How do I decompress a .astc file with an additional .ccz extension? How do I view .lta files?

Question:
This is crossposted from reg. stack overflow. I was referred here.
  This will have more updates, however.

First, full disclosure: I'm very new to coding and very new to file dissecting, but its something I anticipate studying in school very soon, so please pardon my ignorance in future interactions.
As a project I've decided to dissect the files of a mobile app I greatly enjoy. This app is Futurama: Worlds of Tomorrow. I'm a big fan of the cartoon, even spent money on the stuff, so I figured it was natural for me to pick.
Extracting the .apk file was easy, I found some of the assets they use in the game, like the music, the soundbytes, and some .pngs. All simple stuff.
However there are two files I'm absolutely baffled by: files with an .astc.czz extension and .lta files, the developers informed me that those are animation files.
Allow me to go into what I know and what I don't know:
Filename.astc.czz
Example file here
I recognize .astc as a compression file and was informed that .astc files are common for mobile games. Fair enough, but the real extension is .czz, the "real" extension of the file leads me to dead end. I've found the ASTC Evaluation Codec
by ARM-Software on github so I tried that. I changed the extension to .astc and then tried keeping .czz but the codec gives me an error every time. This is where I show my ignorance, I didn't know the right way to do this so I'm showing you every combination of what I tried. I replaced my name with user.
C:\Users\user\Downloads\astc-encoder-master\Binary\Win32
λ astcenc -d C:\Users\user\Downloads\astc-encoder-master\Binary\Win32\firstname.lastname@example.com C:\Users\user\Downloads\astc-encoder-master\Binary\Win32\email@example.com
File C:\Users\user\Downloads\astc-encoder-master\Binary\Win32\firstname.lastname@example.com not recognized

C:\Users\user\Downloads\astc-encoder-master\Binary\Win32
λ astcenc -d email@example.com firstname.lastname@example.com
File email@example.com not recognized

C:\Users\user\Downloads\astc-encoder-master\Binary\Win32
λ astcenc -d C:\Users\user\Downloads\astc-encoder-master\Binary\Win32\firstname.lastname@example.com C:\Users\user\Downloads\astc-encoder-master\Binary\Win32\email@example.com
Failed to open file C:\Users\user\Downloads\astc-encoder-master\Binary\Win32\email@example.com

C:\Users\user\Downloads\astc-encoder-master\Binary\Win32
λ astcenc -d firstname.lastname@example.com firstname.lastname@example.com
Failed to open file firstname.lastname@example.com

No success there.
So then I learned that .CZZ files are apparently associated with visECAD Viewer  and I downloaded that and the .astc.czz files became associated with the program. I tried opening them but visECAD says it cant open them because they are "outdated." So that's another dead end.
I was told to use Unix's file command too, and all I got was "data":
ubuntu@ubuntu:~/Downloads$ file BR1.astc.ccz -b data ubuntu@ubuntu:~/Downloads$ file BR1.astc.ccz BR1.astc.ccz: data ubuntu@ubuntu:~/Downloads$ file BR1.astc.ccz -i -b application/octet-stream; charset=binary ubuntu@ubuntu:~/Downloads$ file BR1.astc.ccz -z BR1.astc.ccz: data ubuntu@ubuntu:~/Downloads$ file -z BR1.astc.ccz BR1.astc.ccz: data

Right, so that's all I know.
Filename.lta
Example file here
Out of curiosity I've actually emailed the developers about this file (and the astc ones too) and they said those are the animation files of the game. They couldn't send me a viewer, which is perfectly fine, but I don't even know what .lta could be. I think it has something to do with Maya, but that's all I got. Any insight would be appreciated, the animations are great and I would love to see them.
For full disclosure here are snippets of what the developers sent me:

Those strange file types are actually compressed files (like
  ".astc.ccz"). Different devices use different compression methods, so
  we support many types to maintain low storage and memory usage. Some
  devices don't use compression and just use .png versions of the same
  file names.
The .lta files are the game's animations. I wish I could help you out
  with viewing them, but there's no way for me to send you a viewer. :(

Well that's all folks, sorry it was so long, and thank you so much in advance. I'm grateful already!
Answer: since these formats seem to be custom to the game, I suspect there is no other way than disassembling/decompiling the game code to see how they're processed.


Questions with pronouns

Question: More specifically, I saw a question in French written like this: "Qu'arrive-t-il à Lucas". Why is the "il" necessary; isn't this a repetition of the "que" (therefore making it redundant) and therefore this question reads "What arrives it at Lucas"? I simply don't see why they added that "il".
Comment: *Que* is a direct object here, with an impersonal subject. The declarative equivalent would be "il arrive quelque chose à Lucas"
Comment: @Eauquidort Wait; why would "que" be a direct object here? For example, in "qu'est-ce que c'est", que is the subject because it is an object. Why would it be different here?
Comment: Because the declarative sentence would be, as @Eauquidort wrote, "Il arrive quelque chose à Lucas." Consider: the subject is the [expletive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syntactic_expletive) "il", the direct object is what is happening, and the indirect object is Lucas. Also consider the similar sentence "[Il se passe quelque chose à Monopolis](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvRQWGWf3-M)" where you even have this impersonal "non-subject" being reflexive. :) In both cases, the meaning is exactly what you'd expect if the thing happening were the subject.
Comment: Similarly, you could also have a construction where the direct object is a verbal clause acting as a noun phrase, as in "[Il m'arrive maintenant de te regarder différement](http://www.paroles-musique.com/paroles-Notre-dame_De_Paris-Esmeralda_Tu_Sais-lyrics,p4421)": "il" is the subject, "me" is the indirect object, and "te regarder différement" is the direct object. Note that @Julep gives good examples below of other sentences that typically use the expletive (impersonal) subject.
Comment: To explain the syntax of "qu'est-ce que c'est", think of this exchange: "It's something." — "Oh! What is it?" — "Huh? What is what?" — "What is it that *it* is?" :p The first "que" is not a subject but the object of the first "est", whose subject is the first "ce", which is itself the object of the second "est", whose subject is the second "ce". ... But I don't think it actually has much to do with expletive subjects. :)
Answer: In your example, the Qu' (for que) points to whatever is happening to Lucas, and the il is impersonal. Like in the statement It rains. It here isn't really something or someone.
So just as you could say and ask the followings :

It rains.
Does it rain?

You can say and ask :

Il arrive quelque chose à Lucas.
Qu'arrive-il à Lucas?

Careful though! In other situations, il in a question would be a personal pronoun. Like in :

Lucas est à l'école.
Où est-il?

And in that case il replaces Lucas and it would be redundant to ask :

Où est-il, Lucas?

To conclude, some sentences use impersonal pronouns, and if you flip those sentences into questions, you will find again the impersonal pronoun. The more you read and speak French, the more you will be able to recognise them! For a start, here are a few examples :

Il arrive que..
Il pleut, Il neige, Il vente...
Il faut...
Il est tard, Il est tôt...

Questions with pronouns


Is there a research on correlation between honesty and success?

Question: Did anyone do a research on corelation between honesty and success, establishing individual's honesty through a provocative experiment and comparing it with his/her salary amount, satisfaction of achievement etc?
Or anything close to that?
Comment: @user3169 -- Obviously you would not ask a person whether he or she is honest. One of the best methods would be covert observation (in the field) followed by an objective measurement protocol using the gathered data. There are various ways in which to assess honesty indirectly. I have run a questionnaire with a similar goal in the past (measuring ethics through judgement on various scenarios), although that was just for school. I do find this overall topic very important, and I would like to see proper research done on the topic of which OP has inquired.
Comment: I wonder how would you measure someone's honesty. Without independent verification, they might be lying.
Comment: In ideal world , there is but in our ...
Answer: No provocative experiment needed. Some of the major taxonomies within personality psychology have well-validated measures for honesty, and have been used in massive samples that could already address this question. I would start by doing a search on Google Scholar for those measures and the types of success you mention. E.g.,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honesty-humility_factor_of_the_HEXACO_model_of_personality

Notice that the trait most often associated with success is Conscientiousness, which may include an aspect of honesty:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscientiousness
Comment: @rus9384 please share the citation from the research you mention. I imagine it also depends on how you define success.
Comment: It's strange given that people with machiavellian traits more often reach success. And they typically score lower on conscientiousness. Of course, it may be that only those who are higher in both reach success more often. But given that the correlation is strong, it's unlikely.
Answer: To add to the existing answer, honesty-humility is a major factor in the HEXACO framework of personality.
There is a comprehensive list of papers using the HEXACO framework here organised under a wide range of headings:
http://hexaco.org/references
My sense of the literature is that honesty-humility in the HEXACO framework is related more to ethical behaviour and lower levels of deviant behaviour (e.g., counterproductive work behaviours, criminality, deviance, etc.), as well as lower levels of self-interest and egotism.
I don't think it has a major direct relationship with success and achievement, at least empirically. But I haven't reviewed the literature.
Theoretically, deviant behaviour would often reduce life success. Getting fired, damaging your reputation, going to prison, getting expelled from school, and so on. However, also, some degree of self-interest may also assist in personal achievement. Furthermore, it may just be that it's not the most relevant dimension of personality: i.e., conscientiousness and abilities are probably more related to achievement.
Comment: Doesn't it depend on how much that behaviour is deviant? It is hard to know if a human lies, especially if lies are small.
Answer: (This answer your question only partially).
Honesty and success are made of many things. Quite a bunch of studies found interesting correlations between honesty and success at the collective/cultural level. (They measure the success in term of wealth, trust, quality of the institution, rights, etc.).
Just a sample to give an idea:
● Edward C. Banfield (1958) shows some correlation between many aspects of honesty and success (he wrote a book about it The Moral Basis of a Backward Society).
● Arrow (1972) & Fukuyama (1995) found that the level of trust in a society strongly predicts its economic success.
● Guido Enrico Tabellini (an Italian economist) find that "there is not just one institutional failure. Typically, the countries or regions that fail in one dimension also fail in many other aspects of collective behavior."
● Inglehart (1990, 1997) analyses of a broader range of societies, and argue that cultural values fundamentally drive economic performance and democratic stability.
● Landes, D. S. (1998)  & Rogers D. found that people's value shape their wealth (they wrote a book: The wealth and poverty of nations: why some are so rich and some so poor)

References: (you'll find many others in the references of their studies).
● Banfield, E. C. (1958). with the assistance of Laura Fasano Banfield. The moral basis of a backward society.
● Arrow, K. J. (1972). Economic welfare and the allocation of resources for invention. In Readings in industrial economics (pp. 219-236). Palgrave, London.
● Porta, R. L., Lopez-De-Silane, F., Shleifer, A., & Vishny, R. W. (1996). Trust in large organizations (No. w5864). National Bureau of Economic Research.
● Tabellini, G. (2008). Presidential Address: Institutions and Culture. Journal of the European Economic Association, 6(2/3), 255-294. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/40282643
● Inglehart, R. (1997). Modernization and postmodernization: Cultural, economic, and political change in 43 societies. Princeton university press.
Comment: Welcome! These sources seem interesting/relevant! Might I encourage you to add these references as full APA references at the bottom of your answer for easier reference?
Comment: @StevenJeuris Done!


What is the standard way to find averages of measurement values that contain statistic and systematic uncertainties?

Question: How to find the average value of several measurement results if we know their statistical and systematics uncertainties?
There might be that there is no such thing as best way to do it, but it would be helpful to know how is this done in different areas of physics/science.
Comment: *"**the** standard way to..."* (emphasis added) Which one? Especial with regard to the systematics you have to take care to be sure you understand *how* the uncertainty would effect your result.
Comment: Related: http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/23643/, http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/24421
Answer: If all of your measurements are completely independent, then I would add the statistical and systematic errors in quadrature to find the effective uncertainty on each measurement,
$$
(\sigma^i_\text{effective})^2 = (\sigma_\text{stat}^i)^2 + (\sigma_\text{syst}^i)^2,
$$
and find the error-weighted mean as suggested by Dai,
$$
\left< x \right> = \frac{\sum x_i / (\sigma_\text{effective}^i)^2}{\sum (\sigma_\text{effective}^i)^{-2}},
$$
where the uncertainty on the mean is
$$
(\sigma_\text{effective}^\text{mean})^{-2} =
{\sum (\sigma_\text{effective}^i)^{-2}}.
$$
If your measurements are statistically independent but share a common systematic uncertainty — for example, you have several experiments that use a related technique to determine an overall normalization — then treating the systematic uncertainties as independent would overestimate the total uncertainty.  In that case you might weight the measurements by their statistical uncertainty,
$$
\left< x \right> = \frac{\sum x_i / (\sigma_\text{stat}^i)^2}{\sum (\sigma_\text{stat}^i)^{-2}},
\quad\text{with statistical uncertainty }
(\sigma_\text{stat}^\text{mean})^{-2} =
{\sum (\sigma_\text{stat}^i)^{-2}},
$$
and assign a separate systematic uncertainty
$\sigma_\text{stat}^\text{mean}$
to the mean based on ordinary error propagation from the individual measurements.
For example,
if your systematic uncertainty is $\sigma_\text{syst}^i/x_i = 1\%$ for all of your measurements, you could reasonably assign $\sigma_\text{syst}^\text{mean}/\left<x\right> =1\%$.
Real measurements usually have a table or a section in the documenting paper entitled "Error budget" which tabulates the authors' estimates for the systematic uncertainties, and combinations of real, independent measurements will have some correlated and some uncorrelated quantities. The proper way to combine such measurements is to construct a covariance matrix. This is a nontrivial task which makes up a long chapter in many PhD theses. For one thoughtful discussion, see §10 of the introduction to the PDG's Review of Particle Physics.
Answer: The mean of a distribution sampled $N$ times is
$$ \bar{x} = 1/N \sum x_i $$
What you want though is the weighted mean
$$ \bar{x} = \frac{ \sum w_i x_i }{ \sum w_i } $$
Here, in order to account for the measurement uncertainties, the weights should be the inverse of the variances (inverse of the standard deviations $\sigma_i$ squared, obviously), or
$$ w_i = 1/\sigma_i^2 $$


USB Mouse on Laptop won't change window focus

Question: I have an Asus g74sx dual-booting Ubuntu and Win7 via Wubi. My touchpad and usb mouse work perfectly in Windows, but behave abnormally in Ubuntu; if I just use the touchpad, everything works fine, but if I try to use a USB Mouse, the mouse will function on the window that has focus, or on the desktop, but refuses to change focus unless I right click on the window's titlebar repeatedly until it snaps to. The odd thing is that this behavior also affects the touchpad; it has the exact same issue while the USB mouse is plugged in. Removing the USB mouse will return the touchpad to normal. I have tested this on Unity, Gnome-shell, Gnome Classic, and Enlightenment.
I'm a Linux newbie, so this may be quite a ways off, but its almost as if Ubuntu is not interpreting my touchpad as a touchpad; rather, it thinks its a proper standard mouse. This is also confirmed by trying to install Synaptiks for multitouch support; the touchpad is indeed Synaptics powered but Ubuntu doesn't recognize it when trying to install that app from the Software Center. If it matters, the USB mouse is a Cyborg R.A.T. 7 wired mouse, and performs flawlessly in Windows. I can also confirm this issue occurs when using a Logitech MX Revolution wireless mouse.
Answer: I solved my own issue using the information found here.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1528982
Comment: Is it possible to summarize the changes you made?  Thanks!


Remove Points that Overlay

Question: I have a pointlayer and some points overlay and i want to remove them, so that only one point remains. the points that overlay have the same coordinates
Answer: If you have an ArcInfo license level use ArcGIS tool Delete Identical (Data Management). Use "Shape field" as field whose values will be compared to find identical records.
Answer: You can use the Collect Events tool in ArcGIS.
Not only will it combine all the points at a location to a single point, it will also give you a count of how many points were combined together at each location.
Documentation for the tool can be found at:
http://help.arcgis.com/en/arcgisdesktop/10.0/help/index.html#//005p0000003s000000
Answer: There is a software called ET GeoWizards which is added as a toolbar to ArcGIS and is free to use for up to 100 features. The tool you are looking for is called Clean Points, which removes any duplicate layers.
Worth checking out as there a many useful tools that ESRI doesn't provide. And it's cheap as well - compared to an ArcInfo license!
Btw. I don't get anything for advertising, but it has saved me many days over the years and Ianko Tchoukanski is very good in coming back in case you have any queries.

Remove Points that Overlay


"I want to come there" or "I want to go there"

Question: When someone is away from you and wants to be where you are, do they tell you I want to come there or I want to go there?
Answer: I have always thought that go has a slight connotational leaning to describing the journey, or leaving the origin.
Come has a connotation to arriving, or the destination.
Thus, "I want to go to Paris" states that I want to make a journey, with Paris as the destination, but that the journey is important.
"I want to come to Rome" implies that the arrival in Rome is for a specific reason that is personally, emotionally important to the speaker.
Moreover, coming to Rome, as opposed to going to Paris, seems to imply that the speaker is addressing someone who is in Rome, and will be coming to them or going to Paris.
I believe that both choices are grammatically valid, but that each has a slightly different meaning invested in it.
Comment: @kiamlaluno I disagree - *Jennifer went home* is closer than *Jennifer came home* to *Jennifer left*. I agree with Carmi's sense that *go* has a "slight connotation" with the departure and *come*, with the arrival.
Comment: Actually, _go_ doesn't have the connotation of leaving the origin, and _come_ the connotation of arriving to the destination. Compare _Jennifer went home_ with _Jennifer came home_, or _Jessica came into the kitchen_ with _Jessica went into the kitchen_. None of the sentences speaks of where the person was before moving; they all say where the person arrived. The difference between _come_ and _go_ is another one.
Comment: @Lawrence In both the sentences it's implicit that Jennifer moved from a place, or it would not be travelling. There is something else that makes the difference between _Jennifer went home_ and _Jennifer came home_.
Answer: Generally, when speaking with a person that is away from you, I want to come there would be understood as I want to travel and arrive where you are.
I want to go there could mean I want to go in the place we are talking of.
Comment: 'I want to come there' is correct because it references the location of _the person being addressed_.
Answer: The most common/natural expression here is probably along the lines of:

I wish I were there.

(Okay, so many people don't bother to use the subjunctive - as you should - and say was instead of were.)
A possible alternative is I want to be there - it's slightly less natural sounding to me though, at least in British English.
I want to go there. might be an appropriate response if someone mentioned a foreign country/holiday destination that sounded appealing to you. I can't think of any real-word situation in which I want to come there. would sound best.
Comment: "I wish I were there" is expressing a wish for having been there *now*. It's not equivalent to "I want to come/go there". (As in: "Will you be in Vienna another two months? I want to come there in the summer.")
Comment: Or even "That place you're describing sounds wonderful! I want to buy tickets and come there right now". In both examples, the OP is asking whether "go" would be right in place of "come".
Comment: "That place you're describing sounds wonderful!" would be quite unnatural in (British) English - a bit convoluted. Otherwise, yeah. I just thought I'd point out alternative contexts in which it makes more sense. :)
Comment: _I want to go there_ doesn't necessarily mean I am talking of a foreign country. I could be speaking of an event happening in my country with a person living in the same building I live, and say _I want to go there_ to mean _I want to go to the event we are speaking of_. When speaking to a person that doesn't live where I live, _I want to come there_ could mean _I want to travel and arrive where you are_.
Answer: I would have to say that there is a fairly simple and straightforward rule to this confusion.  If you are presently at the location, then use "come" (as in: While sitting at a cafe in Rome drinking espresso "I would love to come back next year." or alternatively, "Excuse me, can you come over here").  But, if you are not presently at the location, to use "go" (as in: "Will you go over there." or "Hawai'i? I would love to go there.").
Comment: That's all well and good as a first approximation, but your rule doesn't take into account the possibility that you are talking to somebody who is not located where you are, and you are discussing travel to the other person's location. For example (phoning home from the office): "Sorry I had to work late; I'm coming home now." Or (e.g., when rescuing an injured person): "Stay where you are; I'll come to you."


How to deal with with many fields

Question: I have a form in which there are many fields around 11-13(average not constant). Now some fields are required while others are not. My client intends to hide all non-required ones and show only required ones.What is the best way to hide/show non-required fields.
Comment: Not a direct answer but in general I highly recommend Luke Wrobleysky's [excellent book on web form design](http://www.lukew.com/resources/web_form_design.asp).
Answer: Do an accordion or sliding panels. Expand the mandatory fields section by default and close the optional fields panel by default. This way user always sees the mandatory fields open and if they want to look at other fields, all are a click away. https://jqueryui.com/accordion/#collapsible
Comment: What if I don't put mandatory fields in accordion and simply make accordion for optional fields?
This should be better UX ,what do you say?
Comment: Sure you can do that. But its not an accordion any more. Just a single sliding panel. Only advantage I see is if you have way too many fields in each of the sections, it will help visibility/manageability if you have two sections collapsible. If you are working with not so many fields, then you could do just one collapsible.
Answer: You could present the mandatory fields first and then on a second page show the optional ones with a clear way to skip filling them out.
This is a technique called progressive disclosure and might be a good alternative depending on the context.
Answer: I don't know the nature of the entities you are dealing with, but if client is insisting on this then
1) Show a checkbox at the top of the form labeled - Show only mandatory fields. On selecting this checkbox, non-mandatory fields should be hidden
2) Or, you can a checkbox with label - Fast fill.On selecting this checkbox, non-mandatory fields should be hidden
You can remember user's preference if he use this form again so that he/she doesn't have to make select this checkbox again.
However, do sensitize the client that they will run the risk of totally forgetting about non-mandatory fields. So you need to remind the user about the completion status of these forms if the need be.
Answer: The best way would be different in different cases So, you can take a look at some literature or good examples on Progressive disclosure (the term for this) to determine what suits you best.
Also, the way you hide and disclose would depend on a lot of things like

The screen ( web, mobile etc.)
Content length
Relation between the content
Hierarchy
Visual appeal etc.

How to deal with with many fields


Measuring leaf blower force

Question: It seems that many manufacturers are moving from CFM/MPH claims to using newtons of force for comparisons.   Does anyone know how they're measuring it - what tool/meter,  from the motor or tube,  etc.?
Comment: May prove handy: https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/wind-load-d_1775.html
Comment: I use an anemometer for such things. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=anemometer&t=ffsb&ia=products The kind with a heated coil gives better spot readings than the fan type.
Answer: A Newton is a force ( 0.22 pounds or 102 g, per Wikipedia). But you need to have a standard area ; as in water pressure given in pounds PER SQUARE INCH. I would guess since they are using metric the area unit is a square meter . In that case a rating of one newton would be a pressure of 102 g on an area of one square meter . That seems a reasonable order of magnitude for an inexpensive blower. They measure the pressure in the discharge nozzle.
Answer: A blower, in engineering land, is generally characterized by two specifications, the flow rate and the pressure. The common methods of communicating them is either by listing the maximum values or through a blower curve. It sounds like these manufacturers are only giving you part of the story.
In practical terms, the pressure (which as blacksmith37 notes should be in N/m^2 or psi, not N) represents how hard the blower hits the leaves. Using a pretty simple equation (h=p/r*g), you can convert this to the more intuitive "if I use this blower to shoot a leaf straight up in the air, how high will it go?" More pressure means the leaf goes higher in the air.
The flow rate on the other hand tells you how much air is blowing, or practically, how many leaves you can blow at a time.
So if you had a choice of blowers, you would want a high-pressure, low-flow one to blow a small amount of wet leaves, but you would want a low-pressure, high-flow one to blow a huge amount of fluffy leaves.
As a bonus, multiplying the pressure by the flow rate (and throwing in an efficiency factor) gives you the power consumed by the blower.
Specifically answering your question, an engineer would use a differential pressure gauge to measure the pressure generated by the blower. If you were a sales engineer instead of a real engineer, you could then multiple that pressure in N/m^2 by the cross-sectional area of the blower outlet in m^2 to get a total applied force in N. That would be dumb though, because the pressure is a much more useful specification than the force.
Answer: The problem is that NONE of the gasoline blower firms ever give any such blower curves showing P!
So I had to buy a handheld Testo anemometer to get real (crude but useful) data on my Echo gas blowers etc. to compare with other 12 V blowers for my research for a new application.

Measuring leaf blower force


This infers to the US 6924742 B2 patent

Question: I have some design ideas that I want to bring to life that could potentially save lives. Just like the child seat mats, I want to create a pair one for the parent and the other for the car seat, so when the parent gets up from the mat in their seat, an alarm goes off and the only way to turn off is from the child's mat, thus reminding the parent. I know it isn't much but if I could get in contact with the inventor for the patent US 6924742 B2 I think we could have something. I don't know where else to go, and I am tired of seeing children die each year. if we can have fancy phones why cant there be a device to prevent deaths of children?
Answer: I'm a little confused of what you're asking here. It sounds like you want to get a patent on your idea using mats instead of the original patent's seatbelts? I fear this post will count as a public disclosure and will likely have a negative effect on your patentability.

This infers to the US 6924742 B2 patent


How do I create a link to a specific portal on the Intel map?

Question: I want to share a url that links to a specific portal on the http://ingress.com/intel map. How can I do that?
Answer: I know no way to reference a portal directly.
However you can create a link like this
http://www.ingress.com/intel?latE6=41380512&lngE6=2177417&z=19
Basically you have to find the coordinates of the portal you want to share and insert them into the link (you can use Google maps).
I hope either niantic labs or browser plugin developers will fix this in the coming future.
Comment: What browser plugins do you use with ingress? I was considering writing one that logged all of the RPC's lat longs and names from that site, and somehow generated the links for them (I'd use z=17 but I know ingress sends you super zoomed ones). Then shorten them with goo.gl, cross reference by ID, and add that information to the map so that the shortened URL can be seen in portal details, so they can be pasted in chats etc. A better solution would be a companion domain that has short links, and allows searching.
Comment: I am not using anything at the moment, but if you need help on your plugin suggestion please pm me.
Answer: The "pguid" key in the query string can be set to the GUID for a particular portal in order to highlight it.  Here is an example pointing to the Mosaic Sundial in Boulder:

http://www.ingress.com/intel?latE6=40001583&lngE6=-105244818&z=14&pguid=fed178cb41794581874daeb2fae05f17.11

But note that this seems to be a feature that only works (so far? :) for the IITC client
You can get this sort of link to a portal from IITC by clicking on the portal, and then clicking on the "portal link" link in the bottom left of the portal area:
Answer: Although there is still no way to link directly to a portal, the Ingress Intel page does now have a "Map Link" function in the top right of the page:

So, what I do is:

Make my browser window small enough that both scroll bars appear.
Zoom in as far down as I can, keeping the portal in the middle of the map.
Take a link using the button at the top right.

By taking the link at the deepest zoom level with the smallest window size, it means that whatever size browser window someone is using, the portal should always be smack bang in the middle of the window.
Comment: If you have the portal selected in the Intel map, when you click on the link button, the 2nd set of coordinates (that begin with pll) are the portal location. This link will give you a direct link to a portal
Comment: This should be accepted as the correct answer at this time.
Answer: I just did a little experiment expanding on James S's comment and found out to my amazement that it's completely true. After that, I did another experiment and deleted the "ll" part from the link because I was thinking that this part corresponds to the center of the map that you're browsing and not to the portal being selected. (I think that it's the abbreviation for "location link" or "longitude latitude" while pll is the abbreviation for "portal location link" or "portal longitude latitude")
When you delete the "ll" part (including the coordinates) your link will be shortened and it still functions as a link.
Here is an example for the Statue of Liberty : https://www.ingress.com/intel?pll=40.689189,-74.044668


Building speech recognition for a new language from scratch

Question: I know C++ and PHP, I know OOP and usages of Database technologies. I have to make speech recognition software for my own nation  Whose symbols are unique but supported by UTF-8. and so far no software company has taken initiative to do so. I need to know what programming language will be perfect to do and which courses should I take to learn the process. I don't like to process the language via SAPI or build in recognition technologies as they are based on English (Problem here the grammar and syntax is so difference- it's Indo-European based). And I want to make it from scratch ( machine level/voice processing- i want to make sound that processed directly be parsed to my symbols (no English transformation )). Hope you will understand cause I am looking forward to it as it's my nation's requirement. This is not to promote any programming language or course. Just I need to know it now. ( if my question does not fit here please where it fit most and be kind enough to move to that forum. I had bitter experience about it)
Comment: A TTS (Text to speech) engine is the reverse of speech recognition isn't it? TTS enables the computer to produce speech rather than understand it.
Comment: having a sound database for the way to speak words is necessary. This is what's called TTS engine. Last company i worked for we use to create our own TTS because some language/dialect were not availaible on the market. You need 2 intepret, male and female of generic voice tone and there is a specific list of words they need to read and you record them. tis will generate mostly all possible sound you need. Most language will required between 600,000 and 700,000 words to be recorded.
Comment: @Franck, Thanks. Our community is ready to contribute those sounds, no matter whatever amount of times that require. By the way what technology was your last company using for developing the system?
Comment: There was no coding involve as far as i know for recognition and database building. We had a professional recording room where the women as been recording these 700k words for about a 10 month to 1 year. In the end to do speech recognition we had a TTS server that's quite expensive. If i recall it's in the 6 digits and it's a whole OS by itself. We were calling it with C#, asp classic, asp.net, VXML, and some hardware phone system.
Comment: I don't know how they fare for speech recognition, but Python and Java have NLP toolkits. Speed-wise, go with C++
Comment: If you name your language it would be easier to give you more focused advise.
Answer: Adding support for a new language is pretty straightforward, you actually just need to follow the documentation and you can get to the point. You also need to have a knowledge of the scripting language which will help you to cut manual work on some steps. Unix command line experience is a big plus, though you can work on Windows too.
1) Read Introduction to become familiar with concepts of speech recognition - features, acoustic models, language models, etc.
2) Try CMUSphinx with US English model to understand how things work. Try to train with sample US English AN4 database following acoustic model training tutorial.
3) Read about your language in Wikipedia.
4) Collect a set of transcribed recordings for your language - podcasts, radio shows, audiobooks. You can also record some initial amount yourself. You need about 20 hours of transcribed data to start, 100 hours to create a good model.
5) Based on the data you collected, create a list of words and a phonetic dictionary. Most phonetic dictionaries could be created with a simple rules with a small script in your favorite scripting language like Python. See Generating a dictionary for details.
6) Segment the audio to short sentences manually or with sphinx4 aligner, create a database with required files as described in training tutorial.
7) Integrate new model into your application and design a data collection to improve your model.
If you have questions, feel free to ask on CMU Sphinx / Forums.
Answer: See if any existing speech recognition systems have a way to add a custom language. That will save you years of effort. Even then, collecting a big database of your language's words and grammar will be immense.
Here's some leads to get you started:

http://cmusphinx.sourceforge.net/wiki/tutorialdict
http://kaldi.sourceforge.net/about.html

If not then you probably will be using C/C++ in order to process the incoming audio fast enough. You can learn more about the principles of speech recognition here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_recognition
Comment: Actually a single person can do it in about a month, only passion is required. It is not that complex and C/C++ is not needed.
Comment: thanks for the info. Please let me know any update you receive. I'm trying those out.
Comment: @NikolayShmyrev awesome!


Population disparities between New York City and Boston

Question: Both Boston and New York City are incredibly important early settlements that still thrive to this day. Given the early advantages of Boston I would assume that it would be one of the top 5 largest cities in the USA, however it is only ranked as the 21st largest. New York City has at least 13 times the population of Boston. What has led to this large disparity between New York City and Boston? Are they simply geographical limitations or are the reasons ultimately political/economic/cultural in nature?
Comment: Could you edit the question to be more about history and less about other social sciences (e.g. economics)?
Answer: Don't confuse the concepts of incorporated city, which has more to do with state statutes and regulations in regard to municipal consolidation, with metropolitan area, the true size of the municipal economic entity.
The least biased statistical evaluation of municipal areas I could find for the U.S. is The List of Combined Statistical Areas (2010 Census) published by the United States Office of Management and Budget here and partially reproduced below, in decreasing order by population:

NYC CSA (Combined Statistical Area);
LA CSA;
Chicago CSA;
Washington-Baltimore CSA
Boston-Providence CSA
San Jose- San Francisco CSA
Dallas-Fort Worth CSA
Philadelphia-Reading-Camden CSA
Miami-Fort Lauderdale CSA
Atlanta - Sandy Springs CSA

As you can see Boston-Providence occurs 5th, as your initial estimate expected.
Update:
Remember also that the 1898 consolidation of New York City into 5 boroughs remains controversial in both Brooklyn and Staten Island, as witness the 1990's plan by Staten Island to secede, which had to be blocked by the New York State Assembly.
Updated to 2010 Census - Boston returns to 5th place
Comment: This is a link to an interesting perspective on municipal consolidation in the 20th and 21st centuries: http://www.queensu.ca/iigr/conf/Arch/03/03-2/Sancton.pdf  **Disclaimer:** presented at a conference hosted by my Alma Mater: http://www.queensu.ca/
Comment: I don't see any reference there asserting that the aggregated population of the areas evaluated is a function of a single economic factor. There may be several disparate economic systems in geographic proximity that cause the concentration of population, not necessarily related one to the other. So there's no proof that "Metropolitan Boston's" rank as 5 accurately reflects the success of Boston. Providence, for example, had its own harbor and economy, quite separate from that of Boston long before they were included together as a "Metropolitan area" - "Greater Boston".
Comment: @Vector: There are many insightful comments that could be made about the CSA calculations; such as how, being a statistical measure a degree of arbitrariness exists that must be allowed for by any user of the statistic. I can see no reasons for an inherent bias between any of these statistical measures on the part of US Office of Management & Budget. Unfortunately, your comment is not an element of the said set of useful and meaningful comments.
Comment: I am not sure why you consider my comments meaningless,but I suggest taking a look at how much tonnage came into Boston Harbor in the 19th and 20th Centuries vs NY Harbor, and how many immigrants. I have not researched it, but I suspect that NY harbor would lead by far more than 5/1, although I could be wrong.
Answer: The defining characteristic of New York City has always been its harbor, today formally known as The Port of New York and New Jersey... one of the largest natural harbors in the world... It includes the system of navigable waterways in the estuary along 650 miles (1,050 km) of shoreline in the vicinity of New York City and northeastern New Jersey, as well as the region's airports and supporting rail and roadway distribution networks.
New York harbor is a very large deep water port that can accommodate numerous deep water/high tonnage ships. It is through New York Harbor that the waves of immigrants came to the USA in the 19th and early 20th Centuries. Ellis Island is in New York Harbor.
The immigrants came to New York City through the harbor and settled in the city, and its population grew and grew and grew. At the same time, the port served as a center for commercial trade, bringing in raw materials including coal, iron, timber, and numerous other materials from East Coast of the USA and from overseas, that allowed industry, manufacturing, and large wholesale and retail businesses to flourish. And via the port, businesses also had an easy route for shipping their goods to those same destinations.
This made NYC a dynamo of trade and industry that supported the ever increasing population that came in through the harbor, and then settled and raised families in the great city.
NY Harbor dwarfs Boston harbor, which is listed officially as comprising only 500 acres. That is the simple, obvious answer to your question.
(My apologies for lack of more references at the moment. As a native of New York City, this knowledge is intuitive to me - I learned it from my father, whose parents came to Ellis Island; I learned it in grade school and in high school and I live with it every day, my home being only blocks from the shores of the great harbor itself)
Answer: Quite simple.
The Erie Canal via the Hudson River to the Great Lakes gave New York access to a much larger hinterland. Boston has the Charles River and not much else.
Comment: Excellent observation IMO. The canal was very important indeed. But I did find this [The canal.. and is widely regarded a chief cause that New York eclipsed **Philadelphia** as the largest city and port on the Eastern Seaboard of the United States.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erie_Canal) If so, perhaps Boston was not in the running, regardless of the canal. Interestingly, the Delaware river, which provides Philly's harbor reaches well into NYS, and canals were built to make it navigable quite far north. I wonder if a connection was ever made to the Erie canal - need to research further.


Concrete driveway in New England?

Question: I need a new driveway and I was wondering if my only option is asphalt?
I'm in Connecticut - does anyone know if I can have concrete driveway?
Comment: @pythonstarter huh? I'm not sure what you're talking about. That's what residential paving companies do - they come and pave driveways. I know I can easily hire people to do asphalt. But my question is about concrete.
Comment: I'm not sure if you can find someone who would want to come to make just an asphalt driveway. The surface is just too small and asphalt requires machinery etc. which is really expensive and contractor extremely rarely accept this type of job
Comment: Contractors that pave driveways are quite, quite common - you can easily get 3 or more to bid in most places. A third option is to put in the proper base & drainage that you'd need for a lasting asphalt or concrete driveway surface and have a good gravel driveway instead of just some gravel spread on the dirt.
Comment: @Dannyboy I was speaking about asphalt; this can be really expensive if the area is small because setting up a "construction site" cost a lot of money (bringing machinery etc.) Tyler Durden is right generally speaking but when it comes to small areas concrete is cheaper. But I guess it can vary from country to country. Now I'm really curious if asphalt would cost more than concrete in Connecticut because according to my experience for a small area it would. Can you please inform us on the price?
Answer: Sure you can have one, no one is going to arrest you for putting it in.  However, concrete has a few distinct disadvantages in the north, most notably it is brittle so any heaving caused by freeze/thaw cycles will cause large cracks and there chances of a lip developing (a trip hazard unless ground down) are high. The only way to prevent this is to make the driveway and gravel underlay very thick (which costs more) to reduce the amount of frozen soil below it. Also, regular thawing salt (potassium chloride) is bad for common unsealed concrete.  You need to use Magnesium chloride (which costs more) to prevent damage to the surface.
Here is a good article that discusses more pros/cons: http://www.silive.com/homegarden/homeimprovement/index.ssf/2010/04/asphalt_vs_concrete_driveways.html
Comment: Isn't expansion|contraction rectified by cutting lines in a concrete every couple of feet? As seen here: https://youtu.be/xUgiHghs8vs?t=4m39s
Comment: That article really doesn't say much about concrete driveways. It is basically just saying how great asphalt is.
Comment: Cutting break seams into the concrete will help prevent spiderweb cracks, but make the heaving problem worse.
Answer: Concrete will provide a much better, long-lasting driveway, if it is properly built. For both types of materials, subsurface preparation and drainage are critical and are similar. Concrete will be more expensive both because there are fewer people that do it, it involves more work because forms must be built, and the material is more expensive.
Answer: If built correctly, an asphalt driveway should last nearly as long as one paved with concrete.
Concrete driveways are durable, but they are subject to frost heaves. They also need to have regular control joints added which can lead to substantial cracks appearing that are big enough to have weeds grow in. The look of a concrete drive can basically be ruined from these cracks, especially if it is stamped concrete that is meant to look like natural stone.
Another alternative would be to have a paver driveway. There are many options available with pavers and they can be formed to almost any shaped driveway. The good thing about them in the north is that they can be replaced or reset if one is damaged or has moved and you would never know that there was any damage done. Your neighbors most likely won't have one as well and it will make your property stand out.
Answer: Have you considered pavers as an alternative to concrete or asphalt? Pavers come in a variety of colors, shapes and thicknesses/weights. Some pavers are specifically suited for driveways and can handle high pounds per square inch.
Note that not all regions in the United States have the same paver types and colors available, as raw materials used for their regional manufacture vary.
I used Pavestone products for our Las Vegas home, both for the additional side driveway to a new side gate, as well as for our patio areas (see photos). Pavestone has a regional catalog for Boston that you can review. Other paver providers will likely have regional catalogs as well.

Concrete driveway in New England?


Changing jobs in national visa

Question: I am a non EU national currently working in Germany and in my 3rd month here. I am qualified to apply for EU Blue card but I have not started the process yet. Due to certain personal circumstances which I did not expect, I am looking to change jobs within Germany. I have not yet started to look due to the fact that I am still on National Visa. I was wondering what kind of complications I would face if I want to switch jobs within Germany.
Answer: So, do I understand it correctly if you arrived to Germany recently, work for a company, which is specified in your national visa, and now want to change the job?
Then just look for another job, sign the contract with them and then go with this new contract to the Ausländerbehörde to explain them your situation.
Hopefully, there will be no complications. However, for the new job, if the salary will not be enough to apply for a Blue Card (52,000 Euro per year brutto) you may need to be checked via a job center, which may take a while (3+ weeks).
I would recommend you to negotiate a starting date for your new contract, so that you have at least 2 months in advance (before staring a new job) to clarify the issue with the Ausländerbehörde.
P.S. I'm not a lawyer.

Changing jobs in national visa


Why aren't the Oriental and Eastern Orthodox Churches in communion with each other?

Question: Both the Oriental and Eastern Orthodox Church worship the same God and the Blessed Mother Virgin Mary and the Saints and the Holy Trinity. Do language and cultural differences separate them? What current issues prevent the churches from being in full communion with each other?
Comment: Welcome to Christianity.SE! I hope you'll spend some time browsing the questions and answers here. For some tips on asking good questions, please see [How do I ask a good question?](http://christianity.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask) To get yourself oriented to this site, please take the [Site Tour](http://christianity.stackexchange.com/tour).
Answer: Nestorianism was condemned at the third and fourth ecumenical councils (Ephesus I & Chalcedon I), so calling Oriental Christians 'Orthodox' is incorrect from a mainstream Eastern Orthodox point of view—but this is the title they use for themselves so it is what it is. While some Eastern Orthodox Christians do lump Nestorians and Oriental Orthodox Christians together as monophysite churches, Oriental Orthodox Christians reject this label and distinguish themselves from Nestorians as miaphysite churches.
Concerning Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Christians, the difference is that the latter accept only the first three ecumenical councils (Nicaea I, Constantinople I, & Ephesus I), while the former accept seven ecumenical councils. There are some Eastern Orthodox Christians who consider the controversy between Oriental Orthodox and themselves to be primarily semantic (and some dialogue has been made in the 20th century to reunite the churches, but full communion has not yet been restored), but officially they are not considered to be 'Orthodox' (despite their use of the title) as they were condemned as heretical for rejecting the fourth ecumenical council (Chalcedon).
In summary, officially Eastern Orthodoxy teaches that they are the only Church that can rightly be called 'Orthodox,' and thus Nestorians and Oriental Orthodox Christians are actually heterodox. Their refusal to accept these Church councils keeps them separated.
Comment: Nestorianism and Eutychianism/monophysitism are *opposite* heresies. OOs sometimes lump Nestorians and EOs together, but it wouldn't make any sense for EOs to lump Nestorians and OOs together. The church sometimes known as the "Nestorian Church" is the Church of the East, which is distinct from both Eastern Orthodoxy and Oriental Orthodoxy.  Please fix that part of your answer.
Comment: Thanks, that [accidentally listing the wrong council name] is what I figured had happened, but wasn't sure.  +1 now that it is fixed.
Comment: [This was the other answer in case you were wondering](http://christianity.stackexchange.com/a/19518/1304)


minimum distance r-dominating set on tree

Question: Given a graph G = (V,E) with edge and vertex weights. The minimum distance r-dominating set problem for a graph G = (V,E) requires to find a set S $\in$ V of smallest vertex-weight such that every vertex v not in S, there is a vertex u in S such that d(u,v) $\leq$  r. Distance is defined by the length of shortest path on graph. Does anyone know papers that solve this problem on a $\textbf{tree}$?
Comment: @Hunglv you should include such knowledge and the more precise "I am looking for lower bounds" as part of your question, so that we can better answer it and don't accidentally close it.
Comment: This looks like a standard (if somewhat advanced) dynamic programming problem, at least if all the edge-weights are non-negative.
Comment: Yes! JeffE. This problem could be solved by using dynamic programming. It takes O(r^2.|V|) with memory O(r). But I just want to check whether my algorithm is optimal or not. I found a paper that do better than my algorithm, O(1) memory with the same running time, but for trees with only edge weights.
Comment: O(r) and O(1) I mean for each node of the tree.
Comment: There's probably a four-russians optimization that improves the running time by some polyloglog factor.  (At a high level: Precompute the answer to all subproblems of size $O(\log\log n)$, and then use the results of that precomputation as base cases in the dynamic programming algorithm.)  If you're really looking for a proof that no _polynomial_ improvement is possible, the correct answer is almost certainly "nobody knows".  We really have no idea how to prove superlinear lower bounds for anything.
Answer: The problem is solved in the paper P. Slater. R-domination in graphs. J. ACM, 23(3):446–450, July 1976. It considers an even more general problem using dynamic programming.


Isolating blood vessels and vasculature of the heart?

Question: Is there a chemical or process that would dissolve or remove all other tissues in an organ (in my case, i would like a heart) and leave all the vasculature and blood vessels intact?
Comment: Fascinating question. I'm not really sure Health is the best place to ask, though. I would imagine this would be something biologists would know how to do.
Comment: Not a formal answer, but there is a process (I have seen the awesome end product from it) where they inject a resin into the vasculature that then solidifies, and then they remove all the organic tissue from around it, and you are left with the branching "tree" of blood vessels.  I saw one from the ventricles of the brain too, in our gross anatomy course.  If you wanted the vessels themselves still intact, I can't think of any chemical or physiologic way to differentiate the vessels enough from the myocardium and cardiac connective tissue to selectively dissolve everything but the vessels...
Comment: I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it seems better suited for biology SE.
Comment: @CareyGregory I posted it on the Biology feed too.
Comment: Voting to keep open as the answer ("plastination") created by a medical professional (von Hagen) at the medical university of Heidelberg clearly shows this question does have it's place on Health.SE
Answer: Yes, this can basically be accomplished via plastination, whereby they replace the normal water in tissue with a form of silicone. You can use it on virtually any kind of tissue; first time I walked into an anatomy lab I grabbed a large slice of something... about 1-inch thick, with a large hole in its center and began wondering what it was. Only when I turned it on its side and noticed hair and a tooth did I realize I was looking at a sagital cut of a complete head)
If you look up the Bodies art show, you can find some very nice examples of this (When I saw it several years ago, they even had the vascular tree of a complete body)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastination
Comment: I just visited the show a few weeks ago and yes, they do have the vascular tree of the whole body and just the heart.
Answer: There is a procedure where you fill the coronary arteries and/or the venous system of the heart with acrylic resin, which quickly solidifies. You then submerge the whole heart into an acid solution which dissolves everything except the acrylic filling. What is left is a 3D replica of the heart arterial or venous system.
read more about this


Why is there no option to install alongside win7 with the 12.04 LTS CD?

Question: I just downloaded both the 32-bit version of 12.04 LTS Precise Pangolin and burned it onto CD. When trying to install there is no option to install alongside win7. I tried the 11.10 CD and the option was there. I ended up having to install 11.10 and then upgrading to 12.04 online. Why was there no option to install alongside win7 with the 12.04 LTS CD?
Answer: Not sure. But you can boot into the LiveCD, then use gparted to shrink your windows 7 partition, and then reboot into windows 7 to make sure it's clean. Then you can reboot to the LiveCD and install Ubuntu. If windows 7 craps out on you from changing the partition size. You can fix the boot repair process with the free CD downloads from: http://neosmart.net/blog/2009/windows-7-system-repair-discs/ . You may want to download those and have them ready, if you don't have a windows cd.


What is the influence of inflation on the Wacc?

Question: I understand that the WACC is influenced by the debt ratio but what is the impact of the inflation on the WACC
Answer: The WACC (weighted average cost of capital) formula is a weighted average of the cost of equity and the cost of debt weighted by their respective size (see investopedia definition here). As such, it does not include the inflation rate directly.
Inflation should increase the nominal rate of return that investors require to make an investment, especially on the debt side as inflation erodes nominal bonds returns.


Bank statement or other proof of income uk visa

Question: I am a 16 year old boy from albania and I want to apply for a UK standard visit visa to visit my cousin who is sponsoring for me. In the application UK visa web site is a question with alternatives
As shown in the photo attached to this article what should be my answer considering that I am 16 and I don't have any bank statements or any savings?
I have read somewhere that there is needed proof that you are not staying in uk after visa ends(this can be proved by bank statements from my parents and proof that I am still at high school)
Comment: You must provide some proof that you are the mean to travel in UK. Being a 16 year old, usually mean you need much less money. But you need some proof, e.g. from your father, if he sponsor you. BTW you should start thinking to have a bank account if you travel. ATM (or credit card) are handy, and simplify the process of booking (and being in hotels), and also of immigration. Often you should provide some deposit (and also at immigration you may show up that you have enough money).
Comment: But in my case my cousin who is a British citizen is the sponsor of my visit so how should I answer the question do you have any income?
Comment: @GiacomoCatenazzi But in my case my cousin who is a British citizen is the sponsor for my trip so how should be the answer to the question do you have any income if I will answer no will this affect negatively for my visa to get approved?
Answer: The obvious first thing to say is that you should answer all the questions truthfully. Doing anything else will get you in trouble.
If somebody else is paying for your trip, and especially if you are a minor, then the questions about your personal financial circumstances are less significant. Instead the important questions are ones about your sponsor's finances, so that the visa officers can check the sponsor can afford your visit.
Assuming that you are living with your parents, and they are paying your living expenses, then you may also have to supply their financial statements to show that your cousin's paying for your visit is an appropriate thing to be doing. It would not make sense for your cousin to be paying for a short holiday in the UK if you were in fact unable to afford to live in your home country. Read carefully the guidance on the application.
The important thing with your parents finances is not whether they are earning more than your cousin, but whether they are earning enough to support you, and also that they have enough money to make your taking a vacation to the UK a sensible thing to do. For example, if your parents are not earning enough to cover your basic needs it does not make sense that your cousin would spend money on a vacation for you instead of giving you money to meet your basic needs.
Comment: I added to the answer. And yes, there is always the possibility that your visa will be refused, whatever you do.
Comment: And what happens if my parents don't have such a good wage as my cousin in Britain has? Is there the possibility to refuse my visa? Thank you for your clear answer!


SQL Server 2008 SSIS package compatability

Question: I am trying to save an SSIS package on a sql server running 2005. The issue I have is that I am using SQL Server Management Studio 2008 on my local machine to do this and it won't let me save the package in on the server because its not compatible with 2008.
Is their some kind of compatibility option in management studio that I don't know about?
Answer: No, you need to use the proper version.  They both co-habitate on one computer nicely.  SSIS 2008 is probably using a different .net framework (3.5?).
Answer: This isn't going to work. As SAM mentioned, SSIS 2008 is not backward compatible in SSIS 2005. SSIS 2008 packages require SSIS 2008 to be installed on the system in question. It can and does co-exist with SSIS 2005. The only catch is to watch your paths with respect to running from the command line, etc., as likely your SSSIS 2005 pathing is first in your PATH statement, meaning the SSIS 2005 executables will be executed and if it's a SSIS 2008 package will fail. We have systems where both versions of SSIS are installed and we've had to explicitly specify pathing on those systems.
Your other option is to install SQL Server 2005 SSIS and BIDS on your system (meaning the VS2005 shell will be installed as well) and rebuild your package in 2005 and then deploy it. VS2005 generally behaves just fine installed side-by-side with VS2008.


Are there any 'safe' addons to manage browser functionallity?

Question: I'm new to Tor, and would like to ask if three 'cosmetic' Firefox addons - Tab Mix Plus, All-in-one Sidebar, and Scrapbook - pose an anonymity threat?
Comment: // , Could you add some quick links to the addons mentioned? Also, what is an example of the sort of answer you're looking for here, Panoptes?
Answer: You should not need to use any addons with Tor. If you want addons then Tor is not the browser for you.
Personally I would never risk Tor's anonymity by using 3rd party addons. That's what Firefox is for. Not Tor
Comment: // , How, exactly, do specific add-ons affect the Tor Browser Button's fingerprint or anonymity? I think this question is more about what sort of effect different add-ons have, and why, rather than a simple y/N.


What is H.264 and what is it used for?

Question: I have been hearing that Google Chrome is either stopping support for or has already stopped support for this movie thing called H.264.
What is H.264, and what is it used for?
Answer: H.264 isn't an open codec. The patent is owned by MPEG LA, which for several years, has allowed it to be used more or less freely. However, this can change at any time. So, rather than standardize on a codec that may or may not be free tomorrow, the Chrome team decided to base all their video on an open standard.
On one hand, that's good because Theora and WebM are open standards which anyone can use. On one hand, it's bad, because it's not an industry standard like H.264 has become. But, that may slowly change.
Still worse, not all browsers currently support the same video codec for HTML5. As you can imagine, this is a big headache for web developers who wish to take advantage of HTML5 video. Internet Explorer uses H.264, Chrome uses Theora and WebM, Firefox uses Theora, Opera uses Theora and WebM, and Safari uses H.264.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video
Answer: H.264 is a video codec used mainly for encoding High Definition video. Wikipedia has a good site all about it.
If the system you are using for video playback doesn't support H.264 then you may not be able to play some high definition videos.
I suspect that the Google Chrome that is dropping (or has dropped) support for H.264 may be ChromeOS and not Chrome the web browser, as web browsers don't natively handle video but pass it on to plugins to do it for them.  If it is the browser that is stopping support for H.264 then there will be a third party plugin (such as QuickTime, Windows Media Player, etc) that will handle it instead.
Answer: As others have said, H.264 is a video codec. The new HTML5 standard adds a lot of things that needed plugins before, such as video.  The Chrome browser had support for HTML5 videos in various video codecs, but then dropped it for patent reasons, and is using VP8 and some other codecs.
What does it mean in real life? Not much. This only affects Chrome playing HTML5 video (Flash videos are not affected). If you found a site that only has HTML5 video, and only supported H.264 video, you couldn't see it with Chrome browser.  Or you would have to install the Microsoft H.264 plugin for Chrome. So, in the very unlikely event that the site doesn't have a fallback for HTML4 video and plugins, you have ways around it anyway.
TL;DR Google is removing support for H.264 video codec on HTML5 video tags seen in Chrome. Since few sites force HTML5 only video, this will be a non-issue for the foreseeable future.

What is H.264 and what is it used for?


How are the object and the subject one and the same?

Question: I basically wanted the proof of all is ONE and Prakrithi and Purusha are the same.
Comment: I know of no of no formal 'proof by demonstration' apart from Nagarjuna's 'Fundamental Verses'. Perhaps Bradley's 'Appearance and Reality' might be see as an informal proof. Spencer Brown's 'Laws of Form' could be viewed as a mathematical argument. I keep an eye out for such proofs but they're thin on the ground. The only fully-effective proof would be to discover it in practice. Your question is quite different from the advertised title, so you might like to choose which one you're asking.
Comment: By object I mean the seen(prakriti) and by subject I mean the one who sees(purusha).
Answer: I am giving the proof from Sastra and Aaptavakya or Mahajanavakya as these two are accepted as Pramana or proof in our tradition.
Purusha is known as Shiva(or Vishnu) and Prakriti as Shakti (or Devi). These two are the same:

(a) Shakti-Shaktimatorbhedah Shaive jatu na varnyate/na shivah shakti-rahito na shaktir vyatirekini (Shiva-Drishti.,3/2 and 3/3)
(b) sridevi prakriti proktaa keshavah purushah smritah/na vishnunaa vinaa devi na harih padmajaam vina (hayasirsha-pancharaatra-vachana)

Meaning : (a)According to the of Shaiva Philosophy, there is no difference between Shakti and Shaktimaan. Shiva is  never devoid of Shakti and Shakti is never devoid of Shiva. (Reference: Sastramulak Bharatiya Shaktisadhana, Upendrakumar Das, RMIC, vol 1, page 318)
(b) Prakriti is Sri Devi and Purusha is Keshava. Vishnu is never without Devi and Devi Padmajaa is never without Vishnu.
This is also referred to as Shakti-Shaktimator abhedah meaning there is no difference between Shakti or Prakriti and Shaktimaan or Purusha.
This same concept is also there in Devi-Bhagavatam 1/8/34, 40-41 (quoted in the commentary of Tripuramahopabishad by Bhaskara Raya

Evam Sarvagataa shaktih saa brahmeti vivichyate

Meaning The All-pervading Shakti is One with Brahman
Sri Ramakrishna explains as

Brahman is one with Shakti. Like Milk is one with its whiteness.Still water and wavy water are the same. A snake can be still (Brahman) and moving (Shakti).Agni or Fire is one with its dahika-Shakti or burning power.

As Shiva-Purana says (5/9-12):

yathaa  Shivas tathaa Devi yathaa Devi tathaa shivah/nanayor anratam vidyat chandra-chandrikayoriva//

meaningn: Shiva is Shakti and Shakti is Shiva. They are one as the moon and its light.
(Reference: Sri Sri Ramakrishna-Kathamrita, Sri M (compiled) Udbodhan
Comment: If yes then why and how is perception possible if seer and the seen is one?
Comment: @Sai Baikampadi They are same by definition : Shakti and shaktimaan has no meaning without each other. Perception is possible in world by seeing that for example fire can not be isolated from power of burning, Subjectively it can be felt in nirvikalpa samadhi
Comment: @SaiBaikampadi seer and seen is one only in paramarthika sense. So long as the sense of 'I' and ' My' exist, they are different. So they merge only in the samadhi state.
Comment: Yes I agree that they are the same which is extolled in shastras but why are they same? Is that also mentioned?


How would you translate this? バタコチーズライス

Question: So I'm working on translating a short recipe that I found online.  The title calls it バタコチーズライス.  I know that バタ is "butter", チーズ is "cheese", and ライス is "rice", but I can't for the life of me figure out what コ is doing in here.  Is バタコ referring to something else I'm not catching?  All the googling I can muster didn't yield anything useful for "batako" or "bataco", so it doesn't seem to be an ingredient on its own, and it doesn't seem to be acting as an article or particle.  Thoughts??
Comment: I saw the term Batako (little butter) who is listed as a baker character in the Anpanman manga series.
Comment: It seems to be a pun on [タコライス](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/タコライス), but with バター thrown in.
Comment: Just to assure you, I'm a Japanese, and I've never heard of it, and can't make sense of it for the same reasons you wrote above.
Answer: 「コ」 is short for 「コーン」 ("corn") here.
This type of shortening is very common in Japanese when the word would get too long without it..
Answer: As a fact-based answer, there is nothing much to say besides that コ here stands for コーン (corn). However, I'm pretty sure that the exact word form バタコチーズライス is chosen because it makes a reference to two major characters in the famous children manga/anime series アンパンマン, namely バタコ (a female baker) and チーズ (dog).

(from the left: チーズ, バタコ, ジャムおじさん)
Answer: This dish would be "Butter Corn-Cheese Rice" in English, something similar to Corn and Rice Casserole!
Answer: If the dish is intended to be a play on the names of the famous cartoon series, it could actually just be butter-cheese-rice. The name バタコ is for the young female cook. バタ is no doubt a shortened form of バター which means butter. But バタ is also probably a reference to バタバタする which is a phrase that is used when someone is busy doing a lot of things in busy scattered way...to be flustered which is how the character often acts in the cartoon. コ on the other hand is probably a カタカナ rendering of 子 which is a common ending to female names. So my guess is that it has taken the two charactersバタコさん and チーズ the dog and combined them withライス to get butter cheese rice.

How would you translate this? バタコチーズライス


Good distribution assumptions for customer demand in a supply chain

Question: Why do we normally assume normal distribution/Poisson distribution  for customer demand in a supply chain? Are there other good distribution assumptions?
Comment: I am not sure about this, but one reason could be that, as supply chains become more complex, the actual demand depends on the interaction of many random variables of unknown distribution. If we assume the final demand has an additive relation to them, and that their moments are bounded (which should be the case in real situations), by Lyapunov's theorem the resulting random variable tends to be normal. Of course, there is rarely such a thing as a normal distribution in the real-world: only truncated normals! :-)
Answer: I agree with @QianZhang's answer (nice theoretical properties, easy to implement), and I would add that there is some theoretical justification too. If demands come from customer arrivals, then Poisson is a reasonable demand distribution since customer arrivals are well modeled by Poisson (often). And if the mean is large enough, then normal is a good approximation for Poisson.
Even if demands don't come from a Poisson arrival process, normal is often a good approximation for whatever process they do come from. Although, as suggested by the question Supply Chain Public Data Repository, supply chain data is hard to come by, especially at the transactional level (e.g. data on individual demands so that we can check the distribution, rather than aggregate measures like mean), so it might be hard to confirm my claim empirically.
Answer: In my understanding, using normal/Poisson distribution for customer demand is mainly for two reasons.

These distributions have nice properties for theoretical analysis in supply chain models
These distributions are easier to implement or already been implemented for computational concerns
Answer: Question: Why do we normally assume normal distribution/Poisson distribution for customer demand in a supply chain?
Answer :
Based on my experience in the industry, I have seen that generally, business users use simple thumb rules-based methods for safety stock or inventory models. The next level of sophistication for these users is usage of Normal or Poisson distribution. Usage of these distributions may not be most optimal but these distribution-based models are far more superior as compared to thumb rule-based methods. Now the next level of sophistication is the implementation of actual distribution. When you want to implement the actual distribution then first you need to conduct certain tests to identify the actual fit. The next level of complication arises when you want to combine Actual Demand Distribution with Actual Lead time distribution for computation of safety stocks in the supply chain. Unfortunately not much info is available on how to combine the actual distribution of Demand with the actual distribution of lead time to compute optimal safety stock.
In my experience, for most of the time Forecast Error or Demand distribution is not normally or Poisson distributed.
Question:  Are there other good distribution assumptions?
Answer: There are some approximations available. These are based on research work mentioned in book Inventory and Production Management in Supply Chains by Edward, Silver & Spike

Std Deviation to mean demand $\le 0.5$ and Lead time demand $>10$:
normal distribution.
Std Deviation to mean demand $> 0.5$ and Lead time demand $>10$: gamma
distribution
Lead time demand $<10$, then use Poisson, Binomial, and Negative
Binomial distributions
Answer: Theoretically it is quite naturally convincing to assume that demand time points are independent. In other words knowing that an item was bought in t1 does not give one any good clue in understanding next sales time t2. It is like process renews/regenerate itself after each event and hence time between events are independent of each other. This particular phenomenon can be modeled elegantly by exponential distribution which itself have this property.
Also when time between events are exponentially distributed then number of event occurrences is Poisson distributed. So making Poisson distribution assumption makes sense when you have to generate data (Don't have actual data). For more details you can search Poisson process or some elementary literature in queuing theory.
Normal distribution could be assumed when demand hovers around certain average like newspapers sales etc.
However when supplied with data it makes better sense to check actual distribution than just assume some distribution and model. I worked on slow moving commodity sales project and sales data was not following any Poisson distribution.


Fleet GPS tracking solution with real time location of vehicles with route history

Question: Looking for a recommendation for a web based Fleet GPS Tracking solution to track vehicles and dispatch to drivers using an app, I Prefer tracking the vehicles rather than tracking phones, any suggestion?
Comment: Operating system (or web based)?  Budget?
Answer: I use a solution from www.Highpointgps.com, it uses tracking devices installed in the vehicles to track the vehicles on a map online, the movement history playback is available online for 2 years, Also has a feature to dispatch to a Garmin GPS or android app, and to record the Hours of service as E-LogBook compliant solution.

Interface is very user-friendly.
Answer: I Googled GPS vehicle tracking and found this. Looks to have the technology that you requested and more. It's a cloud-based software that connects with your phone and any other device (laptop, desktop, tablet, etc). It uses a tracking device that is installed onto the vehicle so you will be tracking the vehicle and not the phone. Not sure about pricing though. Good luck with your search.
Comment: I believe it's Spireon GPS vehicle tracking, and you can certainly find more information here: http://www.spireon.com/gps-vehicle-tracking/