What are speed ovens (combo microwave / oven) good or not good at?

Question: We're considering a speed oven as a 2nd oven, probably 27". Our main range is an all gas 30" range. What are those microwave / traditional ovens combo good at? What are the best uses? Conversely, what should they not be used for?
Comment: Now with your edit I'm a bit confused, because I haven't heard of ovens of that size which combine a microwave and oven function. Maybe you could post a link to an example product? Or even better, to some place which describes the product category, if you can find such.
Answer: Microwaves are fine for veggies and for reheating most leftovers.
They are notoriously bad at anything having to do with bread, or anything crunchy. Nothing will make a nice crispy coating go soggy faster than a microwave.
Some people like them for rice, I do not. I think they ruin rice.
You can quickly achieve an edible potato, but it won't have that fluffy interior or crispy skin of baked. By cooking a potato until almost done in the microwave, and then finishing it in the oven, you can get (most of) the best of both worlds. It won't be quite as good as a fully baked potato, but it'll be pretty close. I would think a combo oven would be a good choice there.
Answer: We have had quite a few questions in the past in which combo microwaves showed symptoms of not turning off the microwave part when being put in what is supposed to be a pure toasting mode. If this is true, the only thing such an oven is good for is the same thing as a microwave:

liquids (warming or cooking them),
vegetables, steamed-like,
heating food which will be eaten immediately.

Personally, I wouldn't take the risk, and would rather purchase a standard toaster oven. A good quality toaster oven can do everything a large oven can do. I have been using a toaster oven exclusively since 2006, with a short break (1 year living in a place which had both a large oven and my toaster oven). I even got decent macarons out of it with a few hacks; things like bread and cake have never been a problem.
It needs a bit of getting used to (it bakes with more radiation and less convection at the same temperature, so the outer parts get crispy quicker). And it is not as even as a large oven can be. But if you pay attention to what you buy, it makes a great energy-saving second oven. For buying advice, see this question and read reviews. This is also a product category where reading test results by independent organisations can be very helpful!


How should I bump a question?

Question: If there is an old question that has received no or inadequate answers, it is likely not going to get an answer without intervention, as it is not appearing high enough on the lists of new or unanswered questions to get the attention of people who may be capable of providing an answer. If someone wants to see a particular question answered, what are the different methods they can use to get it the attention it needs? Is there a way to bump questions up these lists? Are there different methods available for those who are the original poster vs those who aren't? Are there any rules of etiquette that should be adhered to as well?
Comment: You could add a bounty to the question.
Comment: @moewe -- a new question pointing to an old one with inadequate answers sounds reasonable, but pointing to one with *no* answers seems to be adding dross to the site.  only if the new question explains the problem (perhaps *much*) more clearly does there seem to be significant value.  but in that case, is the original question worth keeping?
Comment: The 'official' way would be a bounty as samcarter already mentioned. I guess it would also be OK-ish to edit your own question to bump it up the front page provided the edits are not insignificant (correcting typos and a few commas would be a bit puny), after all a significant edit can make sense, there might be a good reason why the question has not received an answer yet, an edit might remove one of these reasons. If it's not your question, significant edits seem a bit wrong to me. I don't know how many people look at active vs. new questions, so I can't tell you if edit-bumps work at all.
Comment: This is not a way to 'bump' the question at all, but asking in chat if anybody can answer the question is an option for getting it some attention.
Comment: Note that some old questions are not answered because there are no good answers to them. Depending on how questions are phrased, we see questions such that no answer would constitute a satisfactory response, so nobody answers. (Sometimes questions are phrased in a way which rules out the answer, 'cannot be done', for example.)
Comment: So to summarise the different options: if there's nothing inherently wrong with the question, the best option is to add a bounty. If there are issues with it, AND it is my own question, then I should edit it to remove those issues, which will both enable people to better answer it and bump it so it can be seen. If there are issues with it, but it's not my question, then it would be poor etiquette to edit it significantly so I should instead just post a new question that is better phrased, and maybe also link to the new question on the old, once it's answered. Does that cover everything?
Comment: @moewe But that just adds to the list of unanswered questions. If it is really the same question, it shouldn't be duplicated.
Comment: I think it would be fine to re-ask a question if it did not get adequate answers: Link to the old question and explain why and how the answers were inadequate and you should be good.
Comment: @barbarabeeton Agreed. If the old question has no answers, the issue is slightly more tricky. If the new question gives the question a new spin or makes it easier to understand or answer I think it would be OK to close the old question as a duplicate of the new afterwards.
Comment: @barbarabeeton I agree up to a point. However, if the answers are really inadequate answers to the original question and this question is really a duplicate, deliberately adding a duplicate seems bad. If they are adequate answers to that question but no longer work or don't work for some case somebody needs, that's obviously very different.
Comment: @Ulysses I would link to the old question in the new and explain how your question is better/clearer. Probably less likely to get closed as a duplicate.
Answer: This might sound strange, but just upvote the existing answers!
If the authors are still around this works remarkably well to trigger an update of outdated answers because many of the users will have a look at their post if they receive an upvote to an very old answer and sometimes within a couple of minutes they will update an outdated post.
Even if this does not work, it certainly is worth a try - you can't lose anything.
Comment: Certainly works with me in some cases. But usually I will only update questions to user newer (better) interfaces introduced in the meantime and will fix the odd typo or deficiency in an explanation. So if you are unhappy with what the old answer did you will probably be unhappy with the updated version as well, so in that case a comment would be appreciated (you can upvote if the answer is update the your satisfaction afterwards).

How should I bump a question?


open data for plant disease?

Question: I'm looking for an open data to use for detecting crop disease based on weather data. For example, to predict late blight disease for potato crop.
A dataset where given daily hourly temperature, humidity and rainfall there is a label that expresses whether the disease manifests or not
Answer: A starting point (hence, partially answering your question) might be the EPPO Global Database which is maintained by the Secretariat of the European and Mediterranean Plant Protection Organization (EPPO).
It provides pest-specific information that has been produced or collected by EPPO and also offers an API. See
https://gd.eppo.int

open data for plant disease?


URL rewriting and SSL conflict

Question: I am facing following problem.
URL rewriting with .htaccess is working perfectly on HTTP URLs.
Now I have installed SSL Certificates on my server and now accessing my site with HTTPS URLs. Site is working fine with normal URLs i.e URLs with no URL rewrite rule in .htaccess.
But when I access a HTTPS URL for which there is a rule in .htaccess it gives me 404 error.
I have performed number of tests, like simple redirect of https://mydomain.com to http://www.google.com but its not working.
It seems HTTPS URL completely ignores rules and conditions written in .htaccess file.
Please help me.
More information:
My .htaccess code is
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(/$|\.)
RewriteRule (.*) %{REQUEST_URI}/ [R=301,L]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !\.(pdf|js|ico|gif|jpg|png|css|rar|zip|tar\.gz)$
RewriteRule ^([^/]*)/([^/]*)$ index.php?%{QUERY_STRING}&current_event=$1 [L]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !\.(pdf|js|ico|gif|jpg|png|css|rar|zip|tar\.gz)$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /commingsoon/index.html/$1 [L,QSA]

And my server's directive file's code is as follows
ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
ServerName www.mysite.com
ServerAlias mysite.com

DocumentRoot /var/www/mysite

<Directory />
    Options FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride all
</Directory>
    <Directory /var/www/mysite>
            Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
            AllowOverride all
            Order allow,deny
            allow from all
    </Directory>

ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /usr/lib/cgi-bin/
<Directory "/usr/lib/cgi-bin">
    AllowOverride None
    Options +ExecCGI -MultiViews +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
</Directory>

ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log

# Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit,
# alert, emerg.
LogLevel warn

CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/ssl_access.log combined

#   SSL Engine Switch:
#   Enable/Disable SSL for this virtual host.
SSLEngine on

#   A self-signed (snakeoil) certificate can be created by installing
#   the ssl-cert package. See
#   /usr/share/doc/apache2.2-common/README.Debian.gz for more info.
#   If both key and certificate are stored in the same file, only the
#   SSLCertificateFile directive is needed.
    #   SSLCertificateFile    /etc/ssl/certs/ssl-cert-snakeoil.pem
    #   SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/ssl/private/ssl-cert-snakeoil.key
    SSLCACertificateFile  /etc/ssl/private/ca_root.pem
    SSLCertificateChainFile /etc/ssl/private/intermediate.pem
    SSLCertificateFile    /etc/ssl/private/www.mysite.com.crt
    SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/ssl/private/www.mysite.com.key

#   Server Certificate Chain:
#   Point SSLCertificateChainFile at a file containing the
#   concatenation of PEM encoded CA certificates which form the
#   certificate chain for the server certificate. Alternatively
#   the referenced file can be the same as SSLCertificateFile
#   when the CA certificates are directly appended to the server
#   certificate for convinience.
#SSLCertificateChainFile /etc/apache2/ssl.crt/server-ca.crt

#   Certificate Authority (CA):
#   Set the CA certificate verification path where to find CA
#   certificates for client authentication or alternatively one
#   huge file containing all of them (file must be PEM encoded)
#   Note: Inside SSLCACertificatePath you need hash symlinks
#         to point to the certificate files. Use the provided
#         Makefile to update the hash symlinks after changes.
#SSLCACertificatePath /etc/ssl/certs/
#SSLCACertificateFile /etc/apache2/ssl.crt/ca-bundle.crt

#   Certificate Revocation Lists (CRL):
#   Set the CA revocation path where to find CA CRLs for client
#   authentication or alternatively one huge file containing all
#   of them (file must be PEM encoded)
#   Note: Inside SSLCARevocationPath you need hash symlinks
#         to point to the certificate files. Use the provided
#         Makefile to update the hash symlinks after changes.
#SSLCARevocationPath /etc/apache2/ssl.crl/
#SSLCARevocationFile /etc/apache2/ssl.crl/ca-bundle.crl

#   Client Authentication (Type):
#   Client certificate verification type and depth.  Types are
#   none, optional, require and optional_no_ca.  Depth is a
#   number which specifies how deeply to verify the certificate
#   issuer chain before deciding the certificate is not valid.
#SSLVerifyClient require
#SSLVerifyDepth  10

#   Access Control:
#   With SSLRequire you can do per-directory access control based
#   on arbitrary complex boolean expressions containing server
#   variable checks and other lookup directives.  The syntax is a
#   mixture between C and Perl.  See the mod_ssl documentation
#   for more details.
#<Location />
#SSLRequire (    %{SSL_CIPHER} !~ m/^(EXP|NULL)/ \
#            and %{SSL_CLIENT_S_DN_O} eq "Snake Oil, Ltd." \
#            and %{SSL_CLIENT_S_DN_OU} in {"Staff", "CA", "Dev"} \
#            and %{TIME_WDAY} >= 1 and %{TIME_WDAY} <= 5 \
#            and %{TIME_HOUR} >= 8 and %{TIME_HOUR} <= 20       ) \
#           or %{REMOTE_ADDR} =~ m/^192\.76\.162\.[0-9]+$/
#</Location>

#   SSL Engine Options:
#   Set various options for the SSL engine.
#   o FakeBasicAuth:
#     Translate the client X.509 into a Basic Authorisation.  This means that
#     the standard Auth/DBMAuth methods can be used for access control.  The
#     user name is the `one line' version of the client's X.509 certificate.
#     Note that no password is obtained from the user. Every entry in the user
#     file needs this password: `xxj31ZMTZzkVA'.
#   o ExportCertData:
#     This exports two additional environment variables: SSL_CLIENT_CERT and
#     SSL_SERVER_CERT. These contain the PEM-encoded certificates of the
#     server (always existing) and the client (only existing when client
#     authentication is used). This can be used to import the certificates
#     into CGI scripts.
#   o StdEnvVars:
#     This exports the standard SSL/TLS related `SSL_*' environment variables.
#     Per default this exportation is switched off for performance reasons,
#     because the extraction step is an expensive operation and is usually
#     useless for serving static content. So one usually enables the
#     exportation for CGI and SSI requests only.
#   o StrictRequire:
#     This denies access when "SSLRequireSSL" or "SSLRequire" applied even
#     under a "Satisfy any" situation, i.e. when it applies access is denied
#     and no other module can change it.
#   o OptRenegotiate:
#     This enables optimized SSL connection renegotiation handling when SSL
#     directives are used in per-directory context.
#SSLOptions +FakeBasicAuth +ExportCertData +StrictRequire
<FilesMatch "\.(cgi|shtml|phtml|php)$">
    SSLOptions +StdEnvVars
</FilesMatch>
<Directory /usr/lib/cgi-bin>
    SSLOptions +StdEnvVars
</Directory>

#   SSL Protocol Adjustments:
#   The safe and default but still SSL/TLS standard compliant shutdown
#   approach is that mod_ssl sends the close notify alert but doesn't wait for
#   the close notify alert from client. When you need a different shutdown
#   approach you can use one of the following variables:
#   o ssl-unclean-shutdown:
#     This forces an unclean shutdown when the connection is closed, i.e. no
#     SSL close notify alert is send or allowed to received.  This violates
#     the SSL/TLS standard but is needed for some brain-dead browsers. Use
#     this when you receive I/O errors because of the standard approach where
#     mod_ssl sends the close notify alert.
#   o ssl-accurate-shutdown:
#     This forces an accurate shutdown when the connection is closed, i.e. a
#     SSL close notify alert is send and mod_ssl waits for the close notify
#     alert of the client. This is 100% SSL/TLS standard compliant, but in
#     practice often causes hanging connections with brain-dead browsers. Use
#     this only for browsers where you know that their SSL implementation
#     works correctly.
#   Notice: Most problems of broken clients are also related to the HTTP
#   keep-alive facility, so you usually additionally want to disable
#   keep-alive for those clients, too. Use variable "nokeepalive" for this.
#   Similarly, one has to force some clients to use HTTP/1.0 to workaround
#   their broken HTTP/1.1 implementation. Use variables "downgrade-1.0" and
#   "force-response-1.0" for this.
BrowserMatch "MSIE [2-6]" \
    nokeepalive ssl-unclean-shutdown \
    downgrade-1.0 force-response-1.0
# MSIE 7 and newer should be able to use keepalive
BrowserMatch "MSIE [17-9]" ssl-unclean-shutdown

Comment: Hmm. What does your rewrite log say? And what happens if you put garble in .htaccess? Do you get a server fault?
Comment: Yes garble gives me Internal server error 500. rewrite log? how can i check rewrite log on my server?
Comment: You'd have to enable it in the apache conf.
Comment: @Halfgaar can you tell me specific name, what i have to enable.
Comment: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/mod/mod_rewrite.html
Answer: You'd have to show your virtual host configs for the SSL and non-SSL sites, but I suspect the SSL version is missing an AllowOverride all statement.
Comment: please check i have updated my question with required information.

URL rewriting and SSL conflict


Does it make sense to talk about an ETF or index in terms of technical indicators?

Question: For example, a story today talked about SPY approaching support levels.  Given that the price of the ETF is essentially determined by the price of its constituents, does this even make sense?  Do people say "oh, the weighted average of all these stocks is hitting a support level, so if it goes below it, then it's likely that all (or most) of the stocks will go down in price"?
Comment: Many academic researchers argue that technical analysis *never* makes sense, so of course that would also apply to ETFs :)
Comment: Some technical indicators are more important than others. In particular, the P/E ratio for the S&P 500 is regularly discussed as an indicator of the overall stock market's performance and/or level of optimism. Trying to trade based on that is another thing, though :)
Answer: Yes, it makes sense. Like Lagerbaer says, the usefulness of technical indicators can not be answered with a simple yes or no. Some people gain something from it, others do not.
Aside from this, applying technical indicators (or any other form of technical analysis - like order flow) to instruments which are composed of other instruments, such as indexes (more accurately, a derivative of it), does make sense.
There are many theories why this is the case, but personally i believe it is a mixture of self fulfilling prophecy, that the instruments the index is composed of (like the stocks in the S&P500) are traded in similar ways as the index (or rather a trade-able derivative of it like ETFs and futures), and the idea that TA just represents human emotion and interaction in trading.
This is a very subjective topic, so take this with a grain of salt, but in contrast to JoeTaxpayer i believe that yields are not necessary in order to use TA successfully. As long as the given instrument is liquid enough, TA can be applied and used to gain an edge.
On the other hand, to answer your second question, not all stocks in an index correlate all the time, and not all of them will move in sync with the index.
Answer: With the disclaimer that I am not a technician, I'd answer yes, it does. SPY (for clarification, an ETF that reflects the S&P 500 index) has dividends, and earnings, therefore a P/E and dividend yield. It would follow that the tools technicians use, such as moving averages, support and resistance levels also apply.
Keep in mind, each and every year, one can take the S&P stocks and break them up, into quintiles or deciles based on return and show that not all stock move in unison. You can break up by industry as well which is what the SPDRs aim to do, and observe the movement of those sub-groups.
But, no, not all the stocks will perform the way the index is predicted to.
(Note - If a technician wishes to correct any key points here, you are welcome to add a note, hopefully, my answer was not biased)


Is it haram for a man to look at naked women in Islam?

Question: Is it wrong for a man to look at a naked woman who is getting changed, if he looks at her without her knowledge?  I require evidences from the Qur'an to support any answer.
Comment: For the sake of clarity, should we assume that the man and the woman in question aren't married to each other?
Comment: This is a legit question, why downvote?
Answer: Let alone the naked women, Islam doesn't even allow a man to look into a woman's eyes(with lust). Every muslim is obligated to lower his/her gaze when talking or facing a person of opposite sex.

An-Nūr (Ayaah 30 - 31):
Tell the believing men to reduce [some] of their vision and guard their private parts. That is purer for them. Indeed, Allah is Acquainted with what they do.
And tell the believing women to reduce [some] of their vision and guard their private parts and not expose their adornment except that which [necessarily] appears thereof and to wrap [a portion of] their headcovers over their chests and not expose their adornment except to their husbands, their fathers, their husbands' fathers, their sons, their husbands' sons, their brothers, their brothers' sons, their sisters' sons, their women, that which their right hands possess, or those male attendants having no physical desire, or children who are not yet aware of the private aspects of women. And let them not stamp their feet to make known what they conceal of their adornment. And turn to Allah in repentance, all of you, O believers, that you might succeed.

And spying someone (Watch someone changing without their knowledge) is like eating their flesh.

Al-Ĥujurāt (Ayah 12):
O you who have believed, avoid much [negative] assumption. Indeed, some assumption is sin. And do not spy or backbite each other. Would one of you like to eat the flesh of his brother when dead? You would detest it. And fear Allah ; indeed, Allah is Accepting of repentance and Merciful.

ۚ  وَاللَّهُ عَلِيمٌ حَكِيمٌ (And Allah is the All-Knower, the Wise)
اللَّهُمَّ انْفَعْنِي بِمَا عَلَّمْـتَنِي وَ عَلِّمْنِي مَا يَنْفَعُنِي
Comment: "Let alone the naked women, Islam doesn't even allow a man to look into a woman's eyes(with lust). Every muslim is obligated to lower his/her gaze when talking or facing a person of opposite sex." is strictly speaking wrong there are clear exceptions where one is allowed to look at a woman especially when a necessity of recognition is given. Beside you could look at a fiancé without lowering your gaze. What you are not allowed is to keep on looking at a foreign woman, without a necessity.


Where does the saying "made from scratch" originate?

Question: I've heard the saying "made from scratch" many times in my life from living in the southern part of the United States. What is scratch in this context and how did this saying come about?
Comment: @Mitch - i did not know what etymology was until I looked that up. So, to answer your question. I had not.
Comment: Did you do a google search for '"made from scratch" etymology' ?
Comment: December 31, 2012--I am now 80 years old. I remember when I was about 14 years old that after I had baked a birthday cake and friends had sampled it, I was asked if it was from a mix (very popular at that time) and I replied:"Oh! No! I baked it from scratch. Since we did not have a T.V., I often wondered where I could have heard that phrase. I do remember the thought of my chickens scratching for their goodies. I wonder now as I hear the phrase more often just where it did originate and when.
Comment: In Australia people refer to 'from scratch' in the context of baking — as in creating from the raw ingredients and not simply adding water to a packet mix.
Answer: In order to get a broader history of 'from scratch', I checked the PhraseDoctor. He writes for "start from scratch":

'Scratch' has been used since the 18th century as a sporting term for a boundary or starting point which was scratched on the ground. The first such scratch was the crease which is a boundary line for batsmen in cricket.
John Nyren's Young Cricketer's Tutor, 1833 records this line from a 1778 work by Cotton:
"Ye strikers... Stand firm to your scratch, let your bat be upright."
It is the world of boxing that has given us the concept of 'starting from scratch'. The scratched line there specified the positions of boxers who faced each other at the beginning of a bout. This is also the source of 'up to scratch', i.e. meet the required standard, as pugilists would have had to do when offering themselves for a match.
Scratch later came to be used as the name of any starting point for a race. The term came to be used in 'handicap' races where weaker entrants were given a head start. For example, in cycling those who were given no advantage had the handicap of 'starting from scratch', while others started ahead of the line. Other sports, notably golf, have taken up the figurative use of scratch as the term for 'with no advantage - starting from nothing'.

For the term made from scratch, this blog writes:

This use of scratch derives from a line or mark drawn or scratched into the ground to indicate a boundary or starting-point in sports, especially cricket and boxing.  That meaning of scratch goes back to the late 18th century.  From there it came to apply specifically to the starting point, in a handicap, of a competitor who received no odds: "Mr. Tom Sabin, of the Coventry Bicycle Club, has won, during last week, three races from scratch." (Bicycle Journal, August 18, 1878).
It was later applied figuratively with the meaning "from nothing", and it was used thus by James Joyce in Ulysses (1922): "A poor foreign immigrant who started scratch as a stowaway and is now trying to turn an honest penny."  Thereafter it was taking up in cooking once boxed mixes and prepared foods became widely available.  Today it is a badge of honor to be able to say one made a culinary delight from scratch.

As the other two answers mention, "scratch" refers to sporting events. However, it was first used in terms of boxing and cricket after which the term was applied to races.
Answer: It appears the term "from scratch" can be earliest derived from foot races, followed by other sporting events. Where the starting line was literally scratched onto the ground. There is even mention of it being use as a term in for a golfer who does not have a handicap. Eventually "from scratch" took on the meaning "from nothing". Hence cooking from scratch meaning to start with basic pantry items, and not to use premixed goods.
Answer: As TXChetG says it's from the line at the start of the race - but how you get to "made from scratch isn't so clear"
Coming upto scratch - means coming to the starting point of the race, is clear enough.
"Starting from scratch" means you begin at the starting line, and you don't have an advantage (or handicap) by starting ahead of the other runners. From this sense of "starting at the very beginning" we get "made from scratch" to mean made from the most elementary starting materials
Answer: I can't cite this but I have heeard people refer to "from scratch of your ear" meaning from the point that you scratch your head to think about/plan the project you're about to undertake.


How to mute/unmute Windows 10 Phone

Question: OK, did read the Global Mute in Win8, but how would it be in Win10? Didn't find any way for it.
Answer: Press volume up (or down), tap on the icon to the left of the volume scale (you may need to expand the volume control panel if you want to mute both the ringer and in-app sounds).
Worth also noting that the phone will maintain separate volume levels for different outputs (headset, bluetooth, in-built speaker, etc.)
Comment: @Roland Shaw OK, this is known, but I'm after some kind of Global Mute, not this Volume+-mute, because, the volume knob is very easily touched by accident and then relieving the mute without noting it, and then the phone may ring loudly on a quiet place/situation ...Another symptom my sister is having is, that the ring is totally muted even pressing the knob here or there, so, what then may cause this? And, previously some years ago on some phones, there were a ring-tone "quiet" to be choosen, how about this today?

How to mute/unmute Windows 10 Phone


Custom Deserialization in WCF Rest

Question: I'm writing a WCF REST service and trying to use the ideas in Carlos Figueira's blog post here to customize my deserialization.
There's just one problem. I'd like my custom IDispatchMessageFormatter.DeserializeRequest() to both:

Deserialize the request body
And parse the URI into method parameters (just as WCF by default does).

For example, if I have the below method in my service contract:
[WebInvoke(Method = "POST", UriTemplate = "/{uriPart1}/{uriPart2}")]
void Func(string uriPart1, string uriPart2, SomeObject messageBodyObject);

then my DeserializeRequest() implementation should not only deserialize the POST message body into messageBodyObject, it should also assign the correct values from the URI to uriPart1, uriPart2 parameters.
Carlos's code does not do the second part.
I'd like to know how I can achieve this. Any help will be much appreciated.
Answer: Why not take a look at the Web API project (http://wcf.codeplex.com)?  It uses WCF under the covers and it does what you are describing.

Custom Deserialization in WCF Rest


How can I earn Foxfire Candle Stubs quickly?

Question: I need to impress a Bishop in my quest for my Heart's Desire, but I need waaaay more candle stubs than I have.
What is a way I can gain them in large quantities?
Comment: What level are your four main Qualities at? Large sections of the game are unavailable at any given time, depending on your main Qualities.
Comment: OP is obviously in 40-80 range, since that's the amount required for progression of Heart's Desire.
Answer: The most efficient way: the right storylet
Find a storylet available to you that rewards you in Foxfire Candle Stubs. Storylets reward you in direct proportion to the minimum main quality required to unlock them, so find the hardest one that you can succeed in on a fairly-regular basis. (For example: a storylet that requires Watchful 20 might reward you with 20 Foxfire Candle Stubs, but a storylet that requires Watchful 50 might reward you with 50 Foxfire Candle Stubs.)
Alas, I can't be more precise than that: most of Fallen London will be unavailable to you at any given moment, because one of your four main qualities will be too high or too low. Storylets are only available for a particular window: if your Watchful is too low, you don't get to see, say, Search For A Missing Rubbery Man in Ladybones Road. Similarly, it will disappear again once your Watchful gets too high.
In general, storylets involving Knife-And-Candle players, New Newgate Prison, and the Church will get you Foxfire Candle Stubs.
The fastest way: Money, Dear Boy
If you really need a lot of candles fast, then the simplest answer is to sell things, and buy Foxfire Candle Stubs at 3 pence apiece from Merrigans Exchange in the Echo Bazaar. (It's the "Bazaar" tab.)
Anything in the "Goods" category is ideal to sell, because those items can't be converted into other things and doesn't have any use except to be spent. Rostygold, Moon-Pearls, Nevercold Brass Slivers, and other such Goods have uses in storylets, but can't be up-converted into other things. Chances are really high that you have far too many of several different types of Goods, so sell off the excess: remember how many you used the last time a storylet required that Good, and sell off all of that Good except for a small reserve. Repeat for the rest of your Goods, until you have enough Echoes to buy what you need from the Bazaar. If you can't or don't want to sell Goods, then sell the base-level up-convertible things, like Whispered Secrets, Jade Fragments, and whatever else that you've ended up with far too much of.
The main idea here is that you will almost never have 1000 of the thing you need, but you'll almost always have 2000 various other things that you aren't using terribly much at the moment. Since you can't really predict what you'll need next, it's a better use of your time to buy what you need now, rather than to save up forever in the hopes that you'll eventually find a storylet that requires those 10,000 Whispered Secrets that are cluttering up your cupboards.
Answer: Actually, for a player in 40-80 range1, best spot would be
Attend a service at the Melancholy Curate's church
storylet, Unlocked with Intrigue: The curate and his sister 1, Investigating... 3, Persuasive 33, and Locked with Investigating... 9 - since it

gives you a guaranteed 37 FCS,
is required anyway for progression of the 'Curate and his sister' storyline,
gets straightforward (100%) @ 64 PER,
allows you to produce FCS in mass amounts (as required by Bishop's progression).

There are e.g. some cards giving FCS and some other FCS-rewarding storylets, but they're usually a one-shot FCS reward only, grossly out of your stat range, and note that it's rather impossible to farm anything in mass quantities in a reasonable amount of time with cards only, due to their randomness.
Also, note that IMO saying "I can't be more precise than that: most of Fallen London will be unavailable to you at any given moment, because one of your four main qualities will be too high or too low." is wrong - you can easily tune up/down your qualities by about -30 to +20 by using proper items without any high-end stuff - getting a couple of +5 items works wonders here, as well as using Talkative Rattus Feber (-25 to all) etc.
Note that farming money is actually less effective here, since it'd require to get > 1 Echo / action to give you higher output of FCS.
1 "Heart's Desire" quest begins in that range
Answer: tl;dr: You will have easy access to an arbitrary amount of Foxfire Candle Stubs (and every other resource), with no risk of leveling past it, eventually.
With the introduction of the Person of Some Importance content (an "endgame" state for players with 100 in every main quality), my answer would be: "wait and do whatever is available and novel to you, until you reach PoSI." (Or until you happen to get enough candles on the way.)
Amongst other things, becoming a PoSI will give you access to grindable, always available storylets that drop the tier 1 resource for every category, on average at least 100 pennies' worth for every action. ("On average" means that the yields may be randomised; "at least" means that depending on the storylet, some have returns up to 150 pennies per action.) This rate might not be the best for every given resource - there are superior ways to get cash - but the storylets are certainly competitive, and very convenient.

Personally I would avoid selling any of the convertible resources to buy others. (I do sell Rostygold, Moon Pearls, Nevercold Brass - they seem to be used by storylets much less often than the others.) The basic unit of the Fallen London economy is the action, so illustrating with an example:

You need 1000 Lamplighter Beeswax. At 1 penny per unit (when sold), getting this as a PoSI would take you ~10 actions.
You have 2000 Whispered Secrets. Getting these as a PoSI would take you ~20 actions, and probably took more before endgame.
If you later then need 2000 Whispered Secrets, that's 20 more actions to get them again.

(Whispered Secrets in particular are an interesting example as well. I end up with many more of those than other tier 1 resources. But also, archeological expeditions will consume truly insane amounts of those - up to 20000 secrets to get a full set of supplies. Furthermore, there's the Fidgeting Writer storyline, that makes it possible to convert Appalling Secrets to cash at rate better than selling the Whispered Secrets directly.)
The action cost for selling secrets, buying beeswax, then getting more secrets is 50 actions. The action cost for waiting until PoSI, grinding beeswax, then grinding secrets is 30 actions.
Obviously, which one you pick depends on whether you favour optimizing for action cost, while switching between goals; or accomplishing a given goal ASAP; or whether you're convinced you will never need as much of one of the resources as you have now. (With regards to the latter, this is a call I wouldn't make until you're done with all of the PoSI content at least.)


Stronglifts 5X5 Question about Gains and injuries

Question: I've been doing sronglifts 5x5 off and on for about a year and a half. I've had to stop for a quite some time due to a knee injury (bad form) I've worked on it though and I think Ive fixed it. If my knee gets hurt again I will have to put the squats and likely deadlifts on hold. I'd like to keep doing the other exercises but I'm wondering if I will still make gains with the other exercises while my knee is healing?
Comment: OHP is also requires some knee effort, you won't be able to do lots of exercises during that period.
Comment: Are you thinking of push press? OHP doesn't require any knee when I do it.
Comment: OHP requires you to lock your knees and squeeze your glutes. If your knees have niggles then you will feel slight pain during OHP, especially closer to your to 5 RM.
Answer: Yes, you will continue to make gains on the other exercises if you're diet is on point.  Although, if you're not squatting and deadlifting, you progress and gains will slow down.  Squatting more than deadlifting initiates quite the hormonal response in your body as far as testosterone and growth hormone.
Answer: Since you're coming back from injury, I suggest you get your form checked by a decent coach/pt (one who specialises in strength/lifting), maybe also see a physio.
You will still make gains with the other exercises, but the program works best when followed as written.
I've been doing Stronglifts myself, and started to feel funny in the knees as my squats went above 120kg - I found knee sleeves have really helped, but we're different people under different circumstances.  See a professional.


Can't find wireless wifi setting in Hera

Question:
I don't see the wireless wifi setting after installing. Am i missing any drivers?
here's my usb list.. what to do now?
Answer: AFAIK, there is no separate network manager module for wifi, so I can exclude the case you are missing some piece of nm.
Next, I assume your wifi card is the Realtek one. If this is the case, it's good because, at least, it's been detected.
If this is the case, try to install ubuntu-drivers-common, which is a gui to help you install proprietary drivers (if I remember correctly it's not installed by default).
Just type
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-drivers-common

After having installed this basically if you go into the installed applications in the app store you'll see that it will suggest you to install some proprietary drivers
.
Another check you can do is if this wifi card is enabled; you can perform this check through rfkill
rfkill list
and if the wireless card is blocked/turned off just type
rfkill unblock all

Of course, if the realtek device that appears in your lsusb is not the wireless card, this could means that it was not been even detected
Answer: I have a new Asus ZenBook (just shipped) with an Intel 9000 series wireless adapter built in, and I had the same problem. I solved it by manually installing the backport of iwlwifi using the advice of "jeremy31" here:
https://askubuntu.com/questions/1046589/backport-for-iwlwifi
Note that the first recommended install didn't solve my problem; it was the second step (getting the newer version from Canonical) that actually solved my problem.


Does a grain of salt have exactly equal amount of sodium and chlorine?

Question: Does a grain of salt have exactly equal amount of sodium and chlorine? I know that the formula unit of salt is 1:1, but for example if there is 10000000 atoms of sodium is it possible that that there is 9999999 atoms chlorine? Thanks.
Comment: In the real world nothing is ever completely pure.  You'd never have a perfect grain of $\mathrm{NaCl}$.  There would be other compounds in it too which would throw off the balance.
Comment: Real world vs. technical definition: salt is NaCl thus anything with Na(x)Cl(x+epsilon) isn't salt.  Take this comment with a grain of salt :-)
Comment: Short answer: Possibly.
Answer: Crystal solids, however small, have defects in them. These defects are basically irregularities in the arrangement of constituent particles. They are of two types:

Point defects
Line defects.

Point defects themselves are divided into other kinds of defects. Here, I'll explain only the relevant one.
One type of point defect is a vacancy defect in which some of the lattice sites in the crystal are vacant. This means that some atoms of Na or Cl or both are missing from their lattice sites.
So the answer to your question is, yes. That scenario is very much possible.
Comment: When you say "a grain of salt can **never** have the same amount of Na and Cl", are you suggesting that [perfect crystals](http://www.nature.com/srep/2013/130724/srep02276/full/srep02276.html) can't be grown?
Comment: Indeed, I was under that impression. I was looking at [this](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_crystal) definition. I'll edit my post.
Answer: It depends what you mean by "exactly".
A single gram of salt contains about 1022 atoms of sodium and chlorine. The important question is how much of an imbalance would be physically noticeable. If you can't detect the difference it isn't significant. A single atom discrepancy would be impossible to detect with the best equipment available to science. So it doesn't really matter.
More importantly most real world salt will contain a great deal of other stuff. Standard table salt might be 99.9% pure (meaning it could contain 1019 atoms of say, K or Br). But, for most purposes this is very pure and nobody will notice the extraneous elements. Sea salt is sometimes only 98% NaCl and we barely notice that difference.
For some context consider one of the purest objects ever made: the silicon sphere being developed as a new, improved, standard for weight. We have extremely good methods for making pure silicon (because of its importance in the semiconductor industry). As this nature article says:

The researchers spent six months eliminating contaminating elements by repeatedly melting the silicon in an apparatus that does not touch the material. The resulting crystal is thought to contain one foreign atom to every 10 million atoms of silicon.

This state of the art level of purity would allow a gramme of salt to have about 1015 atoms of impurities. Doing better than that is going to be tough to measure: a larger mismatch in atom count is going to be totally insignificant in any practical situation.
We might notice a significant effect if there were a significant imbalance of positive and negative ions, but it wouldn't last long as any crystal would attract opposite charged ions from the environment to make it neutral.
So overall salt contains the same number of Cl and Na ions within any practical limits of detection or effect.
Answer: Yes. The amounts of Sodium and Chlorine are the same. The reason being you need to have the charge balanced.
The defects mentioned in the above answer do exist, but always in pairs. That is, for every missing Sodium atom, you have a Chlorine atom missing.
What can be said is that in 58.44 g (Molar Mass) of NaCl, you won't necessarily have Avagadro number of Sodium or Chlorine atoms. But, whatever their number, there will be equal amounts of Sodium and Chlorine.
Comment: Also, although electrical neutrality is held to a high degree of precision, it is not held *perfectly*. You can very well have a crystals with some excess anions and no cations to compensate their charge, or vice-versa. The charge imbalance probably can't be higher than one part per billion though, very roughly.
Comment: The impurities could be charged as well. Your answer is only half correct. Potassium could replace sodium and iodine could replace chlorine. Look http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iodised_salt
Comment: But, if I recall correctly, Schottky and Frenkel defects always occur in pairs right? Also, lab-grade NaCl would be almost entirely made up of only Sodium and Chlorine.
Comment: I think even the purest substances used in macroscopic quantities in chemistry today have at least a part per trillion impurities, which would mean a mole of material may have as much as 100 billion other atoms/molecules! Also, although *most* defects would probably still be electrically neutral or have an oppositely charged defect closeby, there is no rule that says *all* defects are of those kinds.
Comment: I did a bit of reading up. It looks like electrical neutrality isn't perfect and you can't have a 100% pure compound, anyway. Thanks Nicholau, for shedding light on that!
Answer: If it doesn't it isn't "salt" or at least it isn't NaCl, which requires one of each per molecule.
Comment: Can you elaborate on the answer a bit?


IIS Rewrite Module 2.0 question

Question: If I have to install "IIS Rewrite Module 2.0" on my machine for it to work, since my web site runs on a shared web server, does that mean that my host has to have this installed in order for it to work on-line?
Answer: If you are on a Windows host yes they will need have it installed for it to work. I'm fairly certain that the shared Windows hosts would have this installed anyway - it's an essential part of IIS!
Answer: If you have a shared hosting package, you will not be able to install the Rewrite module yourself(if it is not pre-installed by your hosting provider).
Shared hosting packages have certain limitations and installing softwares or updates by the client is once of them.
Usually, IIS RW Module will be installed by your host.
Please check with them once. In case, it is not, you can request them to get it installed.

IIS Rewrite Module 2.0 question


Why a little child goes directly to Jannah?

Question: As far as I know, if an Infant or a little kid or child dies he/she goes automatically to Jannah, because he/she hasnt done anything bad.
Now My Question is: Isn't it a bit unfair that they don't have to be tested like all of us, and they directly go to jannah for the eternity.
Shouldn't we be judged equally? on the same basis?
That's just not right.
Comment: From that child's perspective: is it fair that you get 70 years of accumulating loads and loads of good deeds and consequently a greater Jannah?
Comment: @Shoaib No, We can have different jannah, but everyone should have the possibility to demonstrate if he is a good or a bad person. The only to answer my question is actually saying that God already know everything, so he actually knows if That child is a good or a bad person, and if he deserves jannah or jahannam. But that again leads to think why then should we even live on this earth if god already knows everything!
Comment: Well, they just don't have anything to be held against and they go directly, while we have a bunch of +ves and -ves. Purging data on empty harddrive vs one with billions of petabytes. exactly the point.
Comment: @Shoaib that's exactly the point. Isn't now unfair for the child? he hasn't had even the possibility to make good deeds. That's why I think it's actually nonsense. Just like the fact that children born from non muslim go to hell. that's just crazy, and If a muslim thinks that then for me he is not a muslim.
Comment: @jule It follows from your line of reasoning that the only "fair" solution would be when everyone gets the same Jannah, and the necessary condition for that is that everyone must live to the same age, must be the same gender, same race, same color, same social status, same trials, same calamities. Cain killed Abel just because God didn't accept his sacrifice, so that's another unfairness. Anything short of a world of robots would be "nonsensical" to you!
Comment: Exactly what I just said: according to you its fair only if "everyone should have the possibility" and what follows is that everyone should have the SAME possibility or its unfair!
Answer: According to imam an-Nawawi in his commentary of sahih Muslim (شرح النووي على مسلم) first of all there is/was a dispute about if any little child would go to jannah as there are many hadiths showing that this even wasn't clear for Muslim children.

But most Scholars say any little Muslim child will go to jannah (Heaven) as they aren't considered to be in charge or responsible!

About the children of Mushrikyn

most say they will go to jahanam (Hell)
others say they will go to jannah and this opinion is according an-Nawawi the most correct.
some scholars didn't fix or specify an answer!

These are briefly the different opinions about the matter!
And now here is what i could find about it:

Here are the references for those who said all little children go to jannah

Narrated Abu Huraira: Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) said, "Every child is
born with a true faith of Islam (i.e. to worship none but Allah Alone)
but his parents convert him to Judaism, Christianity or Magainism, as
an animal delivers a perfect baby animal. Do you find it mutilated?"
Then Abu Huraira recited the holy verses: "The pure Allah's Islamic
nature (true faith of Islam) (i.e. worshipping none but Allah) with
which He has created human beings. No change let there be in the
religion of Allah (i.e. joining none in worship with Allah). That is
the straight religion (Islam) but most of men know, not." (30.30)
Sahih Muslim
Abu Huraira reported from Allah's Messenger (may peace be upom him)
many ahadith and one amongst them is that he is reported to have said:
An infant is born according to his (true) nature. It is his parents
Who make him a Jew, a Christian, just as a she-camel gives birth to
its young ones. Do you find any deficiency in their limbs? You cut
their ears (i. e. after birth). They (the Companions of the Holy
Prophet) said: What is your opinion about him who dies in infancy?
Thereupon Allah's Apostle (ﷺ) said: It is Allah alone Who knows best
what they would be doing.
Sahih Muslim
Narrated Abu Huraira: The Prophet (ﷺ) said, "Every child is born with
a true faith of Islam (i.e. to worship none but Allah Alone) and his
parents convert him to Judaism or Christianity or Magianism, as an
animal delivers a perfect baby animal. Do you find it mutilated?"
Sahih al-Bukhari

Note: the 3 hadiths above have in Arabic a slightly different beginning
( مَنْ يُولَدُ يُولَدُ,كُلُّ
مَوْلُودٍ يُولَدُ , مَا مِنْ مَوْلُودٍ إِلاَّ يُولَدُ
)
but the same meaning. I would prefer the translation of the 2nd one for the word Fitra (An infant is born according to his (true) nature) as it is nearer to the original Arabic text! The other translations say it's the Islamic nature this maybe an explanation but not a 1:1 translation.

In Sahih al-Bukhari you can find in a long hadith in the Book of Interpretation of Dreams and in Riyyadu-as-salihyn of an-Nawawi (with some extension in the book of prohibited actions) (Narrated Samura bin Jundub) the following extract:

And the tall man whom you saw in the garden, is Abraham and the
children around him are those children who die with Al-Fitra (the
Islamic Faith). The narrator added: Some Muslims asked the Prophet, "O
Allah's Messenger (ﷺ)! What about the children of pagans?" The Prophet
(ﷺ) replied, "And also the children of pagans." The Prophet (ﷺ) added,
"My two companions added, 'The men you saw half handsome and half ugly
were those persons who had mixed an act that was good with another
that was bad, but Allah forgave them.'"

Now here are the references for those who either said they go to jahanam or they didn't make a decision neither for Muslim children or non Muslims!

'A'isha, the mother of the believers, said that Allah's Messenger (ﷺ)
was called to lead the funeral prayer of a child of the Ansar. I said:
Allah's Messenger, there is happiness for this child who is a bird
from the birds of Paradise for it committed no sin nor has he reached
the age when one can commit sin. He said: 'A'isha, per adventure, it
may be otherwise, because God created for Paradise those who are fit
for it while they were yet in their father's loins and created for
Hell those who are to go to Hell. He created them for Hell while they
were yet in their father's loins.
Sahih Muslim

This hadith seem to me a bit vague as it doesn't clearly say if a little child would go to jannah or not. It only makes clear that one shouldn't say something like: "you will go to hell or you will go to paradise" as only Allah knows it best!

Ubayy b. Ka'b reported that Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) said: The young man
whom Khadir killed was a non-believer by his very nature and had he
survived he would have involved his parents in defiance and unbelief.
Sahih Muslim

From this hadith one only could deduce that from a certain age on a child is responsible and I can't see at which age this child was "killed" by al-Khidr!

'A'isha, the mother of the believers, reported that a child died and
I said: There is happiness for this child who is a bird from amongst
the birds of Paradise. Thereupon Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) said: Don't you
know that Allah created the Paradise and He created the Hell and He
created the dwellers for this (Paradise) and the denizens for this
(Hell)?
Sahih Muslim

As one can read from the sum of those ahadith at first view it is not clear whether little child go automatically to jannah or not. But one should have more knowledge in the hadith sciences to know in what occasion they where said, when was that (year,...) and so on. And maybe one should also know when the Sahaba who narrated these ahadith came to Islam? These are matters that only people who are into this complex science know, for example i once read a thesis about the method منهج of Imam Malik in rating ahadith in his madhab.
As far as i know abu Hurraira (may Allah be pleased with him) was under the latest Sahaba to convert to Islam and his hadith is mutawtir. And Samara bin Jundub (may Allah be pleased with him) was a child when the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) came to Medina and he was born after jahiliya.
To me it seems clear that a newborn and children and any person who isn't able to make a difference between right and wrong is still on the fitra (the true nature mentioned in the Hadith of abu Hurraira) and would go to jannah. As we know that brain-sick people are also regarded as non responsible!
Comment: @Sayyid We are not a site for debate and apologetic; whether or not you personally disagree with a particular scholar, unless that's relevant to the *actual question asked* (which, as written, it very much is not) this is *not* the place to argue about who is "more correct". See also http://meta.islam.stackexchange.com/q/275/22 and http://meta.islam.stackexchange.com/q/1255/22
Comment: Like the first three hadiths you posted, none of them in Arabic mention "true faith of Islam" or similar things.  Prophet said a child is born upon fitrah i.e. nothing.   And it's what the parents raise it as to become whatever follower of their religion.
Comment: I know you didn't translate this, but there is some serious Arabic to English problem here.
Answer: On the authority of Abdullah ibn Masood (ra), who said:
The Messenger of Allah (ﷺ), and he is the truthful, the believed, narrated to us, "Verily the creation of each one of you is brought together in his mother's womb for forty days in the form of a nutfah (a drop), then he becomes an alaqah (clot of blood) for a like period, then a mudghah (morsel of flesh) for a like period, then there is sent to him the angel who blows his soul into him and who is commanded with four matters: to write down his rizq (sustenance), his life span, his actions, and whether he will be happy or unhappy (i.e., whether or not he will enter Paradise). By the One, other than Whom there is no deity, verily one of you performs the actions of the people of Paradise until there is but an arms length between him and it, and that which has been written overtakes him, and so he acts with the actions of the people of the Hellfire and thus enters it; and verily one of you performs the actions of the people of the Hellfire, until there is but an arms length between him and it, and that which has been written overtakes him and so he acts with the actions of the people of Paradise and thus he enters it." [Bukhari & Muslim]


remina pulldown menu not present

Question: after using remina (RDP app) for a while in full screen mode ... the pulldown menu stops working in Loki .... I dont know if this is a remina or Loki bug or maybe something else entirely ... any ideas of what could be causing this or how to get the pulldown menu to continue to be responsive? additional information ... if I end the session and restart it ... it seems like the pulldown is again active ... for a while ... then again become unresponsive
Answer: I use Remina ever day for work, and I have experienced this bug on occasion. What helps for me at least is to delete the connection, and then re-do it, and the bug should stay gone. I've only had it happen once or twice in the last few months.
And to make you feel better, I think it's a Remina bug, because this used to happen to me back when I used Xubuntu as well.
Not optimal, but at least it's a usable workaround.
Hope that helps.
Comment: oh well ... re-creating the session doesn't work ... I even "pinned" the menu to see if that would work ... nope ... I guess just going to need to live with it. or find another that I like to use ... It is a shame that the "MacOS X cord" app doesnt have a linux version ... that was always enjoyable to use

remina pulldown menu not present


Could installing a 12V radio on a JDM Simpa damage the battery and alternator, causing the alternator to put out no charge?

Question: I am a Canadian living in France. I bought a "voiture sans permis" (JDM Simpa) for my son to go to and fro school... It is essentially a very small motor vehicle which can only go up to 80 km per hour. It sat in the garage for about a month. He started driving it September 5, 2018. About the third week of September, we installed a little twelve volt radio, but it never worked. Hooked it up, tried testing out the radio but it didnt work. On October 5, the battery was dead. Since we had very limited options at the time, my son and I put a new battery in the car. I put the old battery on battery charger. My son took the car back to the store to activate the guarantee for the battery and they told him that the alternator was broken and was not charging the battery. My son saw with his own eyes that the alternator was putting out almost no charge. The guy who sold us the car told us that it is our fault  because we tried to install the radio. That somehow by trying to install the twelve volt radio (which never worked) we damaged both the battery and the alternator. Is he correct?
Comment: I am not a mechanic and I dont know what this means. Currently there is a 12 Volt, 40 AH, 340 A (EN) battery in the car. I sincerely hope that answers your question. The car was not sold with a car manuel, so I dont have much more information than that.
Comment: What's the nominal battery voltage on the vehicle?
Answer: I don't think installing or trying to install the radio is going to cause the alternator to fail, (I have installed radios on new cars, old cars, tractors and probably numbered in thousands).
This is most likely coincidence, but, that guy is looking for a way to avoid paying ; very french though...
The comment by @alephzero raises a point: the radio should have been connected to a fused circuit as part of the installation. Some would have connected directly to the battery either with or without fuse, but neither case is likely to have destroyed thew alternator...
Comment: Well, there's a missing piece of the story, which is "why did the radio never work". I suppose you *could* have done something that destroyed the alternator (or more likely, the rectifiers and/or voltage control circuit rather than the alternator itself) but I agree with @SolarMike it doesn't seem very likely.
Comment: I don't know yet why the radio didnt work. To the best of my ability, we did everything right in installing the radio. I wonder if the car motor is too little to support a 12 Volt radio. I have been looking for 6V hidden radios as an alternative, but this is over my budget at the moment, so I merely disconnected the non functioning radio and put the project on the backburner until we can get more money to deal with it.


How to install from unknown sources on AT&T?

Question: A friend of mine has an HTC Aria on AT&T.  On his application settings screen, he does not have the option to allow installation of apps from unknown sources.  Is there any way to change this option to allow him to install downloaded apps (*.apk files) without rooting the phone?
Answer: You can install apps on the HTC Aria using the ADB client.
You'll need to install the android SDK on your PC, and then use ADB to install the .apk files.
To install the android SDK, follow the steps in the Android Developer's guide to setting up your phone for development.
If you're on Windows, you'll need to go to HTC to get the device drivers, as Google only provides drivers for their devices. For some reason HTC doesn't publicise the ADB driver well, but it is included in the HTC Sync software. You can grab the latest version from HTC's Aria downloads page.
Mac and Linux users do not need to install device drivers to use ADB.
Finally, connect your device to your PC, making sure that debugging mode is enabled on the device. You should see an entry in the system tray stating that the device is in debug mode. On your PC, run the following command:
<code>adb install yourapp.apk
</code>
This will install the app on your phone, and you'll be good to go! Note that you'll either need to have the android-sdk/platform-tools directory in your path, or run the command from that directory.
Comment: The HTC download page is http://www.htc.com/us/support/aria-att/downloads/. I'd have added that but I can only post one link per article at the moment.
Comment: This works for the amazon web store downloads as well.  I just searched the contents of my phone (after mounting it as a disk drive) found the .apk files and installed them using adb.  Take THAT AT&T ;)
Answer: Unfortunately, it seems like the HTC Aria does have that ability, but AT&T has removed it.
Answer: I know this is a really old (and probably no longer relevant) post, but as I have an HTC Aria and I shared the same issue, I thought it was worth posting another option.  I would suggest checking out a program called SuperOneClick.  With it, I was able to permanently enable my Aria to install non-market apps.  It will also allow for the installation of the Amazon market.  All of this without having to root your phone or do anything to void the warranty (at least to my knowledge).  It was very easy to use.
Answer: You could try the instructions in this XDA post. Be aware that doing this will disable your ability to send/receive MMS messages, and will require a hard reset to fix:

Go To Your "Settings"
Go To "Applications"
Go To "Manage applications"
Go To The "All" Tab (or any tab that will display all your apps)
Find The Applications "Customization Settings Provider"
Click On "Clear data"
Go Back To "All" Tab (or any tab that will display all your applications)
Find The Program "Settings"
Click On "Clear data"

Finished If You Go Back To "Applications" You Will Now Have The Option To Enable "Unknown Sources"
Comment: Please stop it with the formatting
Comment: Please link back to places where you find your content, both so that others can easily find it (rather than a vague "found on XDA" statement) and to give proper credit to the original author(s).


Is there any other character with a quirk evolution?

Question: I haven't read the manga, but I've seen in YouTube videos that

 Eijiro Kirishima got an evolution, the second form for his quirk.

Is there any other character with a quirk evolution?
Answer: Based on my opinion of what quirk evolution is, it's a yes. However, consider to also read the manga because there is a possibility of a different interpretation to 'quirk evolution'.
In my opinion, there are some in both pro heroes and students. I believe that the biggest quirk evolution happens to

 Kirishima and Endeavor.

In the anime, we already see

 Todoroki and Midoriya's quirks

somewhat evolve and I can't really recall whether in the recent chapters they evolve even more.
I can tell you this though, there is a lot of character development and events in many of the characters that will possibly lead them to evolve their quirk or personality changes, which is shown more in the manga.
Comment: Can you give some details on how Endeavor quirk evolve? By using >! you can hide a paragraph for spoilers
Comment: actually I'll just make another answer explaining this question
Answer: Spoiler (Endeavor question)

Basically to summarize it, in recent chapters we see some character development from him causing him to show a new side of him leading to his 'quirk evolution'. Now that the symbol of peace, All Might, has retired, Endeavor is the number one hero who has to lead society. Feeling a little pressure he asks All Might for advice.He eventually decides to change his ways to fill the missing role that All Might left behind. In the most recent chapter he gets into a huge battle against a Nomu that is stronger than the other ones and gets injured. Caught up in his emotions his quirk evolves and his fire grew even more. He began to glow or got stronger.

From chapter 188

From chapter 189

From chapter 189

From chapter 189

Answer: I think Atsui has almost for sure an evolution of her quirk. In season 3 episode 21 she starts to show almost invisible camouflage, an hability she didnt mention in season 1 when she mentioned her habilities, and after showing camouflage for the first time, she literally says "I improved my frog hability and I reached to the point of being able to use it in combat. Camouflage. It's my new move".
Answer: In chapter 210 of the manga Midoriya shows a sort of quirk evolution,

 Midoriya adquires the hability to use a former quirk of a former One for All user, a quirk called Black Whip. "By the time Izuku acquires this ability, Blackwhip has evolved within the core of One For All. When Izuku focuses on capturing a target and gets angry, this power explodes out of his arm. The black tendrils are much larger and powerful enough to cause Izuku great pain and force him into submission"

Black Whip
Answer: According to Re-Destro, from manga chapter #234,

 Apocrypha's ability to control temperature of ice is a case where a special ability evolves due to some random cause, and Tomura is in the midst of a reawakening


Why does a melodic half step resolve on the higher note?

Question: What is so special about a melodic half step that makes it "want" to go up (As in the leading tone to the tonic).  Why isn't there as much resolution in a melodic half-step downwards?
Comment: A chordal 7th likes to resolve stepwise down(either half or whole step depending on note).
Comment: And in Phrygian the flat 2 desperately wants to resolve down to 1 like a reverse leading tone.
Comment: Even in ionian, the fourth in a sus4 chord wants to resolve a half-step downward to the major triad. I don't think it's a clear-cut case of always resolving up as you state; it's more about wanting to resolve to the nearest of the three basic tones in the Western system, being the tonic (root), subdominant (fourth) or dominant (5th).
Comment: Thank you for the counter-examples you have given.  Maybe I was thinking too much in common ionian cadences. It is good to know that this effect is not as universal as I supposed.
Comment: So I think your question is actually "Why does the leading tone want to resolve up a half-step to the tonic?"
Answer: This is certainly not universally accepted, but I say a half-step isn't really a fixed entity; rather there are a couple of different "half"-steps of different size that can serve different purposes.
That particular leading vii-I step, according to some performers – Pablo Casals was perhaps the most radical propagator of this idea – should be extremely narrow, i.e. the vii so high it can't possibly form a harmonically "steady" rendition of the dominant V chord (even if nobody plays that chord, the listener might infer it). This sort of already-too-high note then, according to his "gravitation" hypothesis, suggests an upwards force that naturally requires the note to be resolved to the nearby pure I tonic.
So basically it's not the vii note itself that requires upwards resolution, it's its dissonant harmonic context. There are a couple of ways this can be achieved, even if playing an equal-tempered vii note. The dominant can be a seventh-chord, whose tritone certainly creates some dissonant tension, between the IV and vii steps. Indeed that not only "pushes" the vii up resolving to I, it also pushes the IV down, resolving downwards either a half-step to the major tonic's iii, or a whole step to the minor's III. These down-resolutions certainly are important as well, but since the iii is a somewhat less satisfying final note than I (in particular if rendered in 12-edo, where this third is as much too-high compared to just intonation as the vii within the dominant), it will more usually be implemented in some middle voice rather than the main melody.
Answer: Well, the reductive answer is that there's nothing special about it and that the only thing that makes a leading tone "want" to resolve to the tonic is hundreds of years of musical convention, since this tendency exists in a Western scale but not necessarily in other scales.
The tuning of the Western scale has changed a lot over the course of those hundreds of years.  Historically, for example, flats tended to be higher than sharps (that's a gross oversimplification but it'll do--from Leopold Mozart, for example: "according to their proper ratios, notes with flat signs are a comma higher than those in the same position with a sharp sign. For example D flat is higher than C#, A flat higher than G#, G flat than F# and so on"), but now, with "expressive intonation," sharps tend to be higher than flats (usually about a seventh of a tone).  For a fuller discussion you could take a look at the book How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony (discussed more fully here)--I don't agree with everything he says but it's a good introduction to the ideas involved.
Answer: There are theoretical reasons why this occurs that are not conditioned responses.
The overtone series if the fundamental expression of "music". That is, the overtone series is a natural occurrence due to the way the universe is designed. I won't get into the why's here but basically it is physics. I can explain more if need be.
The overtone series of the pitch C is C C G C E G Bb C D E F# G A B C. That of F is F F C F A C Eb F G A B C D E F.  (each of these are not technically pitches but sinusoidal frequencies, I won't make a distinction here)
These come from nature and our ear is used to hearing these relationships produced by the overtone series is everything. Most of the higher harmonics are subtle but we have been conditioned by evolution to hear the relationships in the overtone series as "natural". (since the OT series is natural itself)
Now, in the OT series we have several observations:

The P5 down is a very fundamental relationship for motion between sounds. Why? Because C both has it's own overtone series and the next strongest OT series it is a part of is F, a P5 down. We also find the P5 in the OT series to the first new tone. The P4 is derived from this through the inverse relationship.
We find that the b7th occurs way more closely than the n7th.
The n7 occurs in the context of the major scale found in the higher overtones. The OT series can be thought of as a C7#11 + C major scale. In this case the n7 is dissonant with both the F and Bb in the OT series, the Bb being natural because F is related to it through it's own OT series.
Since the n7 is highly irregular in the OT series, that is, has little relationship to the other tones, when it is used in the as a scale, we our minds have to resolve the inconsistent use. We expect a Bb but we get a B, which is very close to C.
Our "ears" and mind have to/try to make sense of what we hear and use the build in OT as the "rules" to make sense of it. The B has to either move to Bb or C, and since our tonic is C, our mind wants the B to be a the tonic. The B sounds like an "out of tune" C more than it does anything else(not in the sense beats but of psychological dissonance).

While there are a few assumptions, they are very natural and probably how things have worked out. Just because other cultures do not fit this mold says nothing as they can be wrong just as they could be right. I won't get into this discussion here though as people tend to get emotionally involved...

Imagine a growing living organism growing from a single cell. The physical environment around it consists of "sounds". Many of these sounds produce a very specific "color", the OT series. As evolution goes, the organism slowly evolves to sense these colors and other colors in it's environment. Since most vibrating things produce sound approximately like the OT series, it is natural and correct to expect that the organism will develop senses to recognize the OT series and over millions of years the OT series will become fundamental to how it "hears" sound.
That is effectively what has happened, more or less. The OT series is built in to all living creatures just as gravity, temperature, etc. Hence fitting music "naturally" with the OT series creates natural music. Western harmony is more natural in this sense because many of the rules it uses are derived from the OT series. This is not about right and wrong, so don't get your panties in a wad ;)
Other cultures that are less "refined" harmonically(which is virtually all "non-western music") usually have stuck to more basic relationships found in the OT series and have not incorporated some of the more distant relationships... usually having advancemed in other areas such as rhythm or ornamentation, etc.
Ultimately, as human music evolves, it will evolve on many dimensions. Rhythm, for example, has it's own basis in reality analogous to how harmony and melody are based in the OT series. Western culture has generally stuck to the more basic rhythmic relationships. Generally this is due to "information theory" and "complexity theory". As harmonic relationships become more complex one sacrifices complexity in other areas else the whole is too complex to be understood in the first place. It seems different cultures balance the equation differently and get different results. This is a good thing IMO but we should not pretend that all are equally valid in the same respects, else we lose track of what they actually have achieved.
Comment: @Dom It's not incorrect just because there is a discrepancy. Microtonality says little about the OT series. You are confusing natural with synthetic. Just because someone does something that is unnatural doesn't mean natural is wrong or incomplete. You say it makes zero sense to explain the LT. It like saying that it makes zero since why the western harmony resolves the dominant a 5th down, or why the I IV and V are the primary chords. You can choose to ignore what reality says but it doesn't you are correct. While culture plays an extreme role, the decisions that people make are not arbitrary
Comment: There's a lot that's incorrect information in this. For starters, a good chunk non western music takes advantage of microtonality which uses tones that would be found further down the the harmonic series.  Also the distance from the harmonic is not at all the reason why the leading tone has the effect it does especially in the equal temperament and even if that did make sense then we would use the semitone above the root to lead back to it not under it as it is further down the harmonic as it first occurs on  the 17th partial where what we know as the leading tone appears on the 15th.
Comment: Also another huge point left out in this is that the equal temperament system that most western musicians are accustom to playing in __does not__ use the exact notes defined by the harmonic series. In fact the 7th, 11th, 13th and 14th partial in the harmonic series  played against the actual notes we use would sound very out of tune to each other if played together. The overtone series is very important in music, but it makes zero sense to say the leading tone's position in the harmonic series is why we use it.
Answer: There's no special strength in a rising half-step.  There IS special strength in a leading note resolving to a tonic, particularly when it's reinforced by the note a tritone interful below.  Then you have the bare bones of a dominant 7th chord, and dominants tending towards tonics are the engine of all Common Practice music.  It's not the only way to construct music, but it's a very powerful one!


Calculating maximum signal frequency knowing its sampling rate?

Question: I was curious as to how I could calculate the maximum frequency of a signal knowing only its sampling rate (for example 125 nanoseconds). Does the sampling theorem have anything to do with it (sampling rate is at least two times the maximum frequency)? So is the max frequency half of the sampling rate?
Comment: There is a unit consistency issue in your question. "Rate" can be ambiguous. First, you have a sampling rate of 125 nanoseconds (time), then you compare the sampling rate with two times the sampling frequency (Hertz).
Comment: SE.DSP wishes you a happy new year 2017, with a kind reminder that your question and its answers may require some action (votes, acceptance, etc.)
Answer: Once a continuous signal is sampled at frequency $f_s=1/T_s$ (here $T_s=$ 125 nanoseconds), the maximum "observable" frequency of the sampled signal, without further hypotheses, is indeed half the sampling frequency. [EDIT following @hotpaw2 answer] There is a risk that some frequency components of the sampled signal, and especially a maximum frequency  (e.g. computed after @Peter K.), are caused by aliasing, and not so related to a "maximum frequency" in the continuous signal.
The sampling theorem has something to do with it. But the sampling rate is in seconds, you have to convert it to a sampling frequency (in Hertz) by computing the inverse.
Answer: The maximum possible frequency in the sampled signal is half the sampling rate, assuming that you are not bandpass sampling and/or there is an anti-aliasing filter. The question is whether the signal has content up to that rate or whether it stops at a lower frequency.
One way to determine this would be to take your sampled signal $x[n]$ and transform it to the frequency domain via FFT to get $X[k]$.
Then find the largest value of $k$ for which
$$
\left |X[k] \right| > t
$$
for $0 \le k \le \frac{K}{2}$ where $K$ is the length of $X$ and $t$ is some "threshold" below which you decide the signal level is effectively zero.
Comment: Not true for undersampled sufficiently narrow-band signals (with low enough sample jitter, etc.)  The samples could represent a much higher frequency frequency band, as long as the bandwidth was narrow enough to prevent aliasing or folding across multiples of half the sample rate.
Comment: @hotpaw2 Agreed! I was assuming the band pass sampling didn't come into it. Most questions of this sort don't want to consider it. And most sampling systems have anti-aliasing filters to prevent it. YMMV
Answer: You can't know from just the sample rate.  It's unknown.  The signal could have been baseband, bandlimited to under half the sample rate, or a much higher frequency narrow-band signal that was undersampled, or some aliased combination or mix of the above.
You have to know something about the signal before it was sampled (for instance, was it properly band-pass, low-pass, and/or anti-alias filtered, etc.) to know anything about the frequencies represented by the samples.
Comment: In fact, given that there is no such thing as a perfect zero-level stop-band anti-alias filter, the max frequency will be of some tiny portion of the aliased noise floor representing a near infinite frequency (say, the reciprocal of Planck time?).


mod_rewrite [L] flag not working as expected?

Question: I thought the [L] flag indicated that "this rule should be the last rule processed for this http request.."
However when I have 2 rules like:
RewriteRule ^test$ php/test.php [L]
RewriteRule (.*) error.php

What always happens is requests to http://localhost/test go to error.php, not to test.php as I expected, since I put the [L] there.  If you comment out the second rule there, then requests to http://localhost/test go to test.php as expected.
What I'm really trying to do is catch 404 errors with mod_rewrite.  Its possible what I'm trying to do is just plain wrong.  But I still want to know why the catch-all rule is active since I did put an [L] after the ^test rule.
I see a large listing in here where the server admin lists a bunch of paths that begin with the recognized directories, but I wanted to avoid doing this by simply using a nice catch-all rule.
Comment: If you comment out *both* rules, where does `http://localhost/test` end up?
Answer: If a rule results in a client redirect then it will re-enter the rule list again from the top when the client makes the redirected request.


Did Martin Luther know Hebrew or Greek?

Question: I know that Martin Luther knew Latin and German, but did he know other languages? For example, did he know Greek or Hebrew (I mean those Greek and Hebrew that the Bible is written in)?
Answer: Luther did translate the bible to what is known as the Luther Bible from old Greek, old Hebrew and Aramaic sources - not the latin translations that were widely used with the catholic church in Germany.
Here are the two hints from the wikipedia article:

He used Erasmus' second edition (1519) of the Greek New Testament, known as the Textus Receptus.
[...] by 1534 he completed his translation of the old and new testaments from Hebrew and Greek into the vernacular [...]

Luther was more familiar with Hebrew Greek than with Greek Hebrew which is why his translations received help by others - especially Philipp Melanchthon.
Luther must have known at least German, Latin, Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic.
Comment: @gentmatt I'm not sure. I found on p. 376 of Nikolaus Walter, Praeparatio Evangelica, 1997, [footnote 101](http://books.google.de/books?id=IevP5Hn10toC&pg=PA367), that cleary states, that Luther was more familiar with Hebrew and gives further references.
Comment: Ok, I'll rather trust your books than wikipedia and edit my answer :). BTW: I just saw, that you work on wikipedia articles! You could edit the article and correct the mistake.
Comment: I think Luther was more familiar with Hebrew than Greek. See Gerhard Ebeling, "Luther. Einführung in sein Denken", 2006, p. 47: "Luther fühlte sich im Hebräischen wesentlich mehr als Fachmann als neben dem Gräzisten Melanchton im Griechischen." ("Luther felt much more in Hebrew as expert than in Greek next to Hellenist Melanchton")
Comment: @KarlvonMoor I don't have the book and cannot look into it, even though I would really like to! I read the German article for Lutherbibel where is says: [...]Luthers Sprachkompetenz war im Griechischen viel höher als im Hebräischen[...] in the section 'Der Weg zur Biblia Deutsch von 1545'. Unfortunately, the they do not state the source in the wikipedia article.

Did Martin Luther know Hebrew or Greek?


Fluxx Play All Card and Hand Limit Cards

Question: Does the Play All card require the removal of any Hand Limit rule cards currently in play?
Comment: Hand Limit rules only affect the game out of turn, meaning that while it is your turn, you do not have to discard down to the number on the Hand Limit. However, at the end of your turn, you do discard down to the number mentioned on the Hand Limit card.
Since you have to play all your cards when Play All is in effect, at the end of your turn your hand will be empty, thus satisfying any Hand Limit card.
Answer: No. Play All replaces the Play One, or any associated play rule cards.
Of the many New Rule cards in Fluxx, there are several archetypes, including: Draw, Play, and Hand Size. Each are categorically separate from the others, which is why each directs you to discard any previous associated rules.
Answer: Adding on to Drunk Cynic, they're separate because they affect specific mechanics of the game. While these mechanics may interact, they are not identical and, with the ever-changing nature of the rules, having Play All remove Hand Limits would be having one archtype rule over another.
Here's an example:
If you have a no hand limit rule in effect and a play 2 and draw 1 in effect, you would never have to worry about the hand limit anyway, but you don't discard it because, if the draw count is increased to 3, you still want that no-hand limit in effect.
Similarly, when you play the Play All rule, you still want to have the hand limit in effect so that, if Play All is eventually replaced, you have the most recent hand limit rule to reference.
Comment: Also good to note that there are ways to get cards not on your turn and if  that happens with zero hand limit you don't get to keep the card.


Identifying .patch files

Question: Here is the problem. I am writing a piece of software that query bug attachments from a Bug Tracking System. I am able to filter the query by only getting text attachment (plain/text etc) and I want to keep only valid patch files (files that have a similar diff -u output that can be applied as a patch to a source file). So I need a way to specify which attachment is a valid patch. For example:
let say I have this attachment with the following content:
Index: compiler/cpp/src/generate/t_csharp_generator.cc
--- compiler/cpp/src/generate/t_csharp_generator.cc (revision 1033689)
+++ compiler/cpp/src/generate/t_csharp_generator.cc (working copy)
@@ -456,7 +456,7 @@
       t = ((t_typedef*)t)->get_type();
     }
     if ((*m_iter)->get_value() != NULL) {
-      print_const_value(out, "this." + (*m_iter)->get_name(), t, (*m_iter)->get_value(), true, true);
+      print_const_value(out, "this._" + (*m_iter)->get_name(), t, (*m_iter)->get_value(), true, true);
     }
   }
How can I know this is a valid patch? Is there a regex to match some possible diff -u outputs so I can write something like this in java:
String attachmentContent = .....
if(attachmentContent.matches(regex))...
Thank you in advance,
Elvis
Answer: You won't be able to test with a simple Regex, nor a complex by the way, it would require a regular expression engine which is able to interpret the portions between @@ as numbers, and define repetition counts from that, I don't know a RE engine which does that.
On the other hand you should not have too much problems finding a library parsing and loading Unix patches (and this is definitely not a compute-intensive task), so simply trying to load the patch would allow you to validate it. e.g. Java diff utils should do that straight forward.

Identifying .patch files


How do I get a Microsoft Sidewinder Precision 2 joystick to work on Windows 8?

Question: When I plug it in, Windows 8 doesn't recognize the Microsoft Sidewinder Precision 2 joystick as being plugged in at all and it doesn't work. How do I fix it?
Answer: I ended up shutting off the computer (actually, just sleeping it, but you could try shutting it off). With the computer off I plugged in the joystick, started it up, and Windows 8 found the joystick, installed the correct drivers, and I was good to go.
Screenshot of the joystick recognized in Windows 8:
Answer: The accepted answer also works for Windows 7 with Sidewinder joysticks. If Windows sees the device but doesn't recognize it as a game controller, go into the Control Panel and uninstall the driver or the device. Then connect the joystick, restart Windows, and it should work.
Answer: If it doesn't work, please try an USB port that's directly on the mainboard. The joystick draws quite some power and secondary connected 'front' ports or ports on a hub do not always work.


Sitecore License for DR servers

Question: I am planning to have a scaled down replica of our production sitecore infrastructure as Disaster Recovery servers so that the same can be used in case of a disaster. This will mean i will have to procur sitecore license for DR server as well even though there might never be an incident to switch to DR servers. Is there any possible solution where the same license can be used in prod and switched to DR when required.
Answer: Maybe. Whatever I suggest here, you are going to have to verify with your Sitecore Sales Representative.
If the DR environment is "cold", then I have experienced Sitecore will allow this without extra license purchase.  "Cold" meaning, the DR environment spins up and takes over, when disaster strikes.
Reasoning being, you actually do not "overuse" your license in this setup. Only one environment is ever active.
For a "warm" DR setup, I have experienced in the past that this can be arranged with Sitecore, possibly at a reduced license cost. Possibly. But this is between you and Sitecore.
I cannot stress this enough however, validate your setup and license requirements with Sitecore before going ahead with either setup.
Comment: I concur with the venerable @MarkCassidy. Once upon a time a "hot" server license for Sitecore came with an allowance for a "cold" spare. There is some speculation over the definition of these terms, and licensing for Sitecore is often altered per customer, so you *must* contact the Account Manager for a definitive position.
Answer: To add to what Mark said, do you have access to your contract with Sitecore? Do make sure you understand the definitions therein. The definition of "server" and the definition of "Cold Failover Server Installation" deserve extra attention.
In our case, we were entitled to "an equal number of Cold Failover Server Installation(s) as the number of Server Installation(s)".
Now, "server" is defined very precisely as well, with a specific number of cores (or allocated cores in case of VMs). So do make sure you have that covered as well!
Answer: Another option to consider is going with a consumption based license see here In that case the cost depends on volume of visits rather than the number of servers. This can bring other benefits as well like scaling up to meet peak load and you will need this if you want to use JSS. For sure check with Sitecore.

Sitecore License for DR servers


Sin and holiness

Question: Can any god among 330 million  Hindu gods  save a sinner and make him/her holy? Please give references from  Hindu Scriptures. (Not your own version as a Hindu  but quotation from an authentic religious book.)
Comment: There is only one Supreme Brahman and all 33 types (koti means type or crore in Sanskrit) of Gods are Brahman's different aspects or attributes. There are many methods described in Scriptures to get rid of Sins. You should be precise of what sin. Visiting Kashi and taking a dip in Ganga will remove almost all Sins. But important thing, you should be  devoted to Lord while taking dip in Ganga and should never resort to those bad deeds again. You can't cheat Lord. Else, there's no use in taking dip in Ganga and Visiting Kashi
Comment: Yes God can save a sinner and make Him Holy. Otherwise that entity cannot be God isnt it? God by definition is All-Powerful. Vaishnavas believe Vishnu can do it. ISKCON believes Krishna can do it. Shaivites believe Shiva can do it. While Shakteyas believe Lalithambika can do it. Advaitins believe you are never a sinner, you are Satchidananda, so the question does not apply to Advaitins :). Good luck
Answer: The only thing that can for sure remove all the sins committed by a person is Sharanagati, Surrendering to the Lotus feet of Lord Shriman Narayana.
Shrimad Bhagwad Gita Chapter 18 verse Shloka 66

सर्वधर्मान्परित्यज, मामेकम् शरनम् व्रज । अहम् त्वा सर्व पापेभ्यो मोक्श्यामि मा शुच

meaning

Completely relinquishing all Dharmas, take refuge in Me alone. I will release you from all sins, grieve not.

Translating word by word
'Relinquishing all Dharmas'  means the complete abandonment of the notion of agency, proprietorship, results etc., in the practice of Karma, Jñāna and Bhakti Yogas which are the means (dharmas) for attaining the highest good when done as Divine Service.
'I will release you from all sins'
means that I will free you from all obstacles that
prevent you from attaining Me; consisting of [the karmic reaction of] innumerable acts of doing what is forbidden and neglecting what is bidden. Accumulating from beginingless times [the reactions of] these deeds cause obstacles in spiritual development.
Alternative Interpretation
Bhakti Yoga is possible only for those individuals
who love the Lord intensely and who are free from all negative karma. One's karmic
reactions (sins) are obstacles in the path of developing loving devotion and are so
numerous that the expiatory rites which would exculpate them could not possibly be
performed in the limited time of one life span. Arjuna therefore thought that he was
incapable of practicing Bhakti Yoga. To remedy Arjuna's despondency the Lord said:
'Completely relinquishing all Dharmas, take refuge in Me alone.' The term 'Dharma' used
in this context would apply to the expiatory rites. So in order to successfully commence
Bhakti Yoga, surrender to Me alone. I am supremely compassionate, the refuge of all
without distinction, an ocean of maternal solicitude for those dependent on Me. I will
release you from all sins, which have been explained as obstacles to the practice of Bhakti
Yoga — grieve not.
As TheDestroyer mentioned you have to be completly loyal to yourself and god,you should feel guilty for committing those sins, then and only then there is meaning to sharanagati, you should love Shriman Narayana who is supreme bramhan
 or love nirguna bramhan if you think advaita is correct
Source
Yet another Interpretation
Comment: I think you should mention just Lord instead of "Srimannarayana". That would be a valid point point for all Hindus.
Comment: @The Destroyer - lord seems to be like an English word, srimannarayana feels like so close .

Sin and holiness


Brake levers for riding in upright position

Question: I'm trying to find out the correct name for the brake levers that are on a bike so that you can ride in a nearly upright position?  I had an old Schwinn 10 speed that not only had the regular brake levers on the drop down handlebars, but it also had a set so you use them when you're riding in an upright position? I'm hoping someone can tell me what they're called from my vague description?  Thanks
Comment: Noted we don't have anything about brakes or brake levers in the terminologiy index.  https://bicycles.stackexchange.com/questions/244/terminology-index-a-list-of-bike-part-names-and-cycling-concepts   Anyone feel like writing up entries ?
Comment: Just wanted to add that my Motobecane Cross Uno bike purchased earlier this year came with both sets of levers, and the handlebar ones worked fine. Couldn't find out what they called them, though.
Answer: There are two sorts of brake lever that would suit this description - given mention an older ten speed you're probably remembering these:

Sometimes called Suicide Brakes, or secondary levers/safety levers or something similar.  They're not common any more because the braking effect is low, probably for mechanical advantage reasons.
Not recommended unless you're going for original-look.  I have one on my 80s bike and its just for show - I never use it.

The more-modern version is a Cyclocross interruptor brake lever like these.  Functionally they're similar, but pull the inner separately to the outer, they don't pull the existing brake lever for you.
These brake levers work fine, and function either in concert with dropbar brake/shifters  as pictured, or can be used as brake levers by themselves if you're on a flatbar bike.
Again, these are mostly cable-brake based, but there are also hydraulic versions of the interruptor brake.  Shimano's GRX groupset has them as an option.

Given you're looking for a new bike, this doesn't fit your need, but...
The third option is to either learn to brake with existing drop bar brakes, or look at upgrading to more modern brifters.  The difference there is that the whole hand position has improved over time, and now braking from the hoods position works much better than older dropbar brakes.
Compare these with the first photo and you can see how different the angles are.

See also Braking on a vintage road bike
Comment: A lot will maybe depend if OP has hydraulic brakes or standard pull / rim brakes. I can comfortably brake with one finger on the hoods on my bike but my mates one with similar levers but rims brakes is a whole different animal to brake effectively with minimum effort
Comment: @DanK an "10 speed schwinn" would have been 100% be cable-based rim brakes.  The question implies OP wants to buy something newer, so good point to consider what the new bike might have.
Comment: We used to call the old school ones "lazy brakes" for those too lazy to use the drop position.