the music department. That was where the problem was. So no music classes.
Answer: Just turn up for the class. Don't register; just sit-in. Afterwards, explain to the instructor that you're studying a PhD in computational biology and that you have a personal interest in the course. You won't get credit, but you're fulfilling a personal interest, not an academic requirement.
Comment: I don't like this answer. I find it rude to show up in a class where the institution is requiring everyone else present to pay to be present. If you want to audit a course, *contact the professor teaching the course first*: they may or may not be okay with you attending as an "unofficial"/unregistered auditor. Don't be sneaky about it, it reflects poorly on you.
Comment: I'll add: it might depend a little on the inherent costs of the course and whether the instructor would mind / have extra costs because of you.  If the course really has no costs on a per pupil basis, and no physical seat limit, the instructor is likely to be happy to have a student who is there *because they want to be*.  Talk to the instructor.
Comment: It's also likely against school policy and an instructor who permits unenrolled attendance (where students could reasonably audit) faces political issues. This is because for every enrolled student, credit or not, the department gets a slice of the tuition money pot. Every unenrolled student means the department is losing out on thousands of dollars of funding they are otherwise entitled to. (Likewise, when you enroll, your department and advisor are losing out on their slice of your tuition payments)
Comment: I agree with this. Even my own thesis adviser takes a course at my university in an area completely unrelated to his field. It's a great opportunity to learn something new for free.
Comment: @BryanKrause This isn't about auditing and I'd answer differently if it were. It isn't about being sneaky nor about deceptive, I recommend speaking to the instructor. This is a practical solution that avoids wasting anyone's time. It is a solution that is recommended by departments I've worked at and is typical amongst students.
Comment: @user2768 Just sitting in is called auditing, whether officially or unofficially. University education is expensive, the other people in that course or their agents are paying a lot for them to be there. Your department might allow it but I wouldn't suggest assuming it is typical.
Comment: @BryanKrause It is actually the mechanism recommended to students who were unsure on what classes to take. It is used between institutions. So, it is typical. At least, between those institutes. (Your definition of audit seems to be limited to North America.)
Answer:
Do I have "the right" as a grad student to take a class just for fun?

I think phrasing the question as you did is slightly the wrong way of looking at the situation. It is more correct to say that you have the right to be treated with respect by your advisor. This includes having the advisor recognize that you are an intelligent human being with many dreams, hopes, ambitions, and a rich set of interests that go far beyond "doing research in computational biology", and that the years you are now spending at a university community with leading experts in so many fascinating areas of human knowledge are an amazing and unique opportunity for you to pursue those interests and grow and develop as a person.
To be honest, I feel sorry for your advisor for being so short-sighted and narrow-minded that he cannot understand why taking these classes is important to you. It does not sound like he is treating you with the respect you deserve, and by failing to respect you I think he is also failing to respect himself and to be the decent person that I assume he wants to be and might believe himself to be.
Finally, your question reminds me of a part of Steve Jobs' 2005 commencement address at Stanford. Talking about his days as a college dropout taking random classes to pursue his eclectic interests, he says:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this.[...]
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But 10 years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backward 10 years later.

I know this doesn't help with the practical question of what you should do, which others have commented about, but I thought I'd offer my take on the philosophical aspect of your question. Keep dreaming, and good luck!
Answer: I once took courses that were not directly in my field.  I think it is appropriate but I would just listen to your advisor -- it's easier in the long run.  Perhaps take some courses / participate in events at a place like a church, the Y, student groups or clubs, etc.
NOTE:  At some places, they expect grad school to be your ENTIRE life, so this is not unexpected, though perhaps not fair.  My advisor wasn't like that.
Comment: If you are a graduate student with tuition remission, you aren't paying your tuition, someone else is, and generally people paying for things for you get some say in how that money is spent. That 'someone else' is probably not your advisor, it could be a government agency for example. This is the not the same as "I want to pay to take a cooking class at night and my advisor won't let me"
Comment: True, but under some registrations, one pays the same whether one is taking an 18 credit load or a 9 credit load, so it depends on the particular situation.
Comment: That may be, but that's not how the university accounting works behind the scenes. Even if you cost the same amount, the way that money is distributed across departments is going to be weighted according to your credit load. If you are an engineering student taking mostly classes in the engineering department and then you add one in music, that's money the engineering department expected to come back to themselves that is now going somewhere else. Additionally, if that money was from a govt source earmarked for your engineering education it might be against their rules.
Comment: I'm pretty sure my advisor wouldn't have approved it if it was against the rules, but it was a long time ago -- I got my Ph. D. more than 25 years ago, and I think this was a few years before that (probably 4)
Answer: There isn't an absolute answer to the question: the rights and responsibilities of a student vary between universities, and are probably set out in writing somewhere. At my university, any student could attend lectures in almost any subject (practical labs and medicine are the exceptions that I can recall), although etiquette was to ask permission from the lecturer in advance.
Without seeing the regulations for your university, we can make some inferences.

Do I have "the right" as a grad student to take a class just for fun?

I think you answer that question yourself:

my advisor won't approve and sign off on them.

If you need approval from your supervisor, then you don't have the (unrestricted) right.

However, the body asks a different question to the title:

Who's being unreasonable here?

To answer that, you have to get at why you need your advisor to approve and sign off.
Are the courses you take assessed to determine your progress? If so, your advisor is being reasonable: unless you can show how studying music or ceramics will improve your understanding of biology, the course would skew the assessment.
Do the courses need to be paid for? If so, who's paying?
If it comes down to thinking that you should be thinking about biology 24/7 then the advisor is being unreasonable, but the need to obtain approval hints at a good reason.
Answer: Ask the graduate program director in your department, or some other department administrator.  Ask in general terms, with neutral language.  That is, avoid terms such as "unreasonable" and avoid finger pointing.
If the answer is "It's perfectly all right, and it's none of the advisor's business, as long as the student strikes a good work-life balance," then go ahead and describe your difficulty.  I expect you could get a department signature.  (Avoid unnecessary conflict, and don't tell your advisor you made an end run around him.)
If I were the department administrator, I would sign your form with alacrity, and say

I'm glad you've found a rewarding hobby.
Answer: Well, maybe you are both being unreasonable. Do you have the "right"? Of course you do. Do you have the right to do it while committing to your current degree program. Perhaps, or not. That would depend on the rules in place at your institution as well as the wishes of your advisor.
I'm just going to guess that the advisor is concerned that you will not spend sufficient effort on the tasks associated with the degree if you take something extraneous. That may be a legitimate concert. It would be especially important if you are doing joint lab work with others.
It is normally a bad idea to go against your advisor's wishes. He has some say in your future and you want him to be happy to support you now and in the future. After you finish you can do as you please, of course.
You could also, take a course from a different institution. That would add to your load, of course and the advisor might still object if he learns of it, based on your level of commitment.
Perhaps the advisor is telling you something important about his view of your progress and what you need to do to succeed in comp-bio. Think about it.
Comment: _Think about it_ — Better yet, ask your advisor about it directly. If your advisor wants to tell you something important, they should use their words.
Comment: The consequences of doing things that might distract someone from their research are clear only in retrospect, but typically, one of those consequences is sanity.
Comment: @JeffE, actually, I meant only to think about the consequences of doing things that might distract you from your research and the things you need to do to succeed.
Answer: Do you have to formally ask your advisor for approval as a result of actual rules? If not, I would just take the course and not mention it to your advisor. It's like any other extra-curricular thing you might do but not mention to your advisor, like, I don't know, joining a tennis team.
Comment: Generally, "just do it behind your advisor's back" isn't great advice, **especially** if the advisor is not of the understanding / reasonable type.
Comment: This needs to be balanced against being obsequious, though; one needs to be an *independent* researcher and contributor from a professional point of view; one is just learning to live in the 'real' (post-undergrad) world too at this point, too. In general, I agree it's hard to make blanket statements though because profs vary wildly from potentially criminal-levels of stalking-based micromanagement on the one side, to not being debatably even still living on the other.
Comment: @cag51 possibly. In my opinion, it's equally likely that he merely *feels* that he needs his advisors approval, even if he does not according to written program rules. I agree that it's possible, however, that it is required according to program rules. This is due to direct experience of the former scenario during my Ph.D.
Comment: I like @user2768's suggestion to merely turn up though, more than even my answer here. Since formal credit won't matter for this course anyway, it's pretty much *the* correct approach.
Comment: The OP references that the advisor "won't sign off on it", which heavily implies that he *does* need the advisor's approval, and so taking it without approval is not really an option.
Comment: And regardless, it's not clear what's meant by 'right.' Rights given by the university? By the governmental constitution? By a higher power? By a sense of normative justice? Dan Romik's answer above is excellent at interpreting it as that last option.


Can I install TFS 2010 using SQL Server 2012?

Question: Can I install TFS 2010 on top of a SQL Server 2012 RC0 installation?  I do not need the sharepoint integration.
Answer: TFS2010 with SQL Server 2012 can only work with chek-in check-out project.
In order to complete TFS Configuration wizard
   (1) uncheck (Reporting Service)
   (2) uncheck (SharePoint Service)
and complete configuration wizard.
Reports and Bugs and Query will not work for TFS project check - check out can be done.
Answer: You can install TFS2010 using a SQL2012RTM though. After installation use the wizard for the basic configuration (without the reporting component, see install/config guide).
Using the Wizard for the Single-Server scenario, which is the recommended version, does not seem to work as it has some issues with RS/AS that have to be solved first.
Answer: It appears that TFS 2010 does NOT support SQL Server 2012 at this point (Jan 2012).  During configuration of TFS 2010, it reports that it cannot find a database, even though 2012 is installed.


What is on-topic for this site?

Question: One of the 7 questions every site must answer is an understanding of what is on topic for this site.  I'm introducing this question to collect answers for our FAQ.
Answer: This SE is for answering objective questions about Politics. It is not a place to advance opinions or debate, but rather for exchanging objective information about the policies, processes, and personalities that comprise the political arena. If you can't back it up, it's subjective. For purposes of this site, we define politics as:

The end result of conflicting egos working themselves out through matters of policy.

This means, the following items are on topic:

Matters of Policy: Central to the idea of this site are the nuts and bolts of policies introduced by governments, presumably for the welfare of their citizens. As such, asking about the tangible benefits and costs of legislation is on topic
Working Themselves Out: Processes are central to legislation is made. Questions seeking to understand the rules and processes by which policy is made in various legislatures or ruling bodies (inside and outside of the United States!) are wholly on topic
Conflicting Egos: In just about  any policy of substance, there are particular personalities that are central to its understanding, as well as demographic data about supporters and opponents of legislation. Asking "Why is [insert person here] such a jerk?" is clearly off-topic  - the answer is highly subjective, but asking "What groups of people tend to support X in her implementation of policy Y?" is answerable using polls, punditry, and other verifiable and reproducible sources.

If your question is rooted in one of these three pillars of politics, you're probably on-topic.  If your question (or answer!) is subjective, opinionated, or just not about one of these three things, we humbly suggest you look elsewhere for an answer to your query.
Comment: It is my own definition.  I came up with it in College about 20 years ago, on the spur of the moment - but I've long been satisfied with it :)
Comment: Just out of idle curiosity, is that definition your own, or plucked from somewhere?
Comment: "What groups of people tend to support X in her implementation of policy Y?" may be on topic but it is not constructive.  There is nothing constructive about building a stereotype.
Comment: @Chad - It can be constructively answered. [cite: Nate Silver]
Comment: @DVK - Yes bad questions can have great answers... that does not make them great questions
Comment: @Chad - the point is that your claim that it's a bad question is wrong.
Comment: @DVK - No just because it *can* be answered constructively does not mean that the question itself is constructive.  It can also be answered in a not constructive manner.  It is a bad question.  What color people make better slaves?  What religion produces the weakest soldiers? They are not constructive.
Comment: @Chad - ALL questions can be answered non-constructively. The difference is that a good question can be answered constructively (e.g. an expert can tell a correct answer from incorrect) and a bad one can not.
Comment: @Chad I would suggest you refer back to the question " Are personalities on topic?" question. We hashed this out there, and there seems to be consensus. If you disagree, I would heartily recommend a different answer. In either event, the comments are not the place to have this discussion!
Comment: @AffableGeek - That does not mean that questions do not need to be constructive.  I really think each of those 3 bullets should be their own answer.  I think you have 2 good bullets and one really really really bad one
Answer: I haven't been to the site for some time and coming back I notice a lot of questions which are not factually answerable, highly subjective and usually not contribute to the better understanding and not "make internet a better place", but just rehash existing arguments or express an opinion in the form of a question.
So I think we need to declare questions that can not be answered definitely to be off-topic. I.e. questions like "What opinion adherents of X usually hold on subject Y?" may be OK, because there could be documents, articles, etc. written by prominent adherents of X that shed light on their position on Y. But questions like "Why politician X did Y?" or even "Why politician X/country Y wouldn't do Z?" should be out unless there's a reason to assume there can be a definite answer to it and not just conjectures and guesses based on one's personal preferences and prejudices. Otherwise the site devolves into a political flame forum, and there are enough of those already out there.

What is on-topic for this site?


ISA and IIS logs

Question: In our network there is an ISA (2000) webproxy. It forwards requests to various IIS servers further down.
Each request results in a log entry on the ISA server and another log entry on the IIS server the request is forwarded to.
How would you match up these log entries ?
Answer: The only way you can match them is by corresponding URL, date and time, and in the IIS log the client IP will be that of your ISA server.  The logs are independent of each other so there is no concept of automatic correlation, you'll have to analyze it.
There might be tools by now (it's been a little while since I've done ISA administration) that will help you automate that analysis but I will admit I don't know of any.
Comment: @esjr: LogParser, or I used to even import them into a SQL database.

ISA and IIS logs


How do you firewall Linux so that unprivileged accounts can only access the web?

Question: I have a Debian server that allows users to log in. I don't mind them accessing the web or downloading files, but I want to otherwise restrict their internet access from that machine.
How should I set up my IPTABLES or other firewall to make this work easily?
Answer: This is actually extremely tricky from a technical perspective (the network layer doesn't usually know anything about users; there is no "user" field in a network packet).
But, Linux, being totally awesome, does have a solution for you.  You'll need the iptables "owner" module, and rules along the lines of this:
<code>iptables -A OUTPUT -o eth0 -p tcp --dport 80 -j ACCEPT
iptables -A OUTPUT -o eth0 -m owner --uid-owner 500 -j DROP
</code>
Where "500" is the UID of the user you'd like to block from hitting the net.  The first rule just allows all outbound port 80 traffic.
You probably need to load the owner module before this will work:
modprobe ipt_owner
So, add that to your rc.local file, or similar.  This assumes, of course, that your system has this module installed.  I don't know what package provides it on Debian.  It might be in the standard iptables package.
Comment: Yes, the owner module can do it. You could also block outbound traffic from processes whose group id is not some group you've authorised.
Comment: OP is talking about locally generated packets, isn't he?  He said "I have a Debian server that allows users to log in".  I assumed that meant the users are local.
Comment: The owner module only works for locally generated packets, not forwarded packets. So it won't do what your claiming.
Answer: Another option is to configure a proxy server (Squid) somewhere that allows general anonymous internet access but requires a login to do anything else. Then block access from your server at the firewall but allow the proxy through.
If you only have one machine, I would echo swelljoe's suggestion. Or combine the two ideas and make everything more granular if you prefer :)
Answer: I would suspect you would simply block all inbound and outbound ports for the host except for ports 22 (ssh) and 80 (web).  If you're using this computer for your own as well as helping out some friends learn, and require things like email, instant messeging, etc I would recommend creating a special group just for them that can only access a specific list of applications.   I think you may need to specify if this is a stand alone server or a workstation for you + a server for them.
Answer: You can use a SELinux policy for this, but unfortunately it's a bit more complicated to set it up than the iptables solution.
Answer: I did this once using a combination of squid and "name" - a really old linux/unix service that provides the current username. Generally speaking, name is a really really bad idea (as its unencrypted and you can modifiy it pretty easy; it's used by irc btw) but for a known set of machines, it works pretty well
Answer: Your looking for a proxy, along with iptables rules.  Use iptables to restrict port access and redirect traffic to the proxy.  In the proxy you filter the content you do/don't want getting through. (The owner module only works for packets created on the firewall itself, not the packets coming from your network.)


How to restore Sticker's stickiness?

Question: I have some old stickers from my collection that are almost fallen off of their backing paper. I was wondering if there's a decent way to restore them and they would still be stickers (would be able to peel them off of paper and apply to whatever surface). Any suggestions?
Comment: Would you be averse to something permanent?
Comment: If there would not be any proper way to do it then yes.
Comment: so your goal is to make them sticky, then put them back on the backing paper to continue to hold onto them? are the backs still clean?
Comment: Why can you not use the glassine hinges that are made for this kind of collection to attach stickers into albums? They are water-soluable, and inexpensive.
Answer: This may not be a life hack as it describes using an adhesive agent, but it is a great fix for the sticker problem. I am not certain it was designed to fix stickers so this may still be a hack... but nonetheless, here is my answer:
Elmer's makes a "rubber cement" which is basically a contact cement. I have used this to create stickers out of normal paper before, but never as a solution to "fix" old stickers.
Basically you apply the adhesive to the sticker an allow it to dry. you can then apply a second coat to the backing paper and allow this to dry. once they are both dry you can attach them to one another and the bond will hold.
With my home-made stickers I haven't had the need to remove them from the original surface, short of repositioning them when being first placed. I would assume that since I was able to readjust and have the sticker affix itself in the new position with ease, that you would be able to use this method to make a non-permanent sticker fixer solution.
Comment: Thanks for the answer. Unfortunately thera are no such items in my area to buy (I'm from outside US). What about the glue that's designed for bicycle tire puncture repair? Is it similar?
Comment: amazon sells it and ships it globally I believe... http://www.amazon.com/b?node=12900041 As far as the cement for bike tires, that bond is a much stronger fixative and most likely will not allow for future removal. it is a bonding cement.
Answer: To actually make a sticker sticky again without using any kind of tape, the easiest way I found would be using a spray adhesive, as shown here.
Another solution would be double-sided tape. But since that is fairly expensive you could stick (pun intended) to plain clear tape. Just roll a piece of clear tape (size depending on size of the sticker) into a loop with the sticky side on the outer side. Then attach this loop to your sticker and then stick it to the surface you want your sticker on. I personally use this "clear-tape-loop" anytime I want to stick something not that heavy somewhere.
If you want to remove the sticker sometime later I would stay away from any kind of glue (super glue, glue sticks, etc.) since those will leave glue residues. I actually didn't try the spray adhesive method myself, so I can't tell if it will leave residue as well.
Answer: Use Eclectic Products, Inc.'s "E6000 Extreme Tack" repositionable glue. I've been using it on paper scrapbooking stickers that do not stick to my matte-finish painted interior walls (paper-on-paper adhesives are notoriously weak) with total success. Extremely sticky, dries clear, not very expensive, comes off without staining, repositionable (as the label says), and available on Amazon as well as other websites. Use sparingly as directed and you will be pleased with the results.
Answer: Rinse the sticky part with water, then wait 30-50 minutes for it to dry, all done!
Comment: Welcome to Lifehacks! This sounds great but can you add some more detail? Thanks!

How to restore Sticker's stickiness?


How to access an API from a solidity smart contract?

Question: I saw how this can be done using Oraclize. Is there any native way to access an API from a solidity smart contract? I understand there is a restriction on the solidity program to be able to call an API.
Answer: If you don't want to use oracles you can evoke event which will trigger some method on your back-end. This method will create a call to an API and when the response is received it will compose new transaction, sign it with your private key and send response to your smart contract (it will update state or/and evoke some event, so you can know that you get a response).
Answer: In general, no, you can't access outside resources from smart contracts. So there is no "native" way to do it either. There are just different workarounds. Oraclize is one of them and @Roman gave you another option.
Have a look at How can an Ethereum contract get data from a website? for more details.


Why does photographing the Milky Way require short exposure, when star trails need long exposure?

Question: I can't understand — how do they work differently? I mean, when 2 secs exposure is required for photographing milky way, while 30 mins exposure is needed for photographing star trails, why isn't the milky way visible on the 30 min?
Comment: How are you determining these exposure times? 2s is probably too short for a good Milky Way exposure, and 30m is probably too long to get any kind of reasonably noise-free image -- if you want a half hour's worth of trails, you'd be better off stacking a number of shorter exposures.
Comment: @Caleb dark frame subtraction would go a long way to cleaning up the 30min image.
Answer: The second question is clear, stars need some time to (apparently) move in the sky. The celestial sphere is rotating at 15 degrees/hour around poles (Polaris on North hemisphere) and the apparent movement is bigger near the celestial equator and smaller near celestial poles.
But this movement is really a big problem if you want to take sharp photos of celestial objects, because ... they move! This effect is more pronounced with long lenses, and if you want to take a sharp photo of the Moon with a zoom lense you need to use speeds around 1/500.
The first question is more subtle to explain and I cant only imagine what could be happened. The Milky Way is a very dim object so using a long exposure may seem like a good idea, but the movement of the sky during that exposure time will produce a blurry image with a very dim light, almost invisible after enough exposure time. You have two options to avoid this problem: move the camera with precision to compensate the Earth movement (using a telescope automated tripod) or shooting with faster speed to freeze the movement on the photo, low f number to increase the amount of light that arrives to the sensor and use high ISO number to obtain more effect with this dim light.
Comment: And dark frame subtraction to remove a lot of the noise and hot/stuck pixels made evident by the use of high ISO combined with a weak signal (dim light).
Comment: So, is the way of photographing milky way by using high shutter speed, high ISO and high aperture?
Comment: But Caleb says 2 sec exposure is too dark for a good milky way photo?
Answer: 2 seconds is quite a long exposure, but if you want to get more of the milky way, you might want to extend this to about 20 seconds. Look up the rule of 600 which should help you to find the right exposure time for your camera and lens. And yes when i have photographed the stars I shot in RAW and used the highest ISO setting (1600) and widest aperture of my lens f/3.5 but as others have commented you will get noise this way which can be improved by using image stacking, although I have yet to try it. Also I edit my photos using lightroom to recover the detail from the RAW files.
Answer: Others have covered it but here is a short summary that MAY help.
For a given star in one position a short exposure is adequate.
For star trails
The required exposure for any given star at one point in the image is about the same BUT for the majority of the time a given star is not at a given point in the image. Exposure is a product of aperture and exposure period - so you will probably use a smaller aperture for star trails than for single exposures, but for a given brightness at a given point the total 'exposure' will be the same in each case.
Why? Read on ...
During the long exposure period, the earth rotates relative to the "fixed" star field - this motion is what creates the trails. While it is the earth which is* rotating relative to the stars it is common to say that 'the star field rotates' relative to the earth as it is how it appears to us and a convenient illusion to use.
As a "moving" star is in one area of the image for only part of the exposure, the time when the star is approximately at any one point in the image is small, so the actual star light at that point receives only a small part of the total exposure.
For any given point on the image, most of the time there is no star there (as they "move") so you get lots of background 'noise'.
The Milky Way IS in the star-trail image, but as all the objects in the Milky Way also "rotate" they all also leave trails and do not appear as individual objects.

Very probably :-). One could argue that the world IS central to all reality and that all the universe moves relative to it AND the rules of physics allow this point of view, but the arithmetic gets horrendous and it doesn't make much sense to use this perspective.