plastic storage for bottles

Question: I just found out that roaches harbor in cardboard boxes. Not to mention that cardboard breaks down easily when filled with damp, freshly sanitized bottles. Does anyone have suggestions for plastic versions that I can store finished bottles of beer in? This question was posted some time ago but the answer that was chosen leads to a website that no longer exists! What are the current solutions? I'd also like to not have to build my own crate.
Answer: Go to a plastic store, a catering store, or something similar and say you are looking for glass racks. There are many versions and something should work for you. Remember to take a bottle with to measure (width and height). Remember to ask about the weight that the rack can handle (if you want to store full bottles in the rack).
OR: Make friends with your local macro and ask if you can have some of their old crates.
OR: Make Your Own! http://www.instructables.com/id/Plywood-beer-crate/
Comment: do you have any urls for something like these? I live in a small town and it's unlikely that we have anything like this in our area.
Comment: I have URLs for South African sites, not sure if that will help you (not sure of your location). Google for "Catering Suppliers", "Plastic Manufacturers". Or go to a hotel and ask where they buy their equipment.
Answer: Try FastRack.
If you don't want to pay that much, you can use plastic containers with newspaper packed around the bottle to keep them from knocking into each other.
Comment: I've seen FastRack but are those also good for storing full bottles of homebrew?
Comment: No, FastRack doesn't work with capped bottles. I suggested it because you mentioned freshly sanitized bottles.
Comment: Oh yeah, I meant freshly sanitized as in the full bottles of beer that are still a little damp from being sanitized.
Comment: Also, all bottles need to be the same size.  You won't be able to stack 1L, 500ml and other sizes easily together.

plastic storage for bottles


Catan: Cities and Knights- barbarian attack with a differential of 2

Question: The scenario is as follows...
Player a has 3 cities and 2 knights, player B has 1 city and 1 knight, and player C has 1 city and no knights. The barbarians attack and given the state of the board, they have a strength of 5 but only 3 knights are activated. Player C obviously loses their city because they have the least amount of active knights but does player A also lose a city because they only have 2 knights to their 3 cities?
Answer: When the barbarians attack, they assume the strength of the total number of cities. Then we look at the total points of active knights on the board. When the knight points equal or surpass the barbarians strength, the Settlers are victorious. However, if there are more cities than knight points, the barbarians win. The actual difference does not matter after this point.
From the rulebook, Page 11 (completely dedicated to the barbarian attack):

If the barbarians win the battle, they pillage one or more cities.
  [...] The barbarians pillage one city belonging to the player who has
  the lowest total strength of active knights [...] If various players
  tie for having the lowest strength of active knights, each of those
  players loses 1 of his cities.

Additionally, if that city had a Wall, the Wall is also destroyed. If a city is a Metropolis, it cannot be destroyed by the barbarians. It is counted when they attack, though.
In your case, player C loses one city for not contributing any knights. If, for instance, player B had moved his knight on the previous turn and not re-activated it, players B and C were tied for least knight points (0) and both would have lost a city.
Comment: I should add a detail to the Metropolis. Barbarians can't destroy a Metropolis, but that also means a player can't choose a Metropolis if he has other cities to chose. If a player loses all cities, he also loses access to all the city upgrades. That means no card drawing, and no special level 3 abilities. When he builds another city, he regains all the upgrades he had.
Answer: Only player C loses a city in this case.  It's because they contributed the least.  It doesn't matter how many cities an individual player has.  If player C had no cities (barbarians before), then player B would lose a city, since he/she only contributed 1 knight.


What ending do you get with brainless Randy?

Question: In Illbleed, if you rescue all your friends you get the "good" ending (with them sitting around on a beach, wondering what to do with all of the prize money). But if you rescue Randy without getting his brain back first, he can't talk properly in cutscenes after that (especially, and hilariously, notable if you use him for the "Killerman" stage).
So what kind of ending do you get for the game if you rescue everyone, but leave Randy brainless? The bad ending (as if you failed to save some of them)? The normal good ending (with Randy miraculously being able to talk normally again)? Or a variation of the good ending with him speaking gibberish like in other cutscenes?
Answer: I believe that he's able to speak normally during the beach scene if you skip getting his brain. I KNOW you don't get the bad ending. I can only assume his friends used some of their prize money to help him out...


How to make hardware sizing sheet?

Question: We build some software platform, and now we need to make hardware sizing sheet for the server-side piece of this software. So, I should prepare some mathematical model that, for example, given the number of concurrent users, can predict the number of physical servers or storage capacity or network bandwidth. How to make such model?
Comment: Whatever model you use, it will be defeated by the reality. The best is to make a scalable system.
Comment: I agree. But when I sell my software, I should tell the customer how much will be the cost of hardware. Microsoft, IBM, SAP, Adobe offer their customers some calculations of hardware based on business parameters (kind of user activity, number of concurrent users, etc). I want to make the same model for my software.
Comment: One obvious solution is prototyping. Run your software on some hardware and add concurrent users until performance requirements are no longer met. Then upgrade hardware and add new concurrent users. With few iterations you may estimate both initial cost and additional cost per user.
Answer: You may want to start with a mathematical model, but I'd advise instead to do a simulation - make a "user": a program that acts like a user and generate randomized user-like activity. Then, load the system with a real-life like dataset (sized accordingly) and deploy your users against the structure you created. Rinse and repeat until you get as many measures for every data point so that you have a reasonable confidence the number represents the performance at a given load and that noise has been reduced to a level that doesn't interfere with your measurements. Keep an eye on maximums, because they may appear in real-world usage and derail the application. Also, remember to test it with absurd numbers of users and absurd volumes of data, as it often offers you some insight on problems that may not be evident on more normal scenarios.
If possible, publish alongside your chart the methodology you used (how your users behave, what hardware did you use - if real metal, if EC2 instances - and how many measurements you made).
This is a highly worthy exercise, BTW. You may discover some bottlenecks you never imagined you'd have, as well as new ways to tune your application on different hardware configurations that never occurred to you.
I come from a web background and I try to make every system I build capable of generating one or more JMeter configuration files for load testing purposes. Nobody knows how to better simulate load than the system itself - it has access to previous usage patterns, as well as to its own working database.
And then when you have a ton of experimental data, you can refine your mathematical models in order to predict conditions you may not easily simulate.
Answer: I think the advice to prototype is right on.  Run it, see how it runs with X users.  Then, add in a "fudge factor" on top of your results so that you have some breathing room with your customers.  So if your test results find that you need 512 MB of RAM for 100 users, write 768 MB or 1 GB in your recommended specs.
The big guys (HP, Microsoft, Oracle) all have recommendations.   Routinely those recommendations are either loosely adhered to in development and test environments, or ignored completely because the hardware used is "whatever is available".  Just a thought about that.
Answer: A "purely mathematical" approach is unlikely to be very accurate.  One of the basic questions to ask when optimising software for performance is "have you measured it"?
My advice would be to perform some stress testing of your software.  Do this in a carefully controlled way, and observe the behaviour of the system while it's under different levels of stress.  This information, combined with your inside knowledge of the system itself, should allow you to come up with some educated guesses about the way your system will perform with different hardware and different loads.  I would advise against trying to extrapolate to hardware that varies wildly from your test setup - it's one thing to predict what will happen if you go from two cores to four, but will that scale to 64 cores, or make efficient use of hundreds of GB or RAM?  I would stay away from wild guesses like that.

How to make hardware sizing sheet?


Samsung S screen turns off while calling

Question: during a call, the screen turns off and I become not able to click(touch) any button on the screen. PLEASE help if there is any solution cause it makes me crazy. Thanks.
Answer: This is normally face detection that turns the screen off so that you cannot press buttons with your cheek.  If moving the phone away from your face does not turn it on, then you should be able to turn it on with the power button.


What is the strategy-guide tag for?

Question: The strategy-guide tag seems to mean a lot of different things to different people, from questions about strategy guides themselves, to questions that are the kind of information you would typically find in a strategy guide, to just general game strategy questions.  Is this a useful tag that just needs a good tag wiki, or a confusing tag that just needs to be removed?
Comment: possible duplicate of [The two heads of Janus "Strategy" Bifrons](http://meta.gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/1855/the-two-heads-of-janus-strategy-bifrons)
Answer: Related: [guide], [strategy], [tips], [how-to]... which do I use?, which covered a precursor tags guide and walkthrough. Which probably still exist.
If we retain it, I think its best utility towards existing as a tag is to indicate questions that want a strategy guide from outside. But unlike a full walkthrough, we are capable of and somewhat intended to be a strategy guide. We haven't gotten many of these questions for months, now, though, but that remains the main useful utility I can see for it.
Using it to describe questions about strategy or content in guides that we host on our site is redundant with asking it on the site. If you want to find guide-like information for a game on this site, this should be found by browsing the tag for that game, not browsing this kind of tag. That utility is also about the same as tagging it with "strategy", which we seem to agree needs to be destroyed. If something needs to be tagged like that, it should be tagged according to what kind of thing you're asking for - a weapons chart should have weapons, for example.
There are a lot of questions that use a lot of tags for the purposes described in the previous question. In addition to the two I named above, you'll also see questions with tags like tips. All of these instances tend to be low in quantity, so it may help for us to prune these down first, then re-examine what's left in order to determine what to do about walkthrough/guide/strategy-guide as tags.
Comment: On a related note, the lack of ability to natively support walkthroughs (something GameFAQs does well) is probably one of our biggest weaknesses.
Comment: @tzenes Fully agreed. I think I remember citing that weakness very early on in the site, but it was probably on a tangent related to game-recs.

What is the strategy-guide tag for?


Fields of math needed for digital filter design

Question: I want learn digital filter design. My knowledge of math is at high school level. I can learn math through the Internet. Then, what fields of math do I have to learn?
Comment: Welcome to DSP.SE!  I've edited your question and added the `reference-request` tag.  I realize it sounds impolite, but generally "Hi" and the beginning and "please / thank-you" at the end of questions aren't used on the *.SE forums. The aim here is to answer questions: so asking a question is a perfectly fine thing to do.
Comment: @George Theodosiou: It took me a while to become accustomed to not using "Hello" and "Thanks" on this web site. The Masters of this web site want to avoid what's called "chitchat." (Discussing trivial things not related to signal processing. Exactly what I am doing right now.) By the way, although not many, there are still real legitimate cowboys in America. A month ago I met a cowboy in a bar in Nevada who wore a leather vest and had a six shooter in his holster.
Comment: Also have a look at [this question](http://dsp.stackexchange.com/questions/15990/what-are-the-minimum-knowledge-required-to-begin-the-study-of-digital-signal-pro) and its answers.
Comment: Mr Moderator, although Americans you are not any more cow boys. You are some how civilized. Then, introducing by "Gentlemen" and ending by "regards" should be permitted.
Comment: I have put some DSP resources here: http://pipad.org/wiki/index.php/DSP
Answer: To get started:
Complex numbers
The frequency response of a filter is easier to understand complex-valued, describing both the magnitude frequency response and the phase frequency response. You will be able to understand poles and zeros, which can be complex. Complex numbers enable you to have negative frequencies, which will make math simpler.
Trigonometry
$\sin$, $\cos$ and their relation to the complex exponential $e^{i\alpha} = \cos(\alpha) + i\sin(\alpha)$ are important. Sinusoidal functions will be passed through filters with only their amplitude and phase affected.
Differentiation
To find at what frequency a simple filter peaks or dips, you can solve at what frequency the derivative of its magnitude frequency response is zero.
Integration
Integration is needed for the Fourier transform and the inverse Fourier transform.
Fourier transform
Fourier transform enables you to go from an impulse response to a frequency response and back. Also things you do in the time domain often have a simple counterpart in the frequency domain, and vice versa.
Comment: You'd also want some understanding of numerical analysis, assuming you'll be implementing your filters in software/firmware. The Laplace transform is also helpful because many digital filters are derived from analog ones.
Comment: I would add that [this free book](http://eceweb1.rutgers.edu/~orfanidi/intro2sp/) covers much of what is needed, right after "integration" in your list.
Answer: If you have the balls to learn math by yourself. The two fields of Mathematics that you need to dominate in order to do filter design are: Functional Analysis and convex optimization.
Pretty much every filter design is the result of an optimization problem, like:
Find these set of $N$ numbers such that the absolute value of the fourier transform in these frequency region has the following shape (between these two limits when frequency is 0Hz to 320Hz, and between these other two when frequency is greater than 340Hz).
Or, what is the set of $N$ numbers such that when applying the discrete convolution of the sequence of the numbers to this signal $x(n)$, the result is this signal $y(n)$.
And there are many other ways of defining them.
And you will need functional analysis in order to understand how to model a signal, how to model a system, and how to model the interactions and operations between signals (transforms, convolutions, etc).
Hope it Helps.
Comment: Of course. I completely agree with you. The thing is the point of my answer was to provide a way to understand the underlying mathematical concepts behind filter design. My approach to filter design is to go to matlab, open the filter design tool and tweak parameters around until I find something suitable. But that is not an appropriate answer to someone wanting to "learn" about filter design. That being said: the optimization problem I described is what matlab does behind the curtains, perhaps with numerical approximations.
Answer: @George Theodosiou:Instead of diving into all sorts of high-powered mathematical subjects (only a portion of which will be useful to you), I suggest you begin by reading a decent book for DSP beginners. Such as the popular books "Understanding Digital Signal Processing" or "The Scientist and Engineer's Guide to Digital Signal Processing." Those books spoon feed the reader, slowly and gently, the mathematics needed to begin studying DSP. Then when you encounter some equation in those books that puzzles you, you can go on the web and learn the mathematics of that particular equation in more depth.
George, if your desire to learn digital filtering is sincere, and you retain your enthusiasm, then you will succeed. To quote Susan B. Anthony, "Failure is impossible." Good Luck.
Comment: @George Theodosiou: I welcome receiving an e-mail from you. I am at R_dot_Lyons_at_ieee_dot_org.
Yassas
Comment: Mr Lyons, many thanks for your comment. I have started study your book "Understanding Digital Signal Processing " and have some comments about, but I need some address for post them. Regards.
Answer: Many thanks to those answered, commented and viewed my question. My answer is that I have to begun from Functional Analysis as Mr Bone suggests. I remember from high school that when a polynomial of x is equated with y, yields function of x with y. Also I remember the fundamental theorem of algebra for real coefficients. Then I can begun from this knowledge.
Answer: For digital filter design, I appreciate above answers, and would like to add some fields.
First, let us restrict to linear filering. Linearity, along with time-invariance, are root assumptions. With them, vector spaces, convolution (integrals and series) and Fourier transforms (part of functional analysis, with complex adn trigonometry) become natural tools. I insist these tools are natural consequences of linearity/time-invariance, if you get that, you will gently be driven to the tools you need. Optimization is quite pervasive in filter design.
On the side, you can keep in mind additionnal fields. You may be interested in designing complementary filters, with different rates, and multirate filter design may lead you to matrix factorization, which is useful as well in filter structures (lattice, ladder) and spectral factorization. If you go to real-system implementation (FPGA, microcontroller), you can have to dive into fixed-point or integer arithmetic. Of course, sampling theory is a first-order requirement, especially if you go multidimensional (image processing). One can even touch higher mahematics, with polynomial systems and Gröbner bases.
I like a lot, for a basic mathematical and clean introduction to many topics, Gasquet &  Witomski Fourier Analysis and Applications: Filtering, Numerical Computation, Wavelets.
Let me add a lesser mentioned issue: one big question is often the number of taps, and the precision (number of bits per coefficient) required to satisfy a certain filter design. Two sources:

Ichige et al. Accurate estimation of minimum filter length for optimum {FIR} digital filters, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems II: Analog and Digital Signal Processing,
2000
Bellanger, On computational complexity in digital filters, 1981


How can I reach Muiderslot castle from Amsterdam Central?

Question: I'm looking for the cheapest transport option to reach the Muiderslot castle, from Amsterdam Central. Muiden is a good city to stay/sleep? I don't know if it's a good option stay in Muiden (to be near Muiden Castle) and also visit Amsterdam Centre.
Comment: Although not the cheapest, I really recommend renting a bicycle.  It's a great way to explore Amsterdam, Muiden, and the countryside in-between.  And it's not too far.
Comment: It's a bus company? Do you know how much I'll spend?
Comment: I loved the idea gerrit. Do you know where is the cheapest place to rent a bike? (and how much)
Comment: Almost all bigger and many small railway stations have a bicycle parking that also rents out bikes. I find a daily rental fee of €6.50 but the site did not contain a date. Other bicycle rent places know they have to compete with the very cheap station bikes and generally offer bikes under €10 for the basic bikes, sometimes they do better the station rental bike. Just search online with 'bicycle rent' or 'fiets huur'  and your location will find you a near one. If in the Netherlands for a longer time, check out the OV fiets. (Takes registering.)
Answer: Just did this today, by bike, from Amsterdam City Center.
Go to the Flevopark on Amsterdam's impeccable bike lanes, then take the scenic bridge (Nesciobrug) and pedal for a few kms, mostly right along the river, in a park with bunnies (Diemerzeedijk / Waterkeringpad).
You'll cross farms, sheep, friendly people. Muiden itself has a few nice cafes and is sailing oriented. The castle itself is beautiful and smallish, and they close at 4:30pm, so try to get in at least an hour before that. Don't miss the garden outside.
Also right nearby is an old fort (Westbatterij) with cannons, behind which there's a very small and cozy beach, you can swim and enjoy.
This is the route: Centraal to Muiderslot by bike
Answer: It takes about 50 minutes to get there and you have to change from subway to bus and then walk for a quarter of an hour. This wil cost you EUR 4.81 one way.
Muiden is too small a place to spend more than a couple of hours, so you'll probably want to return to Amsterdam.
Hiring a bicycle will cost you about 8 EURO. See http://www.amsterdam.info/transport/bike-rentals/ The bike ride will take about as much time as public transport.
Comment: You might want to add a link to the bus itinerary, for completeness sake. ;)
Comment: Small places are often great to stay, especially if you do not like staying in a city and seeing a small place before the tourist come in and after they have left can be a great experience.


How does the summoning ability affect the encounter difficulty?

Question: The Drow Mage (CR 7) has the Action Summon Demon (1/day), which allows him to summon a shadow demon (CR 4). Is the shadow demon already included in the CR of the Drow Mage, or do I have to count the shadow demon as an extra creature to determine the difficulty of the encounter?
Comment: Related (basically the same question for a different edition): http://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/34610/under-what-circumstances-do-additional-creatures-add-to-el
Answer: Probably the summoned monster doesn't count toward the challenge.
Bear in mind there's no RAW that specifies this, and challenge ratings of published monsters include some degree of "eyeballing" from the writers. But we can extrapolate a bit by using the basic challenge evaluation from the DMG on the stats that we do know.
I used Monstermancer* to run the stats of the Drow Mage without the summoning ability, counting all of its spells, and came up with a baseline challenge of 7:
<code>"eval": {
    "defCR": 0.5,
    "offCR": 15,
    "dmg": 126,
    "ac": 15,
    "hp": 45,
    "atk": 6,
    "svDC": 14
}
</code>
So, without any eyeballing or special tweaks to its challenge evaluation, the Drow Mage's challenge matches the one given in the Monster Manual (in fact, this might be a little low, since it doesn't factor in the possibility of having an ongoing cloudkill spell active while throwing lightning bolts, but I digress).
However, while it looks like the summoned creature isn't "baked in" to the summoner's challenge rating, there isn't much guidance as to how you should incorporate it into an encounter. It's less effective than a full-fledged combatant for a few reasons (it takes an action to summon, it might not always succeed, &c.), but adding a challenge 4 shadow demon to a fight against a single challenge 7 mage is not a minor impact on the encounter, so it should count for something.
For a little more circumstantial evidence, there are variants listed in the Monster Manual for demons and devils which can summon other demons and devils; there is an entry for each type of fiend and which others they can summon with a percentage chance, similar to the ability of the drow mage cited here. These variants don't mention a change to the fiends' challenge ratings. Since the book doesn't assume a difference in the creature's own challenge with or without the summon ability there, it follows that the summoned creature should count separately in some way (even if not as a full-fledged combatant).
*Caveat: Monstermancer isn't perfect at this stuff, but it's an OK starting point. Also, there's a huge mismatch between the offensive and defensive challenges it gives to the Drow Mage, so it's a lot easier to take out than its challenge rating implies.
Comment: I think there's a difference between a full-blown creature and a summon though, right? The latter consumes an action (from a more powerful creature), always misses the first round of combat, is vulnerable to a bunch of spells (like being dismissed) and is only around for a short while.
Comment: Yeah...I'm a lot more confident in the first part of this answer (the summoned creature isn't "baked in" to the summoner's challenge) than in the second (you should count the summoned creature as a full participant in the encounter). I'll edit to make this a bit clearer.
Comment: The thing about the summoned creature: The chance of actually summoning it is 50% and it will disappear, should the summoner die. A quasit could be dummoned instead, which is only CR1. I as DM wouldn't count it for as an extra creature, since you can't really say if it will be summoned or not.
Comment: @CédricAntunes; I definitely wouldn't count it unless it was successfully summoned; I'd write up the encounter with the drow mage and retroactively note the increased challenge of the encounter (without altering the mage's challenge) if the other creature showed up. In fact, that's one reason I believe that it *isn't* factored into the challenge 7 that the drow already has.
Answer: I believe that the ability of being able to cast a demon once per day is already included in the Drow Mage's challenge rating.
It wouldn't make sense if a Commoner of CR 1/8 could summon a dragon and still be CR 1/8.
So... I say make it count as one creature of CR 7.

Keep in mind that a Drow Mage has very low health compared to other CR 7 creatures. The DMG (p. 274) shows a tabelle with CR 7 having around 161-175 HP and a DC of 15, while the Drow goes with 45 HP (1/3rd) and a DC of 14 (lower than normal for a spellcaster of CR 7). So I believe that the makers of this race have taken the CR in account for the demon summoning.
Comment: I think your second sentence is a false comparison: the mage in question is summoning something decently below its level, not significantly *above* like in your example.
Comment: @nitsua60 he is referring to the idea that the cr considers the abilities, thus there is no need to adjust cr. The example exemplify that idea. It wouldn't make sense for his commoner to have a low cr if he can summon a high cr creature
Comment: Thanks Chepelink! Yes, I meant it as an example that the CR would have been configured to match the power... I could give a look into the DMG to see on how to create a CR and see if the Drow Mage wouldn't actually be a level lower than it normally would.
Comment: @Chepelink he's *assuming* that it does, and the hypothetical example would be evidence of it. But it doesn't exist, does it? I don't have my MM with me at the moment, but I don't believe there's a CR 1/8 commoner who can summon a dragon back in the NPC section?
Comment: @nitsua60 What he has to do, and I agree with you, is to prove his theory. But as far as his example goes, until evidence is shown that  he is correct (or wrong) you can't say that it is wrong (or correct)
Comment: I added an edit to my post :0 What I forgot to do was look through the pages of the DMG 274+, since it explains how CR could be calculated. I bet they have something about summoning in there too. I have to leave the house now so I can't look into it.. And yeah, there is no commoner that can summon a Dragon.
Comment: A Drow Priestess of Lolth (CR 8) can summon a Yochlol (CR 10) with a 50% chance of succeeding.
Comment: I'd like to correct that part, it's a 30% chance not 50% chance (I find this to be a very low chance). I would like to compare her with the NPC Priest found in the MM page 348. The Priest is CR 2 with a 5th spellcasting level, the Drow Priestess is CR 8 with a 10th spellcasting ability. The difference of both is that the priestess has a really good melee damage and the ability of summoning a yuchlol at 30% chance (on failure she takes 1d10 psychic damage). Without these things she would qualify as a CR of 7 I believe.
Answer: The summoned creature is a separate source of XP to the Drow Mage
The Monster Manual has the following to say in the Introduction > Statistics > Challenge section:

Experience Points
[...]
Unless something tells you otherwise, a monster summoned by a spell or other magical ability is worth the XP noted in its stat block.

The Drow Mage's stat block has this to say:

Summon Demon (1/Day)
The drow magically summons a quasit, or attempts to summon a shadow demon with a 50 percent chance of success. The summoned demon appears in an unoccupied space within 60 ft of its summoner, acts as an ally of its summoner, and can't summon other demons. It remains for 10 minutes, until it or its summoner dies, or until its summoner dismisses it as an action.

As this ability doesn't tell you not to award XP for this summoned monster, the general rule from the Monster Manual applies.
The result is that you award the full XP for this monster.
These seem like strict restrictions...does that not make it easier than a vanilla shadow demon?
RAW...still no.
As a DM, however you are free to make a ruling that this applies. What follows is how I would approach such a ruling as a DM:
Where to start?
We need to do some analysis of the creature's CR. To do that analysis we will use the "Creating a Monster" portion of the Dungeon Masters Guide (DMG).
The restrictions are:

can't summon other demons
It remains for 10 minutes, until it or its summoner dies, or until its summoner dismisses it as an action.

The vanilla shadow demon cannot summon demons anyway, so the restriction on summoning is moot.
The remaining restrictions are based around how long it may last:

10 minutes: The only time we really care about XP is in battle...and zero battles in D&D will last 600 rounds, so this effectively isn't a restriction (it just means shadow mages don't have a permanent shadow demon pet)
until it [...] dies: well if it dies that means it's been defeated and XP should be awarded for it
until [...] its summoner dies: This will really depend on the precise situation, as the drow mage may be at 5 HP when they try to summon the demon, or they may be at 45 HP.
until its summoner dismisses it as an action: in a fight this is only plausibly going to happen in two cases

The summoner has won comfortably and the party failed to get any XP
The summoner has been convinced to get rid of it (by force or diplomacy)

Of these possibilities there are only two that might reduce the XP award, and they are:

until [...] its summoner dies: This will really depend on the precise situation, as the drow mage may be at 5 HP when they try to summon the demon, or they may be at 45 HP.
until its summoner dismisses it as an action: in a fight this is only plausibly going to happen in two cases

The summoner has been convinced to get rid of it (by force or diplomacy)

Both of these could potentially have an effect on the monsters challenge rating by altering either its Hit Points (ie the amount of HP that it still had when it disappeared due to either condition effectively reduces its total HP by that amount), or its damage output due to short time span. Both of these factors (Hit Points and Damage/Round) directly affect the CR calculation (potentially).
In the DMG section on Creating a Monster it states:

Step 8. Hit Points
[...]
Use the Table. You can start with the monster's expected challenge rating and use the Monster Statistics by Challenge Rating table to determine an appropriate number of hit points.
[...]
Step 11. Damage
[...]
Overall Damage Output
[...]
If a monster's damage output varies from round to round, calculate its damage output each round for the first three rounds of combat, and take the average.
[...]
Step 13. Special Traits, Actions, and Reactions
Some special traits (such as Magic Resistance), special actions (such as Superior Invisibility), and special reactions (such as Parry) can improve a monster's combat effectiveness and potentially increase its challenge rating.
[...]

One thing to note, before we jump in, is that the three rounds averaging (from step 11) is in here for a reason...it strongly suggests that on average combat in D&D 5e is 3 rounds long. So let's use that as the basis.
Importantly, summoning is not listed in the list of special traits that affect CR (which gives us more evidence, if we needed it that CR of the summoned creature should be awarded on it's own).
For the effective reduction in Hit Points, we would need to figure out how many rounds after the demon is summoned, that the either condition is satisfied and the discorporation of the shadow demon occurs. Once we have that value, we need to calculate the expected HP the shadow demon would have after our expected number of rounds (less than 3!). We then subtract that value from the shadow demons HP and use the Modifying a Monster section of the DMG to appropriately adjust the Shadow Demon's Defensive CR downwards.
This damage per round figure you calculate is compared to the DMG table to figure out its offensive challenge rating. As a result, if we expect the shadow demon to last less than three rounds, due to either of these restrictions, we could calculate a new Damage/Round and adjust the Shadow Demon's Offensive CR accordingly.
Once we have made these two adjustments the average of the sum of these two CR adjustments is the CR reduction we need to apply.
Finally look up the new XP for your modified Shadow Demon and award appropriately.
So we have a possible ruling...is it worth it? Should we apply it?
In my opinion it isn't worth it (for me). It is an awful lot of work for not a huge amount of gain in the vast majority of summoned monster cases. I would, having gone through this process of coming up with a ruling just save myself the hassle of actually applying this very complicated calculation and just award the XP in the stat block.
Answer: I think it is included
Here is why:
I used this calculator (you can also do this with the method in the book) to determine how hard this monster would be without the summon.
45 HP, 12 AC, +6 to spell attack
The most damaging spell it has (by my estimation) is lightning bolt. It may use cloudkill instead for battlefield manipulation, but LB seems to do more damage. At level 5, LB does a max of 60 damage. I called that 30 for an "average roll." Assuming it hits 2 or 3 people that becomes 60 or 90 damage in a single round.
That is not sustained damage though. Over the course of a few rounds, it will use up the spell slots, so I am guessing maybe 30-40 points of damage per round.
Using that calculator link I posted, that gives a CR of 3 or 4. Adjusting the Damage per Round, it would need to be about 90 to get to a CR 7. I don't know that it can feasibly get that amount of damage without the summon.
Comment: I think the majority of this comes down to how many targets you think that the lightning bolt or cloudkill can hit; the big difference between your numbers on that and mine is that I'm assuming the lightning bolt can hit 4 and not 2-3 (and that I'm assuming 31.5 average damage and not 30). But you should count its AC at 15, since the challenge evaluation should assume that any spell effects that could affect that are active, and the drow mage has mage armor.
Comment: This may help: http://rpg.stackexchange.com/q/64142/23064
Comment: also, the average damage of a 5-th level lightning bolt dealing 10d6 damage is 10*3.5 = 35, not 30. You can't just halve the maximum result, since that doesn't take into account that you cannot possibly roll less than 10 damage - since all of the 10 dice you're rolling will grant at least 1 damage each.


Does the OP have to mention obvious features?

Question: I see in this question that in order to have the questions contain many features for the sake of matching some interpretation of the question guide lines, someone suggested to add having a GUI or being able to work on several files as required features. To me, that sounds pretty obvious, and it's pretty sure that if the OP wanted some CLI he would have said so. Does the OP have to mention obvious features?
Comment: Related: [Is it OK to ask for a software having a particular feature?](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/q/691/185)
Comment: Related: [Dealing with obvious tags](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/q/1147/60)
Answer: While to you it is "pretty obvious" such a tool "needs" a GUI, that's not necessarily the case. I for example much more prefer a CLI for such tasks: Why should I take the hazzle having to start a (maybe even bloated) GUI, navigate to some folder (20 clicks or so), mark it, open some menu, find the right item, and click that to watch a fancy progress-dialog – when it would be so much easier from the shell with auto-complete to simply type something like bpmtag Music/wherever <Enter>?
Standard phrase here: One man's owl is another man's nightingale. You might well guess wrong, based on your background. Not because the CLI case would be the more common (I'm fully aware of the fact it is not) – but simply because the OP thought it clear, as he always prefers it that way, and might simply have forgotten to include it ("If I wanted a GUI, I had said so" – as opposed to your POV).
There might be (and certainly is) a "gray zone" of what's really obvious. But it never hurts to draw the whole picture – as long as it doesn't go "War-and-Peace" ;)
Answer: Yes, as many things you consider important to you and are must have include them at all cost. We don't need people to be parse but verbose (and maybe greedy) when they are looking for something they will be using.
Please also note that in some cases there are just too many from where to pick and having some basic guidelines would be useful, in the case of this question:

The only restricted requirement is that it must run under Windows, and should be preferrably freeware.

There are many mp3 tag editors that fulfills both "must have", so narrow it down will help lots and OP won't have something he might not like.
Answer: This task is one where I would use a command line, scriptable application as a matter of course. I know that most people don't use the command line, so I suspected that a GUI was required. But it never hurts to explicitly say what you want.
If you don't specify a requirement because you consider it too obvious, and someone provides an answer that meets your expressed requirements but not what you had in mind, everybody's lost time. If you write it down explicitly, everything's good. So please do mention "obvious" requirements such as "must be GUI-driven", "must run under Windows", "must be free", …


Performance issues while applying encryption at host or guest level?

Question: One of the security expert here suggested me to apply encryption at guest(virtual machine) level rather than applying at host level with good reason. Before applying that I want to know what can be the possible performance issues in both cases. Will performance be worst in guest level encryption or vice versa? I want to have some theoretical knowledge before implementing it.
Many thanks in advance.
Answer: While I haven't got any data to support, a big problem with Virtualization is that the I/O performance tends to drop dramatically. Now encryption can have a small impact on cpu usage, but definitely the I/O might get hit. So make sure you have fast enough storage to cope with this overhead (you don't want to be using 7.2k rpm sata drives but 10-15k SAS drives or even SSDs).


Can I slightly change the title of my conference presentation?

Question: I'm going to a conference in December and I will have a 20 minute talk there. Originally, a colleague of mine was supposed to go, but personal circumstances resulted in my taking part instead. My colleague and I cover the same area, so this is not the problem. But since my colleague handed in the title of the talk we have reevaluated our use of field-specific key words. Therefore, I think the title as it stands is a little misleading. Is it common practice to adapt conference presentation titles? I found one topic covering a similar matter, but it hasn't got much attention.
Comment: Is your question whether it's okay to contact the organisers to change the title of your talk, or whether it's okay to have a title for your talk that is different from the one in the programme?
Comment: The latter is the case.
Comment: I've seen subtitled used to "clarify" a title, sometimes to such an extent that the meaning changed completely. Maybe a subtitle can help here too?
Answer: Given that, officially at least, the title of your talk will still be the old misleading one, I'm not sure how much there really is to be gained by changing the wording of your first slide, which seems to be effectively what you're thinking of doing. In fact, having a title for your talk that doesn't match what's in the programme could be potentially misleading anyway (for example, if the chair reads your title from the programme, rather than the slide, or if the title on the screen isn't what your audience had expected).
If you feel that your title is misleading then what I think I would do would be to begin the talk by making it clear that the title is potentially misleading, and then clarifying what the talk is actually about. You could even, before the audience's eyes, swap your old title for a new title.
As long as the programme has the old title then to a certain extent the damage is done. I think the best approach to take is simply to make clear from the outset that the title is misleading, and explain what you're really going to talk about.
Comment: Thanks for your answer. I don't think it is misleading in a way that would throw off 99% of the audience. But if someone happens to know my topic they might challenge the title. It is really about a rather vague definition nobody will have heard of. Given that changing the title might be more damaging than living with the present title, I think I will just leave it and address questions if needed.
Comment: @ian_itor That sounds reasonable. Playing devil's advocate for a moment, you may want to consider the possibility that someone in that 1% challenges your title and a couple of minutes of your question time (presumably only 5-10 mins for a 20min talk) is spent clarifying it, rather than discussing something more productive to you. Additionally, if the only people likely to pick up on it are the experts in your topic, are these the people you want to "mislead." Ultimately, you know the field and the audience better than I, so you're best placed to weigh up the likelihood of these events.
Comment: You have raised a good point, but I think saying that our views on the use of terminology have changed since the submission of the abstract might suffice to clear things up.
Answer: It is quite normal that in a conference with 40 talks, several speakers change the titles of their talk on the spot. Common reasons are that there was some success after registration, or during the preparation of the talk the speaker found out that he cannot cover everything in the prescribed time. Sometimes it happens that a mistake was found to late, so the content of the talk has to be changed substantially. Usually this is not a problem.
However, people either come to your talk because they are attracted by the title, or because they just want to appear polite. It would be unfair against the former if you change the content of your talk, in particular if there are parallel sessions. So if after submitting your title and abstract you find some much more interesting results on some other topic, you should still stick to your original talk.


Is it possible for Wi-Fi routers to give clients priority?

Question: From a technical perspective, is it possible for a Wi-Fi router to give priority to certain clients?
Comment: Priority as in....?
Answer: I think you're looking for quality of service (QoS) settings. My Linksys router has the Tomato firmware on it and it lets me put source or destination IP addresses and MAC addresses within a classification (A, B, C, ...). Then on the basic QoS page it lets me specify a range of bandwidth percent for each classification, inbound and outbound.
Answer: If by priority you mean "more bandwidth", then yes, that is possible. As mentioned, it usually appears as QoS, though many home-grade routers don't have the option in the default firmware.
The Linksys WRT54G Series allows users to install a new version of the router firmware [operating system] and the custom ones often do (e.g. I have the DD-WRT firmware on two of mine)
Answer: Yes, assuming it has the appropriate firmware, a WiFi router can assign priority based on Quality of Service (QoS) and a specific form of QoS such as WiFi-Multimedia (WMM).


What achievements/challenges are missable?

Question: I found (annoyingly) that the "Up High, Down Low" challenge for giving Claptrap a high-five is one time only.
Before I miss any one-chance challenges later in the game, what other challenges/achievements are missable inside a single playthrough?
Answer: According to Xbox360Achievements.org, there are no missable achievements. Even Up High, Down Low can be completed later on as there are other opportunities to high five Claptrap (including one right before the end of the game).
Answer: Well... there is a missable challenge called "Save the turret".
It is part of the very last main story quest and thus can only be completed once per playthrough. It may be that you can complete it afterwards if you join a coop-game with this story mission active.
Also the challenge "Compl33tionist" is partly missable. For rank 5 you need to complete 100 optional objectives. This requires 2 playthroughs but you are allowed to miss on 18 optional objectives. Also optional objectives from DLCs do count.
These are the two you should look out for.
Answer: There aren't really any missable achievements, but:

what challenges or achievements are missable inside a single playthrough?

There are 4 character specific achievements that you'll have to start a new playthrough in order to get. So 3 of those will require a second playthrough.
There is an achievement for reaching level 50 and an achievement for a boss who's only defeatable at level 50. However in the first playthrough enemies are capped at level 30, and you won't get much past about level 35 killing them. The only way to get to level 50 is a new game + mode called "True Vault Hunter" where you start again and the enemies start at level 30 and go up to 50. So 2 more achievements require a second playthrough.
So there are 5 achievements that you cannot get in a single playthrough. The minimum number of playthroughs is 5 - one for each character and one on NG+ to get to level 50.
However, that's not really how Borderlands 2 works - gear can be shared between characters and badass ranks carry through. You will level up amazingly fast (about a level per kill) if you join some level 50 friends with a new level 1 character. You don't really end up playing every mission with every character and starting the story again doesn't really feel like a new playthough because you're not starting from scratch.


What Gintama episode had this scene?

Question: I've read somewhere that there was a scene where Shouyou was released from jail and Gintoki cries upon his return, I've watched all episodes but I don't remember this, can someone tell what episode was it?
Comment: as i remember there is not episode like that, but one thing is clear that shouyou was killed by gintoki
Answer: As far as I remember, they don't meet after he's arrested and yoshida shouyou is never released from jail. The only time they meet is when Oboro forces Gintoki to behead his teacher in order to save his friends. Once he's killed, yoshida shouyou loses control over Utsuro and is presumably killed off as a personality.
You could be referring to the episode where Gintoki is restrained as his teacher is arrested and dragged away from him. Which is shown as a flashback in one of the episodes, but is better explained in the movie I think. It maybe the first or second movie, I'm not sure. Never was a big fan of the movies though.

What Gintama episode had this scene?


How do I get Calendar to recognize that I use multiple calendars with my Google Apps account?

Question: One of the new features I've seen listed for Windows Phone 8.1 is the ability to sync with Google Calendars with multiple calendars. I've seen this in effect on my GMail account, but it doesn't appear immediately available on my Google Apps account. I've already gone to the iPhone Sync Settings page and verified that the calendars are enabled for sync (most already were, so I just added the couple I wanted that weren't). Are there other steps I need to do - anything special for Google Apps accounts?
Answer: As I am new to Windows Phone I can only tell how I did the sync with my Nokia Lumia for the Google Calendars, but maybe it helps:
1. Add Google Account to Windows Phone Accounts
Therefore go to Settings --> E-Mail Accounts and other and add your Google Account

2. Make sure the calendar data will be synchronized
After setting up your Google Account in the phone, click on the Google Account for more detailed settings. On this page you will see a select field called something like synchronize contacts and calendars where you can change the interval of sync. Then there is also left to choose the contents to be synchronized where you have to check at least calendar.

3. Check the Google calendars you want to be synchronized
For that purpose go to the native calendar app of your Windows Phone and go into the settings. Now you should get a list of calendars of your Google and your Microsoft accounts which you can check/uncheck however you like and also set a color for every calendar.


Mouse back/forward buttons in FreeBSD under VMWare Workstation

Question:
VMWare Workstation 7.1.4
Host: Windows 7 (laptop with touchpad).
Guest: FreeBSD 8.2-STABLE (yesterday's)
vmmouse driver: 12.6.9_1 (from ports)

The problem: xev doesn't see mouse back/forward buttons (physically connected to laptop through usb). Wheel is working okay (i.e. 4 & 5 buttons work). FreeBSD thinks that the mouse is ps/2, because there are no /dev/ums* devices.
/etc/rc.conf:

moused_type=auto
moused_enable=YES
moused_flags="-r high"

/etc/X11/xorg.conf:

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier  "Mouse0"
    Driver "vmmouse"
    Option "Protocol" "auto"
    Option "Device" "/dev/sysmouse"
    Option "Buttons" "7"
EndSection

I don't want to use vmware usb.generic.allowHID option to connect the mouse to virtual FreeBSD through usb because I need that mouse in the host & in the guest at the same time.
Is there any hint how to force vmware or moused or xorg to recognize 6 & 7 button on the "ps/2" mouse?
(It is possible somehow theoretically, because my Windows XP guest (with vmware tools installed) uses vmware ps/2 mouse driver (not the usb one, I checked) and back/forward buttons work fine there.)
Answer: You can try to load the USB mouse driver in /boot/loader.conf:
ums_load="YES"


String Input output representation in RNN Variational autoencoder

Question: I'm having a look at ..
Molecular autoencoder lets us interpolate and do gradient-based optimization of compounds https://arxiv.org/pdf/1610.02415.pdf
The paper takes an input Smiles string (a text representation of  molecule) and then maps it using a variational encoder into 2D latent space.
Example Smiles String for hexan-3-ol "CCCC(O)CC"
In the paper they pad short strings to 120 characters with spaces.
The paper encoded the string using a stack of 1D convolutional networks into a latent representation of the smiles string
It then uses a 3 Gated recurrent Units GRU to then map positions in the latent space back into a smiles string.
The problem I have in understanding this paper is determining what the input and output structures look like.
The paper is a bit vague on input and output structure. From the use of the 1D conv nets I suspect that the input is a vectorised representation akin to
'C' = 1
'O' = 2
'(' = 3
')' =4
' ' = 0 #for padding

#so the hexan-3-ol smiles above would be

[1,1,1,1,3,2,4,1,1,0...padding to fixed length]

On the output the paper says

The last layer of the RNN decoder defines a probability distribution over all possible characters at each position in the SMILES string

So for the max Smiles length of 120 used in the paper with the 35 possible smiles characters does that mean that the output is [120x35] array?
carrying that logic forward does it suggest the input is instead a flattened [120*35] array - bearing in mind its an autoencoder.
My problem with that is the 1dConv which uses a max length of 9 which wouldn't be sufficient to cover the next atom in the sequence if its a flattened [120*35] array
Thanks for your help...
Answer: The definition of SMILES is more complicated than you may expect as it a linear representation of a graph.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_molecular-input_line-entry_system
In short, a letter designates an atom such as C=carbon, O=oxygen.  The graph can be branched with parens i.e. C(C)C would form a "Y" structure.  Finally, cycles can be created with closures represented as numbers.  I.e. "C1CCC1" forms a square (i.e. the letter 1 is bonded to the other letter 1).
Note that this description is not complete, but should be a good grounding.
If a string is a valid smiles string, simply adding it to another valid smiles string will most-often make another valid string.  I.e. "C1CC1" + "C1CC1" => "C1CC1C1CC1" is valid.
Often, on can extract a linear portion of a smiles string and "embed" it in another and a valid smiles string is formed.
What I believe the auto-encoder is learning, is how to do these transformations.  A stupid example of replacing halides (chlorine, bromine, Iodine) attached to the example above could be:

C1CCC1Cl
C1CCC1Br
C1CCC1I

The auto encoder learns the constant part and the variable part - but in linear string space.  Now this is not perfect, and if you notice in the paper, when exploring the continuously differentiable space they need to find the closest valid smiles string.
If you want to explore smiles strings, all of the ones used in the paper were generated using the rdkit:
https://github.com/rdkit/
which, in full disclosure, I help maintain.  Hopefully this helps.
Answer: You can find the source code here:
https://github.com/maxhodak/keras-molecules
I have been playing around with it, and the input and output structures are MxN matrices with M being the max length of the SMILES string (120 in this case) and N the size of the character set. Each row M is a vector of zeroes, except for the position where the character at position M_i matches character N_j. To decode the output matrix into a SMILE you then go row by row and match to the character positions in your character set.
A problem with this encoding is that it takes up a lot of memory. Using the keras image iterator approach you can do the following:
First encode all smiles into a 'sparse' format which is a list of character set positions for each smile in your set.
Now you have a defined character set over all SMILES (charset), and each SMILE is now a list of numbers representing the position of each character in your character set. You can then begin using an iterator to do it on the fly while training a keras model using the fit_generator function.
import numpy as np
import threading
import collections

class SmilesIterator(object):
    def __init__(self, X, charset, max_length, batch_size=256, shuffle=False, seed=None):
        self.X = X
        self.charset = charset
        self.max_length = max_length
        self.N = len(X)
        self.batch_size = batch_size
        self.shuffle = shuffle
        self.batch_index = 0
        self.total_batches_seen = 0
        self.lock = threading.Lock()
        self.index_generator = self._flow_index(len(X), batch_size, shuffle, seed)

    def reset(self):
        self.batch_index = 0

    def __iter__(self):
        return self

    def _flow_index(self, N, batch_size, shuffle=False, seed=None):
        self.reset()
        while True:
            if self.batch_index == 0:
            index_array = np.arange(N)
            if shuffle:
                if seed is not None:
                    np.random.seed(seed + total_batches_seen)
                index_array = np.random.permutation(N)
            current_index = (self.batch_index * batch_size) % N
            if N >= current_index + batch_size:
                current_batch_size = batch_size
                self.batch_index += 1
            else:
                current_batch_size = N - current_index
                self.batch_index = 0
            self.total_batches_seen += 1
            yield(index_array[current_index: current_index +    current_batch_size],
            current_index, current_batch_size)

    def next(self):
        with self.lock:
            index_array, current_index, current_batch_size = next(self.index_generator)
        #one-hot encoding is not under lock and can be done in parallel
        #reserve room for the one-hot encoded
        #batch, max_length, charset_length
        batch_x = np.zeros(tuple([current_batch_size, self.max_length, len(self.charset)]))
        for i, j in enumerate(index_array):
            x = self._one_hot(self.X[j])
            batch_x[i] = x
        return (batch_x, batch_x) #fit_generator returns input and target

    def _one_hot(self, sparse_smile):
        ss = []
        counter = 0
        for s in sparse_smile:
            cur = [0] * len(self.charset)
            cur[s] = 1
            ss.append(cur)
            counter += 1
        #handle end of line, make sure space ' ' is first in the charset
        for i in range(counter, len(self.charset)):
            cur = [0] * len(self.charset)
            cur[0] = 1
            ss.append(cur)
        ss = np.array(ss)
        return(ss)


What programming language should be used to develop Bitcoin exchange software? Why?

Question: I've only heard PHP is terrible (e.g. in the context of Mt. Gox) and a more efficient/more security-oriented language would be preferable for matching orders and account security. Which programming language, and due to what reasons, would be better?
Comment: @George, take a look at http://meta.bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/633/please-post-answers-as-answers-not-as-comments?cb=1.
Comment: @StephenM347 I don't think George's reply could serve as an answer, not at least until he decides to get into more detail and justify his arguments.
Comment: It's what you do with it that counts :) PHP isn't terrible, but it's not the right tool for an exchange back-end. I know some use C/C++.. I suspect most do.. for speed/efficiency and code quality.
Comment: fair enough. I didn't think it quite warranted being a full answer as I don't actually know what most exchanges use so it was more of a comment than an answer.
Comment: Hey new_to_bitcoin, it seemed to me that your underlying question was rather to ask a best-practice recommendation and reasoning, than just an iteration of the status quo. I've thusly edited your question. If you feel that it's not what you wanted to ask anymore, feel free to rollback or further modify. For a short intro how our site works, check out [tour] and [ask].
Answer: There is no possible way of knowing what are the technologies used by the exchanges.
C++, C# and C have been typically used by the financial and trading software industry as they can be optimized for low latency / high frequency behavior needed for real-time trading. Java, F#, Python, VBA, Haskell as well as other programming languages have also been used but it all comes to a matter of a personal taste, what technologies you or your team are familiar with, what open source (or not) modules are out there that will prevent you from reinventing the wheel and much more that are out of the context of this forum.
Another way to get an idea for the technologies used by an exchange is to spy on its job adverts. Still, what you'll get might not be accurate or it might refer to another or new product or service of that exchange, or even a migration of the existing technologies towards some other but still you'll get an idea.
Answer: A lot of financial industry prefers Python. Some remarkable Bitcoin exchanges, like Bitstamp and LocalBitcoins are built on the top of Python and Django web framework (though there exist other web frameworks you might want to use).
The reasons to choose Python include

Open source ecosystem with a lot of modules to choose from, like ones for Bitcoin
It is not only web development language, but has large use base in scientific computing, making it ideal for data analysis and number crunching (see e.g. IPython, NumPy projects). This makes Python different from Ruby, which is more heavily web only.
Python applications have very good security track record, compared to e.g. PHP applications. To confirm this, see CVE entries to the programming language, related frameworks (Python, PHP)
Unlike more static languages, like Java and C#, which optimize CPU-bound performance, Python optimizes development time, making it very productive. You can always port your code to more heavy platform if your service grows popular and you have money to spend. This is especially important if your project is not backed up by a big corporation, but more startup oriented.
Comment: Interesting because recently I read an article who quite says the opposite and was more for c++/java (8+). Unfortunately I couldn't find it to contribute here :-/
Answer: TL;DR I would use Scala, F# or Rust. If you don't like FP, then Java/C#.
Statically typed: The reason I would avoid Php, and most other dynamically typed languages, is to avoid bugs. Dynamically typed langs are easy to learn and code, but a statically typed lang like Java / C# will avoid a certain kind of bugs, and make refactoring easier.
Automatic memory management: I would also avoid langs where you manage memory, like C/C++, mostly because I fear bugs. Remember Heartbleed? That category of bugs can only happen when the programmer manages memory. Rust/Go are better.
Functional: I know that FP is considered hard, but it is a way to avoid bugs, especially if you are running a multithreaded app where the threads communicate with each other (like trading). FP's most important feature is that you work with immutable data structures. Functional langs are Haskell, F#, Scala and Erlang.
Answer: Python is too slow for exchange job.
Some rates Python about five times slower than Java.
Java is not acceptable either.
Mostly for VM/GC and somehow dirty code practices often employed by Java developers.
C++ is gold standard for performance AND huge waste of time – tedious and long work required.
However, usually code is high quality as developers forced to clean after themselves. Apparently it enforces good practices after years of practice.
Then there are couple of exotic languages like Erlang and Go, would suit the requirements.
Erlang promises to screw your brains and waste a lot of time – see C++.
If you'll get though of it  - results might be good.
Go seems to be the simplest choice specifically tailored for parallel processing.
Not sure if it fits to financial application needs.
Comment: Please provide sources for your claims.
Answer: Checking the partial UI rendered pages for
Cryptsy it seems they are using jquery, bootstrap
coinsquare is using fast-cgi, Angularjs, Angularjs
coinsetter seems to be using Java, jquery, bootstrap.js
Mtgox famously used PHP
Javascript farmework 1.Angularjs 2. Nodejs 3.Phython 4.ruby on rails.
It really depends upon the skill your team have or is willing to learn.
Building a thin client over HTML5, Angularjs, bootstrap,  nodejs, Java are common denominator among many exchanges.
Comment: Looking at the client side libraries and talking to some of the developers. Also looking at the skills the companies have been hiring.
Comment: I'm confused - how did you arrive at this information?


Strange craters in Afghanistan

Question: In this image from 2004 in Afghanistan Kandahar region many small craters are seen. What are they?
Comment: Could these be Qanats?
Comment: Look like qanats to me - common in the Middle East (eg. Iran), these are wells dug in order to dig underground aquaducts. In the case of Iran they often follow fault lines because the fault gouge is much easier to dig than the country rock...  (ie. useful for reconnaissance mapping)
Comment: Also common in Oman where almost every inland town has at least one line of spoil heaps above the qanat, or falaj as they are known locally. These village water supplies are line sinks, developed as early as about 3000 BC.
Answer: These are qanats, a type of antique drainage system common in arid climate regions of the Middle East, particularly in Iran (as mentioned by @Spencer @Winwaed). Some of those are still in use for storage because of lower underground temperature or to access the underground water.
In the picture posted by OP, it further make sense since the underground channels follow linear paths near, around and crossing the small stream, thus providing a remote access to water.
Here is an oblique picture showing the qanats of Bam in Iran (Higher resolution available at the source here).
Comment: It would be nice to include more detail on how they work or are used. Where does the water come from? the local stream or are they harvesting water from elsewhere? How are the individual excavations connected to form a drainage system?
Comment: @haresfur you are right - I will try to work on it

Strange craters in Afghanistan


Can I ask for a school year to consider accepting the offer from my internship?

Question: I have interned with the same small software company for two consecutive summers. I was offered a full-time position with them for next summer, after I graduate with my bachelor's degree.
They are asking that I give them a response within two weeks maximum. It was made clear to me when I started my first summer of internship that the company stresses "long-haul" relationships, where the expectation is that I work for them on completion of school. There is no contract or anything like that obligating me to do so.
My internship projects consisted of mostly web development, as that's what they needed at the time and I didn't yet have the skills for working with their main software. This is my passion, and it is through these internships that I learned most of my knowledge of web development. The position I am being offered (the only one available), however, is for lower-level software development, which I am not as interested in.
My preference is to use my senior year and the expansive resources of my university to find a job that really suits my interests and makes me happy, and fall back on them if I happen to realize their environment is what I really want. I haven't interned or worked in any other programming environment and feel too inexperienced to just accept this offer without knowing what's possible.
I want to tell my potential employer that I want to see my options and not be put into a contract so quickly. I don't think this will be something they are expecting. How do I inform them without turning them off from wanting me?
Comment: What happens if you accept the intern position but then, a few weeks before you start, tell them you won't be joining?
Comment: I'm sorry - edited to clarify. I've already completed two internship sessions with them. I just finished last week. They offered me a full time position for after this next school year.
Comment: "fall back on them" Who's them - the company that offers you the position?
Answer: You can ask for anything with the caveat that they company can decline your request and that it may even damage your relationship with that company.
You're kind of dancing around saying this directly, but it sounds like what you really want is to be able to keep this company as a 'backup'. In other words if nothing more interesting or or profitable shows up then you would like to have this job. Unfortunately this isn't something companies like to hear. No one wants to be the backup plan.
In much the same way you may want to use them as a backup plan, they want to use you as a sure thing. They want to sign you up as soon as possible both to fill any jobs they may have and also to snap you up before another company, potentially a competitor, does so.
With that stated plain let's talk about what is realistic. I can't think of any job that's going to give a fresh college graduate a year to consider whether or not they want to accept a position. Consider it from their end. They have a position for you, they have a team who needs a new person. There is a world of difference between "we have hired a new person for your team but they start in June of next year" and "well we might have hired somebody but we won't know until June of next year". They seem similar, but you really don't want to work on the team that would do the latter.
What is realistic? What are your best options?
Ask what their hiring cycle is. Say something like "I'm actually not sure what my next step is out of university. I might be interested in graduate school(note, this is potentially a white lie, more on this in a moment). Do you have another hiring cycle in the spring that I could be involved with that would give me some time to consider my future?"
Now two things here. Even if the answer is "Yes, we have a hiring cycle in the spring and we would love to talk to you again then", this does not mean you are guaranteed a job. This doesn't mean you'd be on the same team, this doesn't mean you'd be on the same product or technology and this certainly doesn't mean you'll for sure, 100% have a job at that point. If you go this route you will face additional competition, a lot of grads are looking in spring, and your internship experience may or may not be weighted as heavily.
The second thing is that little white lie. Some folks are opposed to lies. To them I say "Huzzah." In my experience no one wants to hear they are the backup. Maybe you are considering further schooling. Maybe you're not. Maybe you'll take 10 minutes on a Saturday in December and go "hmm... Do I wanna go to grad school? Nah." But this is saving face for both you and the company. You're not burning bridges and they don't have to hear they were second choice. They know you will be shopping around, they know you'll be looking at other offers. It's just that neither of you will say that directly...
You have other options of course. Ask to have a more reasonable time to consider(a month isn't unreasonable for most companies) or turn them down with your stated reasons above and see if they counter offer(I would be a bit surprised if they did).
There is nothing wrong with wanting to see what else is out there. However, you're not going to be able to hold onto an offer as a backup. More importantly than 'is there better out there' are the answers to the questions:

Is it a fair offer(are the wages in line with the area and industry?)
Do you like the work?
Do you like the company and it's culture?
Could you see working there for a few years to build a base of experience?
Do you like the area/geographical region?
What would make a 'better' offer and can you negotiate this with the company?

Full disclosure. I accepted my first job out of college in October the year before I graduated. It was a great offer, I liked the company, I thought the work would be interesting and I liked the safety and comfort of knowing I had a job lined up on graduation. I know plenty of folks who went both ways - accepting early or waiting to see what else came up. Most of the time both folks ended up pretty happy (though, of course, some of the folks who waited for something 'better' ended up in something objectively a little worse.) It's really up to you and your priorities on how important this particular offer is.
Editted to add Do not accept the offer and then turn it down if something better comes along. That is a fast way of getting a nasty reputation in the industry.
Comment: Thank you for your answer. You explained your point well.
Comment: I would agree a "white lie" is better then the honest truth if your conclusion of the author is correct.  I also agree that accepting the job now then changing your mind would burn bridges.  Its important to point out.  Its easier to get a new job when you have a job.  The author can accept the job then after a period of time move on.
Answer:
I want to tell my potential employer that I want to see my options and
  not be put into a contract so quickly. I don't think this will be
  something they are expecting. How do I inform them without turning
  them off from wanting me?

You don't want them, so I'm not sure how much it really matters if they no longer want you.
You have indicated your reasons for not wanting to accept their offer very eloquently in your question. If you just convey the same ideas to them when you say "I really appreciate your offer. I've learned a lot, but for these reasons, I have to decline...", it will come across as a very professional response.
Basically, you are saying "Thanks, but no thanks" in a polite, respectful way.
I would suspect that they will accept your response, and move on to other candidates. But that's really what you want anyway, right?
And if you still want to be considered if your Senior Year changes your mind for some reason, you could always ask "Can I still contact you in the future, if my plans change?" and see how they respond.


installing security cameras

Question: i want to thank everyone for their replies to my question about wiring. I need to get some security cameras installed but i am worried about  raising my  electric bill a lot. I have two questions, first for the people here who have cameras did it raise your electric bill a lot. And second do i have to make holes in my house to get the cord for the camera to my outlets?  Sorry if this is dumb question but i have never installed cameras before. Thanks
Answer: Monthly Costs
You can evaluate the electricity cost for a security camera setup yourself. Take a look at the cameras that you are interested in and note how much power each camera consumes. This may be a direct rating of Watts or it could specify operating voltage and current. You can compute the Watts from the voltage times the current. So say that the cameras are rated at 12VDC and the current for each camera is 0.25A (equivalent to 250mA). So 12V x 0.25A = 3Watts per camera.
Next you have to consider a power supply unit that would provide the 12VDC for the cameras from mains power. These units are not 100% efficient and consume some power as well. Typical efficiency may be say 75%. So if you happened to deploy 10 cameras at 3W each that would be a total of 30W load on this power supply. The 75% efficiency would mean that the supply will require 30W / 0.75 = 40W from the mains power line.
Electricity is typically sold in units of KWatt-Hours (i.e. 1000W usage for 1 hour). Electricity cost will vary a lot from region to region so for sake of discussion lets make an estimate of 0.25USD per each KWatt-Hour used. (This will be high for some many regions in the USA but for sake of discussion let us guess high).
Let us base cost of operating cameras on a 30day month. At 24 hours per day that totals out to 24 x 30 = 720 hours per month. The 40W that we computed for the AC line power is same as 0.040KWatt. The total cost of operating cameras day and night for the month will be 0.04 x 720 x 0.25 = 7.20USD per month.
You can follow this process to come to a more realistic calculation based upon your actual electricity cost, the number of cameras you deploy, number of hours of operation per day and the actual Watts of power used by each camera. The numbers I chose above are just seat of the pants values chosen to illustrate the calculation. Your actual monthly cost may be quite a bit lower or could be higher if you chose to use many many power hungry cameras.
Installation
There are many schemes used to install security cameras. Whether any particular scheme requires you to make holes in your house will depend entirely of things that only you can determine such as:

Type of cameras that you choose to purchase
Method of powering the cameras (battery, DC power wiring or Powered through signalling cable)
How signals get from camera to monitoring system (Ethernet, WiFi, coax video)
Your concerns for camera and wiring hiding versus visibility
Your capabilities and tool resources to try to do a DIY install
Comment: I'm not sure if this is a lot of power but the cameras say
Power Supply Input: DC12V-1000mA, Output:100-240V
Power Supply Input: DC12V-2000mA, Output: 100-240V
12V-1000mA) for Cameras
 (12V-2000mA) for NVR
Answer: I have 8 security cameras at my house, I started with the zosi security camera bundle that was the best security camera system I have ever seen for such a affordable price for middle class individuals,  it's weird because the high dollar ones i switched to aren't any better than the super cheap zosi ones, well they are but it's minimal, and at night zosi wins. That's bad to say considering the price.
Didn't raise my bill at all, or I didn't notice, because the dryer, fridge, furnace and water heater raise electric bills...
As for wiring, I have CCTV so they are corded cameras not IP wireless cameras, I don't trust over air waves. I can still access them anywhere because the DVR is hooked up to the ethernet directly,
But I just ran the 50-100ft CCTV wire under the house in conduit and zip tied it with fasteners so it wasn't down on the ground, then I bought some clips for the upper parts that attached to the 1/4 metal tubing for around  the upper part of the house to keep it safe from vandals, the only parts that's drilled is right where they come up into the dvr, they all meet there where the power cord has a splitter for all 8 power cords to run on 12volts plus the 12v dvr
I used piping straight into the cameras outside, and I have a few that are dome cameras that have been drilled into the side of the house and then fished down to go under the house
Dome cameras have to be wired throughout the walls or else it would look kind of funny and someone looking to take the cameras out has a easy vantage point
Tools you'll need:
Ethernet cat5e cord,
Router,
Cctv cameras,
1/8 drill bit,
Drill,
Fishing wire,
Dvr with hard drive,
8 channel 12v power splitter,
2 12v power adapters,
Metal piping,
Conduit,
Fasteners,
Screws,
But if you're going away from the house make sure your bury the wire in conduit at least a foot
I also chose wired instead of wireless because, wireless still needs that 12v of power so you mise as well go with a CCTV camera system
If you do choose IP cameras, you can connect the power directly to your 12v power and to each outlet, but that's 12v power supply x 8 if you choose 8
Comment: You could only do 4 or 8 with the splitter at a time, but you shouldn't blow the breaker back because the outside outlet should be a weatherized GFCI, here's the splitter https://www.amazon.com/ISEEUSEE-100V-240V-Security-Certified-Transformers-Fits/dp/B01BVNKAQ8?crid=3GIASO2MTTJ3L&keywords=security+camera+power+splitter&qid=1538098582&sprefix=security+camera+power+&sr=8-6&ref=mp_s_a_1_6
Comment: Personally you could plug 8 in outside, the same way I use 8 inside but that plug would have to be at least 4 Meters up to be safe from vandals
Comment: Thank you so much for all the information, so is it possible to plug say 5 cameras into one outside outlet? i don't want to blow a fuse or anything like that. If i can't  get them all in one outlet outside  and they each need a outlet i was thinking  and this might sound strange but i was thinking i could run the cord threw my windows, i will make a small slit in the window screen and plug them in that way.
Comment: yeah i am worried about vandals because the outlet is low may be a little over a foot from the ground, its the kind with the cover you have to flip up. But maybe if they know the cameras are recording them they won't mess with it. I getting cameras because of a evil neighbor, i hope they do mess with it so i can call the cops.

installing security cameras


One-Click-Root Failed On Samsung J7 SM-J700H

Question: I have a Samsung Galaxy J7 running 6.0.1 marshmallow which i tried to root using One-Click-Root methods like desktop versions of "Kingroot" and "Kingoroot". However, "Kingroot" doesn't support my device type and "Kingoroot" gives "Root Failed" without showing any error code (as shown in the image below) . I have my phone's OEM Unlocked and USB Debugging on and I use ONE-CLICK-ROOT because it is believed to be the safest method (according to a quora discussion). So my question is, why is this happening ? And what could be a safe alternative to root my phone ?
Comment: Kingo root "is believed to be the safest method"? If I [check our site for "Kingo root"](https://android.stackexchange.com/search?q=%22kingo+root%22), it seems the safest method to get into trouble. Failing to gain root is even the best outcome. Alternatives include sudden adware appearance and certain apps being installed over and over, regardless of your removing them… Apart from that: No, I've got no Sammy, so I cannot help you obtain root on it. But you're welcome to check with our [rooting tag-wiki](/tags/rooting/info).
Comment: @PradanaAumars How can that be a duplicate when it is about a particular error code, and this question specifically says there is no error code?
Comment: I have rooted several phones using kingo(isn't the best but it worked fine) .. Maybe Odin would work better ?
Comment: Granted: if it works out fine, people are not coming here to complain :) As I wrote, I don't use Sammys. So I have to pass this one over to someone else. Good luck!
Comment: Possible duplicate of [What is KingoRoot error code 0x15F6D5?](https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/176922/what-is-kingoroot-error-code-0x15f6d5)
Answer: One click root methods seem not to work on Samsung devices running Android Lollipop and above. They use an exploit that is already patched by either Samsung or Google.
So, the best method still the  Chainfire's CF-Autoroot. I root mobile devices daily and this method seems to work on every Samsung devices. The method consists of flashing a modified recovery by entering the device in Download mode, no ADB here but OEM unlock should be required.

Download this file
Download Odin flasher
Open Odin, click on AP/PDA and select the file you have downloaded.
Boot the phone in download mode (volume down + power button the volume up to confirm)
Click on Start and wait.

The developer has rooting files for  almost all Samsung devices from his site.


The plane of the orbit of Juno around Jupiter is not the ecliptic plane. How did it get into this plane?

Question: Did Juno start off its course on the ecliptic plane from the earth orbit and then left it at insertion to Jupiter's orbit over its north pole or it was always in that plane?
Comment: Jupiter is not exactly at the ecliptic, so Juno was only approximately in that plane during the transfer. You can get any inclination you want at the orbital insertion though.
Comment: To *change* the plane is costly, once in orbit, but the initial choice is basically free.
Comment: Is it not  too costly though to change the plane of orbit? It's not just slowing down the space-craft, it's changing the course into an almost perpendicular plane.
Comment: Are you referring to it being in a polar orbit? Jupiter did the work of putting it in that orbit. The craft only had to be in a spot where the pull of Jupiter's gravity bent it into an orbit over the poles. So it was above it, or below it, when that pull became strong enough.
Comment: That is the question!! because the tangent intercept trajectory is least costly if it remains on the ecliptic plane which goes through the center of Jupiter not above or below its poles. the pull of gravity of Jupiter has been centering Juno for all its trajectory in the planetary orbit of Jupiter not above it!
Comment: No, you are confusing the plane of the orbit around the Sun with the plane of the incoming hyperbolic trajectory relative to Jupiter. They are two different things.
Answer: The plane of the orbit around the Sun is not directly related to the planet-relative plane of the hyperbola on approach to Jupiter, or correspondingly the orbit around Jupiter after orbit insertion. The plane and shape of the orbit around the Sun relative to Jupiter's equatorial plane determines its approach declination to Jupiter. That is essentially the negative of the latitude on Jupiter of your atmospheric entry point if you tried to target your spacecraft to hit the center of Jupiter. The magnitude of the approach declination limits how equatorial the orbit can be, but not how polar it can be.
On approach to a body, your target can be anywhere in a plane perpendicular to your approach trajectory, at essentially zero cost. That plane is called the B-plane:

For convenience, you target a point on the B-plane that you would intersect if the planet were not there, or if it had no gravity. You actually cross the B-plane inside of that point due to the planet's gravity. You get to pick how far from the center of the planet your target point is, and the angle of that point anywhere around the planet. The distance from the center determines your closest approach distance, or your atmospheric entry flight path angle. The angle determines the plane of your planet-relative approach trajectory, which will be the plane of your orbit.
Your approach declination defines a line through the center of the planet entering at a latitude equal to the negative approach declination on one side and exiting at a latitude equal to the positive approach declination on the other side. That line is labeled "S" in the diagram. Imagine a plane that contains that line, and you are allowed to rotate that plane around that line. Those are your allowed orbit planes. One such plane is the "Trajectory Plane" in the diagram. Since your plane must go over the latitude of the magnitude of the approach declination, your orbit plane inclination to the planet equator cannot be less than that. If it were less than that, then your orbit could not go over that latitude.
Juno's approach declination was about 8°. Then by choosing how you target the Jupiter closest approach, which can be anywhere in a circle around Jupiter, you can pick any final orbit inclination from 8° (prograde) to 90° (polar) to 172° (retrograde).
After orbit insertion, you can do maneuvers or swingbys of satellites to change the orbit plane, e.g. if you wanted to be more equatorial than the approach geometry permitted. Cassini is the champion of this, having dramatically changed its orbit plane many times over the course of its mission at Saturn, using Titan gravity assists.
Comment: Nice diagram! Again the point is that not all the points around the Jupiter on your B plane are possible and of the possible ones some are much more costly. let's not forget both Earth and Jupiter lay in the ecliptic plane. therefore even though we have a wide choice of shooting targets far scattered horizontally in this plane we have a hard time shooting at targets off this plane, up or down. We take advantage of centripetal force of Juno's sun orbit to keep it from falling and crashing into Jupiter but that luxury is not available for targets off the heliocentric plane meaning up or down!
Comment: @kamran Jupiter is not centered in the ecliptic plane. It is inclined 1.31 degrees to the ecliptic. Earth, of course, is in the ecliptic by definition.
Comment: @kamran No, all the points on the B-plane near the planet are possible and targeting any point you like in the B-plane is essentially zero cost.
Answer: Basically, Juno came in towards Jupiter from slightly below it.  This allowed it to slow down into an orbit which takes it around the poles of the planet.  Over the course of its journey to Jupiter, it was at a very slight angle, relative to the plane of Jupiter's orbit.  This angle was determined by the flight engineers at its launch, and refined by two deep space maneuvers and an Earth gravitational assist flyby.  This slight angle was enough to put the craft below Jupiter, because its journey was very long.  More information about Juno's trajectory can be found in Spaceflight101's article, which includes a Juno trajectory animation.
Comment: @kamran there is no conflict between Mark's answer and this one. Mark's just gives a more technical sense of how it is set up.
Answer: As noted in comments, by selecting the launch time and initial trajectory, any relative inclination between Jupiter and the spacecraft could be achieved.
That said, while plane changes measured in degrees are indeed expensive, for an orbit that goes out to 5 AU, one degree of relative inclination corresponds to a deflection of something like 12 million km.
If, after Earth flyby, mission control had realized that Juno was on a direct collision course with Jupiter, they could have done a 1-meter-per-second correction "northward"; Juno would then pass over Jupiter's North Pole at a distance of about 60,000km. In the solar frame of reference it's still a low inclination orbit; in Jupiter's reference it's polar.
Comment: You'r assuming the trajectory of Juno to be a straight line from the point of possible correction which it is not! It's a very complex 3d curvature with many inflection points depending on the part of solar system it is passing. Very simplified it could be assumed of piecewise sections of parabolas. let's consider only earth and Jupiter. the path has to start just slightly tilted up from horizon to north of eclectic plane anticipating the gravity of Jupiter, somewhere along the way the plane of its path will twist to Jupiter accelerating! very complex 3d path under different force fields.
Comment: As it's not going far out of the ecliptic, the angle of the force produced by Jupiter and the other massive bodies of the solar system will be nearly in-plane over the majority of the flight. For rough approximation like this we can just about ignore it.
Answer: I estimate the launch time and coordinates must have been optimally designed so that the gravity assist would already position Juno in an inclined plane much more than what was needed ultimately but adjusted over the long trajectory by the pull of Jupiter into correct entry point.
NASA would have two tools to angle the shot: earth's orbit and its axial rotation.
I'd assume they designed the trajectory purposely not in the plane of solar system at all but in an inclined plane winding up and down the apogee of its orbit as needed riding the great roller coaster. Hats off to Isaac Newton.
quote from Wikipedia page on Ulysses probe

to change the orbital inclination of a spacecraft a large change in heliocentric velocity is needed. However the necessary amount of velocity change to achieve a high inclination orbit of about 80° far exceeded the capabilities of any launch vehicle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_%28spacecraft%29.
Comment: That is a word salad that makes no sense.
Comment: You are still confusing Jupiter orbit inclination with Solar orbit inclination. They are _two different things_. In either final orbit around Jupiter that you drew, the inclination of Juno's path _around the Sun_ has not substantially changed inclination, since it is going around the Sun with Jupiter.
Comment: https://www.dropbox.com/s/4i5b7tpp8vmp0to/juno%20orbit_1.jpg?dl=0 i hope the sketch i did is easy to see. 2 alternative orbits are shown,  polar and equatorial. My question is how did they set the orbit entry that it took the polar orbit. I have a hard time believing all entry points are equal energy. A comment about the fact that Jupiter is not exactly on the ecliptic plane doesn't apply because Jupiter will pull Juno into its orbit; it does not recognize ecliptic orbit. I would like to here the detail of how they positioned Juno in the final vertical parabola of pre-entry for polar orbit.
Comment: What your drawing is missing is scale. The ratio of Jupiter's distance from the sun to the apojove of Juno's orbit is over 5000 to 1. A tiny deflection at Earth departure is leveraged over that great distance to make a much larger deflection at B-plane.


In what ways does a project charter differ from a project scope?

Question: Under PMBOK methodology, how would you explain the difference between a 'project charter' and a 'project scope' to a stakeholder unfamiliar with the PM process?
Comment: Possible duplicate of [What is the difference between Vision and Scope Document and a Project Charter?](http://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/2/what-is-the-difference-between-vision-and-scope-document-and-a-project-charter)
Comment: There is an inherent tension between "Under PMBOK methodology" and "to a stakeholder unfamiliar with the PM process" - PMBOK is not intended for stakeholders who are unfamiliar with the PM process.  I'm not saying it can't be done, but the task is much more challenging.
Answer: Project scope is a conceptual thing describing the boundaries of your project, covering what the project encompasses and (maybe more importantly) what it does not encompass. From PMBOK 4:

Project Scope. The work that must be performed to deliver a product, service, or result with the specified features and functions.

Project charters are baselined documents used to capture the agreed-upon objective, scope, benefits, costs, milestones, governance, quality standards, etc etc etc of your project. From PMBOK 4:

Project Charter [Output/input]. A document issued by the project initiator or sponsor that formally authorizes the existence of a project, and provides the project manager with the authority to apply organizational resources to project activities.
Answer: I would explain that studies have shown two major clusters of reasons why projects fail.

Bad scope - people don't understand the boundaries of the work that needs to be done. Either they fail to do all the work needed to ensure that the project is ready for the customer, or they spend time and effort on things that are nice to have.  Nailing down project scope is essential to ensure that the project involves the work, all the work and nothing but the work.
Bad sponsorship - projects succeed because the organization backs them, and the fail because the project team failed to ensure that they had all the support they needed.  It does no good to develop a brilliant web site only to discover that the webserver cannot take any more traffic.  There is a core team involved in the project, but they can be successful only if their work aligns with the organizations' interest and if the organization is interested in their success.  That is the job of the project charter.

Generally the project charter incorporates a high level statement of the scope, but the scope is intended to set boundaries of work and the charter is intended to ensure that the organization backs the project.
If I could, I'd illustrate that with some examples of projects that failed because of scope and of sponsorship - examples that are relevant to the individual. (examples from my environment wouldn't be meaningful to anyone outside my environment).


How to increase the speed of synchronisation?

Question: What ways are there to increase the speed of synchronisation of the network, assuming the use of the main Bitcoin client?
Comment: Disk seek speed is the single most important factor. It takes you 0.5 ms to verify a transaction, but 5 ms to go to disk and save it. When buying harddrives, look at that. SSD's have short enough seek times that the exact seek time doesn't really matter.
Answer: Pass -dbcache=N as a command line option. N is a number in megabytes, and setting it higher significantly improves verification speed. The default is 450, but up to 6000 or so you can notice improvements.
This is superior to using a RAM drive.
Answer: Next to installing an SSD, and using -dbcache=N to allow Bitcoin Core to take more memory, each release of Bitcoin Core has sped up the synchronization.
The upcoming Bitcoin Core 0.14.0 release will introduce the option -assumevalid=<block> which will cause Bitcoin Core to not check signatures up to the given block. This is by default enabled and set to a block shortly before the release. It has been reported that synchronization only took about 2/3 of the time with 0.14.0 than with 0.13.2.
So, if you're still on an older version because you're reindexing or hadn't turned on Bitcoin in ages, you'll probably see huge benefits by upgrading to a newer version.
Answer: One way is to pre-calculate a subset of the data - this would be up to the author of the bitcoin client.
For example, the author of a particular client could say (to the program): "The first block is 286,427, it's hash is 0000000000000000f85c21f45015dcd2a89df40b03071234e1b3211aecaea1a4, and at that time, the COMPLETE list of balances is as follows: (include the full list here).
So long as the information is correct (and verified), and it is not on the wrong side of a fork, processing could continue from there. You would lose transactions before then.