Could machine guns be produced in the 14th century?

Question: Could light machine guns such as the Madsen be made during the 14th century? And since materials may be scarce only a few would be produced for use by a single soldier in a unit. Lets say their understanding of metallurgy back then was already advanced, can they create cartridges for the guns?
Comment: `Let's say their understanding of metallurgy ... was already advanced` Give them enough of a headstart, and the answer is obviously yes.  Given the facts of history and no change, the answer is obviously no.  What are you actually trying to do?  It might be better to abandon this question and ask it again in a different way: "what are the minimal changes necessary to allow the manufacture of a Madsen machine gun in 14th century *Location*?" (*Location* is really important, tech levels varied radically at that time.)
Comment: I'm pretty sure we already have a question about the ability to replicate a modern machine gun based on having one and the design schematics, but I can't seem to find that question right now. If someone else finds it, this just might be a duplicate of that...
Comment: As always when this question comes up, the real problem is not making a machine gun, it's mass-producing the ammunition for it.
Comment: Guns, no, but there were repeating crossbows. Google for chukonu.
Comment: I think you're asking the wrong question. I think the better, more interesting question is "What technological advances are necessary to produce a machine gun?" and then sketching the path to machine guns from a typical medieval environment.
Comment: What exactly are you trying to *do* with this weapon?  There may be better ways to fight that fight that don't involve critical tolerances and having to invent the concept of mass production to make consistent enough ammo.
Comment: @jamesqf Even producing the gun is a problem: you need much tighter tolerances than could be achieved hundreds of years ago.
Comment: @aCVn I find Google with `site:worldbuilding.stackexchange.com` to be much more effective than the site's search. And/or I got lucky guessing the keyword "medieval".
Answer:
14th century is a time, not a place. 14th century China, 14th century Ottoman empire, 14th century Muscovy, 14th century France and 14th century Inca empire are not at all the same thing.
Let's see what they didn't have in the 14th century anywhere. No steel in quantity, and no capability of making steel with consistent properties. No reliable steel springs. No propellant suitable for machine guns. No reliable primers. No notion of mass production -- a Madsen machine gun fires 450 rounds per minute.
Most importantly, they did not have the capability of expressing the dimensions of the parts and ammunition with anything near the required accuracy. I'm not speaking of making them; they literally could not express them. The size of an inch varied greatly from place to place, and from generation to generation.
So you want a (presumably Western European) 14th century with the capability to make steel in quantity, with machine tools suitable for machining steel, with advanced chemistry to make propellants and primers, with uniform units of measurement, and with an industrial base capable of mass production. All right, but then what has this fantasy in common with the 14th century? How do you intend to reconcile late 19th century industrial base with a Late Middle Ages social structure?
Comment: The precision is the real showstopper. You could handwave most of the rest, but getting a bunch of individual craftsmen to create interchangeable rounds is simply not going to happen. (You'd also need very, very consistent *powder* by the standards of the day, or it might explode on any given shot.)
Comment: And even thinking "but they had gun powder" is misleading. A machine gun won't work with black powder because there's too much reside buildup so they would very quickly jam. They've got to invent smokeless powder.
Comment: @Deolater there's a huge difference between being able to fire one, or even a handful of rounds without cleaning, and hundreds or thousands without cleaning as would be needed for a machinegun with a usefully long rate of fire.
Comment: @MichaelW.: The machine gun does not have to be mass-produced, true. But the *ammunition* absolutely must: it's a *machine-gun*, it fires hundreds of rounds per minute. And each every one of those thousands upon thousands of rounds needs to have very precise dimensions with very tight tolerances.
Comment: @Cadence: That's even assuming that black powder works in recoil- or gas-operated machine guns. Doesn't it produce too much soot for this?
Comment: @Cadence, heck, the precision was a showstopper in the 1800s.  It was almost a showstopper during *World War I* (fighter pilots would spend more time checking their ammunition for bad cartridges that might cause a jam than they'd spend in combat).  It was only in World War II that precision machining was good enough for machine guns to be reliable.
Comment: @AlexP There's a youtube video of someone firing a Glock with black powder, so recoil operation is on the table at least.
Comment: A related point that is only rarely mentioned in "could we have done _x_  back in the year _y_?" discussions: One of the things you don't have until fairly recently is a reliable transportation network spanning significant distances. Unless all of the ingredients you need for _x_ are not just present _somewhere_ in the year _y_, but also feasibly accessible to you where you happen to be... then no, you're not going to be able to do _x_. You won't have any way to gather what you need.
Comment: While precision tooling of the rounds is the showstopper, it's worth noting that every part of every gun was custom-made *for the gun it went onto*. Gun parts weren't interchangeable without reworking the part, until the industrial revolution, nevermind the bullets themselves. The revolver was impossible, let alone the machinegun.
Comment: It's not really clear what the goal in the question is. I agree fully that no current firearm would be accepted by modern military trials with black powder ammunition. On the other hand, if I was sent back in time and offered a choice between a black powder Glock and a sword, I'd take the Glock. But I am NOT saying it would be possible to build either the gun or ammo back then. Even if you brought the gun and brass, I don't think they could make the primers.
Comment: @Deolater You'd probably want to take the black powder glock *and* the sword. That glock won't operate for too many shots before jamming up using black powder. And of course, the question is about machine guns where the main feature is firing a large number of times...
Comment: Machine guns obviously could not be mass-produced, but what about producing a single one? That part seems at least somewhat plausible, even though *they could never produce even a single bullet for it.*
Comment: While I think this fairly conclusively dismisses the idea of, say the OP's Madsen, I'm not entirely convinced that you couldn't design an automatic firearm that didn't require modern bullets. I'm thinking something like a paintball gun, except with a powder hopper instead of compressed air and lead balls instead of paintballs...
Comment: @AlexP You're thinking of modern machine guns with extremely high-velocity and efficient ammunition. The first step is to make a regular old gun, which would absolutely be possible, even if the bullets do not always fit perfectly. Then all that's needed is to prime the next bullet by using the recoil (or some form of stored energy). As for parts with precise sizes, they could use a mold of some sort to at least tell them how big it's supposed to be, while making it possible to copy as many molds as they wish. A reference gun, in other words.
Answer: No.
Not in the way that you're looking for, at least.
Put simply, cartridge fed weapons aren't products of metallurgy, they're products of precision and mass manufacturing. In something like an AR15 (or any rotating-bolt action, really), if the round is slightly out of tolerance and doesn't fit in the chamber properly, the weapon can explode. For a less catastrophic example, if the feed lips on a metal magazine are slightly bent out of shape, the weapon will constantly misfeed and jam - not something suited for a machine gun.
Any firearm built in the last hundred years operates on the following assumption: Every round fed to it is exactly the same. They're wholly reliant upon mass and precise manufacturing of ammunition. A few thousandths of an inch here, or slightly more or less powder there, and the weapon will lock up, stovepipe, squib, double feed, detonate, or otherwise fail in its intended purpose.
The level of precision to mass-manufacture cartridges is simply not possible with dark-ages craftsmanship.
You're gonna have to figure out something else
Here's an idea - what about some kind of gatling-flintlock? A hand-cranked mess of gears and pulleys that loads ball and powder into a barrel before passing it over a candle to fire. Not exactly an infantry weapon, but I could see something like it atop a horse drawn carriage.
You could also dream up a breech-loaded musket, fed with a lead ball and pre-measured bags of powder. By no means a modern rifle, but it'd still be significantly quicker to load than firearms of the day. Draw inspiration from a modern bolt-action, perhaps.
Look at modern guns and ask yourself "How would I load marbles and sand into this?" That should help you design your medieval wonder-weapon.
Comment: Breachloading rifles were actually around in 13th century Europe. They were absurdly complex and, of course, expensive. This means they were things like hunting weapons of royalty. Interestinly, they also had re-usable iron casings in some instances.
Comment: @Andon Can you provide a link? I found 13th century breech-loading cannons, but they were about as simple as can be (3 parts, not counting the stand.)
Answer: Depending on the needs of your story, you might consider...

The volley gun: A bunch of single-shot guns joined together. According to HyperWar designs like this appeared as early as 1339, and that drawing is by Leonardo da Vinci. You can see a modern reproduction of such a gun being fired here.
Historically, volley guns would fire all their rounds at once, but there's no reason you shouldn't have a handle you turn or a special fuse to fire them one after another.
The advantage of this is you can take real historical gun technology from the era you like, and just say a bunch were joined together.
The downsides are probably obvious: Weight and reload time. You're not going to see soldiers carrying around a 20-barrel gun any time soon! But if you only need short bursts of fire and don't mind needing a horse and road to transport it around, it could be an option.
There's also a design of gun where multiple bullets are loaded into the barrel at once, then fired in succession, like a roman candle - a so called 'superposed load' which Wikipedia says was first described in 1558. Never really caught on as it's difficult to make it work at all, let alone make it easy to reload in the field, but if your plot calls for occasional hails of bullets and you don't mind applying some artistic license, you could claim the problems were resolved because your fictional world has different powder chemistry or something.
Alternately, if all you want is battlefield weapons that will give a squad of men a chance of being wiped out in seconds by a handheld weapon, you might consider the hand grenade (震天雷, 1044 AD) or the flamethrower ('greek fire', 672 AD) (although I don't know how easily portable the latter was in pressurised form)
Comment: The [mitrailleuse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitrailleuse) was a 19th-century volley gun that, indeed, fired successively rather than all at once. The bullets and powder were contained in a block that would be removed and replaced with another full one, allowing a high rate of fire.
Comment: @Cadence, the mitrailleuse requires percussion-cap technology, which would be a bit difficult in the 1300s (alchemists could certainly make mercury fulminate, but they'd tend to blow themselves up while doing so).  You could probably come up with a flintlock design that doesn't fire off adjacent barrels too often, but you're probably better off with one of the older volley gun designs.
Comment: @Mark But, it DOES show that the successive volley gun idea works. And while the block for bullets/powder might not work in the same manner, I could see a load system that you put the bullets/powder into a block, then put the block on the end of the barrels and reloaded quickly that way. Then have someone reload the block while other things are going on. All possible with 13th century european tech with only minimal handwaving.
Comment: @Andon, with 13th-century technology, you're not going to get a good seal between the loading block and the barrels.  You're guaranteed to get a chain-fire situation where most or all of the barrels fire off at once.
Comment: @Mark I wasn't thinking of anything that would need a seal or be a permanent part of the gun. Just a piece of wood that the shot and powder would be put in, then held up to the end of the barrel and shoved down. Remove block to fire, repeat
Answer: To make a machine gun you need to have already developer breech-loading.

Although breech-loading firearms were developed as far back as the late 14th century in Burgundy, breech-loading became more successful with improvements in precision engineering and machining in the 19th century.
The main challenge for developers of breech-loading firearms was sealing the breech. This was eventually solved for smaller firearms by the development of the self-contained metallic cartridge. For firearms too large to use cartridges, the problem was solved by the development of the interrupted screw.

Also in the 14th century you would hardly have the manufacturing control capabilities to ensure narrow enough production tolerances, needed for producing the bullets and the mechanical parts. And you would also lack the needed good quality materials.
Comment: _the interrupted screw_ I've suffered a few of those in my time, I don't mind telling you . . .
Answer: This all depends on what you mean by a machine gun.  The heart of a light machine gun is its ability to use recoil energy to load the next bullet from a collection of bullets.  However, there are other ways to achieve that rapid firing effect.  A 19th century double action revolver handgun can be fired rapidly by using the non-aiming hand to fan the hammer into the cocked position.  An expert can shoot that revolver faster than a modern semi-automatic handgun.  Also, the auto-loading feature relies on a certain range of pressure, so a revolver can actually be chambered for more powerful (i.e. faster and more lethal) hand-made rounds than a semi-automatic handgun.
Comment: You say it depends on the definition of "machine gun", but fail to provide evidence that it's possible with *any* definition of "machine gun".
Comment: Factually inaccurate, at best. Competition shooters using semi autos can attain obscene rates of fire while maintaining high accuracy, and it's possible to reliably bump-fire a pistol with a small amount of practice. Also while it's true that any given feed mechanism can only handle a certain range of cartridges, that's because it's been designed to handle those cartridges. I would not characterize a Coonan .357 as "slow" or "weak." Nor would I say that of an M2  Hurling .50 BMG at nearly a kilometer per second.
Comment: I think the first 'machine' guns where operated with a handle you'd turn to fire the gun with out the need for recoil energy to load the next bullet. But it still requires low tolerances outside of 14th century technology.
Answer: The real problem is the ammo, machine guns in general are relatively simple and people were able to make them out of some pipes in their back yards, so any society that can make metal springs and tubes theoretically can make a machine gun.
However, it would never occur to anyone as a practical idea unless there is an industrial scale production of cartridges, as they have to be exactly the same size-wise to load properly, so making them by hand is highly unlikely to be practical. Even if you have a large group of very precise workers there is still the issue of propellant. Smokeless powder was only invented in late 1800s and required a number of other chemical advancements to become possible. Before that black powder was used. Black powder is pretty unusable for automatic weapon, as it will gunk up your weapon real quick, and fill the area with so much smoke you wont see anything after a few shots.
So the ammunition is the limiting factor not the weapon itself
Comment: That's an apt user name for this question.
Answer: no, machine guns were invented in 1884. If you want to learn more about the machine gun I highly suggest
 https://www.history.com/topics/inventions/firearms
or
 http://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/technique/gun-timeline/
it is about the history of firearms.
Although machine guns weren't invented gunpowder was available.
1364 is when the first use of a  fire arm was recorded
1380 is when handguns were available across europe
1400 matchlock gun
1498 rifling principle is discovered
1509 invention of wheel lock
Answer: No, but.
There were guns built in the 17th century, which would have been (barely) with the capability of 14th century (Western European) handgonne makers, that approximated a short burst from an automatic weapon.
I speak, of course, of the "volley gun".  These consisted of a number of gun barrels mounted parallel to one another (in what amounted to a sturdy rack, generally on a wheeled cart due to weight) -- anywhere from six to thirty-two barrels that I know of, though there may have been guns with more.  The barrels were all loaded with powder and shot (either a single ball or small shot), and a powder train in a trough was used to ignited the barrels in rapid sequence.  This amounted to nearly an hour of loading time for a single burst of fire that took anywhere from two to perhaps ten seconds (depending how fast your powder train burned).
Volley guns were effective, but limited -- they laid down a withering fire, similar in effect to grape shot from a cannon or a canister round, but with less spread.  Tactically, they'd be treated as a very heavy shotgun.  The limitation was, they were very much a "fire and forget" weapon unless used in specific applications, like defending a wall, where the enemy couldn't just overrun the gun after it fired.  They didn't catch on because grape shot, canister, and shrapnel were at least as good and much faster to load once cannon were common.
Comment: The volley gun was certainly within the capabilities of of 14th-century gunsmiths: back then, it was known as the "[Ribauldequin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribauldequin)".
Answer: All questions about "could they have had X in medieval time". Nicely forgets one important bit of secret sauce.
Before the enlightement, we had not discovered that we didnt know most of the things. Simply in the worldwiew was that everything important was known. While some uninportant things were left unknown, the big picture was more or less there.  They didnt have the mindset needed for R&D, they didnt have the social structure for it either.
It took us a very long time to come to diseminate the attitude that we can do things better if we try. Even today the social fabric is more in the way of changes than the actual changes themselves.
So no they could not have done it. They hadnt invented standardisation, tolerances, interchangeability and the modern metal lathe. With those inventions the might have been able to but then interchangeable parts was a Huge invention.
Its not that they could only maintain a few guns they couldnt supply the gunner with ammo since they would need thousands of peoples yearly output to make the ammo for a single battle.
Answer: The question title states 'could machine guns be produced in the 14th century' it then goes on to confound itself in the body of text. A modern weapon could not be made by a 14th century nation.
Casting (and thus relative uniformity of production) existed well before the Industrial Revolution though, certainly using different moulds would produce different results, but ammunition could be sorted by hand post-production readily enough, it wouldn't even require any expertise.
One does not need exact measurements nor modern reliability to create a 'machine gun.'
Steel is not required to produce good springs.
Steel is not required to make cartridges.
Steel is not required to produce guns.
Perfectly reliable charges are not required to make good weaponry.
Automation was a known concept, numerous examples exist of it, from clockwork mechanisms to spring powered saws.

From Wikipedia - "Up to the 15th century, clockwork was driven by water, weights, or other roundabout, relatively primitive means, but in 1430 a clock was presented to Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, that was driven by a spring."

That is not to say the metal spring was not invented until the 1430

From Wikipedia Torsion springs consisting of twisted ropes or sinew, were used to store potential energy to power several types of ancient weapons; including the Greek ballista and the Roman scorpio and catapults like the onager.

https://www.ideaconnection.com/right-brain-workouts/00346-who-invented-the-toothed-gear.html
1836 Colt and his revolver. Such a miraculous invention.. with the use of a spring and a ratchet..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiFGKWPSaas
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ycyj76VPOtc
The mechanical concepts (and even the parts) required to build a machine gun had already been demonstrated long before the creation of what people recognise as the first automated weaponry.
I think the only part of a machine gun that could not have been readily be designed by a 14th century artificer is ammunition of any reliability, but that needn't kill the project if a part of the automation process expelled failed or partially failed cartridges without relying on the power provided by a spent round.
there is no need for an automatic weapon to fire quickly in order for it to be classed as a machine gun, nor is a rof of 400 or more rounds a minute in any way feasible imo.
A 1300s machine gun would probably make use of a secondary, manually empowered spring prior to contact to act as a guarantor of motion, any failure to fire being catastrophic(which is likely a primary reason why the gatling gun wasn't automatic)
Something like a maxim, but instead of striking a cap a fuse is lit in the rear of the casing with a delay charge, arranged such that perhaps cartridges are lit with a fuse of ~1s.
That is, the fuse is lit prior to the the rotational point of chambering and firing, the last 3 rotational points are inside a secondary (ignition) chamber aligned on the ammunition's arc such that debris from the fuse's ignition can be cleaned out in a separate, external part. This 'external' arc is open to the air forwards, allowing any accidental explosion or pre-ignition due to dust build-up that may occur to be directed away from the user and his allies(if not quite constituting a second barrel)
Depending on the design, the automatic motion normally chambering a round could be aligned to, say, every fourth or fifth (or less or more depending upon tolerances) fire a spring loaded wad instead of a bullet. There is after all no reason why a gun need be cleaned from the muzzle end of a breach-loaded weapon. (And the wad does not need so much strength as to hit the enemy, just to leave the barrel)
Don't really know how light such a contraption would be.
More from wikipedia -"The grouped barrel concept had been explored by inventors since the 18th century, but poor engineering and the lack of a unitary cartridge made previous designs unsuccessful. The initial Gatling gun design used self-contained, reloadable steel cylinders with a chamber holding a ball and black-powder charge, and a percussion cap on one end. As the barrels rotated, these steel cylinders dropped into place, were fired, and were then ejected from the gun. The innovative features of the Gatling gun were its independent firing mechanism for each barrel and the simultaneous action of the locks, barrels, carrier and breech.
The ammunition that Gatling eventually implemented was a paper cartridge style round charged with black powder and primed with a percussion cap. because self-contained brass cartridges were not yet fully developed and available. The shells were gravity-fed into the breech through a hopper or simple box "magazine" with an unsprung gravity follower on top of the gun. Each barrel had its own firing mechanism."
So we have here an existing weapon that uses things that were available in the 14th century, paper, brass, gunpowder, ratchets, springs, primers, multi-phase automation.
Mass production, precision engineering, chemical uniformity and quality assurance processes do not make a machine gun, they just make good machine guns.
Answer: There is a webnovel about that, entirely. The synopsis is all about bringing modern weapons tech to middle-age-like civ. For doing that there were some pre-requisites:

The protagonist has memories of the present day, also, he is a mechanical engineer that also is weapon-addicted.
He is a prince, not the first one in the sucession line
He uses his knowledge of chemistry, and the local alchemists to start researching black powder and a way to mass produce it
He start by making muskeeters (start small)
Since he is a prince, he chose the measurement units as measures of his own body, and they were accepted
He also start to change the mindset of people and educate them so that he can use them in factories
Mostly, with his previous knowledge, he researches most of things that is missing
He does all of this in some years
The setting is in a fantasy world pretty similar to ours, so there are witches, and he uses their power to countermeasure some tech problems, such as precision in steelmaking

The webnovel is called Release that Witch, and there is a lot of technical terms in this webnovel, everything is well explained and there are entire chapters about the technological development.
Sorry about my bad english/mispelling, I hope this helps.
Comment: Using black powder for machine gun is a recipe for failure. black powder solid deposits are known to obstruct the weapon.
Comment: Moreover, "travel back in time" is not exactly a science-based answer.
Answer: You specifically mention cartridges

Paper cartridges have been in use for nearly as long as hand-held
  firearms, with a number of sources dating their use back to the late
  14th century. Historians note their use by soldiers of Christian I in
  1586, while the Dresden museum has evidence dating their use to 1591,
  and Capo Bianco writes in 1597 that paper cartridges had long been in
  use by Neapolitan soldiers.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_cartridge
Comment: One of the main functions of a brass cartridge is to seal the breech, which was difficult to do until about the 19th Century.  Paper isn't going to work that way.
Comment: Paper cartridges sped up loading a muzzle loader by combining ball, wadding, and premeasured powder in a convenient package -- but they cut loading time from most of a minute to fifteen or twenty seconds for a musket (multiply both by five or so for a rifle).  And while paper cartridges appeared in the 14th century, loading as fast as three shots in a minute was for the tail end of the flintlock period, early 19th century -- 14th century guns were cannon locks, matchlocks or, rarely, wheellocks.
Answer: No. Manufacturing precision and consistency as well as metallurgy were not up to scratch. I could also see problems with raw materials and quality control.
Comment: Welcome to Worldbuilding, Kaiser. Answers on this forum need more detail in them to get strong votes - perhaps you could tell us specifically why metallurgy (for example) wasn't up to scratch? Also, the problems you see with raw materials and product control aren't identified, making the answer seem incomplete.


Can I specify '-o' as the default for vi in my vimrc?

Question: When I pass the names of multiple files to vim on the command line (e.g. vim foo.txt bar.txt), I almost always want to add the -o option, because I would like them to be visible side-by-side in separate windows. However, I often forget to add -o. I cannot find an appropriate setting, but is there a way to set this as the default? (for example, in my .vimrc?). I know I could probably create a shell alias, but that only works if it is invoked interactively from a shell (not from another program).
Comment: Related: [How do I make opening new tabs the default?](https://vi.stackexchange.com/q/310/205)
Answer: As a solution to the generalized question How can I apply a command-line option every time I open vim? (there are options that don't have configuration equivalents) one approach is as follows.

Put your personal bin dir (~/bin) ahead of vim's path in your PATH environment variable. If the bin dir is not already in your path you can use this (in .profile, or .bashrc or whatever you use):

PATH=$HOME/bin:$PATH

Create a wrapper shell script named vim in that directory:
$ cat > ~/bin/vim <<'EOF'
#!/bin/sh

exec /path/to/vim -o "$@"
EOF

Per OP's request I'm using -o in this example. Obviously you'll need to change /path/to to actual path.
Make it runnable:
$ chmod +x ~/bin/vim

Now if you run vim foo bar then "foo" and "bar" each get their own windows.
Comment: Thanks @muru that little formatting trick was just what the doctor ordered.
Comment: Thanks. That's reasonable, unfortunately it doesn't quite address scenarios such as diff mode being enabled (which to be fair I didn't ask about, but realised would be an issue once I read the related question!). It would be nicer to have a configuration-based approach. But it's definitely the best answer I've seen so far.
Comment: Hi @AndrewFerrier I knew this answer wouldn't be what you'd consider ideal but after I came up short on it I become a bit skeptical that there was a configuration solution. Well, at least I could improve on the alias-based solution you mentioned as well as solve the problem generally for all flags with no vimrc analogue. An ideal solution may yet appear and it'll be great if it does. I knew this might be relegated to secondary/alternative status. I'm just glad a number of people seem to have found it useful so far.
Comment: BTW, what's the diff mode scenario you mention? If I understand how it breaks down in some scenarios I may be able to improve it a bit.
Answer: A shorter version of the accepted answer is to use aliasing, supported by many shells (for bash, see https://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/aliases.html). That is, you can simply say
$ alias vim="vim -o"

and your next vim foo.txt bar.txt will open 2 buffers. You can make this permanent by putting the line into your shell init script (~/.bashrc for bash)


Eclipse on Ubuntu: Rectangles instead of Strings and some Java methods and classes

Question: after upgrading from Ubuntu 9.04. to 11.04 (new installation), I have weird problems with the Eclipse editor.
With the Eclipse PyDev plugin, whenever I typ single quoted strings like 'bla', they appear as rectangles (both the quotes as well as the string).
First I thought this was a problem with the PyDev plugin, but it also happens with Java and Scala Plugins. With Java, it happens, for example, when typing
System.out.println("bla")
and then "out" is shown as rectangles only.
Weird is that for about half a second I see "System.out.println" and then the editor changes it to System.[][][].println (not really [] (here I used two brackets), it is shown as rectangles).
This is very weird. I've never had this before with any Ubuntu, Java or Eclipse version.
Currently, I use:
Ubuntu 11.04.
Eclipse 3.6
Java 1.6.0_25
The latest plugins for Python (2.1) and Scala (beta 5) where used.
Eclipse and Ubuntu Terminal  is set to UTF-8.
The problem also happens when using KDE instead of  Gnome.
I doubt is has anything to do with Java as I use the same versions on older Ubuntu installations (10.04, 9.10, etc) at work. It does not happen with Netbeans.
But I saw once error dialog message from the Update Manager where there were some rectangles in the error widget. Maybe this is the same problem
Any ideas what could be wrong here and how to fix this? Eclipse is unusable but I need this for work and also for Scala and Python (the Eclipse plugins for those are very good now).
Claus
Answer: Figured it out. It was a font problem. When I change Eclipse to use the system font settings in the Java editor, it works. Somehow the required font was installed by ubuntu.


How to clean water spots from wooden table?

Question: I have got water spots on my wooden table. Is there any trick to make them disappear.
Comment: A photograph would help. What kind of wood? Is the surface painted or varnished or just untreated wood?
Answer: This may be surprising, but the best solution I've found to remove both water and heat spots from a wooden table, is an iron. Cover the spot with a dish towel (so as not to directly burn the table), then iron the towel. The heat will transfer from the towel to the wood and the spot will magically disappear. I have done this myself multiple times, and so has my mother.
This is a youtube link that I followed. Often the youtubers use thick towels, or folded a towel a bunch, but we found there wasn't enough heat being transferred. So just use a regular thickness towel, and don't fold it, but just keep an eye on it.
Good luck!
Answer: To remove white rings left by wet glasses on wood furniture, mix equal parts vinegar and olive oil and apply it with a soft cloth while moving with the wood grain. Use another clean, soft cloth to shine it up. To get white water rings off leather furniture, dab them with a sponge soaked in full-strength white vinegar
*Steps for Removing Water Stains on Untreated Wood

Mix one teaspoon of salt with several drops of water to create a salt paste.
Apply the paste to the stained wood.
Use a clean, damp towel to gently rub the paste into the water marks.
Rub until the stain is no longer being removed.
Wipe the paste from the wood.
Answer: Use any volatile liquid like any glass cleaner or you could also use alcohol or petrol. Volatile liquids evaporate at a much faster rate and hence unlike water do not leave stains.


If a caster wants to use a spell scroll as a reaction, do they need to already be holding it in their hand?

Question: If a caster wants to use a spell scroll as a reaction (casting a spell that has a reaction casting time), do they need to already be holding it in their hand? What if they have the War Caster feat?
Answer: Yes.
You need to hold the scroll on your turn, and have it in your hand by the time you wish to read it.

Casting the spell by reading the scroll requires the spell's normal Casting Time.

This is required, because object interactions (like getting the scroll from somewhere) happen on your turn, and you need access to the scroll to read it, by the Spellcasting rules.

Before a spellcaster can use a spell, he or she must have the spell firmly fixed in mind, or must have access to the spell in a magic item.

The Warcaster feat simply allows you to cast the scroll as a reaction, for an opportunity attack, if the spell meets the criteria.

The spell must have a casting time of 1 action and must target only that creature.

If the scroll's spell had a casting time of 1 Reaction, you don't need Warcaster to use it as a reaction. Further discussion here.
Comment: Specifically: drawing a weapon (or scroll in this case) is done as part of the character's movement which, as you say, happens on the character's turn.


Does Banner's strength affect the Hulk's?

Question: While the magnitude depends on writer, the Hulk's strength is generally believed to increase with his rage. However, if Banner should decide to increase his strength, would this have an effect on the Hulk's baseline strength?
Answer: Probably not. The Hulk's physical power has little to do with the physical strength of Bruce Banner, and more to do with the manifestation of his psychological dysfunction of anger and rage. It is rage which powers the Hulk, so the angrier Banner is, the more powerful the Hulk's will be physically.
Since Banner's physical strength is so minuscule in comparison to the Hulk, it is unlikely improving Banner's physical strength would do anything to augment the Hulk's already almost limitless reservoirs of physical strength.

The Hulk possesses the potential for limitless physical strength depending directly on his emotional state, particularly his anger. This has been reflected in the repeated comment, "The madder Hulk gets, the stronger Hulk gets." After probing, the entity Beyonder once claimed that the Hulk's potential strength had "no finite element inside."
Hulk's strength has been depicted as sometimes limited by Banner's subconscious influence; when Jean Grey psionically "shut Banner off", Hulk became strong enough to to overpower and destroy the physical form of the villain Onslaught.
Writer Greg Pak described the Worldbreaker Hulk shown during World War Hulk as having a level of physical power where "Hulk was stronger than any mortal—and most immortals—who ever walked the Earth."
His durability, regeneration, and endurance also increase in proportion to his temper. Hulk is resistant to injury or damage, though the degree to which varies between interpretations, but he has withstood the equivalent of solar temperatures, nuclear explosions, and planet-shattering impacts. - Hulk > Wikipedia
Comment: We know that the Hulk has no upper limit on his strength, but he needs to start somewhere when he transforms. Would any muscle-building that Banner does increase the amount of strength that the Hulk starts with?
Comment: Probably not. The reason is as soon as Banner transforms he is a 100+ ton monstrosity. He is already stronger than 95% of all of the heroes on Marvel Earth. With just the tiniest bit of anger, he becomes stronger than 99% of all the heroes on Marvel Earth. Banner's base contribution simply doesn't add enough to the equation to make it worth the effort. He would be at the same power level if Banner was a 98 pound weakling or a 250 pound titan. The Hulk simply makes his Banner form irrelevant in seconds.
Answer: It is very likely that if banner were to increase his strength that the hulk's baseline strength would in fact increase as she-hulk discovered that if she trained in her human form that her hulk form became stronger as well.
Comment: She-Hulk's power/transformation is different from the Hulk's though.  Her transformations are triggered by fear, or she can conciously transform, whereas Bruce Banner's are involuntary and triggered/powered by rage/anger.
Answer: The Hulk is physical manifestation of pure rage, the status of Banners body is irrelevant. Case in point, when wolverine stabbed Banner in the Ultimate serious the injury did not carry over.


Create new record in one controller and pass Id to a second controller

Question: Still pretty 'green' when it comes to Apex and I am having a difficult time with this one issue.  So, I have a Visualforce page that replaces Orders to replicate the button 'Save and Add Product' which redirects to another Visualforce page that I created to clean up the Add Product page.  Both pages work perfect on their own, but when I attempt to redirect to the other page I get and error.
System.QueryException: invalid ID field: null
I cannot figure out how to get the Id from the controller on the Orders page after it is created to pass to the controller for the Order Products page.  Here is a little bit of the code.
Controller for the Orders VF page
public class SaveAndAddProductControllerExtension {

    public SaveAndAddProductControllerExtension(ApexPages.StandardController controller) {
    }

    Order ord;

    public Order getOrder() {
        if(ord == null) ord = new Order();
            return ord;
    }

    public PageReference save() {
        try {
        insert Ord;

        PageReference neword = new PageReference('/apex/orderproductentry?oId='+order.Id);
        neword.setRedirect(true);
            return neword;
        }
        catch (DMLException e) {
            ApexPages.addMessage(new ApexPages.message(ApexPages.severity.ERROR, 'Error creating new order.'));
        return null;
    }

    return null;
  }

}

Controller for the Order Products VF page
 public with sharing class ordersProductEntryExtension {

    public Order theOrder {get;set;}
    public String searchString {get;set;}
    public orderItem[] shoppingCart {get;set;}
    public priceBookEntry[] AvailableProducts {get;set;}
    public Pricebook2 theBook {get;set;}
    public String toSelect {get; set;}
    public String toUnselect {get; set;}
    public Decimal Total {get;set;}
    public Boolean overLimit {get;set;}
    public Boolean multipleCurrencies {get; set;}

    private orderItem[] forDeletion = new orderItem[]{};

    public ordersProductEntryExtension(ApexPages.StandardController controller) {

        // Need to know if org has multiple currencies enabled
        multipleCurrencies = UserInfo.isMultiCurrencyOrganization();

        // Get information about the Order being worked on
        if(multipleCurrencies)
            **theOrder = database.query ('SELECT Id, Pricebook2Id, Pricebook2.Name, CurrencyIsoCode from Order where Id = \'' + controller.getRecord().Id + '\' limit 1');**
        else
            theOrder = [SELECT Id, Pricebook2Id, PriceBook2.Name FROM Order WHERE Id = :controller.getRecord().Id limit 1];

The error is on line 23 of the Orderproductentryextension which is the one that contains the database query towards the bottom.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Answer: Liz, it looks like you're implementing extensions to standard controllers. In this case, I think it's important for you to know that the standard controller expects the record ID to be in the id page parameter.
Try making the modification below to SaveAndAddProductControllerExtension.save().
//PageReference neword = new PageReference('/apex/orderproductentry?oId='+order.Id);
//neword.setRedirect(true);
//return neword;

PageReference nextPage = Page.OrderProductEntry;
nextPage.getParameters().put('id', order.Id);
return nextPage;


How can I alleviate my 34 month old little girl's fear of poo?

Question: I feel incredibly stupid and awful about this, but a while ago I jokingly referred to my daughters' poo (in her nappy, not in the toilet) as a monster (because it was so big).  I think I have now given her a fear of pooping and having her diaper changed. I need to start toilet training but think I have really set her back now.  She now only poos every 2-3 days and tries to avoid diaper changes. I am going to start talking about how nice her poos are and praise her but has anyone else found something useful in this situation?
Comment: Welcome to the community and Thank You. These related questions may be useful to you.  Here is one about deciding if your child is ready to toilet train, http://parenting.stackexchange.com/q/1193/2876 and http://parenting.stackexchange.com/questions/8301/what-to-do-when-my-3-year-old-holds-poop-in-and-wont-go-in-diaper-or-on-potty.  The second one is very close to your situation - though it sounds as though it might be more extreme, the answers are probably particularly relevant.  Because of this, I'm flagging your question as a duplicate as we try to keep super similar questions to a minimum.
Comment: I agree that there's already an [answer](http://parenting.stackexchange.com/a/8312/420) that sounds like it covers exactly what you're asking about, including negative words about feces triggering the behavior (take comfort that this is pretty common, and not a major problem; you don't need to beat yourself up about this!).
Answer: I did the same with my boy once. We have a Mickey Mouse phone with a demo button and it starts moving and making sounds. I was holding my boy and made a jerking movement, to surprise him or so with a mind set of  "oh geez, what is this all the sudden"...
What was I thinking, so stupid... I instantly made him afraid. And it didn't go away by just putting the think in front of him, forcing him to face it, to make him see there is nothing to fear. That totally didn't work at all.
What did work was, holding him on my arm and walking by the Mickey Mouse, not giving it attention as we passed. Or just randomly turning it on, not looking at it anymore. Or all sorts of stuff like that, repeatedly until he decided for himself, that it wasn't anything to be afraid of.
My point is, do not put to much focus on it. It is not something we as adults have to deal with, it is just something we do. Try to see/feel it like that and she will notice your feelings. That is what she did in the first place that made her fear her poo now. The reverse works the same, albeit it takes a bit longer when the fear was already set first.
I would not potty train her for few days until she poos on her normal regular intervals. Then just start over again, not giving it to much attention.
You didn't do it on purpose, and you learned from it (otherwise you wouldn't be knowing what caused it). She will get over it faster then you think. The more she can trust your feelings in it, the faster it is over. I think.
Goodluck.


Is there any benefit at all to a rooks' pawn opening?

Question: Many beginners open the game with moving their a or h pawns.
Is there any benefit at all with this opening?
Answer: Apart from the fact that you can develop your rooks (which isn't good so early in the opening, because your rooks might become vulnerable), the only other "benefit" I can think of is that a4 (more likely than h4) can be useful after some transposition to a normal opening, e.g. stopping black from playing b5.
That being said, black can comfortably choose (thanks to your gift of a tempo) an opening where a4 is useless.
The other move 1. h4 is even more problematic because castling kingside is much more frequent than castling queenside and h4 weakens the pawn shield in front of your king.

So I don't think it's worth calling these possibilities benefits at all.
Comment: There are 4 rook's pawn openings (1.a3, 1.h3, 1.a4, 1.h4) and your answer mentions only the two weakest ones.
Answer: 1.a3 is a semi-respectable opening called Anderssen's Opening, and since he beat Paul Morphy(http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1019048) with it, it cant be so ridiculous. He used it to enter an English opening or a reversed Sicilian. I think Larsen once did the same.
There is at least one trap. Black plays a reversed Scotch 1.a3 e5,2.e4 Nf6, 3.Nc3 d5, 4eXd Nxd4 5. Qh5. This move is playable, and very lively, on the fourth move of the regular Scotch, but it's not played much because of 5. Ndb5 which is not available here.
Beginners would probably disapprove of 1.a3, on the grounds that it does not give them enough freedom of action to put their Rook en prise.
Answer: GM Hector once opened with 1. h4 and (with a bit of luck) won the game:
[FEN ""]
[Event "Dinard open"]
[Date "1986.??.??"]
[Result "1-0"]
[White "Jonny Hector"]
[Black "Paul Boersma"]

1. h4 Nf6 2. d4 d5 3. Nf3 c5 4. Bg5 cxd4 5. Bxf6 gxf6 6. Qxd4
Nc6 7. Qa4 Rg8 8. c3 Qb6 9. Qc2 Bf5 10. Qxf5 Qxb2 11. e3 e6
12. Qxh7 Rg4 13. Qd3 Qxa1 14. Qc2 Rc8 15. Nfd2 Nb4 16. Qd1 f5
17. cxb4 Qb2 18. Bb5+ Kd8 19. Ke2 Qxb4 20. Bd3 Rxg2 21. Nf3
Bd6 22. Nbd2 Ke7 23. Qa1 Bg3 24. Rf1 f4 25. e4 Rc3 26. exd5
Qc5 27. d6+ Kd7 28. Qb2 Qe3+ 29. Kd1 Qxd3 30. Ne5+ Kxd6
31. Nxd3 Rxd3 32. Qb4+ 1-0

I thought one idea behind the move 1. h4 was to play the Albin Countergambit with the extra attacking move h4,
[FEN ""]
[Title "Reversed Albin"]
[Startply "12"]

1. h4 d5 2. d4 c5 3. e4 dxe4 4. d5

but according to my database this has actually never happened in a real game, so I might be mistaken.
The book Groteske Schacheröffnungen: Wagnis mit Methode (1991, in German) by Stefan Bücher has a chapter about 1. h4.
Comment: @AsherScheiner Chess is an international language.
Comment: Well, Fischer read Russian chess magazines as a teenager in Brooklyn. Sometimes the important information is not available in your favorite language.
Comment: Helpful for those who speak english...
Comment: Iwas referring to the book.
Answer: There are benefits and drawbacks to each move in chess.  The benefits to h4 or a4 is that they grab space, control squares in the enemy territory, and increase the scope of the rook.
Some of the drawbacks to opening like this are:
1. They don't fight for the center
2. They impact castling options
3. They don't promote the development of the Bishops
Answer: 1. h3 has the potential to transpose into normal openings, as it is quite common to play h3 to prevent ...Bg4 pinning a knight on f3.
For example this move order quickly becomes a four knights Italian game:
[FEN ""]

1. h3 e5 2. e4 Nf6 3. Nc3 Bc5 4. Nf3 Nc6 5. Bc4

One other transposition possibility is that white can play the Grob, but that opening has a dubious reputation.
[FEN ""]

1. h3 e5 2. g4

Comment: @Oliver. Maybe not. The pseudo sacrifice..Bxf2+ is normally bad in such positions., but h3 has weakened the dark squares
Comment: In your first example 5.Nxe5 is much stronger than 5.Bc4...
Answer: Rook pawn openings are not as inherently useful as they are detrimental.
The only value I can see for them is if your goal is to get the other player out of book as soon as possible. This goal implies that you are a better positional/tactical player than your opponent and that stranding him without a roadmap is all you would need to win; otherwise, you are stranding yourself as well.


Newly generated coins

Question: New to BTC world so my question is how and what can I do with newly generated coins what's the process and how to see balance of that in wallet? Can I send those to paper wallet
Comment: You can only generate coins by mining new blocks, but you can receive coins from anybody (via trade or donation). What do you mean by newly generated coins?
Answer:
New to BTC world

Be very very careful about who you trust. Do your own independent research. Reading old questions on this website is a good start.

what can I do with newly generated coins

People often ask this sort of question after downloading a mining game to their phone and "mining Bitcoin" on their phone. Unfortunately those are not real.
If you have real Bitcoin you already have a wallet, your wallet will show how many bitcoin you control.
Beware of watch-only addresses that let you see bitcoin amounts that you do not own and have no control over.
Beware of "testnet" bitcoins that are worthless.
Newly mined bitcoins are generally associated with a bitcoin-address that is controlled by the miner or mining pool. That address was derived from private keys which will be held in a wallet.
Mining bitcoin isn't something you can do casually.
Comment: Well the newly generated coins are in the blockchain.info they were donated to me from a friend and I'm trying to transfer those into my wallet and have been watching tutorials if the proper procedure.

Newly generated coins


Can I refreeze sauce made from frozen tomatoes

Question: Hi  I have some frozen tomatoes and I would like to blend them in my Vita mix and make sauce. My question is can I re-freeze the sauce once it's been cooked.
Comment: Hello Andrea, and welcome! Your title could have meant many things about tomatoes, so I changed it to better describe what you are asking. It's a nice first question, +1.
Answer: Probably. Depends on your sauce; some sauces do not tolerate freezing (e.g., they "break"). The fact that your tomatoes were frozen at one point doesn't matter.
Mostly warnings about not re-freezing foods are due to quality loss. For example, each time you freeze a vegetable, it will turn closer to mush.
Safety warnings are primarily about quick thawing (e.g., in the microwave) where the food may get into the danger zone (between 4°C–60°C/40°F–140°F); the recommendation is to cook it before freezing (if you thaw in the fridge, this is avoided). You've already got a cook step between the thaw/freeze, so even with a quick thaw method, there aren't any extra safety concerns.
Answer: I frequently freeze for up to 6 months various homemade tomato based pasta sauces, bbq sauces and hot sauces and have not had any trouble. Just thaw and make sure you mix well.
Answer: The fact that any raw ingredients were frozen is irrelevant for the sauce you intend to freeze. It is 100% safe to freeze a cooked sauce, though the quality of taste may be affected.
You can test it first if you like, put part in the freezer and keep the rest refrigerated. Thaw the frozen sample the next day and if it is still acceptable add the rest to the freezer. If not you may consider different options for storing the sauce.


How do some seeds germinate and flourish in soil filled pots?

Question: I have regularly seen people not recommending plain soil for pots, since the roots of the newly generated seedlings suffocate in the lack of oxygen due to its compact nature and lack of water drainage. Yet, I have seen people here propagate marigold and holy basil (Ocimum sanctum) pretty much fine in plain soil. The plants also turn out pretty healthy. Same goes with aloe vera. How is that?
Comment: When you say 'plain' soil, do you mean taken from the open soil on the ground and put into pots, or do you mean just ordinary potting soil from a bag,with nothing else added?
Comment: Soil taken from the ground.
Comment: For one thing, lack of oxygen water drainage are caused by compaction, not by the nature of plain soil. For another, conditions in all but the closest-neighbouring gardens can be quite different, which suggests you should experiment.
Comment: Put a handful of dirt from the garden in a glass jar, add water somewhat above the level of the soil, shake vigorously, leave several hours - the 3 sizes of mineral particles are visible through the glass. So you will know if your soil is clay-y.
Answer: Firstly I assume with "plain soil" you mean dug up from outside in contrast to a bought or self-made potting mix.
Secondly a recommendation is most often just a best practice. I've seen many people do a lot of stuff I wouldn't recommend doing and do fine. That doesn't mean that there isn't a reason for the recommendation.
So for containers the main problems are constricted space. That's why potting mix exists. It's usually pretty rich in nutrients and has decent water retention while still allowing for good drainage.
So what's the difference between the soil from your garden and potting mix? The main constituent of the "plain soil" are minerals. From large grain to fine they are grouped as sand, silt and clay. Sand drains pretty well but doesn't retain water and nutrients very well, clay retains water and nutrients very well but doesn't drain well. Silt sits somewhere in the middle.
Then there is organic matter (humus), water and air.
The amounts of salt, silt and clay determines how easy your soil drains and how good it retains nutrients and water. That's where the distinction between heavy and light soils comes from.
For potting mix the mineral part is replaced by other things like peat moss, coco peat, vermiculite, perlite or sand. Depending on the recipe of the specific manufacturer. There is usually more organic matter in there than plain soil too, to solve the nutrient problem (plants in the field can root deeper and wider that in a pot so the soil doesn't need to be as nutrient dense to provide the same amount to the plant).
So if you got very sandy soil with no clay the only thing you would only need to solve the nutrient problem - with some additional compost for example - to get a usable potting mix.
I got a sandy clay in my garden. Nice to work with in the garden but if I put it in a pot I get a rock-hard lump of clay soil after a few days. So I wouldn't much recommend using that in a pot.
Thus, the recommendation to use potting mix instead of soil. It saves a lot of hassle and your soil is probably not as light as you think at a first glance. But it isn't impossible to pot with plain soil.
Now for nursing seedlings to be transplanted later there is an addition consideration: You usually use something with very few nutrients (pure coco peat for example). The seed contains everything needed to get the seedling going and the sparse nutrition forces the plant to send out lots of roots.
So just because something is recommended doesn't mean it's impossible to do it any other way. But it usually is easier amd less error prone.
Answer: The biggest reason you don't use ordinary garden soil in pots is because of possible pathogens -  there are many pathogens in open soil which aren't a problem there, but might well be so contained in a pot. The same is true of compost which has not been produced using an aerobic, hot method of composting. Most people's compost is made anaerobically and it does not get hot enough to kill off any pathogens which may be present, so it is very useful as a soil conditioner on open ground, but not suitable for containers. Then there are the other reasons not to use garden soil, like it has too high a clay content or its too sandy or whatever...
For striking cuttings and growing seeds, it's recommended to use starter or seed and cutting potting soil, with the seedlings or cuttings transferred when they are big enough to either potting soil in containers or into the ground. Clearly, many people do risk using ordinary soil and it works out, most of the time they get away with it, but results can be variable and may be disastrous.


Is it possible to use Unix commands to cp a file in my subdirectory into a remote computer via SSH?

Question: I have a series of software files downloaded into my subdirectory ~/Downloads on my personal computer. I am also using bash to connect remotely to a computer using ssh.
Is it possible to transfer this file via ssh to the remote computer?
Comment: The question refers to a singular file (`this file`) and multiple files (`a series of software files`), the best solution depends upon whether you have a single file or multiple files.
Answer: You may want to use scp for this purpose. It is a secure means to transfer files using the SSH protocol.
For example, to copy a file named yourfile.txt from ~/Downloads to remote computer, use:
scp ~/Downloads/yourfile.txt email@example.com:/some/remote/directory

You can see more examples here.
Comment: @Paebbels On the contrary, replace `scp` above with `rsync` and it should work just fine.
Comment: I think `rsync` may work as well, now that I think about it
Comment: rsync is far to complex for just one or a hand full of files...
Comment: I tend to use `rsync` for everything, even single files, because it "just works" in the simple cases and can be far more efficient in other cases. If using either `scp` or `rsync` on anything not already compressed and/or encrypted, remember to turn the compression option on (`-C` for `scp`, `-z` or `--compress` for `rsync`). In fact I turn it on by habit - it is very rare you'll find a circumstance where it ever slows things down (perhaps if you are using a slow low-power device with limited CPI power like an rPi).
Answer: Though scp is clearly the right tool for this, if for some reason you can't use it you could do something like the following from your local machine to copy, say, a directory structure to the remote machine:
tar -c . | ssh <remote> tar -x

This will tar the current directory on the local machine, and write that tar to stdout which will then be piped to an ssh command where it will execute a remote command to untar the file it reads from stdin
Edited to reflect Dietrich Epp's comment about -f - being the default on both the creation and extraction ends, so not being necessary to specify explicitly.
Comment: You'll probably want to add a `-C basedir` argument to `tar` to extract somewhere other than your home directory if you're doing this.
Answer: If you want to do this on more than the rare occasion, I'd suggest mounting the remote filesystem with sshfs if you are using a Unix-like that supports FUSE (Linux, *BSD, Mac OS X).  Make a directory under your home directory, say, called ~/remote-server:
    $ mkdir ~/remote-server

Then mount the remote filesystem with sshfs.  Replace "yourserver.com" with the host name of your remote machine, and "name of remote directory" with the directory you are using on the remote system.
    $ sudo sshfs email@example.com:/name/of/remote/directory ~/remote-server/

Once this is done, the remote directory is part of your filesystem and you can use all your normal tools on it, including cp:
    $ cp ~/Downloads/your-files ~/remote-server

If you don't already have sshfs installed, you should be able to install it on your computer using your package manager (look for packages named sshfs or fuse-sshfs). For more information, you can read a tutorial online.
This, by the way, is my favorite way of managing files on remote servers.  I normally keep one production server and two development servers mounted in this way and use my normal file browsing workflow with them.
Comment: And then check which sshfs options will help you get your work best done. E.g. starting with user/group ID mapping `-o idmap={none,user,file},gid=,allow_other` and `-C` for compression if poor bandwith. As soon as it works good, I personally add aliases for the commands to quickly mount the distant filesystems over ssh. @Benjamin_Staton I wouldn't use sudo or root here, not without a proper user/group mapping at least.
Answer: First time, there is no real difference between scp (copy over ssh) and rsync.
Subsequent runs will benefit by rsync not copying files that already exist.
rsync -avH ~/Downloads  username@remotehost:Downloads

-a for all files
-v for verbose
-H for "just figure out symlinks and do the right thing"
then source and destination paths.  You can use wildcards in the source, or just sync the whole directory.

Other useful flags include:

--delete    to delete files in the destination that no-longer exist on the source.
--dry-run    for testing - very handy when combined with --delete.

This will use ssh keys to do a passwordless login too, if you have them set up.
At the end of the run, rsync will tell you how many times faster it was over doing the plain copy over again.
Comment: `-H` is actually for hard links, it stops the same content being sent twice or more when it is linked into more than one place in the source directory structure (but can make the process less efficient for large directory structures). it has no effect on symbolic links, but some of the options included by `-a`/`--archive` do affect how symlinks are processed.
Answer: To add to above answers. Sometimes I am not exactly sure about remote path. In these cases I use sftp to first navigate to required location, then use get or put to actually download or upload a file.
If you also want to keep something always synced and even want to execute locally some file that is located on remote machine, sshfs works great.
Answer: I'm doing something very similar with ssh. I created a custom build tool for Visual Studio and am basically having VS run an ssh command that copies my code to a target computer and then compiles it on that target computer.

ssh userB@hostB 'cp /network/path/of/source/file.ext /path/of/final/file.ext; ./runCustomCommand'

Notice the use of single quote mark and semi-colon. The former encapsulates your commands to hostB via ssh and the latter allows you to run multiple hostB system commands in one ssh command from hostA.
In order to make this work, you'll need to set up ssh keys on your start machine so that you can be userA@hostA and login to hostB as userB. The process for creating a public ssh key for userA@hostA is well documented.
If you don't create a public key on hostA for userA, and copy that key to hostB as userB, then you'll be forced to enter your password every time - which ruins the joy of automation.
Comment: Can anyone who downvoted leave a comment as to why they downvoted? Down votes are meaningless without informative feedback.Thanks.

I have addressed the OP's specific question with an answer that directly relates. I'm not introducing new technology or suggesting alternate routes. Why? maybe OP doesn't want to use alternate routes.


How to remove a stripped/broken sparkplug on a 2001 Chevy Malibu

Question: I have tried to remove the #3 spark plug from my 2001 Malibu, with no results. It is very hard to get to that particular spark plug because there is not much room between the fire wall and cylinder. I somehow broke the top off and the bottom of the spark plug is cracked in half. I tried different tools but still won't come out. There is not enough clearance in the area of the #3 spark plug to fit a drill in there or any other kind of tool. Please help, it's the only car I have, plus I have no money and I know just a enough about cars, to keep mine from going to an auto-repar shop. I was trying to change the plugs for a smog check, which is now past due.
Comment: I take it from your statement, the threads of the spark plug have broke off and are still in the head? If so, did the rest of the spark plug come out (porcelain and electrode)? If this is the case, you should be able to use the correct size "easy-out" removal tool to back it out. If this is not the case, please explain it better so we can understand. Getting to the #3 is a PITB, but can be done. I had this one strip out on me on a 94 Sunbird ... took 4-5 hours or so to re-thread and helicoil without removing the head (or anything else for that matter).
Answer: You might want to try a right angle adapter in your drill to give you more room.
Here is a link to the sort of thing  http://www.screwfix.com/p/angled-drill-chuck-10mm/39590
You could then try the easy out or if that fails [or it snaps off] weld an old ring spanner over the stub of the spark plug, the heat from the weld will help to free the plug. You can place a long tube over the ring spanner to get more leverage so be sure to position it optimally when you weld it on, as it may be the last chance you have to free it.
Answer: For stuck plugs use "SeaFoam" brand penetrating oil.  It is the best.  You may have to let it sit and work for a few days though. I have not seen this engine but it sounds like a tight spot so use a universal off the socket. Also use a 12 sided socket and, to make sure it doesn't skip, lightly grease the inside of the socket and dip it in sand blasting sand then gently tap the socket into place.  A socket treated this way will give tight, positive grip and  with luck, and a 4 foot snipe, the plug should come out.  Worked for me anyways.
Answer: Assuming the body of plug is still screwed into head squirt wd40 liberally and leave
o/night.You can then purchase a thin straight wall plug socket much like you would
use on a lawnmower (the type you put a screwdriver through to turn)This should easily fit in gap surrounding plug
Answer: If there is no room for drill I would try to do as written in this guide. It seems that this could be a cheap solution for your problem. EZout extractor can be bought on ebay or maybe at your local house tools store. I hope it helps.


Will a PCI-E V2.0 Graphics Card work with a PCI-E V1.0 Motherboard?

Question: If I buy a PCI-E v2.0 graphics card (Nvidia Geforce GTX 275) will it work correctly and to the full potential with my PCI-E v1.0 motherboard (Asus P5B-Deluxe) ?
Answer: Yes. PCIe is backwards-compatible, so you can use 1.0 cards in 2.0 motherboards and 2.0 cards in 1.0 motherboards.
As to reaching the full potential of your graphics card, it's true that PCIe 1.0 is half the speed of PCIe 2.0. (So a PCIe 1.0 x16 interface is comparable to PCIe 2.0 x8.) But single graphics cards really don't saturate the bus anyway: if you dig around through older tech articles, you'll find a number of reviews of video cards in the x8 PCIe slots of early SLI/CrossFire motherboards. Invariably, the conclusion was that the slower bus didn't hurt performance noticeably at all.
You'll be just fine.
Answer: PCI Express 2.0 is backwards compatible.  Providing you have the power and space requirements, it will work.  However, i'm not positive you'll be reaching the maximum capacity of the card as the PCI-E v1.0 slot has a slower bus speed.
Answer: With a AGP 1x & 2x cards are only compatible in 1x & 2x slots. 4x & 8x only work in 4x & 8x slots.
You can not stick a 4x in a 2x slot.
There were AGP pro slots that had a workaround to allow it but it depended on whether the card could even drop down to 2x speed as most cards could not.
AGP is totally different to PCI-E in respects to backwards compatibility. The only time I have seen PCI-E graphics cards not working was because the BIOS of the motherboard did not allow 1x graphics cards.
Answer: As others have already said, technically, yes... but...
I seem to recall in the early days of AGP that the 1x, 2x, 4x, etc. versions were also supposedly all backwards compatible, but there were quite a few problems with 4x cards in 2x slots from memory (or maybe it was 2x cards in 1x slots).
Although it was designed to be backwards-compatible, the implementation was flawed and in practice it turned out there were some combinations that did not work as they should.


What should I do to make amends for stealing money before I hit puberty when I cannot find the person I stole from?

Question: When I was nine years old, I stole some money from my martial arts teacher (I hadn't reached puberty at the time).  I didn't know it was a major sin. Now that I'm older, I found out that I could not be forgiven unless that person forgives me and I return to her that money. The problem is I have no way to find her again and I really don't know what to do and I'm very scared that Allah will not forgive me and will send me to hellfire.
Answer: Your former martial arts teacher is not the only person in the world. It is good that you realized you did something wrong. If you cannot find him, though, do some good deeds to other people, even related to your sin. Explain to some Kids that don't know it that stealing is bad. Give some money to people in need.
Even though I don't know your teacher, I am sure that he has already forgiven you. People working with children know that children can act in a completely irrationnal and immoral way without realizing it. It is true for every teacher I met. He would not teach martial arts to Kids if he was not like this.
And one last thing, life is easier and healthier when you don't think about hell all the time. If you do, you won't enjoy it much.
Comment: The answer might be true (and is actually true) but if you include some islamic reference it would be better. Your self thinking reply should be a comment to the question.


Using SharePoint 2007& SharePoint Designer 2007

Question: We are using SharePoint 2007 for our Intranet and I am using SharePoint Designer 2007 to work on my 'issue.' Here is the situation, I created a site and would like to have 3 rows and 3 columns of web parts. The problem I having is getting them to line up in rows and columns. I would like to have it look like a 'Tic, Tac, Toe' site. I'm creating clickable graphics for the site. I can send screen shots if needed.
Hope someone can help
Thanks
Answer: Since you are using SharePoint 2007 your simplest solution would be to create a custom Page Layout.  See http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint-designer-help/customize-a-publishing-page-layout-HA010174129.aspx for details on how to do so.
You could create a table layout (for simplicity) that layouts of the sections you want and then put a web part zone in each table cell.


Smoke+fire new showing in viewport not render at all

Question: I have an issue here, i was working on an asteriod project when i realized i cant view my smoke+fire whether in 3D viewport or render, what actually happens is that when i use quick smoke without editing it at first i can see my smoke in 3d view port, but when i try to switch the flow setting from "smoke"to "fire+smoke" then i can't, view anything, not in 3d view or render view at all. i am using blender 2.78
Answer: Try to save your blend file and then make a bake of your animation. Your computer can't probably calculate the simulation in time.
Answer: Select the Domain
In the Node editor
Before the material are

We need to add some color to flame (fire)

Duplicate the Attribute and change the name from density to flame
Add-> convert-color ramp
(Add the color as shown) You can tweak the color fire has Black at the corner then brown, orange, pale yellow and white (not to be perfect) adjust it.
Add a emission with 7.6 emission

Connect the nodes as show below.

And render hope you get a fire render


How do I deal with an error message installing Ubuntu from DVD on an old machine?

Question: I have an old Win XP PC that I wiped the drive on (thoroughly).  I downloaded Ubuntu on another PC and copied it onto a DVD.  When I try to boot on the old XP PC from the Ubuntu files on the DVD I get an error message, something like the boot failed... duh.  I selected the boot device after selecting the F10 boot option when I power up the old PC.  Still, the same error message.  If you can help, please keep it simple.  I am only an intermediate user.
Comment: Did you just copy the .iso file onto the DVD? You need to write a DVD image, which is different. For help, see [here](https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BurningIsoHowto).
Answer: You don't just copy an ISO file or it's contents to a CD/DVD, as it contains a complete file system, with a boot sector, that's why it's called a CD image.
Note: If your computer is not ancient, it should be able to boot from an USB stick, which is often a better alternative to CD/DVD, as it's faster and more flexible, since you can re-format it later.
Please see this article on creating a bootable USB stick or this article on burning a DVD on Ubuntu.
If you only have Windows at the moment, here is how to burn a DVD and here is the USB stick guide.
Tip: you might want to consider Xubuntu or Lubuntu instead of Ubuntu for your old hardware. They are fully functional, but lightweight compared to Ubuntu in terms of RAM and CPU usage.


Where can I find the correct POH for my Cessna 152?

Question: I'm training in a C152 and the POH in the backseat has seen its days and I can barely use it, much less keep it from being getting worse than it is. This is a 1983 C152 Trainer aircraft. A lot of questions that I am doing in my flight planning and solo quizzes can be answered through the POH but because the plane is shared I don't want to take it out of the cockpit because it would anger other pilots who also need it. Is there a resource online I can find the POH? Also, I'm not sure but I figure I can't use any C152 POH, it has to be the one for my year and model, is that true too?
Comment: You may take a picture of the important pages, such as weight and balances, speed limits etc. With today's technology that's pretty easy to accomplish.
Comment: @kevin that never crossed my mind because I DON'T want just weight and balance, etc...I want the POH so I can just sit down and read it. Considering that I never owned an airplane and the POH seems pretty important..I think I'd like to have a moment and read the material and not just a few pages that I don't even know are important unless listed by people like you. Thank you for your answer but not so much.
Comment: I see. In that case you may ask your flight school if they have a copy of the POH, or you can just find the POH of another C152 *as reference*. You'd want to match the model, avionics, engine power etc. as close as possible to the one you're flying. C152 is a simple aircraft and *most* sections in a POH would apply to all aircraft, not just a specific airframe.
Comment: @kevin thank you for the info.
Answer: Strictly speaking the POH/AFM is specific to your airframe as it generally contains the weight and balance information which will be unique to your airframe as it is equipped. Thus you should always reference the POH that is in the plane for the most accurate source of information.
For example here is a nice scanned PDF of a POH for a C152. You should confirm that the numbers match those in the POH for the airframe. As long as they do you can use it for reference. The POH does not need to match for the specific year but it does need to match for the given aircraft configuration and setup in regards to the engine and performance data as well as any data related to things like extended range tanks etc.
Comment: Ah ok, I see. So how would I know what my aircraft configuration and setup is to be able to tell which reference material will match my aircraft? Is it in on a page on the POH in the cockpit or somewhere? Thank you for your answer, it was illuminating.
Comment: Your aircraft should have an Airworthiness Certificate somewhere. This will denote the model at least and may reveal some engine data depending on how they number their models. The accompanying POH should have the rest of the relevant information.


Can Infected beer cause death or major illness?

Question: Basic question. Can you get sick and die from drinking infected brew? I know that it must taste terrible, was just wondering. Can't seem to find any references where people have died from infected beer.
Comment: Two questions in a row about beer infections.  Are we having a problem with sanitation? :)
Comment: There might be an ascertainment bias. How are people supposed to report death by infected beer. I mean their dead right. ;-)
Comment: No, just trying to learn a bit more than what my internet research is yielding. I'd rather get firsthand reports, so that I know what to watch for.
Comment: There's a section in the documentary "How Beer Saved the World" that actually goes into the properites and processes of fermentation that kill the pathogenic nasties (and sometimes resulted in powerful antibiotics) from Egyptian times onward.
Answer: In short, no.  Otherwise beer making would have never made it out of the middle-ages.
The acidic environment and low alcohol does a good job of stemming most pathogenic bugs. Certainly some microbial contaminations might not agree with different people and make them ill.  The general rule of thumb is that pathogens do not survive in beer, hence why you can't find any references to people biting the dust due to beer contamination.
Comment: Thanks. I hadn't heard of this, but thought that I'd consult the experienced minds of y'all.
Answer: Botulism toxin is the only "infection" I've heard about in the brewing community that would be potentially hazardous, but it's only a concern for canning wort. If you're not growing  yeast starters in home-canned wort, it's non-issue. And even if you are, the topic is often debated.
As I understand it (and I'm definitely no expert), the problem is that botulinum spores (which are in just about everything that grows in dirt) aren't destroyed during normal boiling. Say you boil some wort for canning. Unless you're using a 15psi pressure cooker, the wort never reaches the 240*F mark needed to destroy the spores. The spores themselves aren't dangerous, but they release botulism toxin during reproduction. If you pitched yeast in this wort, the spores would never have a chance to reproduce and you'd be fine. Without the yeast, though, the spores can find themselves in a happy environment (once the wort cools) and begin reproducing. Once released, the toxins produced during by the spores can't be destroyed by any amount of boiling.
That said: it's rare. In fact, I've never heard about it happening. But every thread I've seen about canning wort includes a discussion on botulism. So to answer your question: yes, it is theoretically possible to get sick from a "bad" beer. I think it's more likely that someone would die of alcohol poisoning from too many 'infected' beers than to get botulism poisoning from one.
Comment: Heat destroys the toxine indeed:
Botulinum toxin is denatured at temperatures greater than 80 °C (176 °F) (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botulinum_toxin#Chemical_overview).
Typical botulism problems are with food which is not cooked after canning
Comment: This is more of a case of getting sick from bad wort rather than bad beer. If a brewer just left the wort sitting in open air for a few days they would also likely get sick for the same reasons. For beer to be safe, the wort it's made from has to be handled correctly - the time the unpasteurized wort is exposed to the air before boiling should be a few hours at most.
Answer: In the Middle Ages, they used to do things like add chicken broth to beer, I kid you not (I ran into a few recipes at one point).  Alcohol itself tends to retard pathogens and if you aren't adding this sort of thing to your beer it is unlikely that you will get the right kind of pathogens growing to make you sick anyway.
Also there are a lot of places today that do wild yeast fermentation (ranging from things like kim chee which involves both wild yeasts and bacteria to some traditional alcoholic beverages).  I am actually looking at trying to do this with guanabana in the near future.  If it was dangerous, brewing never would have gotten started seriously nor, for that matter, would we eat sauerkraut.
Comment: Broth? Just broth? Enter Pechuga Mezcal :-D
Answer: The rule of thumb I've always been taught is that if the beer smells that bad you won't drink it, and anything that simply tastes bad probably isn't enough to hurt you.
That being said, I've never heard of anyone being sick due to contaminated beer, with the exception of dirty beer lines.  I've gotten puking sick from dirty beer lines a few times back in the day when I shot league darts.
Answer: It seriously depends on what has infected your beer; but, we have a digestive system that has allowed us to eat much less sanitary food than we currently enjoy.  Even if you threw a cup of dirt into your beer, you'd probably survive it.  Most brewing infections lack a good "starter culture" of truly pathogenic substances.
On the other hand, life is to short to drink unpleasant things in the name of fun.  Since someone mentioned this is your second question about sanitation.  You need to focus on the slighly-less-fun side of brewing, washing.
B-brite on everything with scrubbing until it appears clean.  Replace items that have unnecessary seams that can catch food / liquid with ones that don't (that means the cheap-looking "one piece" spoons are actually better, etc).  Rinse with iodaphor solution, not water.
Yes you could get sick from some bad brew, but typically you'll stop drinking bad tasting stuff before you overload your body's defenses, and you probably won't encounter most waterborne ailments (in concentrations that will hurt you) unless you are starting with a very unsanitary water supply (cholera, etc).  Even then, the alcohol will do it's best to kill of the pathogens, and it usually works pretty well.
Answer: In short, no. As far as I know, most "infected" beer is a version of vinegar. Even something that is vinegar in smell and taste is difficult to drink so if it's really infected to the point of causing deadly illness, it's unlikely that you'll be able to stomach enough of it to cause anything beyond a stomach ache.
I still stand by the rule that sanitation is the most important step in homebrewing!
Answer: Whether it is worthwhile is another question. However, if you use water containing pathogenic bacteria, your beer can be poisonous.
Comment: Can you add more detail? Which bacteria would be dangerous, especially after boiling for an hour or longer?
Answer: As of today, there are zero known toxic microorganisms that can be found in beer. Even methyl alcohol cannot be found in a contaminated (infected) batch of beer.


At what altitude does a spacecraft slow down?

Question: So as far as I understand, at 100km atmosphere exists, although very faint. Could someone approximate the speed of a sphere at 50km altitude after re-entry from a high orbit? It might sound as a wierd question but I am trying to calculate a factor and need an approximation of speed that would be realistic. An answer like 'hypersonic' would suffice with a minimum realistic value (educational guess). I am satisfying my curiosity of approximating a possibility of something that's quite nuts.
Comment: I think the title needs a clean up. Is this question asking about spaceships slowing down, or the behavior of a sphere at 50km altitude?
Comment: you would need to know the ballistic coefficient of your object (which you could calculate from the mass and diameter of the sphere) to calculate the terminal velocity at a given altitude.
Comment: Welcome to *Space!*  Your title asks for altitude, but your post says speed.  Which one?  Also, do you ultimately want a theoretical answer, or what has actually occurred with past spacecraft?
Answer: tl;dr: At 50 km altitude, about Mach 8-10 from LEO, and about Mach 15 returning from the Moon (which is coming in roughly the same speed it would be from a high Earth orbit). Your milage will vary depending on a lot of aerodynamic details!

See the question How does a Reentry Breakup Recorder survive reentry and then broadcast its data before impact? for the first image of the actual spacecraft, and then @Uwe's excellent answer for a lot more details on the spacecraft.
For the data shown below, see the 2013 presentation by Andrew S. Feistel, Michael A. Weaver, and William H. Ailor, of the Vehicle Systems Division, The Aerospace Corporation: Comparison of Reentry Breakup Measurements for Three Atmospheric Reentries at the 6th IAASS Conference: Safety is Not an Option, May 2013.
So for a small blunt reentry craft deorbited from LEO, it looks like about Mach 8 to 10.

above: Cropped from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ISS-28_Ron_Garan_prepares_the_Reentry_Breakup_Recorder.jpg
below: From page 10 of Comparison of Reentry Breakup Measurements for Three Atmospheric Reentries

From NASA Technical Note TN D-6792: The Aerodynamic Environment of the Apollo Command Module during Superorbital Entry by Dorothy B. Lee and Winston D. Goodrich (1972) one of the examples shown gives about 16,000 feet/sec or about 4850 m/s or about mach 15 when re-entering the atmosphere from cis-ulnar space or "Superorbital" speed.
Comment: your answer suggests the speeds are dependant on the entry velocity, not the sizes of the objects. Was that intentional?
Answer: Atmospheric effects during reentry usually start around 120km.
The atmosphere extends far beyond 100km. Even at 400km the ISS is constantly slowing down, enough to require periodic reboosts.
The exosphere extends much further again, up to 10,000km were it merges with the solar wind. The exosphere will also slow spacecraft down, but the amount only becomes significant over longer timescales.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exosphere
Comment: Obviously, but that's roughly the point when vehicles start taking an active interest in aerodynamics.   the drag is actually increasing from thousands of km, but it only matters in years up there, days/weeks at hundreds of km, and matters in minutes/seconds as you approach 100km
Comment: There is no border at 120 km, the drag is gradually increasing from 400 km down to 100 km.
Comment: `+1` fyi I'm fine with adjusting the title (or other aspects) of the question.
Answer: There's not an answer to that. At least not precisely. The compromises are:

Slowing down higher up usually requires lift generation or very high drag to mass. If you're in a space shuttle this is a lot easier than in a capsule or just a chunk or rock.
You also generate a bit of heat over a significant time. Favouring not ablative heat-shielding.
Slowing down lower down requires surviving greater aero-dynamic stresses. It also means higher temperatures, but they must be endured for less time. This favours ablative heat- shielding.
The faster you are going to start with, out scrubbing as much speed as you can in the upper atmosphere will still leave you a fair amount to get rid of lower down.

This graph: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Radiation-Ablation-Coupling-for-Capsule-Reentry-via-Leyland-Morgan/471eb8a136f41006def99b65e8ccf3cc5592322e/figure/7
show this in action for Saturn V capsules vs the Space shuttle. These are pretty much opposite ends of the spectrum on all three counts and as predicted the capsule does most of its slowing down at about half the altitude of the shuttle. I think these two should be good bounds though. You would need quite exotic designs to considerably extend the "slowing down" altitude out of those ranges.


Cannot move Screenlets in GNOME Shell

Question: I have searched around and can't seem to find an answer. I have installed the 0.1.4 version of Screenlets on Ubuntu 11.10 running GNOME Shell, and everything functions okay except that I cannot move them. I can't seem to find any documentation about this problem; any help is appreciated!
Comment: Hi! Was this problem solved?
Answer: This is fixed in screenlets revision 740 (see http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~screenlets-dev/screenlets/trunk/revision/740). If you install Screenlets from Dev PPA, you can move Screenlets by dragging them.
To enable Development versions PPA:
<code>sudo add-apt-repository ppa:screenlets-dev/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install screenlets
</code>
Answer: I can't find a fix for this either but I did notice that you can adjust the X,Y position in the screenlets properties. It's not nearly as quick/easy, but it works.
If you restart GNOME Shell (Alt+F2, then enter "r" and hit ENTER) then you can move the screenlet as long as it's window property is not set to "Lock". For some reason, this only works if done right after restarting GNOME Shell, and once you click on anything else, the widgets all are locked in place again.
Answer: In 12.04, installing from the ppa above did not help. It installs version 0.1.7, which sounds different from 740.
Selecting or deselecting the Window>Widget option does not work either.
Using the X/Y position scrolling in the widget properties is the only option that allowed me to move either the clock or countdown widgets.

Cannot move Screenlets in GNOME Shell


Openwrt on Airlive AirMax5

Question: We are tyring to install openwrt firmware on Airlive Airmax5 which is running DD-WRT by default. Can anyone please help me, how to install openwrt on wireless router.
Waiting for reply.
Caterpillar...
Answer: Since its running DD-wrt the change to openwrt shouldn't be hard at all. Download the appropriate firmware for your hardware from openwrt and then in the dd-wrt web interface to upgrade.
If that doesn't work go the tftp route. The steps will be similar.
http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Installation

Openwrt on Airlive AirMax5


How many electrons does each shell hold?

Question: why some times 2nd shell onward it can hold 8 electrons and other times it is like they can hold K2 L8 M18 N32? when do i have to use first method(K2 L8 M8 N8) and when to use second method (k2 L8 M18)? I'm really confused.
Comment: Hmm, have you learned about orbitals?
Comment: yes I have learn it already. I remember my teacher telling me that each shell can hold certain amount of electron (K2 L8 M18) But when i was looking through text book, in an example it says that potassium have electronic configuration 2,8,8,1 why it cant have 2,8,9?
Comment: Have you learned about the subshells as well? The first shell only has $s$, the second one has $p$ and $s$, the third one has $d$ as well, and so forth. Also, you might take a look at [here](http://chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/8598/maximum-number-of-electrons-each-shell?rq=1), if it helps.
Comment: No i haven't not yet.
Comment: @student11 See my [answer](https://chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/76884/do-atoms-react-to-fill-outer-shell-or-8-valence-electrons/76886#76886) here, I have explained in detail the exact concern that you have.
Answer: This is a great question that allows us to learn from the periodic table. The previous answer asked if you have learned about orbitals, and if you haven't this is probably why you are having difficulty.
If you look at the periodic table, you will see that the elements are arranged in two ways, vertically (group) and horizontally (period), there is good reason for this. Electrons can only occupy space based on mathematical probability; each of these probability functions is what we refer to as orbitals. Each orbital can only hold a maximum number of electrons ( the equation for total electrons is 4l+2 electrons where l is a quantum number starting at l=0 for s, l=1 for p etc.) in the valence shell (for 1, it can hold 2 Starting on the left side of the periodic table with Hydrogen we know that it is in group 1, which means that it has 1 electron in its valence orbital. Element number 2 (He) is a bit of a special case because although it only has 2 electrons in its valence orbital, it is full because the orbital number is 1. What I mean by this is that if you look at period 2 elements, starting with Li, you see that it falls under Hydrogen, and has 1 valence electron. This is because the 1s orbital is full with 2 electrons, and the additional electron goes into the next lowest energy orbital which is called the 2s orbital. Be has 4 electrons, 2 of them in the valence orbital, and 2 of them in the 1s orbital. When we move to B(oron) the 1s and 2s orbitals are full, and we start to fill the 2p orbital. The p orbital can hold a total of 6 (4l+2 where l = 1) electrons and so the boron atom has the following configuration (1s)2(2s)2(2p)1. What you see is that the highest energy orbital (in this case 2 (s + p) is the valence orbital and so B(oron) has 3 valence electrons, but also has 2 electrons in the much lower energy 1s orbital. Think of these orbitals like layers of an onion, where the further from the center, the greater the energy of the orbital. There are rules to how the orbitals are filled and the rules are dictated by quantum mechanics but generally speaking the orbitals are filled as follows 1s 2s 2p 3s 3p 4s 3d 4p 4d using what is know as the Madelung rule. s orbitals can hold 2 electrons, p orbitals can hold 6 electrons, d orbitals can hold 10 electrons. As you work your way from low atomic number on the period table to high you will see why it is organized the way it is. The break between H and He is because of electrons, when you move to period 2 you start filling valence shell 2, when you move to period 3 you start filling valence shell 3 and so on.  I hope this helps, and let me know if you need clarification on anything!


Recover Windows password history

Question: I am able to log into my Windows 7 machine as admin and am interested in recovering past passwords for the accounts on my laptop. Is there an easy way to do this, or would it still require cracking the hash with rainbow tables?
Answer: Windows does not store passwords. Only hashes. So whether or not you have any stored past passwords you can not recover them as text from Windows. Only the hash.
Comment: Pity. Guess it's the hard way then.
Answer: All of your account's passwords stored into a file that called SAM,The Security Accounts Manager (SAM) file in Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 stores users' passwords in a hashed format (in LM hash and NTLM hash). Since a hash function is one-way, this provides some measure of security for the storage of the passwords.
In an attempt to improve the security of the SAM database against offline software cracking, Microsoft introduced the SYSKEY function in Windows NT 4.0. When SYSKEY is enabled, the on-disk copy of the SAM file is partially encrypted, so that the password hash values for all local accounts stored in the SAM are encrypted with a key (usually also referred to as the "SYSKEY").
In the case of online attacks, it is not possible to simply copy the SAM file to another location. The SAM file cannot be moved or copied while Windows is running, since the Windows kernel obtains and keeps an exclusive filesystem lock on the SAM file, and will not release that lock until the operating system has shut down or a "Blue Screen of Death" exception has been thrown. However, the in-memory copy of the contents of the SAM can be dumped using various techniques (including pwdump), making the password hashes available for offline brute-force attack.

Recover Windows password history


Is there a time limit on how long you can stream iTunes Radio?

Question: My iTunes Radio will shut off every few hours and ask me if I want to resume. Is there a time limit on how long you can stream iTunes Radio and if so can it be disabled?
Answer: You should count on it shutting off pretty much at the two hour point:

Why does the music stop playing after two hours?
iTunes Radio will time out if you don't interact with your system or
  device for approximately two hours. If this happens, simply access
  iTunes Radio again and choose a station to continue playing.

From: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS5181 - Common questions about iTunes Radio
If you set a timer and change the channel about 20 minutes before things are about to stop, my experience is your 2 hours starts anew. I don't know if there's a practical limit on how long you could keep this up or if some pause is eventually enforced on the server side.
Answer: I think this is a standard practice of streaming services because they do have to pay (a tiny amount) for each track they play, so they want to make sure you are still there and aren't streaming their money into an empty room.