In which year did Dumbledore become headmaster?

Question: In which year did Dumbledore become the Headmaster for Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry?
Answer: Although the generally accepted date is 1956 (e.g. presuming that Minerva McGonagall replaced Dumbledore as Transfiguration Mistress on his appointment to Headmaster) there's a fair argument that he didn't actually become Headmaster until late 1964/early 1965.

We know from the latest release on Pottermore that Minerva McGonagall was appointed as Dumbledore's assistant in 1956 but not as his replacement. There's no canon description of how long she worked under him but we can reasonably assume it would take quite a few years to go from a 21-year-old trainee to full Mistress at Hogwarts;

She sent an owl to Hogwarts, asking whether she might be considered
  for a teaching post. The owl returned within hours, offering her a job
  in the Transfiguration department, under Head of Department, Albus
  Dumbledore. [Pottermore website]

Lupin was born in 1960 and didn't become infected until 1963/4. He speaks of the change in attitude at the school when Dumbledore became Head.

I was a very small boy when I received the bite. My parents tried
  everything [edit] It seemed impossible that I would be able to come to
  Hogwarts. Other parents weren't likely to want their children exposed
  to me. But then Dumbledore became Headmaster, and he was sympathetic.
  He said that, as long as we took certain precautions, there was no
  reason I shouldn't come to school.
   Prisoner of Azkhaban

You can see an extensive discussion of this alternate hypothesis here.
Comment: So… JKR messing up with numbers and dates again, basically?
Comment: Can't she hire an assistant? I mean, it's not like she can't afford it…
Comment: @Lohoris - There's no indication she messed up, she just hasn't made it clear.
Answer: Though never specifically stated, we can infer that Dumbledore became Headmaster in 1956. How do we know this?
Prior to being Headmaster, he served as Transfiguration professor under Headmaster Armando Dippet. Thus, when Dumbledore succeeded him he would have left a vacancy for the spot of Transfiguration. We know that Minerva McGonagall filled this vacancy, but the question is when?
From Order of the Phoenix, Chapter 15: The Hogwarts High Inquisitor:

"How long have you been teaching at Hogwarts?" Professor Umbridge asked.
"Thirty-nine years this December," said Professor McGonagall brusquely, snapping her bag shut.

Order of the Phoenix takes place in 1995 and 1996, with this statement coming in approximately September 1995.
Given the odd date of hiring (in the middle of the school year), we can infer that Dippet died in office, Dumbledore succeeded him, and McGonagall hired to replace him as soon as possible.
Additional Evidence for 1956
We also know that Tom Riddle jynxed the position of Defense Against the Dark Arts when Dumbledore (as Headmaster) refused him the position. Again, this is another date that is unconfirmed but is generally accepted as circa 1957.
See: In what year did Voldemort curse the DADA job
Unfortunately this is based on the ambiguous ten years after the death of Hepzibah Smith  (which occurred an unspecified number of years after Riddle graduated), and on the above evidence pointing to 1956.
Comment: The dating of Voldemort's refusal to the position of DADA tutor is based on the prior assumption that Dumbledore became headmaster in 1957. As such, it's no evidence at all.
Comment: @Richard I agree that the Lupin evidence is the strongest (and +1'd it accordingly), but am providing all the evidence I can for the more widely accepted date of 1956. Unfortunately all the supporting information is interconnected (date of McGonagall's hire, death of Smith, death of Dippet, etc.) and we don't have a real date for any of it. The only issue I have with the Lupin account is that he is retelling it from a very early childhood memory, and thus may not recall it 100% accurately.
Comment: I just don't think the 1956 date makes sense. Voldemort would have needed to have worked at Borgin and Burkes for less than a year before killing Hepzibah Smith and McGonagall would have had to have been appointed a senior Mistress at the school at the age of 21
Comment: I don't have an issue with the McGonagall timing as she was the top student of her class. So was Riddle, and he was rejected a teaching position shortly after graduating, but that was under a different Headmaster. Her being the Transfigurations professor does not give her any immediate seniority. As far as I can tell from the books (haven't looked at Pottermore at all), and from the size of the school, I have never seen an instance of multiple professors teaching the same subject. So she was hired as a fresh professor, and only later became Head of House and then Deputy Headmistress.
Comment: I think the implication is that the wizarding war led to a decimation of the wizard population


How do I turn off USB tethering or restart USB connection via computer/PC's terminal?

Question: How do I turn off USB tethering or restart USB connection via computer/PC's terminal?
Comment: Do you want to accomplish this from Android's terminal or from computer's (to which android phone is connected) terminal?
Comment: @edvinas.me preferably from computer if possible
Answer: Fastest, foolproof way is just unplug it, that terminates the connection and the service. Otherwise the answer above is useful, or you could just issue adb reboot (assuming you have USB debugging on). Otherwise you'd need to find the PID in your PC operating system and stop that service.
Answer: Léo Lam in his answer explained the relevant commands that can be used using adb shell.

Running the following command as root should enable USB tethering:
service call connectivity 32 i32 1 on Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0)
service call connectivity 33 i32 1 on Jelly Bean (4.1 to 4.3)
service call connectivity 34 i32 1 on KitKat (4.4)
service call connectivity 30 i32 1 on Lollipop (5.0)

See further information in his answer.
Setup ADB in PC, enable USB debugging, launch Terminal/CMD in PC and enter:
adb shell su -c "<cmd>"

Replace "<cmd>" with the relevant aforesaid command to enable USB tethering. Change 1 to 0 to disable USB tethering.
E.g. For My Jelly Bean 4.2.1, the commands would be:

Enable USB tethering
adb shell su -c "service call connectivity 33 i32 1"

Disable USB tethering
adb shell su -c "service call connectivity 33 i32 0"


How do I stop Apache Tomcat from requiring context paths to exist on the file system?

Question: I'm in the middle of trying to deploy IIS + Tomcat, and its' a mess.  The company has a ton of virtuals set up in IIS, and because there are so many and some of the virtuals contain JSPs, we need Tomcat running all of these virtuals.
I've attempted to setup the Host/Context as follows:
<Host name="localhost" unpackWARs="true" autoDeploy="false" appBase="e:\webdata\Inetpub\wwwroot\">
    <Context path="/aboriginal"  docbase="static\business\Abo"   crossContext="true" />
    <Context path="/ecc"  docbase="static\countries\Canada\ECC"   crossContext="true" />

The problem is, when tomcat loads it looks for "e:\webdata\inetpub\wwwroot" to exist.
SEVERE: Error starting static Resources
java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Document base e:\webdata\Inetpub\wwwroot\ecc does not exist or is not a readable directory

And of course it doesn't exist! static/business/Abo exists!
Everything I read lead me to believe the "contexts" were Tomcat's version of virtual folder.  Why does the virtual folder have to exist priori to creating it?
Is this the way it is?  What am missing here?
I've written an IronPython script to pull the virtuals from IIS and create the appropriate IIS config.  I would prefer not having to create a series of empty files and folders to replicate this.
Thanks a million for any help!
Comment: You can remove the appBase from server.xml and specify the full path to the web app in docBase
docBase="e:\actual_file_path\static\business\Abo"
Comment: Would that get away from the problem I'm seeing here?
Answer: JoseK is right.
Please see the docbase property here: http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-7.0-doc/config/context.html#Common_Attributes
You should therefore have
<Context path="/ecc"  docbase="e:\webdata\Inetpub\wwwroot\static\countries\Canada\ECC"   crossContext="true" />


Heuristic argument for the Riemann Hypothesis

Question: Is there a heuristic argument that supports the validity of the Riemann hypothesis or are we just relying on numerical evidence?  Moreover, what is the strongest theorem that supports the validity of RH?
Comment: @SamHopkins : In Derbyshire's book *Prime Obsession*, he says that Martin Huxley is a skeptic, citing Littlewood's heuristic that [a longstanding conjecture in analysis generally turns out to be false](https://mathoverflow.net/q/306851). He also says that Andrew Odlyzko is completely agnostic about RH. He quotes Odlyzko as saying that when a certain function called the S function gets large then it *might* threaten the truth of RH. Selberg proved that S is unbounded, but it grows very slowly, and the regime where it might threaten RH is far beyond computational reach.
Comment: I have heard that a certain strain of number theorist believes the evidence for RH is indeed quite thin. But maybe someone who knows more about that could post an answer to that effect.
Answer: The Riemann hypothesis is true, if primes are random in certain ways.
Comment: @Mark: A single zeta zero with real part greater than $1/2$ would already cause big irregularities in the distribution of prime numbers.
Comment: @Gerald Edgar, is there a principled definition of "P causes Q" when P and Q are logical propositions?
Comment: "Cause", eh?  I have to warn students: "If P then Q" does not mean "P causes Q".
Comment: To elaborate a bit on the comment by GH from MO, each zero off the line yields an irregularity that makes itself felt asymptotically. It is not the case that asymptotically, we can ignore a finite number of zeros. Of course if the zero is very close to the line then it might not be detectable numerically until you've gone a long way out.
Comment: @Michael Yes to both questions. It's not the residue of $\zeta$ which matters, but the residue of $x^s/\zeta(s)$, which can only be zero for all $x$ if $\zeta$ is nonvanishing there.
Comment: If one had all but finitely many zeros on the critical line would this still hold?
Comment: This borders on being a link-only answer, no?
Comment: @ChanBae: When P and Q are logical propositions, it may be a poor choice of wording to talk about "causation", but I don't think its use qualifies as a correlation/causation fallacy like Gerald seems to have implied.
Comment: @Pace Nielsen, thanks for the nice link. Could you elaborate whether the argument in the link "If Riemann was right, there will be no zeros for Re(σ)>1/2, and hence we could choose σ to be as little as 1/2+ε" applies to zeros with multiplicity? If zeta function has zeros off the 1/2 line such that the residue of 1/zeta is zero, would that have an impact on prime distribution?
Comment: @WillSawin do you mean the residue of $-(\zeta'(s)/\zeta(s))(x^s/s)$? Logarithmic derivatives of $\zeta(s)$ (or $L$-functions) are what naturally occur in standard explicit formulas, and the function  $\zeta'(s)/\zeta(s)$ (like any logarithmic derivative) has at worst simple poles, with the residue of $\zeta'(s)/\zeta(s)$ at each number in $\mathbf C$  being the order of vanishing (positive, negative, or zero) of $\zeta(s)$ at that number, so logarithmic derivatives of meromorphic functions never have residue $0$ at a pole.
Comment: @user1728 If you follow the link, he's talking about the explicit formula for the sum of Mobius, not the explicit formula for prime counting. So I tried to answer for the Mobius function. I agree with everything you said about the primes/von Mangoldt and logarithmic derivatives.
Answer: There are many theoretical results that support the (generalized) Riemann hypothesis:

zero density estimates for the zeros of certain $L$-functions
infinitely many zeros on the critical line of certain $L$-functions
nonnegativity of the central value of certain $L$-functions
subconvex bounds for certain $L$-functions
strong lower and upper bounds for certain moments of certain $L$-functions
the (proven) Riemann hypothesis for the $L$-functions of algebraic varieties over finite fields

and so on. Each of these items is a research topic on its own, with hundreds of articles. Use Google, Wikipedia, MathSciNet etc. to learn more about them.
Comment: @MustafaSaid: I reacted to "are we just relying on numerical evidence". The answer is a clear "no".
Comment: @user1728: In this case, one considers an $L$-function $L(s)$ which is holomorphic on $\mathbb{C}$ and real-valued on $\mathbb{R}$. The Riemann Hypothesis for $L(s)$ implies that $L(s)>0$ for $s>1/2$, and hence $L(1/2)\geq 0$. So if we can prove the nonnegativity of $L(1/2)$ unconditionally, then we could confirm an important prediction of GRH. I say "important", because nonnegativity usually has deep applications, while proving it requires a similarly deep understanding of the arithmetic structure behind $L(s)$. For infinitely many $L$-functions, $L(1/2)\geq 0$ is a theorem!
Comment: @MustafaSaid: I guess my point is that many powerful consequences of the Riemann hypothesis have been verified independently. Some of these address the distribution of the zeros directly. In my view, these results are much stronger evidence than the numeric verification of the Riemann hypothesis up to a certain height. Add to these that the algebraic geometric analogue of the Riemann hypothesis is a theorem thanks to Weil, Deligne, etc. I am talking about infinitely many $L$-functions in each of the bullet points in my anwer.
Comment: And not only are there infinitely many zeta zeros on the critical line, but the proportion thereof has been shown to exceed 41%.
Comment: But where is the heuristic argument?  The GUE connection is more along the lines of what I'm looking .
Comment: Why do you consider nonnegativity of a central $L$-value evidence towards GRH?
Answer: The function field model came up in GH from MO's answer, and then also in user54038's. I just want to add some detail to explain how good of an analogy the function field model is.
The Riemann zeta function does not stand alone, but instead is the simplest member of a series of wider classes of zeta and $L$-functions of deep relevance in number theory - among them Dedekind zeta funcitons, Dirichlet $L$-functions, Hecke $L$-functions, Artin $L$-functions, elliptic curve $L$-functions, automorphic $L$-functions. (More precisely each of these fall into two wide classes, those being the motivic $L$-functions and the automorphic $L$-functions, which are conjectured to more-or-less agree, so you could also say there is a single class of $L$-functions with many interesting sub-classes). For all of these, the Riemann hypothesis has been conjectured.
There are direct analogues of all these in the function field setting, with the interrelationships among them basically the same. The Riemann hypothesis was proven for all of them - the first couple by Weil, the later ones by Deligne, and the automorphic ones by Drinfeld, L. Lafforgue, and V. Lafforgue.
Furthermore properties known and conjectured of these zeta and $L$-functions, in particular those to do with the distribution of the zeroes, match up in straightforward ways. As far as I know, all known results about the distribution of zeroes of $\zeta$ and $L$-functions can be proven also over function fields by essentially the same arguments, and much stronger extensions of these results, fitting what we conjecture over $\mathbb Q$, are known in the "large $q$ aspect".
So the function field check on the Riemann hypothesis is not just a single analogy between two functions but a web of related analogies that all seem remarkably consistent with each other.
Comment: @paulgarrett Sure. The proof of the Riemann hypothesis is due to Deligne, but of course this was just the final piece of the puzzle. For the foundations of etale cohomology he used, one should probably credit the SGA school, in particular the authors of the relevant texts - at least Grothendieck, Raynaud, Artin, Verdier, Deligne again, Illusie, and Katz. While Dwork proved one of the Weil conjectures, it wasn't Riemann, and his methods weren't directly used in Deligne's work, though his ideas. We could also mention Rankin, Lefschetz, and some others.
Comment: (Just a tiny quibble, that probably Dwork and Grothendieck deserve considerable credit for the run-up to Deligne's proof. Probably others whom I don't know...)
Comment: Yes, good. Thanks!
Comment: are these other R.H. in some way equivalent to the asymptotic behaviour of some sort of generalized Merten functions, as mentioned in Pace Nielsen's and JoshuaZ's answers?
Comment: @user347489 Sure, just sum the coefficients of the inverse of the $L$-function.
Comment: @WillSawin Oh, interesting! Thanks!
Answer: I am not sure that this is a proper answer for your question. Sorry in advance if it is not.
Other answers provided some good examples of heuristic arguments supporting the RH. But I want to point at a heuristic result that puts some serious doubts on it. Since I am not so familiar with the technical details, it is better to quote directly from this answer:

The De Bruijn-Newman constant $\Lambda$ was defined and upper bounded by $\Lambda\le\frac{1}2$ in 1950. After 58 years of work, in 2008 this upper bound was finally improved to... $\Lambda<\frac{1}2$ (a 0% improvement) in a 26-page paper. The best known upper bound is currently $\Lambda<0.22$. The Riemann hypothesis was known to be equivalent to $\Lambda\le 0$, so if it's true then we've got quite a ways to go.

But Terrence Tao and Brad Rogers recently proved that $\Lambda\ge 0$. So in Tao's words (actually, Newman's words quoted by Tao):

If the Riemann hypothesis is true, then it's 'just barely' true.
Comment: I'm not familiar with the De Bruijn-Newman constant, but naïvely I don't see why a proof of $\Lambda\geq0$ would make $\Lambda\leq0$ any more dubious. In fact, for something as fundamental as the Riemann Hypothesis, it would seem quite fitting that it be "exactly spot on just true" rather than merely "true on the boundary of something more mundane".
Comment: @leftaroundabout : The intuition is that Lehmer pairs (unusually close consecutive zeros of $Z(t)$) look like they're "nearly" counterexamples to the Riemann hypothesis. Roughly speaking, $\Lambda\ge 0$ means that these near-counterexamples come very close to being true counterexamples. So if one's intuition is that the behavior of $Z(t)$ is modeled well by some "random process" then one might worry that some "random fluctuation" might cause one of the extrema of $Z(t)$ to fall just short of crossing the $t$-axis. (BTW the phrase "just barely" goes back to Newman and isn't Tao's coinage.)
Comment: Or, if the Riemann hypothesis is true (so $\Lambda = 0$), then we've got quite a ways to go.
Comment: @TimothyChow thanks for the tip about the last quote. I edited the answer.
Answer: Besides all the theorems already mentioned I would like to add the Bombieri-Vinogradov theorem. This can be roughly thought of as an averaged version of the Generalised Riemann Hypothesis and thus gives strong support for GRH. Even more, in many proves it can be used to replace the Riemann Hypothesis and so make theorems unconditional.
Answer: There have been some good answers already given but I want to note another aspect, namely a heuristic involving the Möbius function. Let $\mu(n)$ be the Möbius function. The Riemann Hypothesis is equivalent to the claim that for any $\epsilon >0$ one has that $$\sum_{1 \leq n \leq x}\mu(n) = O(x^{1/2+\epsilon}).$$ This equivalence stems from making an explicit integral for $1/\zeta(s)$ in terms of the Möbius function which converges up the the 1/2 line if one has the above bound on the sum.
Now, it is reasonable to guess/hope/assume that $\mu(n)$ is essentially random in the sense that the non-zero values behave essentially like a fair coin with heads corresponding to 1 and tails corresponding to –1. It turns out that if one has a fair coin, and one keeps flipping it, then the difference between the number of heads and tails after $x$ flips will with probability 1 be $O(x^{1/2+\epsilon})$. So if the Möbius function behaves like a random coin flip, or even close to a random coin flip we should expect RH to hold with probability 1.
Note that this isn't the only thing satisfying about this framing of the Riemann Hypothesis. This sort of shows one major reason that RH is important: a lot of sieves and other ways to get a handle on the primes involve inclusion/exclusion arguments, which is essentially what $\mu(n)$ is for. So in a moral sense RH says that if one is doing inclusion/exclusion with primes, one cannot get very large deviations in how much at any given stage one needs to include or exclude.
(Edit to add: actually this is essentially the same sort of approach as noted in the link by Pace above.)
Comment: For iid coin flips the law of the iterated logarithm gives that the sum is $O(\sqrt{n \log \log(n)})$ with probability $1$. Is it known that the partial sums of the Mobius function are not $O(\sqrt{n \log\log(n)})$?
Comment: @burtonpeterj This sum is sometimes called the [Mertens function](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mertens_function). According to Wikipedia, there is a conjecture by Steve Gonek that this sum should by $O(\sqrt{n} (\log \log \log n)^{5/4})$, so it would grow even a little bit slower than the coin flips heuristic would suggest.
Comment: @burtonpeterj Probably based on heuristics on the linear independence / random distribution of the zeroes.
Comment: Let's write $M$ for the Mertens function. Apparently the best lower bounds for $\limsup_{n \to \infty} |M(n)|n^{-\frac{1}{2}}$ are less than $2$. Moreover, recent progress on this seems incremental. Given that, why is it considered so implausible that $|M(n)| = O(\sqrt{n})$?
Comment: Gonek and Ng have conjectured that $\limsup_{x \to \infty} \frac{M(x)}{\sqrt{x}(\log \log \log x)^{5/4}}$ (resp., $\liminf_{x \to \infty} \frac{M(x)}{\sqrt{x}(\log \log \log x)^{5/4}}$) is finite and positive (resp., finite and negative), which would imply that $M(x) = \Omega_{\pm} (\sqrt{x})$.  Good and Churchhouse and L\'evy have made (I think less plausible) conjectures that imply that $\limsup_{x \to \infty} \frac{|M(x)|}{(x \log \log x)^{1/2}}$ is finite and positive, which also implies $M(x) = \Omega_{\pm} (\sqrt{x})$.  The law of iterated logarithm is at play here I think.
Comment: $\dfrac{1}{\zeta(s)} = s \displaystyle \int_{1}^{+ \infty} \dfrac{M(x)}{x^{s+1}} dx , \quad \Re(s) > 1$ .. the equality is true also for $s=1$ (Von Mongoldt 1897).
Comment: What does $|M(n)| = O(\sqrt{n})$ say about structure in the zeroes?
Answer: Bombieri reviews the evidence for the Riemann hypothesis in his problem description for the Millenium prize. In section III, he gives the numerical evidence as one of three pieces of evidence, the second being results on the density in the complex plane of hypothetical counterexamples, and the third that "it is known that more than 40% of nontrivial zeros of $\zeta(s)$ are simple and satisfy the Riemann hypothesis". However, in section IV, he says that "It may be said that the best evidence in favor of the Riemann hypothesis derives from the corresponding theory which has been developed in the context of algebraic varieties over finite fields." He gives special attention to Deligne's theorem. So, the strongest evidence is not the numerical evidence or even a heuristic argument, but rather an analogous theorem about a different system. At least, that's Bombieri's opinion.


Followup to "Blacklist the [microsoft] and [apple] tags"

Question: This is a followup to Blacklist the [microsoft] and [apple] tags.  The request was asked back in 2013 and not only does microsoft and apple still exist but they are still getting questions using them.  The info for both of these tags says to not use them but people are still posting to them.  Is there any plan to blacklist and or burn these tags?
Comment: There's over 7,000 questions in each of those tags combined.  As much as I'd like to see them gone myself, it'd be difficult to accomplish without moderator intervention.  To be blunt, I'd much rather see that silly "DO NOT USE" notification removed since it's *not accomplishing jack*.
Comment: @Makoto: You mean nearly 7000 in both together. Anyway, is there now a way for moderators to lock a tag, or is that still a distant dream? Because I think that would be just about neccessary for successful cleanup.
Comment: Makoto @Deduplicator blacklisting needs developer action. Moderators can't do anything. Maybe you will have some luck poking a random *cough*animuson*cough* CM,
Comment: @Deduplicator: I think it is possible to blacklist a tag that is still in use, but unrelated edits to the posts start to fail because the new version of the question fails the "no blacklisted tags" check.
Comment: @BenVoigt Is unrelated edits failing a big problem? If people are editing it anyway, they could just remove the tag.
Comment: It would be nice if we could at least get this tag blacklisted so the problem doesn't keep growing.  I don't see the problem with forcing an editor to get rid of a bad flag while they are in the post editing it anyways.
Comment: Just a reminder to people who might be reading this and considering taking action: please do **not** attempt to unilaterally manually remove this tag from all these questions, **doubly** so if you don't have full editing privileges. The discussion on how to handle this is ongoing, and no bulk tag editing should be done by someone whose edits have to go through the review queue - that isn't a good use of reviewer manpower. See http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/239190/when-to-burninate for more info.
Comment: @NathanOliver: well, at least we've killed a lot of the *Microsoft* ones, plus improved a few questions, flagged a few, I even found a couple of gems and put bounties on them ...
Comment: @rjmunro: I'm just repeating the reason the diamond mods give for not blacklisting tags that are still attached to questions.  I personally wouldn't expect it to be a big issue either.
Comment: @NathanOliver: hey we're down to 2411 from 7000 :)
Comment: @OurManInBananas The 7000 was a combined total.  the combined total as of right now is 6197.
Answer: If I edit all 7000 of those questions and change all the microsoft tagged questions to proper tags like microsoft-azure or microsoft-powerpoint or microsoft-excel and all the apple to things like apple-ios etc will I get a gold badge?
But seriously, while it certainly makes sense to remove these tags, it has been mentioned before, there's a chance that some questions will get lost or lose visibility...
Is there a process open to the moderators or programmers to run a script to combine the tags in all questions that have both Microsoft and (say) excel into microsoft-excel? A quick check, and there are 195 questions tagged with microsoft AND excel
This could be a script but would have to include all the possible products and permutations...
Right, I'm off to make a start, I figure if I do 10 per day, by 2020 we should be able to lock those tags!
Comment: If 700 of us each do 10 edits, we'd have it done in no time, and we could fix / edit / close those questions along the way  :-)
Comment: @JonasCz: It's Saturday evening and I'm editing posts on SO - how sad is that lol :)
Comment: I think your calculation doesn't take into account the amount of tags added daily which are tagged with those meta tags.  I think your estimate is optimistic but off by two years. ;)
Comment: One nitpick: in your example, I'd just remove the [tag:microsoft] tag from questions with [tag:microsoft]+[tag:excel]. No reason to create a second Excel tag.
Comment: @OurManInBananas Yes, quite a few but you are all making trivial edits that are bumping these posts to the main page.
Comment: @Makoto: we're down to 2411 - I guess there's quite a few of us working on this project...
Comment: What should we do when reviewing these edits ? They are trivial edits that add little or no value to a questions. I have been skipping them so far, but should we reject them instead ?
Comment: @Jaco: They shouldn't be made by people who have less than 2000, and whose edits need to be reviewed as far as I understand...
Comment: @alexwlchan: yes you're right...
Comment: Today I have noticed many of these edits in my review queue, in particular as I have been skipping reviews for this type of edit.
Answer: Fortunately, microsoft is gone now, but apple's still around and currently discussed again. At least its description reads

DO NOT USE THIS TAG!!! Apple is the company that manufactures Macs and iOS devices. Use tags more relevant to the OS and device/computer you're targeting.


i want a keg cooler that is cheaper than kegerator

Question: Looking into buying a 5 gal ball lock keg, i have the Co2 tanks, a tap, and gauges/hoses. I want to save by just purchasing something to keep it all cool. Strapped on cash at the moment but want to keg. Dont have the $450 at my disposal right now. Any alternatives? literally have everything but the keg and a something to keep it consistently cold. ideas? experiences? or just save my money.
Answer: Keep an eye on Craigslist for a used refrigerator. You can often get them free or nearly free if you pick it up. That's all you need: take the shelves out, and you can keep your keg in there with a picnic tap. I did this for about 15 years in my basement. If you want to get fancy, you could get a kit to put a faucet through the side so you don't have to open the door.
Comment: Craigslist is a great resource for a cheap fridge! I would suggest getting new beer lines though (if they are aren't new). hoses are a great place for unwanted contamination to hide and spoil your beer after you have put all that hard work into it!
Answer: Move to a cold country and leave the kegs outside. :p
I have a chillplate that I put into my fridge. I store the keg and CO2 on the one side of the fridge, beerline goed into the fridge, through the chill plate and out the other side to a mounted tap. Works like a dream. * I have NOT tested the system in the heat of summer (35C), but so far it is working fine in autumn and winter temps (25 - 10C).
If you want to use the keg occasionally then buy a plastic bin that is bigger than the keg, put keg in the bin and fill the bin with ice. I have seen a large plastic rubbish wheely bin converted to take two kegs, small CO2 mounted to the side and two taps built into the bin. Worked great (but it does look a bit odd).


Why does a lens hood plus built in flash cause shadows on the photo?

Question: Why is there a shadow on the photo taken with Canon DSLR camera with lens hood and built in flash?
Comment: A situation where you need a lens hood and a flash but _don't_ need a speedlight. hmmm. Not sure about that one. The only thing I can think of is using the camera as white light trigger while shooting outdoors with off camera fill. But then, how would it be dark enough in the subject area for the winky flash to have a contribution? I feel like we are being trolled here
Answer:
Lens hoods attached to super-zoom kit lenses contain a shadow monster that is released when exposed to light from the built-in flash. Remove the hood to avoid letting the monster escape into your photos.

@mattdm, @dpollitt, @YaoBoLu, and @JohnGleeson are all correct. Light from the built-in flash hitting the lens hood casts a shadow. If the lens is large enough, it may cast a shadow on its own without a hood. You have many options to try avoiding the problem:

Don't use flash.
Remove the hood.
Use a smaller lens.
Zoom in or out until the shadow isn't visible.
Re-orient the camera so the shadow doesn't fall on a foreground object.
Use a larger on-camera flash.
Use an off-camera flash.
Point the flash at a wall or the ceiling.  (Some built-in flashes tilt.)
Use a diffuser to soften the shadow.
Use a bounce card.

Here's a before and after using a business-card bounce. A larger card would have been easier to use. The bounce was pretty weak, but not hopeless. Used +3 EC to compensate. (The 2-cent flash diffuser works better.)
Comment: I realize this is comical and that the image does show what is happening, a real explanation being added after the funny part would make this a much stronger answer.  Someone might not catch what is actually happening in the picture.
Comment: It could be insincere or it could be that they are wondering why the built in flash doesn't avoid this.  It's hard to tell from such a short question.  It doesn't really seem troll like, so I'm not sure what their intent was.  Generally best to assume good faith, though yes, it is likely to be closed as a dupe anyway, but those may get merged in to the existing, so it's still good for any answer to actually work and there's no problem with humor in a decent answer.
Comment: I see the monster in both pictures! Look at his demonic red ears.
Comment: Eeyore is already sad.
Answer: Because the built-in flash is too close to the camera body, and therefore the lens blocks its light in the frame, causing a shadow.
The lens hood can't be made smaller, or else it would not be effective. And the pop-up flash can't be made to move further away without making it more bulky, more fragile, or both.
So, given that, this is kind of a case of "Doctor, it hurts when I do this..." (Doctor says: "Well, don't do that.") Take off the hood, or else use a hotshoe or remote flash.
Answer: The 2-cent flash diffuser, made by wrapping a piece of paper around the built in flash.

Sample images:
Comment: It improves the result, but there is still a shadow there, quite pronounced, for me at least.


Is there a ranged pull for Guardians?

Question: I just started playing Lord of the Rings Online as a Guardian, and I've noticed I don't have the ability to use any ranged weapons (bows, etc).  Is it possible for me to do a ranged pull at all, or am I forced to charge in and start swinging?
Answer: While you do get Bows at level 30 (champions get it at level 18) there is another way: Throwing Axes.
Throwing Axes are crafted by weaponsmiths (not sure if you can buy it from vendors) and deal much, much, much less damage then a bow. You also only have a finite number, but it is a good way to pull mobs before level 30
They are also available for every class, so if you have other characters that are melee-only you may want to get some.
Answer: You should get a bow ability at level 30. No auto-shoot like the hunters have, but you'll be able to make the single-shot required to pull.
Comment: You can still auto attack with the bow as a guardian.

Is there a ranged pull for Guardians?


Is Atlanta too far inland and too far above sea level to be affected by the comet in "Deep Impact"?

Question: In "Deep Impact", the president says that "New York City, Boston, Atlanta, Philadelphia, all will be destroyed". New York and Boston are on the water and would be in danger from a tsunami of any size, Philadelphia is 39 feet above sea level and 50 miles inland. Atlanta is over 200 miles inland and between 750 and 1100 feet above sea level. Would an impact event of the size imagined in the movie actually send a wave that far inland and that far up? Would the natural topography of the region (lots of small hills) affect the wave?
Comment: Yep I live up jasper ga we are over 65 mile north of Atlanta Georgia up north Georgia mt
Answer: Tsunamis form as a series of moderate amplitude, long interval waves that travel away from the initial impact.  The first of these waves has the highest amplitude of the initial waves, and becomes the 'big one' later. Subsequent waves are caused by water rushing into the void created by the initial impact, bouncing off of each other, and starting the next wave out.
As the radius of the impact waves increases, the power in each wave gets spread out over a larger and larger circumference, at a rate of $2πr$.  This is a steady geometric decrease in the power any given portion of the wave has.
As these waves start to reach shallow water, the waves in front begin to slow down.  This causes the waves behind them to become part of the tsunami.  This build up continues until you reach land.  Once at land, no more power is being introduced into the wave, no more water is being pulled in.  What you see is what you've got at this point.  None of the follow up waves will go anywhere near as far inland as this initial wave.
To elaborate, following landfall, the tsunami would encounter:

The barrier islands to Georgia's east protect it from most severe storms.  Their arrangement would also introduce an interference pattern into the wave that would incline the big tsunami to spread out more.
Beyond that, there is a large, flat area of low elevation where the wave would travel easily, but it would lose a large percentage of its power crossing this area.  Once again, the wave is losing power as it spreads.
Next, you get to the continental shelf that separates North Georgia from South Georgia.  In a rather sharp increase, land goes from a few hundred feet above sea level to, as you mentioned, 750+ feet.  That is one steep hill to climb for an old, tired tsunami.

Without subjecting this to a full simulation I can't be certain, but I think that any impact capable of creating a tsunami that could reach Atlanta would be completely unsurvivable.  Some of the simplest forms of life might make it, but everything else would be gone.
That does not mean that Atlanta wouldn't suffer substantial damage from other factors, such as all of the water launched into the air by the impact of a red hot flaming rock and any chunks of that comet that might break off from the friction of passing through the atmosphere, but right now Atlanta is pretty safe from tsunamis.
Comment: Agreed. It's a good movie, but I think they just randomly picked a major city in that corner of the country.
Comment: If they wanted a major city in the southeast, they should have picked Miami. Just like NYC and Boston, I have no doubt that a tsunami caused by a rock that big would utterly destroy that city.
Comment: Don't tsunamis have periods? So don't Mega-Tsunamis (1500ft) waves have a period of 14 or 15 miles? So if you're 20 miles inland, would you ever see the wave?
Comment: Did you mean to say "[Fall Line](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_line)" instead of "continental shelf "?
Answer: The bolide depicted in the film seems to have been modeled upon the Chixculub meteor that impacted Yukatan, and created the K-T extinction event. Both the film and Chixculub were about 11 kilometers in diameter. This would result in a roughly $10^5$ Gtonne impact explosion - with some variation depending upon the density of the bolide, and the orientation with respect to the Earth's orbital vector, and hence the velocity of impact. The blast radius would be several thousand kilometers - actually about 7000 kilometers on a theoretical plane surface, but somewhat less due to the curvature of the Earth. So, sorry Atlanta, irrespective of whether the tsunami reaches your fine city, its curtains for you! :-)
Comment: The comet in the film splits into two fragments, one of which is Chixulub size and will impact Western Canada, one of which is about 1/4 that size and will impact the Atlantic ocean off of Cape Hatteras.
Comment: Some simple napkin math suggests to me that 1/4 the diameter results in something like 1/74 the internal volume, suggesting a blast radius closer to 100km. That may be wrong, but it does suggest that the difference is significant.
Answer: Georgia is a fairly flat state, well known for it's extensive wetlands (swamps, y'all), particularly the Great Dismal Swamp. The Northeastern part of the state is part of the Appalachian and Blue Ridge mountains, but these are very old, low-rolling mountains (unlike the high, sharp peaks of the rockies). So the land slopes down from the North-Northeast to the Atlantic coast in the West-Southwest. Atlanta is pretty far inland, but the land South and East is essentially a ramp leading down to the coast. I imagine it's quite possible for a tidal wave to reach Atlanta.
Comment: Downtown Atlanta is over [1000 feet in elevation](https://en-us.topographic-map.com/maps/k68/Atlanta/), and even SE parts of the metro are generally over 800 feet (except right near waterways)...  elevation doubles quite quickly north of Macon\west of Lake Oconee... I wouldn't think of it like a broad easy ramp at all.  Cincinnati, Louisville, and Little Rock are at significantly lower elevation.


Secure way to use name_save_pre?

Question: I created a custom post where I need to change the post name regarding to the custom field and taxonomy values. This is how I did it:
<code>add_filter('name_save_pre', 'save_name');
function save_name($name_to_ignore) {
         global $post, $meta_box, $wpdb;

     $this_post_id = $post->ID;
         // verify nonce -- checks that the user has access
     if ( !isset($_POST['wp_nonce']) || !wp_verify_nonce( $_POST['wp_nonce'], basename(__FILE__) )) {
        return $post_id;
    }
         if ($_POST['post_type'] == 'mytype') :
          $name1 = $_POST['term1'];
          $name2 = $_POST['term2'];
          $name3 = $_POST['custom_field_1'];
          $name4 = $_POST['custom_field_2'];
          $my_post_name = $name1."-".$name2."-".$name3."-".$name4."-".$this_post_id;
        endif;
        return $my_post_name;
}
</code>
I just want to is it secure to save the data this way. Cause I read somewhere else (which is I forgot where), said that using $_POST['Custom_field']; is very easy to get hacked. Is it true?
Answer: Validate input values and sanitize outputting data. Take a read good article about Data Sanitization and Validation With WordPress, it will make you understanding these principles better.

Secure way to use name_save_pre?


How to file bitcoin income to the IRS

Question: I want to check if there is any specific tips how to properly file income from speculation with BTC to the IRS.
Also is there any specific report from the Coinbase available?
Comment: According to CoinDesk, IRS finally announced guidance [What the IRS Bitcoin Tax Guidelines Mean For You](http://www.coindesk.com/irs-bitcoin-tax-guidelines-mean/)
Answer: The IRS just issued a preliminary ruling on this and it will be treated as property.  The Q&A portion is particularly useful.
SECTION 4. FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Q-1: How is virtual currency treated for federal tax purposes?
A-1: For federal tax purposes, virtual currency is treated as property. General tax principles applicable to property transactions apply to transactions using virtual currency.
Q-2: Is virtual currency treated as currency for purposes of determining whether a transaction results in foreign currency gain or loss under U.S. federal tax laws?
A-2: No. Under currently applicable law, virtual currency is not treated as currency that could generate foreign currency gain or loss for U.S. federal tax purposes.
Q-3: Must a taxpayer who receives virtual currency as payment for goods or services include in computing gross income the fair market value of the virtual currency?
A-3: Yes. A taxpayer who receives virtual currency as payment for goods or services must, in computing gross income, include the fair market value of the virtual currency, measured in U.S. dollars, as of the date that the virtual currency was received. See Publication 525, Taxable and Nontaxable Income, for more information on miscellaneous income from exchanges involving property or services.
Q-4: What is the basis of virtual currency received as payment for goods or services in Q&A-3?
A-4: The basis of virtual currency that a taxpayer receives as payment for goods or services in Q&A-3 is the fair market value of the virtual currency in U.S. dollars as of the date of receipt. See Publication 551, Basis of Assets, for more information on the computation of basis when property is received for goods or services.
Q-5: How is the fair market value of virtual currency determined?
A-5: For U.S. tax purposes, transactions using virtual currency must be reported in U.S. dollars. Therefore, taxpayers will be required to determine the fair market value of virtual currency in U.S. dollars as of the date of payment or receipt. If a virtual currency is listed on an exchange and the exchange rate is established by market supply and demand, the fair market value of the virtual currency is determined by converting the virtual currency into U.S. dollars (or into another real currency which in turn can be converted into U.S. dollars) at the exchange rate, in a reasonable manner that is consistently applied.
Q-6: Does a taxpayer have gain or loss upon an exchange of virtual currency for other property?
A-6: Yes. If the fair market value of property received in exchange for virtual currency exceeds the taxpayer's adjusted basis of the virtual currency, the taxpayer has taxable gain. The taxpayer has a loss if the fair market value of the property received is less than the adjusted basis of the virtual currency. See Publication 544, Sales and Other Dispositions of Assets, for information about the tax treatment of sales and exchanges, such as whether a loss is deductible.
Q-7: What type of gain or loss does a taxpayer realize on the sale or exchange of virtual currency?
A-7: The character of the gain or loss generally depends on whether the virtual currency is a capital asset in the hands of the taxpayer. A taxpayer generally realizes capital gain or loss on the sale or exchange of virtual currency that is a capital asset in the hands of the taxpayer. For example, stocks, bonds, and other investment property are generally capital assets. A taxpayer generally realizes ordinary gain or loss on the sale or exchange of virtual currency that is not a capital asset in the hands of the taxpayer. Inventory and other property held mainly for sale to customers in a trade or business are examples of property that is not a capital asset. See Publication 544 for more information about capital assets and the character of gain or loss.
Q-8: Does a taxpayer who "mines" virtual currency (for example, uses computer resources to validate Bitcoin transactions and maintain the public Bitcoin transaction ledger) realize gross income upon receipt of the virtual currency resulting from those activities?
A-8: Yes, when a taxpayer successfully "mines" virtual currency, the fair market value of the virtual currency as of the date of receipt is includible in gross income. See Publication 525, Taxable and Nontaxable Income, for more information on taxable income.
Q-9: Is an individual who "mines" virtual currency as a trade or business subject to self-employment tax on the income derived from those activities?
A-9: If a taxpayer's "mining" of virtual currency constitutes a trade or business, and the "mining" activity is not undertaken by the taxpayer as an employee, the net earnings from self-employment (generally, gross income derived from carrying on a trade or business less allowable deductions) resulting from those activities constitute self-employment income and are subject to the self-employment tax. See Chapter 10 of Publication 334, Tax Guide for Small Business, for more information on self-employment tax and Publication 535, Business Expenses, for more information on determining whether expenses are from a business activity carried on to make a profit.
Q-10: Does virtual currency received by an independent contractor for performing services constitute self‑employment income?
A-10: Yes. Generally, self‑employment income includes all gross income derived by an individual from any trade or business carried on by the individual as other than an employee. Consequently, the fair market value of virtual currency received for services performed as an independent contractor, measured in U.S. dollars as of the date of receipt, constitutes self‑employment income and is subject to the self-employment tax. See FS-2007-18, April 2007, Business or Hobby? Answer Has Implications for Deductions, for information on determining whether an activity is a business or a hobby.
Q-11: Does virtual currency paid by an employer as remuneration for services constitute wages for employment tax purposes?
A-11: Yes. Generally, the medium in which remuneration for services is paid is immaterial to the determination of whether the remuneration constitutes wages for employment tax purposes. Consequently, the fair market value of virtual currency paid as wages is subject to federal income tax withholding, Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA) tax, and Federal Unemployment Tax Act (FUTA) tax and must be reported on Form W-2, Wage and Tax Statement. See Publication 15 (Circular E), Employer's Tax Guide, for information on the withholding, depositing, reporting, and paying of employment taxes.
Q-12: Is a payment made using virtual currency subject to information reporting?
A-12: A payment made using virtual currency is subject to information reporting to the same extent as any other payment made in property. For example, a person who in the course of a trade or business makes a payment of fixed and determinable income using virtual currency with a value of $600 or more to a U.S. non-exempt recipient in a taxable year is required to report the payment to the IRS and to the payee. Examples of payments of fixed and determinable income include rent, salaries, wages, premiums, annuities, and compensation.
Q-13: Is a person who in the course of a trade or business makes a payment using virtual currency worth $600 or more to an independent contractor for performing services required to file an information return with the IRS?
A-13: Generally, a person who in the course of a trade or business makes a payment of $600 or more in a taxable year to an independent contractor for the performance of services is required to report that payment to the IRS and to the payee on Form 1099-MISC, Miscellaneous Income. Payments of virtual currency required to be reported on Form 1099-MISC should be reported using the fair market value of the virtual currency in U.S. dollars as of the date of payment. The payment recipient may have income even if the recipient does not receive a Form 1099-MISC. See the Instructions to Form 1099-MISC and the General Instructions for Certain Information Returns for more information. For payments to non-U.S. persons, see Publication 515, Withholding of Tax on Nonresident Aliens and Foreign Entities.
Q-14: Are payments made using virtual currency subject to backup withholding?
A-14: Payments made using virtual currency are subject to backup withholding to the same extent as other payments made in property. Therefore, payors making reportable payments using virtual currency must solicit a taxpayer identification number (TIN) from the payee. The payor must backup withhold from the payment if a TIN is not obtained prior to payment or if the payor receives notification from the IRS that backup withholding is required. See Publication 1281, Backup Withholding for Missing and Incorrect Name/TINs, for more information.
Q-15: Are there IRS information reporting requirements for a person who settles payments made in virtual currency on behalf of merchants that accept virtual currency from their customers?
A-15: Yes, if certain requirements are met. In general, a third party that contracts with a substantial number of unrelated merchants to settle payments between the merchants and their customers is a third party settlement organization (TPSO). A TPSO is required to report payments made to a merchant on a Form 1099-K, Payment Card and Third Party Network Transactions, if, for the calendar year, both (1) the number of transactions settled for the merchant exceeds 200, and (2) the gross amount of payments made to the merchant exceeds $20,000. When completing Boxes 1, 3, and 5a-1 on the Form 1099-K, transactions where the TPSO settles payments made with virtual currency are aggregated with transactions where the TPSO settles payments made with real currency to determine the total amounts to be reported in those boxes. When determining whether the transactions are reportable, the value of the virtual currency is the fair market value of the virtual currency in U.S. dollars on the date of payment.
See The Third Party Information Reporting Center, http://www.irs.gov/Tax-Profession..., for more information on reporting transactions on Form 1099-K.
Q-16: Will taxpayers be subject to penalties for having treated a virtual currency transaction in a manner that is inconsistent with this notice prior to March 25, 2014?
A-16: Taxpayers may be subject to penalties for failure to comply with tax laws. For example, underpayments attributable to virtual currency transactions may be subject to penalties, such as accuracy-related penalties under section 6662. In addition, failure to timely or correctly report virtual currency transactions when required to do so may be subject to information reporting penalties under section 6721 and 6722. However, penalty relief may be available to taxpayers and persons required to file an information return who are able to establish that the underpayment or failure to properly file information returns is due to reasonable cause.
source: http://www.businessinsider.com/irs-bitcoin-is-property-not-currency-full-release-2014-3?op=1
Answer: I think it works like stock profits or losses.  But consult your accountant.
Answer: The IRS has not ruled on this yet.  So I plan to treat Bitcoins as an asset for now.  This means keeping track of your cost basis (purchase price + fees) and deducting this from your net sell (sell price - fees) to determine the capital gain or loss.  Since you have no control over the specific coins you sell, you should probably use the FIFO (first-in first-out) accounting method.
Here are a some links to discussions on this subject:
Taxes on Bitcoin Transactions
Reporting bitcoin mining earnings to IRS
Comment: How does this compare for coins that are mined? The purchase price is zero obviously but as a miner you do have expenses, ie power and cost of the computers/GPU/asics etc.  Can those costs be deducted from the price you sold at?
Comment: I would think you could deduct equipment and electricity used for mining as an investment expense.  But this is really an unknown area and there is no telling how the IRS is going to rule on this.  If your mining nets you a significant amount of money, then you really need to consult an accountant.
Answer: While treating income from buying and selling bitcoins as investment income (i.e. like stocks) would be nice, it's not what I would recommend.  The advantage would be that capital gains taxes are cheaper than standard income.  The downside is that if the IRS rules that bitcoins are a currency instead of an asset, then the taxes are higher and if that's how they rule I'm certain they'll be performing audits on everyone that treated them as assets instead.
It means a higher tax bill, but I plan to treat it as a foreign currency while doing my taxes this year.  After all, that's the plan for bitcoin, isn't it, to be taken seriously as real money?  And if the IRS classifies bitcoins as an asset, I can always file an amended return later to recoup the over payment.
Answer: TaxHawk finally has cryptocurrency filing instructions for the 2018 tax year:

Cryptocurrency
Where you report the income from cryptocurrency depends on how you received it.
Wages: Menu Path: Income > Common Income > Wages (W-2)
Investment: Menu Path: Income > Common Income > Stocks or Investments Sold (1099-B)
Mining: Menu Path: Income > Business Income > Business Income (Schedule C)
Virtual currency, also known as cryptocurrency or altcoin, is a medium of exchange that only exists digitally. It has no centralized authority but uses a decentralized system to record transactions and relies on cryptography to prevent counterfeiting and fraudulent transactions. Examples of cryptocurrencies are Bitcoin, Zcash, Litecoin, and Ethereum, just to name a few.
Income paid in cryptocurrency or earned by buying, selling, or mining cryptocurrency is subject to taxation by the IRS. You can read the direction the IRS has given in Bulletin 2014-21.
Where you enter cryptocurrency income depends on how you earned the income. We'll give you an overview of the possible places below.
Wages paid in cryptocurrency should be converted to U.S. dollars on the date of each payment by your employer and reported on your Form W-2. The conversion to dollars should have already happened before you get your W-2.
Income paid to you in exchange for goods and services that wasn't wages (for example, you were paid for a service performed as part of your self-employed business in cryptocurrency) should be converted to U.S. dollars on the date of each payment and reported along with any other self-employment income.
If you held cryptocurrency for investment, it should to be treated as a capital gain or loss.
If you mined cryptocurrency, earnings from this activity should be converted to U.S. dollars as of the date you receive it and be included as income. If you were self-employed for the cryptocurrency mining, the income needs to be reported as self-employed income.

How to file bitcoin income to the IRS


When is a contract legally binding?

Question: If one party wrote an agreement down on paper and the other party signed it, does that make it legally binding? For example, something silly like if Bob wrote on a piece of scrap paper that he will pay Alice $5 a day for her to walk his dog for the next 3 weeks, and they both sign it, then Bob decides he no longer wants the service.  Can Alice successfully sue Bob, if Bob stopped paying?
Answer: To form a contract, you must have:

Intention to create legal relations
Agreement
Consideration
Legal Capacity
Genuine Consent
Legality of Objects

On the face of it, Alice and Bob's agreement meets these criteria so it is a legally binding contract and Alice would have every prospect of success in a legal action for breach of contract.
Specifically:

by writing out and signing the agreement they are showing an intention to be legally bound
what they have each agreed to do is vey clear; more than many I have seen
both parties have provided consideration: dog walking and money
there is no suggestion that either was legally incapable of forming a contract
genuine consent refers to them actually agreeing what they though they agreed, for example if Alice asked Bob to walk her dog (meaning the Great Dane) and Bob agreed (meaning the Jack Russell) there has not been genuine consent
dog walking and paying money are both legal
Comment: @Alex Did you buy a coffee today? Did you sign the contract when you did so?
Comment: Must a contract be signed to be legally binding?
Comment: conversely, if you have said or written something it's not legally binding. For example if I write "I'm going to give you $100" and not sign it, you can't sue me for not doing so. Maybe you can give a definition for what the phrases mean in your first list?
Comment: @Alex I can't give a definition; I could, if I had time, write a textbook. These issues *are* contract law.
Comment: @Alex it does'nt _have_ to be signed, but a signature is good evidence for consent, and not signing is good evidence for no consent. Depends on the situation. When you buy a coffee, the combined fact that the shop offers coffee, you ordered it, the shop gave you the coffee, and you drank it, is good evidence for consent.

When is a contract legally binding?


Should coverage analysis be performed on test code?

Question: I'm of the opinion that it should.  Test code is meant to be deterministic.  This means that 100% of it should be executed.  If it's not 100% (and assuming the analysis tool isn't under-reporting), either there's dead code that ought to be deleted or the code is complicated enough that it ought to be extracted into helper code and that helper code ought to have tests.
Comment: A good point has been raised about coverage of meta-tests (tests for test helpers).  I find a good rule of thumb is that if a function has a cyclomatic complexity of one, it's OK if it doesn't have a test.  This rule of thumb applies to both test code (eg tests themselves) and production code (eg getters and setters).

I should also point out that xUnit itself is a set of test helpers.  I doubt anyone here would opine that it shouldn't have tests.
Comment: While it may seem that this question fixates on code coverage, the deeper question is whether or not test code is as important as production code.  If one thinks test code is as important as production code, it's straightforward to aim for high coverage (although, as has been pointed out and my rule of thumb above implies, 100% may not be a feasible goal).
Comment: While you are at it, you might considering whether you need to do functionality tests on your test code.
Answer: I wouldn't necessarily put it high on the ToDo list, but I think it's beneficial to measure test code coverage to find dead tests. You probably won't get to 100%**, but you can find dead functions and binaries - which makes a big difference when you have a 20-hour automation run you're trying to whittle down to an overnight run.
** note - test code often has more code in error (or failure) conditions than production code, so unless your tests are failing, you probably won't hit the error paths. Of course, this begs the question of whether you should induce failures to ensure that the diagnostics and error handling in the test code is valid, but I'll leave that answer for another question.
Comment: +1 for pointing out that most code in test automation tests for errors and those error paths may not get exercised in a "clean" regression run.
Answer: I'm with Alan on this one - a lot of test automation code will cover error handling which may not get exercised often - and if you're really lucky, it won't ever get exercised (you do include error handling for every routine, right?)
Also, if you have a lot of libraried routines, you might find that one set of tests uses a relatively small subset of your library, where different test sets will use a different but overlapping subset. For instance, a library routine handling say user configuration could be used in multiple test runs. Libraries of utility functions are particularly prone to this.
I'd also suggest that this is a much lower priority than finding older, less effective test automation code and refactoring it to a cleaner state, which in turn is a lower priority than keeping up with new feature development.
Of course, it's possible that the software you're testing is stable and your automation code is nice and clean. In which case, more power to you! You're doing better than I am.
Answer: Personally I don't run code coverage on test code, as a tester with limited time, I simply have too many other things that need my limited time and attention.
What I do run though is static code analysis with Visual Studio or fxCop as a way to keep test code quality high.
I actually joke that visual studio Pro should be called Visual Studio un-Professional as it does not include code analysis, and it forces you to turn off the code analysis policy on TFS if you have a single copy being used as they can't check in with the policy on.
Answer: I assume by "deterministic" you mean "under the same conditions, always does the same thing". I am not sure that deterministic test code equates to 100% test code coverage. For example, a test may be deterministic and at the same time contain error-handling code for reporting anticipated conditions that rarely or never arise in practice.
Do you need 100% test code coverage? I think that depends on the needs of your organization. For example, if you publish your test code, or if your test code is a deliverable to your customer, it may be important to know that every line of your test code has been exercised. In my organization, tests are purely internal tools. I need a high level of confidence that my tests exercise the product in the way I intended and that my tests report failures and success in the way I intended. On the other hand, I am content with a lower level of confidence that my test will behave the way I intended if the network connection between my test and my database server times out.
Your suggestion about extracting uncovered test code into helpers that are then tested by other tests (meta-tests?) raises an interesting question: do you need to ensure 100% coverage for your meta-tests too? And if they contain uncovered code, should you extract them into meta-helpers that are tested with meta-meta-tests? In my organization, this would not be considered a good use of time.
It may be tempting to ask, "If I do not have 100% coverage, how do I know that my tests are correct?" You are wise to ask this question, because we tend to place a great deal of faith in the value of automated tests. However, code coverage is just one of a myriad of possible measurements of quality, all useful and all imperfect. There are other ways to raise your confidence about your tests, e.g. code reviews. Give code coverage its due, but do not allow your enthusiasm for code coverage interfere to with your good judgement.
In a subsequent comment, you said the deeper question is whether test code is as important as production code.  "Important" can mean a lot of things; I assume you mean "necessary".  It is necessary for a software company to have production code, and it sounds as if it is also necessary for your organization to have test code.   Both are software, perhaps written in the same language and perhaps even written by the same people.  Nonetheless, they exist to solve different problems, and so it is reasonable that they may be treated differently.


How to learn automation from scratch?

Question: I have zero knowledge about any coding language. But I have to learn an automation tool, preferably selenium. How should I begin? What language should I learn? In short, how to begin??
Comment: Maybe this helps as a starting points: https://ministryoftesting.com/dojo/series/coding-for-non-coders-jim-holmes There are a lot of courses online. Also this question is primairly oppionionated, because popular languages and tools change over time. Even if this is not a duplicate it does not fit the Stack Exchange format. Any learning process starts with research.
Answer: Well this is a tough question to answer from the start but here is my 2 cents.

Pick a language. You need to figure out a language to start with so that you can get a foundation. If you are new to programing at lease learning the fundamentals of a language will help begin building.
Learn the basics of the framework I started with Selenium, on Java. Overall in every language that I jumped around to, the basics were similar and interacting with the elements were close to the same. eventually using different languages helped my knowledge grow. By example this is how it went for me:

Java Selenium
Selenium Cucumber on Ruby
Cucumber Selenium Java
random PHP frameworks
Random frameworks in JS
Then Testcafe
Python Selenium

Consider what do you do as a user? Understand your users workflows. Consider everything you evaluate while testing. Make sure to include or not include those when composing the test.
Somethings are not worth automating. Things that are timed events that you can't achieve instantly are not worth the effort. If you have test running on a CI. A test that required 1 hours for a process that gets kicked off is a waste. You can try but just be wary of the tests goal.

At this point you just a have to adventure and play around. I hope this helps.
Answer: I am still learning c#\selenium, but I started with video tutorials on youtube from execute automation. I found them INCREDIBLY helpful:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCO1aucBAJgFR8odzfXOZ5uw
They have videos for other languages and technologies as well.
Comment: online videos are helpful. I know grabbing a book helped me as well.

How to learn automation from scratch?


How to cut thin strips of Hardiebacker

Question: I started with Hardiebacker for the first time today for the wall of a shower, and was greatly impressed by the ease of the score-and-snap method for getting the large pieces I need.  However, I also require some thin strips of Hardibacker for a few places (e.g., 3.5 inches wide for the entrance on either side of the curb; 1.5 inches wide in a corner). In those cases there isn't a lot of board to provide much leverage to snap, so how can I make such thin strips reliably?
Answer: After scoring, place the sheet on the floor as usual, then cover the thin strip with a stiff board or straight stud as long as the score line. Align one edge of the board with the score. Kneel, or have someone stand, on the board. Pull up on the larger piece.
In other words, score and snap as usual, but trap the thin piece between your work surface and a stiff strong board.
Answer: You can use a circular saw. There is a blade for cement board, if it is just one cut or two you can sacrifice an old blade. it will dull very quickly.
This will create copious amounts of dust, it is extremely important to wear a mask and safety goggles. You should also use a shop vac to minimize dust.
Comment: Correct, but if you do this a lot with a regular saw, you will kill the bearings. And the note about the dust being extremely dangerous should not be taken lightly.
Answer: There is another way that doesn't require sawing.
All you need are two 2x8s with a 1/2 inch plywood spacer between them at each end, joined securely with several 3" screws, so that there is a 1/2 inch gap between the two boards.
Lay this flat on the floor. Slip the section you want to cut off between the 2x8s with the scored cut line on top, EXACTLY on the edge of the 2x8s.
Put your full weight on the 2x8s with one leg & step down on the Hardiebacker with the other. If it doesn't snap straight, use another board to apply even pressure the entire length & step down on that.
If you're cutting a narrow strip from a large sheet of Hardibacker, you can lift up on it instead. You may need someone else to lift up on it.
Answer: Other answers are also correct -- just to add that an angle grinder with a diamond blade can either cut all the way through or score so heavily that it's easy to snap. (Plus, the grinder will come in handy for tile cutting.)
Can't emphasize enough the danger of this dust, though. Good mask, good dust collection, good eye protection are all necessary.

How to cut thin strips of Hardiebacker


What does the "visibility" number mean on an approach plate?

Question: In the profile view in an approach plate, there is a visibility number next to the MDA or DA. What does it mean? Is it limitation to use the approach?
Comment: This question can be improved if you can include an image of the approach as an example.
Answer: If this question is about the US, the FAA's Chart User's Guide is a useful source for questions about approach plates or any other charts. It says:

This section gives the pilot the lowest altitude and visibility
  requirements for the approach. There are two types of landing
  minimums: Straight-in landing or Circling. Straight-in landing
  minimums are the MDA and visibility, or DH and visibility, required
  for a straight-in landing on a specified runway. Circling minimums are
  the MDA and visibility required for the circle-to-land maneuver.

And:

The visibility values are shown after the DA/DH or MDA. They are
  provided in statue [sic] miles or runway visual range (RVR). RVR is reported
  in hundreds of feet. If the visibility is in statute miles, there is
  an altitude number, hyphen, whole or fractional number, e.g. 530-1.
  This indicates 530 feet MSL and 1 statute mile of visibility. The RVR
  value is separated from the minimum altitude with a slash, e.g.,
  1540/24. This indicates 1540 feet MSL and RVR of 2400 feet.

The number is indeed a limitation: if the required visibility doesn't exist then the pilot can't use the approach. However, there are some differences in what that really means depending on the type of flight: an airline flight (part 121) can't even start an approach if the reported visibility is less than the approach requirements; a private flight (part 91) can start an approach but may not land if the flight visibility is below minimums. This question might be relevant.
Answer: That is typically a Runway Visibility Range (RVR) number expressing the runway visibility in thousands of feet.  The pilot will have to determine whether local weather conditions permit runway visibility at or greater than that published figure in order to successfully terminate the approach in a landing.  If it cannot be done, the flight crew must initiate a missed approach.


Can a simple pendulum be considered a simple harmonic oscillator?

Question: Is the motion of a simple pendulum, a simple harmonic motion? It stops vibrating after sometime.
Answer: $y(\theta) = A\sin \theta+ B \cos \theta$ is known as the simple harmonic function. All the motions which can be represented by this function are known as simple harmonic motions.
Motion of a simple pendulum is approximately a simple harmonic motion for small amplitudes. It stops vibrating after some-time due to drag from air i.e. loss of energy. But, we don't take that into account. Physics always has a habit of taking ideal cases. But if you want to consider the 'damping', it is not SHM. It is in that case, known as Damped Harmonic Motion.
Comment: @Bernhard From the physics point of view, I would prefer the same, but I wrote the general form of the simple harmonic function.
Comment: I'd prefer $y(t)=A\cos(\omega t + \phi )$
Answer: A body is said to be executing S.H.M. if it oscillates about a fixed mean position and the motion should be periodic i.e. body takes equal time to reach its mean position in several repetetions......(All S.H.Ms are periodic in nature but all periodic motions are not simple harmonic)......


Master address - not saving choice

Question: I have been working to finalize import of approximately 2,000 contact records from our old systems. Our old db had 2 people in one record, so have been working to separate. Imported the primary contact and was using import on the second contact and utilize the "master address belongs to" field. My 2 smaller groups of the second contact worked just fine and properly "mapped" and saved the master addressee belongs to. Yesterday I was importing my last batch of about 600 names. The import took longer than normal but eventually I just went to a screen saying there was a web server error. About 94 of the last records didn't get imported. As I was working on some cleanup I realized that when I would manually go edit someone's address and tie it to a master address nothing would save. I was able to take one contact, put in an address, save, and then edit again and tie the master address. However, I haven't been able to replicate that again. I ran the system job to clean cache and that didn't help. I was on 4.6.5 and decided to go ahead and do my upgrade yesterday to see if that might clear up whatever, and it didn't. The crash of the import seems to be the point where something changed. Has anyone experienced this or recommend anything (even at the table level in phpMyAdmin -- which I am comfortable navigating in) that I can check/try?
Comment: I just tried something that may be indicating why an update isn't saving. If I just go to a contact and click the Edit Address button in the address area, Civi lets me select another user but nothing saves (i.e.,the address comes back to the one already entered and isn't linked). I found another similar post and he stated that he if went to the full edit instead he got some resolution. I tried that with 2 contacts and in both cases when entering different contacts (that have an address on their record), Civi threw "Please select valid shared contact or a contact with valid address" when saving
Comment: not sure if this will help but - can you visit civicrm/admin/setting/debug?reset=1 and turn on debugging and backtrace. And yes try using the full 'Edit' process. Also note if you get pop ups and do not see any useful errors, rather than just clicking on the button that triggers the pop up, try right clicking and opening in a new page, since that is more likely to show you any errors.
Comment: Thank you for replying. I hadn't thought to turn on the debugging/backtrace but did and nothing posted. I was able to edit a couple both with the direct Edit button and the Edit Address and a couple "took" and a couple didn't but saved the address and didn't link. I also got a couple where I selected a master contact from the dropdown list but when I tried to save Civi told me I had to select a valid contact (and I know it is a valid contact as she was also a master address owner for another contact that saved fine). Since we have just imported data I'm about tempted since it worked before my
Comment: I tried to import a "Master Address belongs to" using http://d46.demo.civicrm.org/ and it will not import. Unless somebody can share the steps to get this to work on the demo site, we should consider this feature broken and report a bug.
Comment: hmm - i tried importing a Master Address too and got nowhere. Would you be willing to open a JIRA ticket, spell out steps to replicate. and then perhaps post the jira as an answer here
Comment: I'm not sure this has ever worked quite right.  I believe the only way I've been able to import contacts and master addresses was a two step process.  1. import person including the street, city, etc of the master address.  2.  import update adding the master address belongs to.  When an address record has a master address id, it also has the street, city, etc.
Comment: If you try to import update a person without an address and include the master address belongs to, the contact will appear not to have an address.  When you click on the address it will pull up all the addresses in the db.   If you try to import update a person without an address and include the master address belongs to, the contact will appear not to have an address.  When you click on the address it will pull up all the addresses in the db.
Comment: When I tried to import a new person with a master address belongs to with debug on I got a back trace, is not of the type Integer coming from CRM_Contact_BAO_Relationship::checkDuplicateRelationship((Array:4), 8861, NULL).  That last NULL can't be null.  It should be the ID of the master address's contact.  The code looks to be trying to create relationships in the case of individual having the master address of a household.
Answer: I'm not sure this is the answer Drew is looking for or it even addresses his issue.  It sounds like it was working for him and then he had a timeout and it messed a number of them up.  The comments, which I added too many to, show that it doesn't work in some cases.
To import contact with a master address belonging to someone else, you need to include the actual address along with the address belongs to.  It is looking for the ID of master address.  How one might know that without sql is beyond me.  Whenever I've imported people with shared addresses, I've imported all the people each with an address and then wrote some sql to pull out the address id of those that would be the master and id of the contact that would use that address and id and did an import update.
I just imported a Joe Blow into Demo46 having him share an address id 3.  My cvs had first, last, street, city, state, postal, country and master address belongs to.
I'm guessing way back when for ease of implimenting shared addresses it appears it was decided not to quite do them as relational database should.  You'd expect the id to be there and for the forms, queries, etc. to follow that id for the address, but it appears it depends on the address actually being in the record.  I suspect the contact form sees that and does a copy when you share an address or the master gets changed.
So Drew you might look at your database and see if you have records in civicrm_address that have a master address id but the street, city, etc. are blank.  If so this sql should fix it.  (A caution, I wrote this sql a while ago but it think it's still fine.  In case your wondering why it is ca and pa, I was dealing parents and children.)
<code>update civicrm_address ca,
       civicrm_address pa
set    ca.street_address = pa.street_address,
       ca.city = pa.city,
       ca.state_province_id = pa.state_province_id,
       ca.postal_code = pa.postal_code,
       ca.postal_code_suffix = pa.postal_code_suffix,
       ca.country_id = pa.country_id
where  ca.master_id = pa.id
and    ca.master_id is not null
and    ca.street_address is null
</code>
If you don't have the master_id populated but you do have the two people both having the address, you could write some sql to add the address id of the first to be the master_id of the second.

Master address - not saving choice


What Bhagavad-Gita says about responding to those who hurt you?

Question: What Bhagavad-Gita says about responding to those who hurt you? Do we need to stay calm and get hurt again and again untill our life ends and get the whole life spoiled because of bad people? Or else do we need to wait for the God's next incarnation? Or else leave them saying that God will punish them after death?
Comment: You are forgetting why Krishna gave Geeta updesha to Arjuna in the first place. Korwas hurt them(Padwas). And Pandwa's elders also taking side of Korwas(for diff reasons). Arjuna said to Krishna _"I can't fight with my own family. God will surely punish him then why I need to kill my own brothers/Grand Father/Guru"_ Then Krishna gave Geeta updesha to Arjuna to teach about Dharma. One must not surrender himself against adharma. But one has to kill all adharmies Even if it is your own relatives. Geeta promotes to take action against bad instead of sitting quitely and leave everything on God.
Comment: The key reason of Geeta updesha was to promote Arjuna to fight against bad instead of keep hurt by korwas and leave everything on God by thinking God will punish them some day.
Comment: @Rishabh, i don't know why, but i just find your spelling of kauravas as korwas to be hilarious :), i hope i don't offend you or anything, maybe it's a regional thing, but it's just sounds funny when i say it in my head..
Comment: @ram I am not offended at all bro. It's just, spell-check feature only works on English words. And kauravas is a Hindi word written in English. So spell-check feature can't correct me there. And without spell-check I am pretty useless in spelling hahaha
Answer: How to rightly act in a given situation, is part of Dharma. Bhagavad Gita doesn't discuss on general Dharma in the scope of prakruti. Refer:
What is Dharma according to the Bhagavad Gita?
According to Gita, a person doesn't "act" under his own will.

BG 5.8, 5.9 — "'I' certainly don't do anything" is believed by knower of fundamentals (tattva gyAna) - even while seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, eating, moving, dreaming, breathing, talking, discarding, accepting, opening, closing; -- "Senses only are acting in the subjects of senses" - is understood.

Hence this Qn may not be in the scope of Bhagavad Gita. You may want to ask from the perspective of Dharma ShAstra to get the precise answer.

However, for your specific Qn during Gita's discourse Krishna does ask Arjuna to fight without giving way to weakness:

BG 2.3 - O Partha, yield not to unmanliness. This does not befit you. O scorcher of foes, arise, giving up the petty weakness of the heart.


How to clean my humidifier

Question: I know, it's my mistake.
I used common non-filtered water in the humidifier. And now it has limescale.
How to remove it carefully and don't break humidifier?
Answer: Limescale can be dissolved by acids.
Vinegar essence is a popular cleaning agent because it doesn't leave residues, but it smells quite pungent.
Citric acid works just as well and doesn't smell. Do use diluted pure citric acid  rather than lemon juice because juice leaves residues. It can be bought in most drug stores or pharmacies and even as a cooking/baking ingredient in well-sorted supermarkets.
Be responsible and safe! Wash your hands after handling acids and take care not to get any into your eyes. Keep out of the reach of children.
Plain old sparkling water contains carbonic acid in a low concentration. It's probably the safest detergent of all the listed ones but also the weakest and may take longer or multiple applications to completely clean the humidifier. The more the water fizzes, the better it can dissolve limescale. Do not let the humidifier sit in sparkling water for a whole day, because as soon as it stops fizzing, the carbonic acid is gone and the mineralized water itself builds even more limescale.
Do not use any sugary beverages like lemonade or coke unless you know you can clean sticky sugar from the humidifier sufficiently.
Comment: Welcome to Lifehacks! I have used vinegar myself and it works well, but will try to sparkling water method in the future. Great answer!
Answer: Buy special liquid to remove limescale. It usually used for kettles or irons. I don't think, that it will damage your device.  Just follow the instruction.
Or you can ask for help in the store, where did you buy your humidifier.
Answer: WD-40 contains petroleum distillates which will remain in the water and are somewhat toxic when ingested, It is a water displacing lubricant not a descaler. Lime scale is dissolved minerals in the water left after the water evaporates. Rinsing with hot distilled water (demineralized water) will clean the humidifier.
Answer: I don't if you ever have heard the word of "WD-40". As a solution I agree with Elmy but if you want cheap and trustable solution you may want to try WD-40.
Here is a page for some examples that you can use WD-40
But you may find it so strong, I can offer use the products of Durgol. ı trust this brand for descaling my coffee machine.
I hope these helps.
Comment: WD40 is a bad idea. It doesn't descale, and it will leave a greasy residue in the humidifier which will cause problems later on.
Comment: First of all any chemicals will remains residue ; that is why you should boil hot water and use it to remove anything remains. WD-40 is not leaving greasy residue and it is also used for descaling, but it may depends on brands. Also you should follow the links I shared. Durgol is one the trustable brand for Coffee machines.
Comment: WD-40 is designed to be difficult to remove with water. And no, it doesn't descale. From wikipedia: The long-term active ingredient is a non-volatile viscous oil which remains on the surface to which it is applied, giving lubrication and protection from moisture.

How to clean my humidifier