In California, can landlords take money out of a security deposit for a "cleaning fee"

Question: After doing some cursory research I've read that landlords cannot deduct damages for "normal wear and tear" from their tenants'. Does a "cleaning fee" that was stated in the rental agreement violate this law?
Comment: It can be confusing when the question in the title and the question in the post appear to require opposite answers - would you mind editing this so a "yes" or "no" can be applicable to both.
Comment: Is the "cleaning fee" unconditional, or for when the unit needs to be cleaned after you move out?
Answer: Short Answer

Does a "cleaning fee" that was stated in the rental agreement violate
this law?

This question does not clearly enough describe the term in the rental agreement to provide an accurate answer.
A cleaning fee that is taken out of a security deposit in all circumstances, without regard to how clean it is at the termination of the tenancy (if actually enforced), is probably prohibited, although this isn't absolutely clear beyond all question.
But, if the rental agreement provides that it is only due when needed because the premises need to be cleaned (or is enforced in that manner even if the lease says otherwise), then the rental agreement would most likely be construed as a reasonable contractual agreement to establish what constitutes "reasonable wear and tear" in advance of an actual dispute over that issue, and to establish in advance what a reasonable cost was for very specific items in advance to provide greater predictability and lower litigation costs to both parties.
Also, an upfront cleaning fee collection in all cases that does not come out of a security deposit appears to be permitted.
Analysis
Several cases address the issue.
One holds that the "statutory definition of security does not include legitimate rent and in determining characterization of payment as security or legitimate rent trier of fact must look to various factors including facts and circumstances of each particular case." Granberry v. Islay Investments, 207 Cal. Rptr. 652 (Cal. App. 1984) (note that this is not the same case as the California Supreme Court case involving the same parties cited below by one of the cases quoted).
Another recent case holds that an upfront cleaning fee imposed in every case is permitted.

Defendants contend that the TIER fee is not an unrefundable security
fee prohibited by Civil Code section 1950.5. Civil Code section 1950.5
now provides in relevant part:
"(a) This section applies to security for a rental agreement for
residential property that is used as the dwelling of the tenant.
"(b) As used in this section, 'security' means any payment, fee,
deposit or charge, including, but not limited to, an advance payment
of rent, used or to be used for any purpose, including, but not
limited to, any of the following:
"(1) The compensation of a landlord for a tenant's default in the
payment of rent.
"(2) The repair of damages to the premises, exclusive of ordinary wear
and tear, caused by the tenant or by a guest or licensee of the
tenant.
"(3) The cleaning of the premises upon termination of the tenancy.
"(4) To remedy future defaults by the tenant in any obligation under
the rental agreement to restore, replace, or return personal property
or appurtenances, exclusive of ordinary wear and tear, if the security
deposit is authorized to be applied thereto by the rental agreement."
Subdivision (e) provides that "[t]he landlord may claim of the
security only those amounts as reasonably necessary for the purposes
specified in subdivision (b). The landlord may not assert a claim
against the tenant or the security for damages to the premises or any
defective conditions that preexisted the tenancy, for ordinary wear
and tear or the effects thereof, whether the wear and tear preexisted
the tenancy or occurred during the tenancy, or for the cumulative
effects of ordinary wear and tear occurring during any one or more
tenancies."
When Civil Code section 1950.5 was enacted in 1977, and until a 1986
amendment (Stats.1986, ch. 564, § 1, p.1991), subdivision (e) limited
use of a security fee to "such amounts as are reasonably necessary to
remedy tenant defaults in the payment of rent, to repair damages to
the premises caused by the tenant, exclusive of ordinary wear and
tear, or to clean such premises, if necessary, upon termination of
the tenancy."
The $100 TIER fee was collected from every new tenant by Trinity
Management Services, Inc. The fee is usually collected when the tenant
signs a standard form lease. The lease imposes an obligation to pay
the fee before occupying the premises. Upon payment the tenant
receives a "Receipt and Agreement for Tenancy Initiation Expense
Reimbursement" from the landlord. Unlike the Court of Appeal here and
in Parkmerced, we do not find subdivision (e) of Civil Code section
1950.5, which specifies the uses to which a security may be put by a landlord, useful in determining whether the TIER fee is a security.
Subdivision (b) (set out, ante ) defines the term and, while it
provides that its examples of securities are not exclusive, it
supports a conclusion that a security fee paid by a tenant to a
landlord is an amount intended to offset expenses incurred by the
landlord as a result of tenant conduct during the tenancy. It does not
encompass the TIER fee that the trial court included in the
restitution order made here.
We begin, as we must, with the term "security." "We interpret
statutory language according to its usual and ordinary import, keeping
in mind the apparent purpose of the statute. When no ambiguity
appears, we give statutory terms their plain meaning.
Excluding meanings for the noun "security" that are irrelevant in this
context, the term means "something given, deposited, or pledged to
make certain the fulfillment of an obligation." (Webster's 9th New
Collegiate Dict. (1989) p. 1062.) Every example of a security given in
subdivision (b) of Civil Code section 1950.5 is consistent with this
ordinary meaning of the word.
The parties and the Parkmerced court assume that because the TIER
charge is a fee it must be a "security" within the definition of
security given in subdivision (b) of Civil Code section 1950.5. It is
apparent, however, that the Legislature included the terms "payment,
fee, deposit or charge" in the definition to ensure that a landlord
would not be able to use those or similar terms rather than "security"
for a charge and thereby avoid the prohibition of nonrefundable
securities and the limits placed on the use of a security by that
statute. Application of the principle of ejusdem generis and
consideration of the remainder of the statute compels that conclusion.
"Ejusdem generis applies whether specific words follow general
words in a statute or vice versa. In either event, the general term or
category is 'restricted to those things that are similar to those
which are enumerated specifically.'" The canon presumes that if the
Legislature intends a general word to be used in its unrestricted
sense, it does not also offer as examples peculiar things or classes
of things since those descriptions then would be surplusage.
All of the examples of a security set forth in subdivision (b) of
Civil Code section 1950.5 are charges intended to secure the landlord
against future tenant defaults. Subdivision (e) specifies the only
uses to which such fees may be put by the landlord, again confirming
that the "fee, deposit, or charge" which may be a security within the
subdivision (b) definition is one held by the landlord to ensure
reimbursement for future tenant defaults. This is confirmed by section
1950.5, subdivision (d), which provides that the landlord holds a security for the tenant, by subdivision (f), which imposes a duty on
the landlord to notify a tenant who has vacated the premises of the
amount and disposition of the security and to return any remaining
portion, and by subdivision (l ), which prohibits a nonrefundable
security. Reading the statute as a whole thus confirms that even
though a security is not limited to the examples set out in
subdivision (b) of Civil Code section 1950.5, a security is limited to
charges imposed to secure the landlord against future tenant defaults.
A fee imposed at the outset of the tenancy to reimburse the landlord
for expenses incurred for such purposes as providing application
forms, listing, interviewing, screening the applicant, for checking
credit references, and for similar purposes is not a security governed
by the provisions of that section.

Kraus v. Trinity Mgt. Services, Inc., 999 P.2d 718, 733–35 (Cal. 2000) (some holdings of this case that are not applicable to this issue subsequently superseded by statute) (some citations omitted).
This case also notes that from 1977 to  1986, cleaning fees could only be deducted from a security deposit if cleaning was "needed" at the termination of a tenancy. It isn't entirely clear of the "as needed" qualification survived the 1986 amendment and there are fair readings of the statute that go either way. On one hand, the "as needed" language was replaced with more general language that could be taken to mean the same thing as the old language. On the other hand, the removal of the "as needed" language from the statute could be interpreted as changing prior law as to cleaning fees even though the prior law was not changed as to other kinds of damage charges.
There is also a relevant unpublished case that that does not establish binding precedent on the issue that strongly implies that automatic deductions from security deposits for cleaning fees at the termination of a lease are prohibited if that lease provision is actually enforced.

Jason Reynolds, Brittany Lundquist, and David Pherrin (collectively
plaintiffs) filed a class action lawsuit against Shea Properties
Management Company, Inc. (Shea). Plaintiffs allege that Shea
improperly deducts fees for cleaning and painting from tenants'
security deposits after tenants vacate their apartments. Plaintiffs
allege that the fees are improper because they are governed by
policies requiring that the tenant be charged for (1) all cleaning
costs and (2) some or all painting costs depending solely on the
duration of the tenancy rather than on an assessment of the actual
condition of the paint. Plaintiffs appeal from the denial of their
motion for class certification.
Plaintiffs contend that common issues predominate with respect to
their claims because Shea's policies render the deductions from
tenants' security deposits unlawful. But Shea introduced evidence
showing, among other things, that Shea did conduct individualized
assessments of each unit with respect to both cleaning and painting,
that Shea did not charge for all cleaning costs, and that Shea did not
charge for painting solely on the basis of the duration of the
tenancy. We conclude that plaintiffs have shown no abuse of
discretion, and we therefore affirm the order denying class
certification.

Reynolds v. Shea Properties Mgt. Co., Inc., B268949, 2017 WL 4769384, at *1 (Cal. App. Oct. 23, 2017) (not published, not citable).
This recent case didn't reach this issue on the merits and merely denied class certification of the issue. But, it strongly implied that automatically deducting a cleaning fee from a security deposit was not allowed if it is actually enforced, stating (in this non-precedent creating case) that:

To establish liability based on a violation of section 1950.5,
plaintiffs must prove that the amount deducted from the tenant's
security deposit exceeded the amount reasonably necessary for the
specified purposes. (See Granberry v. Islay Investments (1995) 9
Cal.4th 738, 744–745.) Whether a deduction for cleaning or painting
was excessive under the statute depends on the condition of the unit
at the beginning of the tenancy, its condition at the end of the
tenancy, the extent of ordinary wear and tear, and the amount of the
cleaning or painting fee charged. The condition of the unit at the
beginning and end of the tenancy may differ for each unit. The extent
of ordinary wear and tear may differ depending on the length of the
tenancy.
Plaintiffs argue that common questions predominate because Shea's
written policies were unlawful and applied to all of Shea's tenants.
As regards painting, plaintiffs argue that "Shea's policy applicable
to all class members was to charge 'based on length of residency,' and
to strictly impose its rate schedule based on length of residency
whenever an outside vendor was used to paint.... No consideration
whatsoever was given to wear and tear by Shea's policies when charging
for painting. Shea's tenants are charged out of their security deposit
for painting whenever a third party is used, 'regardless of what that
damage is.' "
Although Shea's written policies provide some support for some of
plaintiffs' assertions, the record contains substantial evidence that
contradicts all of them. Shea introduced evidence that it did not
"strictly impose its rate schedule based on length of residency
whenever an outside vendor was used to paint." Rather, Shea
individually assessed the condition of the paint in each unit and,
when possible, used its in-house personnel to do touch-up painting,
which was usually sufficient to deal with ordinary wear and tear in
any tenancy of two years or less (and the schedule itself called for
no painting charge after two years); tenants were not charged for
painting done by Shea's in-house personnel. When Shea did use an
outside vendor, it did not always charge the tenant the full
percentage specified in the written policy and sometimes waived the
charge altogether. In addition, when Shea did use an outside vendor,
it would sometimes contract for a "full paint" but sometimes only for
a "partial paint," depending on the condition of the unit. In sum, the
record contains substantial evidence that Shea did not rigidly adhere
to a percentage schedule for painting charges based on length of
tenancy alone. Because the record contains substantial evidence
supporting the negation of all of the factual premises on which
plaintiffs' argument is based, we cannot conclude that the trial court
abused its discretion by rejecting plaintiffs' position.
Consequently, the court did not abuse its discretion by determining
that Shea's written policies concerning painting charges do not
present a common question as to liability. Insofar as the written
policies suggest an unlawful type of uniformity in charging tenants
for painting ("strictly ... based on length of residency whenever an
outside vendor was used"), the evidence shows that Shea's actual
practices did not conform to the policies, were based on individual
assessments of each unit, and do not present a common question of
liability.
Plaintiffs raise a parallel argument concerning cleaning charges:
"Shea's policy is to 'always' charge from the security deposit any
time an outside vendor is used.... The schedule charged is a flat rate
based solely on size of the unit, i.e., how many bedrooms.... No
consideration was given of the condition of the property when the
tenant moved, the tenant['s] efforts to clean, how dirty it is, or how
long it takes to clean." The argument is meritless for parallel
reasons: Section 1950.5 allows the tenant to be charged for the
reasonable cost of restoring the unit to the level of cleanliness it
was in at the start of the tenancy. The record contains substantial
evidence (and common sense confirms) that tenants rarely leave a unit
as clean as they found it. Thus, in the overwhelming majority of
cases, section 1950.5 would allow Shea to hire a vendor to restore the
unit to its pre-tenancy state of cleanliness, and Shea could lawfully
charge the tenant the reasonable cost of doing so. The record contains
substantial evidence that in numerous respects Shea's actual practices
were not as described by plaintiffs and were more favorable to tenants
than section 1950.5 requires. The record contains substantial evidence
that Shea individually assessed each unit, did not charge for cleaning
by in-house personnel, did not always charge for cleaning by outside
vendors, and in particular did not charge as long as the tenant made a
reasonable effort to clean. Again, insofar as the written policies
suggest an unlawful type of uniformity in charging tenants for
cleaning (" 'always' charge ... any time an outside vendor is used,"
and give "[n]o consideration" to "the tenant['s] efforts to clean"),
the evidence shows that Shea's actual practices did not conform to the
policies, were based on individual assessments of each unit, and do
not present a common question of liability.

Reynolds v. Shea Properties Mgt. Co., Inc., B268949, 2017 WL 4769384, at *5–6 (Cal. App. Oct. 23, 2017) (not published, not citable) (some citations omitted).
I could imagine a case addressing this issue in a published decision departing from Reynolds in one of two different ways.
On one hand, another court issuing a published decision could rule that a lease with a facially impermissible automatic deduction for cleaning fees from a security deposit language had to be reformed in every case to legally permissible language, even if the lease was not actually enforced as written.
On the other hand, another court issuing a published decision could rule that an amount due from every single tenant at the close of a lease, even if it might be called a "cleaning fee", is, in substance, not a cleaning fee after all, and instead is simply additional rent. Moreover, even if calling it a "cleaning fee" was not allowed, the law wouldn't necessarily prohibit the landlord from increasing the rent for a final month by $100 or something like that, if the charge was called rent and was due as part of the final month's rent payment rather than deducted from the security deposit.
Answer: No, a "cleaning fee" in the rental agreement does not violate the law.
Wear and tear covers the damage done to object due to normal use of them over time. Carpet naturally wears out as it's walked on normally, and refrigerator compressors naturally wear out as the appliance is used normally. Your landlord cannot charge you for items like a clean, but old and worn out, carpet, or for a burned out compressor (assuming you didn't cause the damage by leaving the fridge door open.)
Stains on carpet are not caused by normal use, nor is a refrigerator made dirty through normal use. These are cause by someone being careless and making a mess, and can be covered by a cleaning fee.
Comment: Are you answering the question in the post or in the title - a yes for one implies a no for the other. Your answer would be better if you expanded your first line.


Have we directly observed the electric component to EM waves?

Question: For example, has anyone has directly observed charges oscillating due to standing EM waves? I am particularly interested because it'd demonstrate that radiation has a transverse electric component to it. Anything else (historical or modern) that shows that light has a transverse electric component would also be gladly invited.
Answer: Yes, we have. As other answers have explained, this is easy to do in the radio regime, but over the past fifteen years or so we've been able to do it for light too.
The landmark publication here is

Direct measurement of light waves. E. Goulielmakis et al. Science 305, 1267 (2004); author eprint.

which broke new ground on a method called attosecond streaking that lets us see things like this:
$\qquad$

On the left you've got the (mildly processed) raw data, and on the right you've got the reconstruction of the electric field of an infrared pulse that lasts about four cycles.
To measure this, you start with a gas of neon atoms, and you ionize them with a single ultrashort burst of UV radiation that lasts about a tenth of the period of the infrared. (For comparison, the pulse length, $250\:\mathrm{as}$, is to one second as one second is to $125$ million years.) This releases the electron out of the atom, and it does so at some precisely controlled point within the infrared pulse. The electric field of the infrared can then have a strong influence on the motion of the electron: it will be forced up and down as the field oscillates, but depending on when the electron is released this will accumulate to a different impulse, and therefore a different final energy. The final measurement of the electron's energy, as a function of the relative delay between the two pulses (top left) clearly shows the traces of the electric field of the infrared pulse.
Answer: Yes. Radio waves are low frequency, long wavelength light waves. They drive electrons up and down an antenna. The radio detects the voltage changes this induces, amplifies them, and produces sound to match.
Answer: It depends on what you mean by "directly observed charges oscillating" and whether the formation of a standing wave is essential.
Using microwaves to demonstrate that they can be polarised you can infer the direction of oscillation of the electric vector in an electromagnetic wave.

If there is a horn receiver as well as a horn transmitter then just rotating one relative to the other produce a variation the amplitude of the received signal to show that the transmitted microwaves are polarised.
This can lead on to demonstrating polarisation of light using a Polaroid which on a molecular scale has crystals orientated in parallel which can form a conducting path just like the rods for microwaves.
If you do need the condition that the demonstration has to be for standing waves then a pair of Letcher lines might be of use?

Microwaves (or UHF waves) from a transmitter $b$ are guided along a pair of parallel uninsulated conducting rods with a spacing less than that of the wavelength of the microwaves and if shorted ($c$ in the diagram) produce a standing wave pattern which can be investigated by either observing the voltage nodes and antinodes or current nodes and antinodes.
Leybold produce an excellent leaflet describing the sort of experiments which can be performed with such an apparatus.
At radio frequencies the rotation of an fm dipole aerial showing the variation in signal strength will illustrate polarisation.
In this case unlike the microwave demonstration with the parallel metal rods the response is a maximum when the dipole is orientated parallel to the electric field.
Answer: Oscillating charges themselves produce radiation, but not along their axis of oscillation.
It is straightforward to show, with linearly polarised laser light, that no scattered light is received from a material in the direction(s) of laser polarisation, but is a maximum in a plane at right angles to these directions.
This demonstrates that the electrons have been made to accelerate in a particular direction -- the direction of E-field polarisation of the wave.
Answer: A waveguide slotline with a probe and a detector diode connected to an oscilloscope, a so-called Standing Wave Ratio (SWR) meter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWR_meter
Answer: Yes, we have observed, but not for all em waves.  Detailed answer follows from "Planets and electromagnetic waves".
Light waves or rays interact with electric fields of electrons in a solar cell to produce a disturbance in electrons so that electricity is produced.  In a tungsten bulb, electrons try to move with very close distance because of a voltage, and at the same time the electric fields of these electrons repel them. So, light energy is released.  Light energy is associated only with electric fields.
Moving electrons have magnetic fields.  Radio waves interact with magnetic fields of moving electrons, and disturb the moving electrons to make variations in current. Radio waves are associated only with magnetic fields.
No one practically observed combined form of magnetic field type and electric field type of waves with common wavelength.  In Hertz's experiment, it happens that both light waves and radio waves are released but not with common wavelength.   Some researchers do not consider microwaves as electromagnetic waves, because their velocity in vacuum is less than the velocity of light in vacuum.


Debugging SFTP connections between AIX client and Windows Server

Question: Situation: a client with an AIX machine can't connect properly to a Windows 2003 Server running FTP server Serv-U FTP Server v10.2. Plain FTP works. SFTP is not working.
It's not clear where the error is, whether this is an issue on the FTP client or server side. They are connecting with an ftp binary that has a -s flag option.
Here's what they see on their side:
$ ftp -s -D 900 ftp.example.com
Connected to XX.XXX.XX.XXX.
220 Serv-U FTP Server v10.2 ready...
234 AUTH command OK. Initializing SSL connection.
TLS Auth Entered.

ERROR  Error during the hand shake for the control connection
ERROR  Error setting BIO object for the control connection
FTP: Unable to authenticate to Server.

Using a FreeBSD machine, I was trying to see if I could evaluate what might be happening, so what I tried was running curl as below, and also using curl inside PHP, and I get a sense that it's possible there's an issue with SSL certificates on the Windows server. But then other folks have been able to connect from other machines using SFTP without issue, so it's hard to say where the problem is.
Here's a curl command and the output error I get from a FreeBSD machine outside the network:
curl --ftp-ssl ftp://ftp.example.com

The result is:
curl: (60) SSL certificate problem, verify that the CA cert is OK. Details:
error:14090086:SSL routines:SSL3_GET_SERVER_CERTIFICATE:certificate verify failed
More details here: http://curl.haxx.se/docs/sslcerts.html

curl performs SSL certificate verification by default, using a "bundle"
 of Certificate Authority (CA) public keys (CA certs). The default
 bundle is named curl-ca-bundle.crt; you can specify an alternate file
 using the --cacert option.
If this HTTPS server uses a certificate signed by a CA represented in
 the bundle, the certificate verification probably failed due to a
 problem with the certificate (it might be expired, or the name might
 not match the domain name in the URL).
If you'd like to turn off curl's verification of the certificate, use
 the -k (or --insecure) option.

What can I do to see where the fault might be? Any guidance on how to debug this and maybe see the certs that are being passed back and forth? Or maybe guidance on what to tell the client to do to give us something more diagnostic than "unable to authenticate." Again, when we open vanilla FTP to them, everything works fine, so it's definitely in the security of the connection.
Answer: As far as I know, none of the AIX versions up to 7.1 ship with a SSL capable FTP client (and there's no -s switch as you show in your example), so it sounds like they're using a non-standard client, which could be anything really.
Maybe ask them to switch to LFTP, or Curl from IBM's RPM packages, both have FTP over SSL support
Comment: `ftp -s` became [available in AIX6.1](http://www-01.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/ssw_aix_61/com.ibm.aix.cmds2/ftp.htm?lang=en-us#ftp__row-d3e122117).
Answer: We have faced a similar problem in our enterprise setup; it was caused by following line in configuration of the Cisco ASA on the way between the involved machines:
inspect ftp strict

Removal of the strict did the trick.


What language should I use for this race-manager software?

Question: I'm an intermediate programmer, I would want to create a software to manage a cycling race. Basically I have to deal with a database, (order partecipants, compile PDF files with rankings and so on…) but i'd rather not use Access… Any advice?
Comment: Is this question about a programming language or about a database? And frankly, for what you currently describe you can use almost anything. This question needs much more information to advise one over the other. Start with [edit]ing your question to answer my first question + is this online or local? + what budget do you have? + what OS?, then add more info
Answer: Python is probably the best if you don't want to redistribute your program. It's easy and quick to write and has tons of libraries.
pdfrw - a library for reading, morifying and writing PDFs
sqlite3 - simple sqlite library (included with python)
I think the simplest apporach to your problem is to create a sample PDF in some office program and use it as a base for creatnig leaderboards.
Then load the database in python and add the data into the PDF with pdfrw. If you run cycling races you could also store all of the data in one seperate database and render some statistic graphs with matplotlib and put them in your PDF or your website.
PyQt4 or tkinter are nice if you want some GUIs. I'd say to go with PyQt4.
Comment: I'm not sure why this answer was given a down vote, it covers the language, PDF and database requirements.  The only downside could be the "if you don't want to redistribute" part, as writing in Python wouldn't affect its ability to be redistributed
Comment: @gabe3886 Yeah, I don't know why I wrote that. Probably because of my experience with compiling PyQt4 and SIP.
Answer: Visual Studio 2015 is an option to consider. Microsoft provides a free community version. You can write code in C#. There is a drag and drop designer included that makes it easy to build UI applications and also bind to data in databases. Windows Forms, WPF and UWP are options for desktop based UI platform.
Syncfusion provides UI controls and file parsing libraries for all of the above platforms.
Essential PDF can be used to generate PDF files.

The whole suite of controls and libraries is available for free through the community license program if you qualify (less than 1 million USD in revenue). Note: I work for Syncfusion.


Why doesn't my freenet.de email account open under Tor?

Question: I can open www.freenet.de under Tor, but if I want to log into my email account, it is rejected under Tor. What can I do? Freenet says that I should delete all cookies and browsing history. I did that, but even no access.
Answer: That often happens when NoScript is not allowing the scripts the site needs to log you in. To you it will appear that you have entered your username and password, but the data is not sent to the site. Click on the NoScript icon and temporarily allow all on the page or set the options to allow you to control individual scripts.
(Which is more difficult because sites often require lots of other sites to work, I had to allow 5 other sites to make this page work, and one of them contained the name Google (which is the enemy of everything Tor stands for in my opinion)).


Finding out what church a 19th century English family belonged to?

Question: I am trying to research the birth of a child in 1864 in Holbeach, Lincolnshire (England), and have run into a problem with the lack of a baptismal record. There was only one parish (All Saint's) for this town at that time, as far as I know, and although the child appears in the civil registration birth indices, and in later census records, he is not present in the All Saint's baptismal book for the period in which he was registered (Oct-Dec 1864), or indeed any other period, from what I can tell. Thus I suspect his family did not belong to the Church of England. In which case, do I have any ways to determine which church (be it Roman Catholic or non-conformist) he/his family did belong to?
Answer: I would first caution:

In searching for his baptism record, you could be searching for something which simply has never existed. Baptism was neither a legal nor cultural imperative in the 1860s in England. He might just not have been baptised.
Many children were not baptised at birth, or even in the first year of life. Some were not baptised until their teenage years, or later. Therefore you may need to extend the search significantly.
Many children were also not baptised at their place of birth. Families often moved parishes, or even counties, between birth and baptism. So you may have to look further afield.
Children did not necessarily follow the denomination they were originally baptised into, later in life.

Church of England baptisms are generally the first, and easiest, to investigate. Holbeach had a number of different churches over the years (both Anglican and non-conformist). From the GENUKI page for Holbeach:

Anglican

All Saints, Holbeach, Church of England
St John, Holbeach, Church of England
St Luke, Holbeach, Church of England
St Mark, Holbeach, Church of England
St Matthew, Holbeach, Church of England

Baptist

Albert Street, Holbeach, Baptist

Congregational / Independent

Holbeach, Congregationalist

Methodist

Albert Street/Albert Walk, Holbeach, Methodist (United Free)
Chapel Street, Holbeach, Methodist (Wesleyan)
Edinburgh Walk, Holbeach, Methodist (Primitive)
Jekils Bank, Holbeach Fen, Holbeach, Methodist (United Free)
Jekils Bank, Holbeach Fen, Holbeach, Methodist (Wesleyan)
Marsh Road, Holbeach Hurn, Holbeach, Methodist (Wesleyan)
Roman Bank, Holbeach Bank, Holbeach, Methodist (Primitive)
Roman Bank, Holbeach Hurn, Holbeach, Methodist (United Free)
St Marks Road, Holbeach Marsh, Holbeach, Methodist (Wesleyan)

Roman Catholic

Holy Trinity, Holbeach, Roman Catholic

There is no central repository for non-conformist churches. They are typically archived in the local archives, so the general process is a matter of determining which is most likely. Do any other records for the family mention denomination or religion – records such as school records or prison records can be helpful in this respect, apart from marriages and burials. Next step is determining which of those churches were open in the 1860s, and which and where any records (if they survive) may be. Some records may still be held by the church itself. The Lincolnshire Archives is a good place to contact, if you cannot find where records for a specific church are located.
In trying to narrow things down, I often find it helpful to identify the specific place your ancestor lived, or was born, on a map. Particularly for larger towns and cities, often people attended the most convenient church. If you can find the address of birth on an old map, look around that area for what churches were in the vicinity.
Comment: Many thanks for your reply. It seems like all parishes but All Saint's were not founded until 1869/1870, and he is not present in them anyway. Unfortunately, I have precious little information about this ancestor. I am starting to suspect his family was non-religious. The surname ("Depear" or "DePear") might suggest French (Huguenot?) origins, in fact – and a search I just did adds weight to this – but I'm not aware of any Huguenot church in the area.
Comment: It also doesn't help that he migrated to the US in the 1880s (I don't know exactly when), so records are split across two countries, and there are no immigration or naturalisation records, that I can find.
Comment: @Noldorin If you want to find US immigration or naturalization records, start by reviewing some of the other Q/As on the site, then write a new question -- include what you've already tried, and say why the existing Qs didn't help you.  See https://genealogy.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask
Comment: @JanMurphy Sounds fair. I've already given up on those however, as I've searched quite thoroughly, and none are to be found. I simply believe they were never logged, which I suppose is quite possible in the 1880s.
Answer: First, did he marry?
If so, check his marriage certificate. Was the ceremony carried out as CofE, non-conformist, RC, etc...? That might tell you what registers you're going to need to check.

Next, find a copy of the Philimore Atlas and Index of Parish Registers - it may be available in your local library, or, if you have a subscription, you can check some of the information on Ancestry.co.uk (although I'm not sure if the Ancestry collection also contains the index, which contains some of the most useful information!).
That will tell you what registers survive, which ones you are likely to find on FamilySearch, which nonconformist records are at the National Archives etc.

And then it's all legwork.
Work your way through the local registers, keeping records of which registers you searched and what you did, or didn't, find in each case. Start with the most likely registers (CofE in the absence of evidence to the contrary) and work your way through until you find him.
If you don't find him after all that, then he probably wasn't baptised at Holbeach, so you'll have to expand your search to nearby parishes. If the census records suggest that the family moved, you can repeat the process at later parishes where you know they were living.
Comment: @Noldorin  The civil certificate should record the church & say something like "... according to the rites of ..." which may tell you if he was a non-conformist.
Comment: Thanks for the response. He did indeed marry, although I'm only aware of a civil marriage certificate. The Philimore Atlas and Index sounds like a good place to start then!
Comment: Hmm, it only mentions the names of the individuals, the date on which they got married, and the notary. It's called a "marriage record report", and it's from Colorado, USA. Perhaps it's only a summary though?
Answer: For planning your search, try FamilySearch's England Jurisdictions 1851, a GIS-based system which can be accessed at https://www.familysearch.org/mapp/. The first link leads to the article in the FamilySearch wiki, which describes the site and has information about what works were referenced when building it; the second link leads to the site itself.
With the site, it is easy to:

List contiguous parishes
do a Radius place search
Search the Family History Library Catalog
Search the Family History Historical Records
Search the FamilySearch Research Wiki

For Holbeach, their notes say:

Non-Church of England denominations identified in Holbeach include: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, General Baptist, Presbyterian, Primitive Methodist, Society of Friends/Quaker, and Wesleyan Methodist.

For other places in the parish, they list:

Fox's Low, Holbeach Bank, Holbeach Clough, Penny Hill, Holbeach Hurn, Holbeach Marsh, and Holbeach Drove.

This is a powerful tool, especially when used with the information at GENUKI (as previously discussed).  The user can choose between Google Maps, a satellite view, or an Ordnance Survey map.
Another source for historical Ordnance Survey maps -- the digital collections at National Library of Scotland.  See https://maps.nls.uk/ and choose find by place.
One caution: be careful not to search so narrowly in time that you miss your subject.  In my own research, I have found cases of siblings born two years apart who were baptised at the same time and appeared on the same page on the register book.  (Check the date between the birth registration of the missing child and the date of the parent's marriage; if the numbers aren't what you might have expected, that might be a clue that the child was baptised under his mother's name only, or not baptised 'on schedule'.)
For an extreme case, Judy Webster (who goes by the Twitter handle @JudyQld) reported: https://twitter.com/JudyQld/status/978709489754038274

I found a digital image of a parish register with the baptism at age 61 of my 4xgr-grandfather Isaac PEACOCK of Farndale, "a Quaker born 8 May 1754, bap. 25 Apr 1816, son of Benjamin & Sarah". It's in the Yorkshire collection at http://bit.ly/2yorksh

The shortened URL sends the user to findmypast.
Another thing to consider is the coverage of any extant collection of baptism records.  In my own research, I found articles in the British Newspaper Archive about the local vicar in my study place being chastised for not performing his duties (including baptisms).  If you have access to the Church of England registers, have you counted the number of baptisms per year, and checked the numbers against the population numbers in the census reports?  If you see a rise in population from 1851-1871 but the baptism numbers fall off from the earlier period, that's a sign that you don't have good record coverage.
General Resources:

Lewis A Topographical Dictionary of England at British History Online
A Vision of Britain Through Time
Historical Directories of England and Wales, part of University of Leicester special collections

Resources for Lincolnshire:

FamilySearch Wiki: Lincolnshire, England Genealogy and Lincolnshire, England Online Genealogy Records
DustyDocs: English Parish Registers Online
Lincolnshire, England : Classification : Parish Records at UKBMD
Comment: Worth noting that if, like JudyQld's great-great-great-great-grandfather, the person you're looking for turns out to be a Quaker then (unless performed by another denomination) there won't be a baptismal record because Quakers don't practice water-baptism. There should, however, be good membership records.
Comment: Thanks for the useful info. Unfortunately so little of the information is available online (at least for free), so it looks like I'll have to put in a lot of effort and possibly money to check these registers. But at least I have a good approach to take now.

My suspicion is that the family was not particularly religious, although it wasn't Church of England either, I think. I know the individual in question later married an Irishwoman (Catholic, I think), but I only have a brief civil marriage record.


Combining forms to make a new musical form

Question: Has there ever been a composer between Baroque and early Romantic periods (within piano literature) who created a new form based on a combination of previously separate forms into a new iteration or manifestation?
Comment: If there were a "history of music" SE site, I'd send this there.  Since there isn't, I'd like to see answers here.
Answer: I'd argue yes with sonata rondo form. Sonata rondo form combines both the tendency to go to a related key and back of sonata-allegro form with the persistent repeats of the first theme of rondo form. Perhaps the simplest version of sonata rondo form is A-B-A-C-A-B', with B in a related key (e.g. dominant, relative major) and B' in the home key.
According to the current Wikipedia article on sonata rondo form, the source "Girdlestone, Cuthbert Morton (1964) [1939, 1958]. Mozart and his Piano Concertos (Republication of Second Edition). Mineola, New York: Dover Publications. pp. 48–55. ISBN 0-486-21271-8." argues that sonata rondo form may even be an innovation of Mozart's.
Sonata rondo form is quite common in Classical-era music, not just from Mozart, so that form either presumably spread fast or was independently reinvented. Regardless, I don't think Baroque music uses sonata rondo form (comment below if I'm wrong!), so there's your answer.
Answer: Also here it is to say - as else where:
Theory is following and reflecting the practice!
The classical forms are typical "classical" abstractions. In reality we'll find a lot of mixtures of all elements. The pure form could be the exception while the combination of all elements of the "Lied form" (adagio), Scherzo, Menuette, sonata, variation could be the regular form.
(Symphonies, Sonatinas, Concertos, Sonatas etc.)
Answer: Similar to @Dekkadeci's answer you can find sonata type movements where one of the themes is a simple binary form. These cases can be very obvious where repeat signs in the score clearly delineate the binary structure.
I seems to notice this in Mozart piano sonatas in slow movements.
I don't think anyone would call such forms 'new musical forms.' But they would exhibit one of the characteristic you describe: a combination of forms. This being specifically a smaller form within a larger form.
(I will look for a specific Mozart quotation and update this post later today.)
You probably could find examples of theme and variation form within a larger form. But it could be tricky to make a case of that being the one form inside the other, because classical style can be summarized in part as repetition with variation. In a way variations inside larger forms is happening all the time.
Fugue is often described as a process rather than a form. Nevertheless you will often find fugal passages inside large movements and that is an interest combination of methods.


Should I have an RRSP on top of a pension?

Question: I am a teacher and automatically contribute into the Teacher's Pension Plan every paycheque.  This pension plan is considered to be one of the best in the country.  Do I need to have an RRSP as well?  Should I be putting extra money away every month for retirement?
Answer: I would say yes: it's worth building additional retirement savings on top of a defined benefit pension plan (plans that pay set annual income).  Here are a couple of reasons:

Don't put all your eggs in one basket.  While OTPP is probably in good shape, things can and do happen to pension plans.  While there is a provincial system in place to guarantee some of your pension income ($1000/mo) if your plan goes bust, your benefits are not 100% guaranteed.
Defined benefit pension plans are designed to provide recurring annual income, like your paycheck when you are employed.  You can't "take more out" from your defined benefit pension plan when an emergency comes up.  Whereas, your RRSP (and eventually RRIF, in retirement) are accounts from which you can take out extra in any given year, if necessary.

That being said, Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) won't let you save as much in your RRSP as other people who don't have pension plans:
Normally, individuals in Canada are entitled to save 18% of their earned income, up to a limit ($21000 in 2009) in an RRSP each year.  However, to level the playing field, individuals who are in a pension plan get a "Pension Adjustment" (PA) number on their T4 which reduces their available RRSP contribution room.  Otherwise, they'd be able to tax-shelter more income for retirement than others.
So, I would suggest if you have the RRSP room, consider using it.  I'd also suggest you look at a Tax Free Savings Account (TFSA), especially if you don't have much RRSP room due to the pension adjustment.  If you're not sure whether to use an RRSP or a TFSA, consider both.
Answer: Let's say your marginal tax rate is 33%.  For every dollar you put in an RRSP, you'll get 33 cents back on your taxes, while the whole amount grows tax free inside the investment.  If you can afford it, money in an RRSP generates a lot of free money.
Comment: a tax return is just what it says 'a return of your money'--you should try to put your self in a position where you are paying taxes quarterly, not loaning your money tax free to the government.
Comment: @Tim: If you have the RRSP deducted directly on your paycheque, you get the tax back on it immediately.
Comment: @Tim - Actually, in Canada, you aren't loaning it for free.  The government pays fairly considerable interest on overpaid remittances.  [As of Q3 2014, the prescribed interest rate on overpaid remittances for non-corporate taxpayers is 3% annually, compounded daily](http://news.gc.ca/web/article-en.do?&nid=856179), which beats the hell out of a savings account or just about any other common short-term investment of similar security.
Answer: It depends on what kind of pension you get and your anticipated retirement income.  If you have one of those nice defined benefit plans that pays 90% of your last 5 years' average salary annually, you might not want to bother with a separate RRSP and put your money into other use instead.
While most Canadians should worry about not having enough to retire on, some might end up with too much and costing them in the form current purchases and entitlements to government retirement benefits.
Figuring out how much you need for retirement is not trivial either.  A lot of people talks about planning for needing 70% of what you made now as a way to preserve your lifestyle.  Well, my opinion is that those type of generalization might work for the people in the middle of the income band and is too little for those in the low-income and possibly too much for those with high income.  My own approach is estimate your retirement income requirement by listing out your anticipated expenses as if you were doing budget.  I would agree that's not the best approach either (back to my comment about no one size fits all), but it's one that I feel most comfortable with.
Once you have that figure, factor in what you think you will get from the government (OAS, CPP and etc) and you will have the amount of money you need for retirement.  I will warn against using "average life expectancy" to forecast your retirement needs, 'cos 50% of the people will end up with extra money (not a bad problem) and the other 50% will run out of money (bad but very true problem) if you use that approach.
Instead of going on and write an essay on this topic, I will simply say this - everyone's situation is different and, just like solving any other complex problems, you need to start with "end" in mind and work things backward, with a ton of different scenario to be able to cope with whatever curveballs life might throw at you.  If you spend enough time in the library/bookstore looking through books on the topic of "estate planning" and "retirement planning", you will find people arguing back and fro on these topics - this is a sign that this is complex and no one has the one "good" answer for.
Do a bit of reading by yourself and, if still unsure or just want to be sure, go spend the money and review your plan with a fee-only advisor.  They will be able to provide another opinion on your situation after thoroughly studying your situation.


What are the differences between Numenera and Numenera 2?

Question: In the style of the numerous D&D edition comparison questions, what are the major changes that Numenera 2 offers over the original release?
Answer: Numenera 2 has two corebooks. Discovery, and Destiny.
Numenera 2 works now in the Cypher System. The main change it brings to Numenera is related to armour. The costs in might and speed associated with wearing armour is replaced with an increase to how much Speed needs to be spent to use Speed Effort when wearing armour. Light takes +1, Medium takes +2, Heavy takes +3. Edge works as normal, and not being practiced in wearing that type of armour increases the effort cost by an additional +1.
In Numenera 2, the distinction between anoetic and occultic cyphers is removed. If you use cyphers from Numenera 1 in Numenera 2, each counts as 1 cypher.
At tier 3, and again at tier 6, a character can choose between several abilities for his focus.
Discovery
Discovery is similar to the old corebook.
Discovery introduces the concept of Player Intrusion: a player paying 1 XP to do something cool. What a player can do with an intrusion is listed in its type (so a glaive has a different set of player intrusions than a nano). Usually, a player can do this no more than once per session.
Destiny
Destiny introduces new character types: arkus (leadership), wright (crafting), delve (salvaging). There is also rules for large groups of creatures (hordes and communities), salvaging (introducing iotum, numenera crafting components), and crafting (introducing plans for building commonplace and numenera objects or structures).
New descriptors and foci related to the new types or interacting with the new rules are in this book.
Compatibility
Numenera 2 is compatible with previous Numenera products, including the bestiaries and the adventures, with the minor changes to the armour and cypher rules described above. However, the publisher (Monte Cook Games) does not recommend using Numenera Character Options and Numenera Character Options 2 with Numenera 2.
Comment: Any idea why Character Options 1 and 2 shouldn't be used with Discovery/Destiny?
Comment: According to Monte Cook Games, Character Options 1 and 2 "will remain compatible, but will become substantially less relevant following the improvements to characters in Numenera Discovery. We will retire those titles".
Answer: Numenera Discovery not a new version but an update to some of the core rules. This does mean that all content is supposed to be backward compatible except for those small changes that have been made (list in this other answer).
My group and I have had no problem using the new core rule book with an adventure which was started with characters created from the original book.
If you're a big Numenera fan then you are going to want to buy the new core book, but you don't have too.
Comment: Teaches me to type mine using my phone...


Traveling to the US with a renewed passport, visa in old but still not expired passport

Question: I'm traveling from Guatemala to the US in March, my passport expires on August and my Visa is on that passport. I know Guatemalan citizens are not required to have the six month validity rule  but I'm afraid the airline staff will not know this and won't let me board. So, should I renew my passport and take both the new and old one? Will it be a problem if the old passport is still a few months from expiring?
Comment: The airline staff will know the rules. They have a global database named Timatic which contains all of the rules for validating travel documents for every country.
Answer: If you are concerned that there might be an issue you should renew your passport early. When your new passport is issued, your old one is usually made invalid. Even if it's not for some reason it's still OK to travel with multiple passports, as long as they are yours.
Answer:
So, should I renew my passport and take both the new and old one?

Yes.
I'm from Argentina. When your passport expires authorities give you a new one and they do not retain the old one in any case. I always carry both passports with me, just in case I am required to show the old one.
If you happen to have a US valid visa on your old passport, present both documents.

Will it be a problem if the old passport is still a few months from expiring?

No. Never heard that you need to wait until passport expires to issue a new one. It would be totally inconvenient.


Are the Boeing CST-100 Starliner and Orion MPCV interchangeable at any level?

Question: Although the Boeing CST-100 Starliner and the Orion MPCV are designed for different missions (LEO vs beyond LEO), one might imagine a mission which could be served by either vehicle. Presumably, both will be equipped with the same type of docking adapter, but can either be mated to and launched on the same booster type? Do they have compatible physical/electrical mountings/interconnections? Or do the different mission types and therefore booster requirements preclude the need for any such standardization?
Comment: This is a very tiny, picky request, sorry! Could you add links to what a CST-100 and MPCV are? I haven't a clue, and I can't even select-right-click their names in the title because the title is also one big active link. Or, at the very least, repeat the names of the objects in the text of the question where I can get at them by select-right-clicking? Right now I have to either remember their names when I open up a new search tab, or type them into a text file in a different application, select/copy then open a new tab, then paste. Thanks!
Comment: Well, an Orion spacecraft test article was launched on a Delta IV Heavy, and the CST-100 is intended to be launched on any one of Atlas, Delta, and Vulcan (and possibly F9), so it's *possible* that they could share launchers in the future (depends on the future of the SLS and Orion programs). However, the CST-100 is absolutely not designed for cis-lunar missions (inadequate heat shield, for one thing), and I'd consider using Orion for LEO missions to be massive overkill and a waste of money.
Answer: Short principle-based answer: Yes
They both use a Low Impact Docking System, so what one could dock with the other could too. For that matter, they could dock with eachother.
Here's the principle based part; Ever tried to hook up an old monitor to  a new computer? Maybe you have DVI cable for your TV but an HDMI cable on your cable box? Adapters are cheap and easy to come by for these consumer grade items.
Same goes for your rocket. Granted, you probably can't buy an Atlas-to-Orion adapter online, but space agencies employ lots of bright and talented people. Engineers exist to solve these problems.
Also, vehicle assembly isn't as simple as screwing your payload into a launcher. You're not so much loading it onto a launch vehicle as you are building it into the launch vehicle. Again, your engineers are going to earn their keep - it's part of their job to make sure all the electronics and power hookups are linked together properly.


Speculative answers discouraged through downvoting

Question: I have found a few cases when I try to answer someone's question based on my best understanding of what they are asking.  Sometimes, I have made some assumptions based on their vague descriptions, or just based on speculation as to the source of the problem.  Occasionally, these answers are based on wrong assumptions (shocking, I know).  What I have found in some of these cases is that I get downvoted for these reasonable-yet-not-applicable answers.  This has driven me to provide all my answers which are based on any kind of assumption as comments first.  This works okay, but I've seen some discussion here on meta which seems to discourage posting answers as comments.  So which is it?
Comment: You win some, you lose some. Psychic debugging has the potential for great rep gains.
Comment: Related: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/15798/etiquette-for-providing-a-suggestion-and-not-an-answer
Comment: Just a few minutes ago I gave someone an upvote to counteract a downvote, because they gave a perfectly correct answer to the question but wasn't a solution to the actual problem.
Answer: Don't post speculative answers.
Posting answers as comments isn't what comments are for, if you aren't sure what the question is about, post a comment and ask for clarifications. There is a ton of unanswered questions you could be answering instead of trying to guess what the OP means and providing wrong answers when you fail to do so.
Comment: And then the person who guesses right in the meantime gets all the glory. In a perfect world this would be the right answer, but that's not where we live.
Comment: @MarkRansom Glory? Meh.
Answer: First off: there's no possible way you can do this "safely" if you're guessing. Accept that. If you can't live with the possibility of being wrong, follow Yannis's advice and stick to answering less ambiguous questions.
If you do want to gamble, I have some recommendations that can help to make this a bit less stressful for everyone involved:

Edit the question!
If there are two ways it could be understood, edit it to leave one. Explain what you're doing in the revision summary. Then leave a comment for the OP explaining what you've done and why, and advising him to roll it back and edit to clarify if you were wrong. This shows the author what he should have done originally, makes the question easier to find for future readers with the same problem, and helps to avoid issues caused by two answerers interpreting the same question in completely different ways and effectively answering two unrelated questions.
Be willing and ready to delete your answer
Like I said, it's a gamble. In spite of your best efforts, you might be completely wrong. Know when to fold 'em... And since we're listening to Kenny here,
Know when to walk away, know when to run
Ideally, the asker will take a hint from your edit and clarify his question. But sometimes, the lack of clarity indicates severe confusion, which he'll try to resolve by engaging you in a lengthy discussion in comments... Or worse yet, he'll keep changing his question each time you solve one problem to present another one. Unless you've nothing better to do than spend the rest of the day teaching him to program one-on-one, you'll need to extricate yourself from this situation. Even if you do have the time, you'll want to take it to chat.
Comment: I like this answer in general, but is #1 really okay?  I can see this as a good option when some context cues can push your interpretation in one direction or another, but if it's truly ambiguous, this seems somewhat counterproductive.
Comment: I do wonder about option 2.  Since we are attempting to build a comprehensive knowledge base for technical problems, presumably someone could find the original question through a google search and find value in my answer, because although my answer did not correctly assume the conditions for the particular OP, it might be close enough to be useful for other people with similar issues.  Is that not worth considering?
Comment: @Chris: if you're not comfortable editing in that situation, you probably shouldn't be answering either. If you want to anyway, you'll need to accept that you're playing an even risker game.
Comment: @Jake: sure. There are plenty of perfectly good questions that can have multiple, good, non-identical answers. As sixlettervariables said in a comment, there's *potential* in these questions. It's still a gamble. Only you can decide how long you want to stick it out. You *might* win big, and find that while your answer didn't help the OP it ended up being quite beneficial to future readers - or you might find the down-votes multiplying as more and more new readers find it unhelpful. I can't tell you when to fold... (-3 is probably a decent rule of thumb; at least there's a badge for that)
Comment: @Shog9: I don't spend a lot of time answering questions, so I can't argue from a position of great experience in this kind of situation. You say if you aren't comfortable editing, you shouldn't really be considering answering. I agree with you, but mostly in the case where you have an AWOL OP who doesn't seem to be working to reduce that ambiguity him/herself based on the early comments. I think editing the question to tip it in one direction is a good idea even if for no other reason than to generate better answers to something useful. But with an active OP, waiting it out might be better.
Answer: You should request clarification from the poster in comments, and build an appropriate answer based on that feedback.
If the question so vague that it requires guesses on your part to answer, it's not a good question yet. Make the person who asks provide the required detail before you attempt to answer.
Note that this doesn't always work. If the person doing the asking doesn't provide sufficient details to make his question answerable, just walk away (possibly casting a close vote as you go).


Why Muslims want to convert Non-Muslims to Islam?

Question: I just want to ask simple question that why Muslims want to convert other religion people to Islam? When god is one then what is the use of converting into Islam?
Comment: @goldPseudo I don't think "why one must believe in God?" is the same as "why Muslims proselytize?" If nothing else, the latter has historicity. Related, but not duplicates.
Comment: @goldPseudo IMO, questions are duplicate when the same answer applies. My answer to this question (and some other answers), copy pasted in the linked question is a misfit.
Comment: @Shoaib This post is asking two distinct questions: "Why do muslims want to convert..." and "What is the use of converting...", both of which are already asked and answered on the site. The second seems to be a clear duplicate of the post I linked, and I can't pick more than one "Duplicate" target.
Comment: @goldPseudo but the meaning of my question and the your link to duplicate question are different. But if you really think its duplicate then its okay.
Comment: I would recommend you take the time to focus your question better (see also "[How do I ask a good question?](http://islam.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask)"); without details, it's pretty much impossible to understand any nuance to the question, or what will (or will not) actually answer it to your satisfaction.
Comment: There are other good questions of the same [type](http://islam.stackexchange.com/search?q=proselytize)
Answer: That is because Muslims believe that Allah sent the Islamic religion as the final religion, that it is obligatory for all human beings who hear of it to believe in. Your friend wants to save you from the hellfire. Also, besides the threat of the hellfire, Muslims just love Islam. We want others to experience the joy that we feel from this religion insha'Allah(God willing)
There are five verses of the Qur'an and one hadith (saying of the Prophet PBUH) that make it clear why we were created and how we must worship.

It was reported from Abu Hurayra that the Messenger of Allaah (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: "By the One in whose hand is the soul of Muhammad, not one of this nation, Jew or Christian, will hear of me and will die without having believed in that with which I have been sent, except that he will be one of the dwellers of Hell fire."

And I did not create the jinn and mankind except to worship Me. (Quran 51:56)

And whoever desires other than Islam as religion - never will it be accepted from him, and he, in the Hereafter, will be among the losers. (Quran 3:85)

This day have I perfected your religion for you, completed My favor upon you, and have chosen for you Islam as your way of life. (Quran 5:3)

And We send not the Messengers but as givers of glad tidings and as warmers. So whosoever believes(in Islam) and does righteous good deeds, upon such shall come no fear, nor shall they grieve. (Quran 6:48-49)

Allah forgiveth not that partners should be set up with Him(polytheism); but He forgiveth anything else, to whom He pleaseth; to set up partners with Allah is to devise a sin most heinous indeed. (Quran 4:48)
Answer: Because Islam is the only religion that overcomes all other religions. It teaches a human being in each and every aspect of life. One of the most important fact of Islam is that Muslims have a Prophet Muhammad S.A.W whose life is a complete practical for every person to lead a successful life. The second one Islam has a Quran which is the most authenticated and most readable in the entire world.
Comment: ****. Comments should primarily be used to ask for more information and suggest improvements. Not discussions. Take it [chat] if you want to do so.
Answer: First, "Muslims want to convert" is bit of an overstatement, not substantiated by facts. Accept the euphemism "Muslims like to deliver the message." Even orientalists agree that there hasn't been organized converting - forcefully or otherwise - infidels to Islam, except possibly for Spain under Al-Mohavids. In fact, if you read Hans Kung, a Christian theologian and orientalist, he goes so far to say that Muslims rulers (especially those in Syria) "disliked" conversion to Islam, for political reasons.
Secondly, missionary works is a part of every religion, even secular religions like say liberal democracy. There is no guarantee that every missionary expedition has always remained faithful to the jurisdictions of delivering the message and the message alone. However, such transgressions (coercing people to change their faith) are not a norm. To judge of all Muslims by transgressions of a few zealots - speaking hypothetically - is unwarranted.
It is an oversimplification of any religion to reduce it into a matter of identifying the right God. Every religion has a worldview, even the godless religions. When Muslims preach, they speak not only of God but also of the Judgement - a worldview based on mankind subjected to a trial, the ephemeral nature of this world and the permanence of the next world. The question of how to spend ones ephemeral life is inextricably linked to the worldview. The answer in a nutshell is in following the Quran and the Sunnah. Taken this way, there is no place for religious relativism i.e. every religion is as every other religion.
Answer:
You are confusing Invitation with Conversion. What utmost a Muslim can do is invite you to Islam. And if a non-muslim accepts the invitation, a Muslim can help him convert by bearing witness to his acceptance of Islam and teaching him basic steps to be a Muslim.
As far as I understand, A non-Muslim has to convert himself to a Muslim, Muslims can only Invite him and help him do it. This invitation is called Da'wah (A mere translation of the word "invitation").
The various campaigns of Da'wah you see are to invite people to Islam by showing them traits of truth and beauty of Islam. They help them realize the truth rather than forcing them to accept it. Moreover, forcing someone to accept Islam is unlawful in the Islamic law itself.

Qur'an :: Chapter 2 (Al-Baqarah) :: Ayah 256
There shall be no compulsion in [acceptance of] the religion. The right course has become clear from the wrong. So whoever disbelieves in Taghut and believes in Allah has grasped the most trustworthy handhold with no break in it. And Allah is Hearing and Knowing.

Why are Muslims so interested in Da'wah?
At the primary level. A true Muslim is always a selfless person. He is a Da'ee (Promoter of Islam). He is convinced that the religion is the most truthful. He knows what a non-Muslim is deprived of and what he will go through if he doesn't accept Islam. This is why he wants all his fellow human beings to follow it.
@AmericanMuslim has a point here. Generally speaking, Every religion has Da'ees who promote their religion. They are somehow convinced that their own religion is most truthful.
Another point: Every child takes birth as a Muslim. Whether he is born in a Christian household or a Hindu family, he is born a Muslim. But his parents and caretakers make him a Christian, a Jew or other Non-Muslim.

Sunan Abu Dawud :: 1694
Abu Hurairah reported the Messenger of Allah (May peace be upon him) as saying :
Every child is born on Islam, but his parents make him a Jew and a Christian, just as a beast is born whole. Do you find some among them (born) maimed? The people asked : Messenger of Allah! What do you think about the one who died while he was young? He replied : Allah knows best what he was going to do.

So, Inviting people to Islam is inviting people to their first and original religion.
The final verdict is:

Qur'an :: Chapter 3 (Aali 'Imran) :: Ayah 85
And whoever desires other than Islam as religion - never will it be accepted from him, and he, in the Hereafter, will be among the losers.

ۚ  وَاللَّهُ عَلِيمٌ حَكِيمٌ (And Allah is the All-Knower, the Wise)
اللَّهُمَّ انْفَعْنِي بِمَا عَلَّمْـتَنِي وَ عَلِّمْنِي مَا يَنْفَعُنِي
Comment: Now this answer make some sense that you just give invitation and if we accept it you will help us in that. But i have question you said every child is born as a muslim. what is the proof that the child is a muslim or hindu or christian or any other. what is the proof, is there any mark or something?
Comment: @CZAbhinav, Do you mean a birthmark? Even if it exists, every human being should have it in common because every person is born into Islam. So how will you distinguish people based on a mark that everyone'll have? As regards the proof, It is in the definition of the word Muslim (One who submits himself to God/Allah). Every born child submits himself/herself to the will of Allah and hence is a Muslim.
Comment: so this means I am also a muslim
Comment: @CZAbhinav, Let me reframe. **Every newly-born child is sinless and submits himself/herself to the will of Allah and hence is a Muslim until he is turned into a non-Muslim by his/her parents.** This means you were a Muslim when you were born. As you grew up, you were gradually converted into a non-Muslim by your caretakers.
Comment: I am actually really shocked after reading this.
Answer: Because we muslim believe that islam is the right religion. It contains the right Beliefs like there is one God, Quran is God's message, Mohamed is God's prophet, there is paradaise and hell... It also contains statement of what God want us to do like from the birth to death like doing salat, zakat, siam.. So islam is about Beliefs and what human should do to make God satisfied. Other religion (even if they contain beleiving in god) have wrong Beliefs and wrong Acts of Worship. So trying to convert other to islam is trying to guide them to the right beliefs and the right way to pray to God so they can make God satisfied and as a result they win in this life and in the after life
Comment: ****. Comments should primarily be used to ask for more information and suggest improvements. Not discussions. Take it [chat] if you want to do so.
Answer: why Muslims want to convert other religion people to Islam?
Everyone, not just Muslims want people to convert to their religion. Christian, Jews, Scientology, etc.. all want people to join.
The question you should be asking is why do people want people to convert to their religion?. I answer that with the following reasoning:

The more people like you are there are, the less you think of yourself as a minority.
You get a sense of achievement.
You get a sense that "my religion" is more right than other religions, thus making me look right.
In many cases it is a empowering thing. The more people you have in your religion, the more access you have to money (Ex: Membership fees, donations) and voting power.

Going back to the original version, in Islam there is no Compulsion. Muslims shouldn't want to shove down Islam on other people, it is their actions that should speak for Islam and want people to convert to Islam oppose to forcing your ideas on others.
The best thing to do as a Muslim, act according to the Quran and Sunnah (as long as it does not contradict the Quran), which when people see will be effected and come asking you for Islam.
Forcing people into Islam never worked, look at most non Arabic countries where Islam was spread by the Sword (Europe, France, etc..) they easily reverted back to other religions once they were re-occupied by others.
Comment: What do you mean by "muslims shouldn't want to convert other people to islam"? Then what is daawa, and why did the prophet and his companions call out for people and invite them to become muslims if they shouldn't be wanting to convert people to Islam as you said?
Comment: @AbdelRahmanShamel Daawa by the prophet and companions was spread by their good words and actions, which is what I meant. I updated the answer.


How do I associate a custom post type with another through a taxonomy or storing an ID in a custom field?

Question: I'm working this problem discussed here:  Custom Comment Types, but I need more clues to map out the process.  I want to create custom post types and associations between Questions & Answers, and Pin-ups & Critiques.  I think that I want to do this because I want to be able to archive and create feeds for Answers and Critiques separate from Post Comments  For example, for a given author/user home page, I want to be able to list Questions posed, Answers given, work Pinned-up for comment, and Critiques made.  An Answer would include the title of the Question it refers to.  This is more of an aside, but I am imagining a role/capability to comment on each custom post type (Question, Answer, etc. ala Quora and Stack Exchange).  The comment referenced 2 options:  using a custom taxonomy and storing an ID in a custom field.  I'm self-learning, so any additional help is appreciated.
Answer: I've explored both options, using custom fields and a custom taxonomy, in previous versions of my plugin, Posts 2 Posts. The latest version uses two custom tables.
Comment: why do you find using cutom tables better the postmeta or terms table?
Comment: postmeta => slow queries; terms => can't add info per connection


Are there any new Option pricing models?

Question: Back in the mid 90's I used the Black-Scholes Model and the Cox-Ross-Rubenstein (Binomial) Model's to price Options. That was nearly 15 years ago and I was wondering if there are any new models being used to price Options?
Comment: For FX options, many use the Garman-Kohlhagen model (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garman-Kohlhagen_model#Valuing_FX_options:_The_Garman-Kohlhagen_model), since it can handle two interest rates for two currencies versus the one interest rate that Black-Scholes can handle.
Answer: Black-Scholes itself didn't change a lot but we can now adjust it to deal with a lot more complicated factors to price more complicated contracts:

stochastic volatility (Heston, Gatheral)
stochastic rates (Hull)
credit risk
dividends

Other methods (computing intensive) have also evolved to deal with various types of contracts where BS is not very appropriate choice (e.g. Monte Carlo simulation for path-dependant options).
Answer: There are plenty of other models
You can also add all the exponential Lévy processes with or without time change and also other stochastic volatility models such as SABR.
I must add that there exist a paradigm different of the "risk neutral pricing" (mainly developped by Platen and Heath) called  "Benchmark Pricing" and which is in a way (that I do not fully understand yet), more general than "Risk Neutral paradigm". The biggest problem being that calculation and determination of the benchmark protfolio doesn't seem easy to achieve in this "supermartingale framework".
Regards
Comment: @ all: There is a paper by Fontana"Weak and strong no-arbitrage conditions for continuous financial markets" :http://arxiv.org/pdf/1302.7192.pdf that explains very well the link between different notions of arbitrage among which the Benchmark approach can be wrapped. Regards
Answer: Maybe you think about other model than a diffusion ?
There is an article on wilmott.com about the Korn-Kreer-Lenssen Model.
Comment: That URL has a pay wall unfortunately. That's my problem, I think, not yours, and I appreciate your answer. You gave additional content so I have a starting point. Might you have any other links that are more accessible?
Answer: One I like is the Artificial Neural Network model with inputs the same as for the Black-Scholes model (hence Spot, Strike, Rate, Time to expiration, Dividend).
This is a modification of the Andreou et. al. (2008) framework who use hybrid artificial neural networks that incorporate information from the parametric models. Moreover,
$Call = f(Call_{cs}, Call_{bs})$
where $f(.)$ is the hybrid network that links information from the parametric models with the prices $Call_{cs}$ (Corrado and Su, 1997) and $Call_{bs}$ (Black Scholes, 1973).
In the case I proposed, one can use the same hybrid networks $f(.)$ to incorporate information from the Black-Scholes inputs (Spot, Strike, Rate, Time to expiration, Dividend). Hence,
$Call = f(Spot, Strike, Rf, T, Div)$.
This would allow for complex nonlinear relations. However, the approach may be sensitive to overfitting or other calibration issues.
Comment: @JohnAndrews, could you please post a paper or anything you used as reference or that you can show here as reference. It would actually lend your answer much more credibility to add references rather than saying "I know of a new model called "fractional banana split option price model", but unfortunately I cannot provide any explanation what it is nor references to someone who does know". I dont mean to be condescending so please ignore the analogy if it disturbs you. TGIF.
Comment: See modification
Comment: Is there a paper or explanation you could link to?
Answer: Option pricing is done under the risk-neutral measure, i.e. the drift term is the risk-free interest rate. Therefore the only degree of freedom to drive the underlying is the volatility. That is why volatility modelling for all (new) option pricing models is so crucial. You can find a good, concise and current overview here:
A Short Note on Volatility Models by Didier Kouokap Youmbi
Abstract:

This document is a short summary regarding the evolution of the
  volatility models from Black and Scholes to the Local-Stochastic
  Volatility models. We show advantages as drawbacks linked to each
  model, and how the community has moved from one model to another in
  order to overcome drawbacks.
Answer: There is a whole family of GARCH option pricing models; ones with complex distributions, leverage effects, skewness parameters etc. For an example see Christoffersen and Jacobs (2004).
Some example GARCH models:

NGARCH
EGARCH
TGARCH

Some distributions that can be used:

Hyperbolic
Normal Inverse Gaussian
Variance Gamma
and the generalized form Generalized Hyperbolic
Comment: GARCH models are not for pricing options.
Comment: there is a whole literature that disagrees with you @BobJansen for example: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30046228
Comment: I'd call to those GARCH-based but point taken.
Answer:
The introduction of 'volume endowed' shapes that represent support and resistance forces. Theoretical paths in , unlike in Brownian motion are either strictly monotonically increasing, flat, or monotonically decreasing and obey the equilibrium equation with an inverse relation between LHS resistance/support forces and .
Volatility  in chart to scalar is a combination of variables such as the geometric properties of the LHS resistance/support forces, change in price, trade size, and volume.
The interaction of buy & sell orders within the volume is the propagator of price change.
The use of truncated normal distributions in contrast to a log-normal distribution.
Answer: To the best of my knowledge, progress has been made in making pricing models more accurate, accounting for additional variables (stochastic vol. & GARCH, local vol., jumps, etc), but the option pricing equations fundamentally involve the same GBM framework, albeit they are much more complicated.
Off the top of my head, the only example I can think of something completely original is http://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=2412761 Here, option prices grow at $t^{1/4}$ instead of $t^{1/2}$
Answer: There seems to be a tendency to include ever more risk factors into the models. CVA is a good example: based on credit default swaps it is possible to calibrate model parameters and include the risk of default into a Monte Carlo pricer.
The book Counterparty Credit Risk: The new challenge for global financial markets (Amazon) discusses counter party risk in detail.
For the implementation perspective: Mathworks has a nice practical discussion of counterparty credit risk and CVA including example code.


What is this ... electrical bike's setup? Is there a particular brand or model name for this? how to replace its battery?

Question:
Just bought it from someone, interested to get it fixed. he said it just needs to replace battery, I doubt it (after numerous experience with asking the sellers "what is wrong with the bike" and ends up there is always more things  are wrong). So I wonder, if this is actually a working electric bike at all... and where ahd how exactly I replace its battery? I do not see one lol Did google some video but none like this.
Comment: I had a similar motor setup.  It uses a very short chain loop between the motor and the LEFT side of the rear wheel hub.  So you need a special wheel.  Also, so little chain means it wears quicker, so you should use 1/8" chain for the increased durability.
Comment: @ChrisH that's exactly what mine had - a freewheeling sprocket (but reversed) on the left hand side of the hub, and a 100% normal derailleur transmission on the right hand side of the hub.  The 1/8"  chain was only 15-18 links long and connected the motor to the wheel hub.  It still had normal 3/32" chain on the right for the transmission.
Comment: The battery is in the metal box under the rack.  This is a fairly common setup for e-bikes.  (And it looks like a manufacturer-produced setup to me, though a very old one, likely with lead-acid or ni-cad batteries that are hard to find anymore.)
Comment: @ezeewei  please peel off the top plate (the four bolts visible in your picture)  and take a photo of whatever's inside.   Also, do you have the wall-charger for this system?  Please photograph that and any labels on it.   And a photo of the batteries if you can get them out, (probably screwed down with a retaining strap inside that case.)
Comment: @Criggie did yours have a rear derailleur? Presumably not if you could use 1/8" chain. Could you use a flip-flop hub with the freewheel on the pdeal drive side and the fixed on the electric side?
Comment: @Ezeewei consider protecting that wiring better too - its not well-protected and is exposed to damage.  The motor is really low, and it sticks out the left hand side of the bike.
Answer: It looks to be an older Currie Electro Drive, they were originally made in 1996 i believe. I don't know much to anything else about them though other than that is one and they exist.
Here is the companies website which offers support options. I would look for a serieal number and call them with questions about battery replacement.
http://www.currietech.com/about.html
Also, i found this random page that sells parts, you may be able to source a battery and spare parts from them as well.
https://electricscooterparts.com/currieelectrodriveelectricbicyclekitparts.html
This looks to be quite similar as far as the motor mount and rack go.
From what i can tell they make a very large battery pack that slides down the side of that rack and connects to those two metal terminals above the bicycles axle (the blue block). You can see them if you follow the second link i listed.
Comment: As the battery pack is 24V you could in theory make up you own batteries. All you need is 24V, wire them into the terminals, and and some way to mount them on the rack. For testing the motor works, a couple of car batteries would work well.
Comment: I'm guessing it's a couple of lead-acid batteries in that box. I've ridden a 36V lead-acid e-bike of a similar age; that used that same batteries as small UPSs
Comment: Yeah, the batteries pictured in one of the above links appear to be standard lead-acid batteries of the sort used for emergency lighting, etc.  A local battery distributor such as Batteries Plus would have replacements.
Comment: @mattnz - If you don't match the technology of the old batteries you risk burning out the controller electronics (or setting fire to the batteries).


Is my credit card information "wide open to hackers" without VPN?

Question: I saw an ad for a vpn provider recently where they claimed that, without using a vpn, my credit card information is "wide open to hackers" while shopping on-line. I guess the implication here was that vpns are encrypted, while regular connections are not. However, isn't https encrypted, and therefore safe to use without vpn? And aren't on-line stores required to use https or other forms of secure payment?
Comment: Don't know that you can say "required" - you can certainly run an online store without HTTPS, but you probably shouldn't - see https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/33783/is-it-compulsory-to-have-https-on-e-commerce-site
Comment: "Required" needs a context (i.e. required by law? in which jurisdiction? Required by your card processor? And so on) but in the end, it seems like an aside to the real question here.
Answer: It depends.
If you enter your credit card information on a site which is not protected by HTTPS then a VPN will provide at least part of the missing protection, like addressing the problem of an attacker in the local WiFi hotspot.
If you enter your credit card information on a site which does not properly handle this information neither a VPN nor HTTPS will not protect you. This might be cases where the site accidentally puts this information online by itself or where it got attacked and the data exfiltrated.
Similar if you enter your credit card information on a site which is already compromised the attacker might grab the information right where you enter these. A VPN will not protect you against this and neither does HTTPS.
Comment: @Dunno Steffen's answer explains it perfectly. VPN's use cases are the following: anonymity, censorship bypass. Besides those, it doesn't provide any security improvements or features. Also worth noting is that if you download a banking trojan, HTTPS, VPN and encryption will not stop the attacker from getting your CC info
Comment: Yes, I know. I was just explaining the use cases that the question asker would use it for. I use VPN every day for connecting to my internal corporate network
Comment: So it doesn't look like a vpn increases your security much when shopping on-line... that ad feels misleading to me now.
Comment: @Dunno: Unfortunately ads in the security area are often overly simplified and misleading since most will not understand the real implications anyway. And fear sells well.
Comment: @leaustinwile: Your description of what VPN are used for is only true for the typical VPN sold as kind of protection for non-business users. And even then there have more use cases, like bypassing geoblocking, protecting traffic against interception when using open Wifi networks ... But VPN in general have more use cases, like allowing mobile users to connect to their companies network, link different locations of a company, ...


Duration of Schengen visa while travelling to non Schengen areas which allow Schengen visa

Question: I'm planning to travel to the Netherlands, Bulgaria and Turkey. I'll be in Netherlands for 4 days, Bulgaria for 4 and Turkey for 2. I'm applying for a Schengen visa for the Netherlands. Considering that Bulgaria and Turkey are not in the Schengen Area (but accept Schengen Visas for entry), will the duration of the visa be determined by only the Netherlands leg of the trip? Ideally I would want the visa to be valid for at least 10 days to include the entire trip.
Comment: Spain is not part of the trip anymore? If you are unable to obtain a multiple-entry Schengen visa valid for the whole trip, you might need a Bulgarian visa in this scenario. See also http://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/13242/single-multiple-entry-schengen-visa-for-visiting-italy-and-croatia
Comment: http://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/5538/does-applying-for-a-multiple-entry-schengen-visa-instead-of-a-single-entry-the-f might be of interest as well.
Comment: Since Bulgaria just requires a valid schengen visa, will I need a multiple entry visa? Will the dutch authorities consider my trip to Bulgaria as grounds to give me a multiple entry visa? Yeah, Spain is out. I need to be in BG during the week and then Istanbul is pretty close :)
Comment: My understanding is that once you leave the Schengen area (or any country really) where you were on a single-entry visa, you don't have a *valid* Schengen visa anymore (i.e. you could not return to the Schengen area). It's also obviously the case if the visa is set to expire on that date as well. But I still have no idea about the rules in Bulgaria or Turkey, the best might be to ask their consulate about that or request a visa to be on the safe side (provided it's practical from a financial/delay/etc. point of view).
Comment: Ok, got it. I think it's probably something that I should get clarified with the Dutch/Bulgarian embassy.
Answer: As far as I understand as @Annoyed said Bulgaria and Turkey are not part of Schengen area right now. Even though you enter those countries, it's considered as you exit Schengen area and if you only have single-entry Schengen visa you might have a problem entering Schengen area again. I used to do this when I entered Croatia which they also accept any holders of Schengen Visa I got stamped at the border. This means that I exited Schengen area and entered Croatia.
So to answer your question since those countries are not part of Schengen visa, it will not be considered in your visa process. You might only get a single-entry-4-day Schengen visa from the embassy at the very worse case.
Answer: Please also note that according to the following:

Holders of valid common Schengen visas who have exhausted the permitted number of entries and duration of stay on their common
  Schengen visas will only be allowed to enter Bulgaria or the purpose
  of return transit.

in your case you would have to either get a multiple-entry visa, or alter your itinerary as Netherlands - Turkey - Bulgaria - return (which makes Bulgaria your return transit country). Latter would be more tricky and require more explanation to your airline; success is not guaranteed.


Community Input on Backup Solutions

Question: I am considering changing my backup strategy from using backup tape to using a product from EMC called Avamar. I have a Corp Data Center and a Disaster recovery Data Center. The plan is to put Avamar units in both DC's and replicate between the two fulfilling our SLAs requirement for off site backups. I was just pitched the Avamar product and was impressed, now I want the cold hard facts about the solution. What are the pros and Cons of going this route and what is the good the bad and the ugly with the Avamar product?
Answer: If it's not capable of being taken offline and taken off-site, it's not backup. When the site is destroyed, the "backup" will be gone too.
Corollary: If it's off-site but always online, it's not backup. If you leave it online, the attackers can destroy it right after they destroy the production copies. Hacking across an air gap (read: physical security) is much harder than over a wire.
Answer: Food for thought - a very large financial company did the same thing.  They had EMC SANs in both of the world trade center towers and lost everything.
So, how far apart are your two data centers?
For my company we have nearly 5,000 customers (web sites, web applications, hosted systems, etc...) We have a DR plan that uses both disk based replication to a geographically separate data center as well as tape backup.
Tape backup allows us to give certain customers longer retention as we off load from disk.  We host some applications for large companies who are mandated by the US federal government to keep certain records on file for so many years and tape is the only real cost effective solution in these situations.  Something to think about.
Comment: the DC's are about 3000 miles apart one is in the east the other in the west.
Comment: At 3000 miles, I would imagine you have a latency of around 40 to 50ms; typical of a major telecom using DWDM.  So your replication is either write local and wait for the remote to return or cache & queue.  So naturally, you have to decide if this is good enough for DR.  For backup, you still haven't spoke to the retention needs and to the importance of historical data.  Importance is typically the cost to the company if the data was lost for good.
Answer: I see one potential problem : if you use Avamar on both sites, and that some problem hits the Avamars (for instance some weird bug, or a license related problem) you may be out of order on both site at the same time or close. A true backup is both offsite and offline, and in an open and easy to read format (open standard encryption like PGP, open data format like TAR or CPIO, etc).
Only the paranoids survive :) See the still funny Tao of backup. Particularly notice the section "Keep some old backups".

Community Input on Backup Solutions


What type of sugar can preserve bread the longest?

Question: I believe that honey preserves bread the longest. Are there any other sugars or sugar-like solutions that can preserve bread from mold longer?
Comment: related : http://cooking.stackexchange.com/q/7804/67
Answer: I don't think a spoonful of sugar, honey, etc added to a loaf to encourage the yeast will make much of a difference. Sugar can act as a preservative but only at pretty high concentrations, and the amount you use in bread isn't going to be high enough.
My experience is that home-made bread will get stale long before it gets moldy. I've seen supermarket bread go moldy but I assume that's because they use some pretty serious preservatives that means the bread has the time to develop the microbes - say, a week or more.
I'm thinking about cake, which is pretty much a ultra-sugary bread, and even the amount of sugar there isn't enough to avoid it going stale. And again, that goes stale faster than it goes moldy, at least here in the cold North of England.
Comment: +1, You cannot preserve bread with sugar, so there is no best type.
Answer: Some formulations of dextrins can extend shelf life, though that's only kind-of-sort-of a sugar solution. One example is MoisturLok, which is primarily aimed at preventing staling, but its ability to reduce available water also lowers microbial counts on baked goods over a few days.