How would most programmers feel about the bugs they wrote?

Question: Do they feel frustrated, disappointed, or even don't admit at all?
Comment: I only write features :-)
Comment: Love them, and tug them and pet them and call them George!
Comment: @Thorbjørn, this is a deeply male chauvinist comment. No wonder there are so few female bugs found in this profession! :-)
Comment: @Péter, you should write fewer bugs and watch more cartoons!
Comment: Really?????????
Comment: Wow..,I did it..?
Comment: @Péter Török George Sand?
Comment: @biziclop, [she was a writer](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Sand), not a bug... And George was only her pseudonym, chosen by herself, not given by someone else.
Comment: I have WTF moments all the time when reading old code of mine or even looking at code that I just wrote that isn't working. Bugs happen. Worrying about bugs is like worrying about your hair style. It's important when you're fresh on the scene, but eventually you stop worrying about it so much.
Answer: I don't know how most programmers feel about their bugs, only how I and some of my (past / present) coworkers do.
Luckily almost everyone I have worked with so far (including myself) was and is a realist: we all create bugs, it is a fact of life. The only way to avoid producing software bugs is to not write code altogether. So the important thing is not to try to avoid making mistakes, but rather to learn from our mistakes, and do what is needed to prevent them from happening again. Taken this way, mistakes and bugs can be turned into a great opportunity to learn something (about ourselves, the team, the language, the tools / frameworks used etc.) and to improve things (coding habits, communication, processes etc.).
The latter is especially important because the bugs we are worried about the most are the ones which manage to slip through to production and cause real problems to customers. This is why we have tests / code reviews / QA department etc. Whenever a bug slips through these shields, it is an obvious sign that there is a hole in our defense.
For nontrivial problems, it is a good idea to do retrospectives or post mortem analysis to recover the real root cause of the problem, so that it can be dealt with. This is explained via a great example by Joel in Five Whys.
Comment: I'd add just one thing - a way to see a bug found before a release is "it could have been found by a customer - this is a win!" - every bug the team finds is a bug the customer doesn't find.
Comment: Yes.  "learn from our mistakes, and do what is needed to prevent them from happening again"
Comment: What I like to do is not just a technical post mortem but an analysis of how testing, deployment and configuration processes can be modified/extended to stop similar bugs.
Comment: @biziclop, this is exactly what I meant, I thought this is what "post mortem" means.
Comment: Often it is limited to technical solutions, although the example you linked to shows how it can be taken further. (Well, even more often it is limited to shifting the blame from dev to support or vice versa. :))
Answer: I actually feel happy. When I find my own bug, I can write a test and be sure, that I will never make it again. This gives me more confidence in my own work.
Comment: How about when others find your bug?
Comment: Then I feel grateful. I can write a test and be sure, that neither I will make it again, nor anyone will be able to find it ever again. This gives me even more confidence in my work ;-)
Comment: It would be a miracle if one day I can see a programmer like you! :-)
Comment: For some time now I have been thinking about migrating to Down Under, so maybe you can help me find a job there :-P
Comment: As an SDET, my favorite compliment from devs is "Good find!"  Devs are often pretty chipper about bugs being found.
Answer: None of the above.
Bug are a fact of life, there's no point feeling frustrated or disappointed. The best thing to do is to admit you made a mistake, and take steps to correct it.
Comment: Things are easier said than done....especially when you find the bugs in the big program in front of your boss, I presume you would change it silently.
Answer: A bug is a difference from the desired behavior of the program, which happens to everybody.
The feelings involved mostly come from the amount of trouble resulting from said difference.  There is a vast difference between a speling error and being woken up at 3 A.M. to be picked up by a helicopter and flown to your desk to fix it.

EDIT:  Or worse, a helicopter flies your desk to you...
Comment: Really, a helicopter? I would intentionally make one just to be get a helicopter ride.
Comment: That is true. :-)
Comment: @apoorv020, please do and report back how it went.
Answer: There is some initial frustration that soon passes. If it affects what a user is doing and causes them to lose a lot of time, I'm more bothered by it. You'd like to think you catch those sooner.
I'd like to think I own up to all my mistakes and have little use for people who don't (not just programmers).
Answer: Well, it really all depends on the type of bug and when it was caught.
Bonehead (ie, very simple to spot/find) bugs are fine so long as I'm the one who catches them. If I pass a bonehead bug off to the QA team, I tend to be a bit annoyed with myself.
Functional bugs are a fact of life. I don't feel frustrated or annoyed about them. Just something to accept and move on about.
I love unexpected behavior bugs when QA brings them to me. "Really, it does that? Sweet." I'm not so much a fan of them when I get a support call about them in the middle of the night though. ;)
Then there are the bugs that have lived in the code so long that they must be considered features. When you spend days debugging it to track it down and eventually kill that one stupid bug that no one else even wants to touch, I think you feel elated. You just want to tell someone when you've solved a bug like that.
But, bugs are apart of development. You can't call yourself a developer if you don't deal with bugs. Getting your code to work on time and on budget while minimizing the bug count what it's all about. :)
Answer: Bugs are going to happen, like the coming of the tide.  If there's frustration, it usually comes from a lack of understanding from my coworkers/boss that these things are normal.
However, as stupid as it sounds, reviewing code that I've recently written (wait at least 10 minutes afterwards to review) helps a lot.  Writing code to anticipate strange inputs helps a ton as well (though in such cases, better to announce it rather than to sweep it under the carpet).
Or.. you could do like Htbaa and just write features.  :)
Answer: I think one thing to add is that the reaction can have a lot to do with when the bug was found.  I have seen defensive reactions when developers where asked to track bugs before they'd even had a chance to compile and test the code once.  Needless to say, that got a strong pushback since for most folks, compiling and running code is an organic part of development.  I think that every developer wants a chance to try out the code to some sane degree before they make their work "public" - so pre-check-in code changes could easily be called "development" and not "bug fixing".
Post checkin/Pre-release - I think that in most cases, the outcome is relief - whether the developer finds it themselves, or another member of the team finds it, it's a good thing to hit a bug, especially a big one, before the customer does.    I have seen a strong desire in most developers to want to fix the bugs in the code they developed.  This can be problematic, if you're dealing with a team where a small % of individuals wrote the code, but a much larger group is testing/debugging.
With one caveat - the "that's not a bug, it's a feature" response - there's plenty of times where a design decision (especially in UI) has resulted in some behavior that the tester finds wrong, but the coder believes is right.  Convincing a developer that the "feature" is a "bug" can be a real trick, but it's doable.
Pre-release, I think the trick is to avoid the bug finding/fixing process being one of shame - it needs to be one of triumph.  Every bug is an opportunity to make the code better, and it should matter who found it.  If you have a culture where bugs are reviewed and attributed as a specific person's "fault" then you are likely to create a culture that shoots itself in the foot when trying to find bugs because it will be more important to to CYA than to fix the product.
The hardest can be the post-release bugs - when someone outside the technical team gets involved, it's easy for a blame war to start.  The trick is to keep it focused on customer satisfaction.  There's a really good example from Lexus about how a major recall was handled with such elegance, that even in the midst of a big quality problem, the company was able to wow customers.  It's that sort of attitude that needs to be present - you can't think about how bad it was to have a bug -- you have to think about how gracefully you can recover.
Answer: How do I feel? Realistic about a lack of perfection, but also a sense of obligation to put right anything thats wrong. That includes past employers, where if needed I'll happily be on the phone, email, whatever so that if they want to ask questions or seek assistance I'll gladly give it.
Answer: There are 2 types of bugs really:

one where the code doesn't do what you thought it would do the way you wrote it
the other being where the code does exactly what you intended it to do but you misunderstood the requirements. (it's not a bug it's a feature!)

More of an issue is how quickly you can fix them and install a patch, and that will often depend on the development process. In an ideal system you will not need to do a full system build and install to deploy one, but instead build and install just the small component with the fix.
By the way I think most developers are happy to be "responsible" for the code they wrote and fix their bugs. It is fixing other people's bugs whilst those developers are doing the "new" coding that most developers will object to.
Answer: Writing for myself, I feel embarrassed, but will openly admit that it's my fault. Bugs are generally avoidable.
In my current job I do very much more reviewing than coding, particularly of production code. Still, missing a problem is embarrassing and my fault. Just don't claim that it's okay to take unclear shortcuts. Attempting to review low quality code is a mugs' game.
Answer: The only thing that really annoys me is when a bug "goes away" before I can find it. Otherwise it's just part of the job, really. While of course I try to avoid them, hunting them down is actually fun and often extremely educative.
And once you give up the concept that you own the code you've written (as you should), a positive side-effect is that you're not hurt by someone finding a bug in "your code" that much. It's still embarrassing but not that bad.
Answer: Maybe I'm misinterpreting the tone of this thread but it seems that most people posting here are too lackadaisical with regards to bugs. As someone mentioned, there are 2 types of bugs. The ones because of misinterpreted requirements. Those are understandable.
However, the other kind, bugs in your program not doing what you thought it was supposed to do should be extremely rare. Those are the kind that show a failure on the programmer's part to their job properly.  I'm getting the impression from the posters on this board that it's no big deal to release buggy code, it's just normal. Keep kidding yourselves, because it isn't normal. Or at least, it isn't acceptable at many places of business. Once or twice a year tops, maybe. But beyond that, you are a shoddy programmer and will be treated as such.
Comment: I think most people here are talking about bugs coming back to you from the testing department, not being released to the customer.  If you only get 2 bugs per year from testing, either they aren't doing their job, you aren't letting them do their job, or you aren't working on software complex enough to tax your potential.  Writing a single function that does what you thought is easy.  Writing 100,000 functions that interact perfectly is near impossible.  Programmers who don't have a testing department are much more careful, but also much slower.
Comment: I used to write automated tests for a military aircraft's embedded software, some of the most well-architected and reliable software out there, that spends over twice as much time and manpower on software testing than development, and still found a bug every month or so.  If you think you're doing better than that, you're kidding yourself.
Comment: @Karl: I work in similar/same industry as you. And I totally disagree with your premise that programmers who test their own code are much slower than those who don't. Those who don't test may send their code back for testing sooner but they end up wasting not only their time but multiple other people's time in the process before the code gets sent back to them. Also, there are 2 types of bugs, I am referring to, the requirements misunderstandings are bound to happen. That should be the majority of your problems. If you are seeing functional issues frequently then you have developer problems
Comment: @Karl, as for finding a bug every month, I'm not saying it doesn't happen. I'm saying that you can usually trace frequent instilling of bugs in the product to the same people.


What is the difference between thermodynamics and statistical mechanics?

Question: What is the difference between thermodynamics and statistical mechanics?
Answer: Statistical Mechanics is the theory of the physical behaviour of macroscopic systems starting from a knowledge of the microscopic forces between the constituent particles.
The theory of the relations between various macroscopic observables such as temperature, volume, pressure, magnetization and polarization of a system is called thermodynamics.
first page from this good book
Comment: What he said. Statistical mechanics tries to justify the laws of thermodynamics by finding underlying microscopical models. Thermodynamics is just happy with finding the macroscopic laws. If the law was derived from stat mech, so be it, but it is not a prerequisite.
Comment: One could also add that since thermodynamics makes fewer assumptions about the microscopic details, it sometimes works even when you don't understand why; for example, the thermodynamics of black holes.
Answer: Thermodynamics is an older theory that has studied work, energy, temperature, entropy and related concepts (including volume, pressure, polarization etc.) as continuous quantities describing continuous material objects. It was based on several principles - such as the conservation of energy and the growth of entropy - that prevent one from constructing perpetuum mobile gadgets.
Statistical mechanics is a newer theory that appreciates the atomic structure of the matter. Energy and entropy are distributed among the atoms and the temperature measures the average energy per one atom (or degree of freedom). Statistical mechanics allows one to derive the older laws and principles of thermodynamics by applying statistical methods on dynamics of a large number of atoms and molecules. For a particular model of a material, it even allows one to determine the material constants.
Answer: The point of contact between the two disciplines is taken to be the function for Entropy S which is a function of the thermodynamic variables $S=S(U, V, N_i)$ etc, with U being internal energy, V volume. Sometimes this is inverted as: $U=U(S,V,N)$
From a Thermodynamics perspective equations for temperature and other relations can be established by taking derivatives of S or U wrt the variables.
Statistical Mechanics aims to derive S explicitly as a function $S = k \Sigma f_i ln f_i$ where $f_i$ is a possible microstate. The totality of these microstates, and their associated energy, is determined from a partition function.
Both subjects can diverge from here too. Thermodynamic equations met in courses generally refer to equilibrium conditions. Many systems are in non-equilibrium and some thermodynamic theories try to explain this condition and how it changes. Some might argue that the regular thermodynamic concepts like Entropy are not even well defined far from equilibrium.
Statistical Mechanics would differentiate between "classical" systems and various types of "quantum systems" - which have different partition functions and energy behaviour. Thermodynamics is thus often viewed as a limiting classical theory (like Newtonian mechanics), but some Thermodynamic concepts (like Chemical Potential and Temperature) find themselves in quantum partition functions of Statistical Mechanics. In addition Entropy and Temperature are associated with Black Holes for reasons that dont currently translate into Statistical Mechanics.
Answer: In Hamiltonian or Lagrangian Mechanics, we can exactly predict the trajectory of the system. The general conclusion is that for Hamiltonian systems we don't have a sufficient number of analytical constants of motion in order to write the solutions down exactly. The systems are generally non-integrable. We use the tools of statistical mechanics to pay attention to systems with a very large number of mutually interacting degrees of freedom. There is no axiomatic derivation of equilibrium statistical mechanics and there are far too many subtleties which are not addressed carefully in the textbooks. In statistical mechanics, we consider microscopic interactions and do the math based on apriori assumptions(postulates).
Thermodynamics deals with averages. It is a science of time-scales and length-scales. Thermodynamics can be defined as the study of systems on their longest length-scales and time-scales so that fluctuations that happen in the shorter time-scales and length-scales are neglected. So what I call thermodynamics on one system may not be the thermodynamics for another system. We have a term called thermodynamic equilibrium which means that for the system the long-time averages of the physically measurable quantities are time independent.
Answer: Thermodynamics is the study of thermal and mechanical properties of equilibrium states of macroscopic systems, using the empirical laws of thermodynamics.
Statistical mechanics uses the laws of classical mechanics or the postulates of quantum mechanics, and the principles of statistics to reproduce the thermodynamical properties of macroscopic systems from the microscopical constituents.
Statistical mechanics aims to obtaining expresions for state functions of the systems from microscopic physics.
Answer: thermodynamics deals with temperature variations in the systems, where as statistical mechanics deals with classical mechanical theories to solve the system


Not Red but Orange: How to correct the color of an Irish Red after brewing?

Question: Probably we used not enough of the carared, but what we can do? Is it possible to use a dark fruit extract(sour, not sweet) to correct the color in the end? And what will be the effect on  taste?
Answer: Fruit is not the best color agent here - the flavor will be out of character in an Irish Red.
You get the red color from a little roast barley. Take a handful of lightly crushed roasted barley (or two handfulls of whole) and let them stand in half a pint of cold water for half an hour to an hour. Strain the water, which will now be black, boil, then add it to your wort/beer. You don't need to chill - it will cool instantly on contact with the beer.
The barley will give a red color to the beer (and a very slight touch of dryness in the finish, which is welcome in an Irish Red.)
Depending upon the SRM of your roast barley, you may need to do this more than once. A handful is possibly less than you need - but you can always add more to add more color after a first try, but it's not so easy take it away!
Comment: Thanks a lot, but one more question: to what quantity of wort you refer to when using 2 handfuls of barley? It's a carboy of 50 liters?
Comment: I was thinking of the standrd 5 gallons/20l, since you didn't state otherwise. For 50l I would use 2.5x the quantity. To be sure, you could also measure the volume of liquid after straining, and then add a proportional amount of this to a pint, to check for colour.
Answer: I would go with some Sinamar. Its a product from Weyermann made entirely of Black Malt and will add color to the beer without any additional flavor.
http://www.williamsbrewing.com/4-OZ-SINAMAR-NATURAL-BEER-COLORING-P2651.aspx

Sinamar® natural beer coloring was patented by the Weyermann Company
  in Germany in 1902, and is a gluten free natural mashed coloring
  derived from debittered Carafa Special 11 black malt. It will help you
  create a dark beer with very little roast character. It is used in
  breweries in 67 countries today, and used to darken Dunkelweizens,
  Schwarzbiers, Bockbiers, Dunkel Lagers, Altbiers, Stouts, Porters, Red
  Ales, Brown Ales, and even Scotch Ales. If you are a beer drinker with
  any experience, you have consumed a beer colored with Sinamar.
Sinamar is currently popular with craft brewers in the United States
  making dark IPA styles, as it imparts natural malt darkness without
  most of the roast and bitter dark malt flavor components. Use 1 fluid
  ounce in 5 gallons of wort (add while cooling at the end of the boil)
  to add 5 SRM of color. 5 SRM is the difference between a pale blond
  beer and a dark golden beer. To turn a pale golden beer dark brown or
  almost black, add 3 to 4 ounces of Sinamar to 5 gallons.

You can drink a drop of two of this stuff straight from the bottle to verify that it does not posses much flavor at all. It would be ideal to darken up a Red Ale instantly. You should add a few drops at a time to the carboy until you get the correct color you want.
Remember, the beer is a little darker in the carboy than in the bottle, BUT you need to make sure your yeast has cleared. If not, your beer will look lighter in the carboy, as the yeast reflect light.
Comment: In other words: wait and see, and don't kaizen it if it ain't broken.
Comment: Thanks a lot for this advice. In respect of the quantities you name and in order to add the adequate quantity of Sinamar you refer to 1 ounce = 28,35 grams and 1 gallon = 3.785 liter?
Comment: Today, after 10 days, the color is more and more turning red without any intervention. And we didn't do anything. Of course it's our first Red but we didnot expect this to happen.
Comment: Yeah, this is probably a case of suspended yeast making the red beer look lighter and orange because the yeast reflect some light back to you.
Comment: My question is: Is this a normal procedure? Anyone knows about this? We might say that the fermenting process itself needs more time to produce the color, which indicates that we probably used the sufficient quantity of malt.
Comment: Yeah its normal. The color of the beer in the carboy usually gets darker after the fermentation is done, once the yeast start dropping out. One of the best pieces of advice you can get early on is that once primary fermentation is done (ie, the bubbles stop), you should just FORGET about the beer for 1-2 weeks. Nothing useful can be determined in the first 10-12 days after primary, so its best to simply ignore the beer completely.


Request to create synonym for not-exactly-c tag

Question: Could someone please add nxc as a synonym for the not-exactly-c tag? NXC is an acronym of Not eXactly C, and is often used to refer to the language. I would do it myself if I had enough reputation.
Comment: Currently, the process of getting it done will be a bit unnecessary (we'll have to get a community team member in on this and all). Once we get protems, they'll be able to do tag merges/synonyms in a few clicks, so we can leave this meta post here for them for them to find. They also can do preemptive synonyming (I did a bunch of that when I was appointed on Chemistry)
Answer: Normally tag synonyms are created when there is a problem with some people using one tag, some people using another, and some people using both. At this point, the tag synonyms are created and posts with either are considered the same for tagging purposes.
At the moment, we have a couple of not-exactly-c tagged questions and no nxc tagged questions, so we aren't having a problem yet.
That's not to say it won't be a problem later, so it's good to bring these sorts of issues up, but I doubt it will be a priority for the stack exchange community moderators. When we get some protem mods though, they might be more likely to act on anticipated tag synonyms like this.


Find point in 3D space based on start point, three angles and a distance (need example)

Question: I know this has been asked before but the answer wasn't very helpful, sorry. I need an example and to see each step of the equation being solved. Let's say we have 45 degree angles to each axis and starting at point A(0,0,0). If the distance is 2 what are the coordinates of point B?
Comment: you can't have 45 degree angles to each axis. They have to add up to 180.
Comment: A point in 3D space is specified by three pieces of data.  In your case you need two angles and a distance.  In spherical coordinates two angles are sufficient to specify a location on the sphere, and the radius of the sphere scales each coordinate in cartesian space.
Answer: First, let's put B'' 2 units away at angle 0; explicitly B''(2,0,0). Since we know B is $45^\circ$ away from the $x$-axis, we know by basic trig that B'$(\sqrt{2},\sqrt{2},0)$.
From there, we say, okay; if it's also $45^\circ$ from the $z$-axis, then how do we get that? The $z$-coordinate just gets $\cos(45^\circ)=\sqrt{2}$ (If you draw the picture, you can see the side adjacent to the angle is on the $z$-axis). Similarly, the radius in the $xy$-plane needs to be scaled to "lift" B' into B; the scale factor naturally should be $\sin(45^\circ)=\sqrt{2}$; because the scaling must happen in both directions, we have:
B$(\sqrt{2}\sqrt{2}, \sqrt{2}\sqrt{2}, \sqrt{2}) =$ B$(2,2,\sqrt{2})$.
The trick is being careful about which angle represents each direction, and making sure your sines and cosines work under the conventions you're using. Of course, with $45^\circ$, you can be a lot sloppier; however the method I used will work for general angles (with adjustments for sign).
Edit: Ah, I see this is not technically what you asked for, as Robert noted. I assumed you wanted in terms of the azimuth angle and the inclination angle. Were you actually looking for angles from each axis, or from each plane?


With debts, unemployment, disability, and old age, are we required to pay zakat?

Question: I have 85,000 dollars student loan debt, and also 3000 dollars in credit card debt.  I am unemployed with some disabilities and older husband who is retired.  Our only income is my husband's Social Security. I pay zakat on the gold jewellery I have. Are we required to pay zakat?
Comment: Possible duplicate of [Is a woman's jewellery subject to zakat?](http://islam.stackexchange.com/questions/1596/is-a-womans-jewellery-subject-to-zakat)
Answer: Based on the hanafi position, If you pay Zakah on Gold, then it would indicitae you are above the nisab, therefore you will not be eligible to recieve Zakat.
However Zakat is an indivudual obligation and can be received indivudualy.
You have Gold more than the nisab of the Gold standard so you can't receive the Zakat.
The Student Loan is most likely not due to be paid immediately, so you can't count this as a deduction, but if you are paying a monthly amount towards it, that can be deducted. The Credit Card depends on your intention of paying. If you pay only the minimum amount, then deduct that from your asset in that month. If you are looking to pay the full amount, then pay it all, and see what assets you have remaining. Even then, if you are below the nisab is cash assets, you still have Gold in excess, so you still won't meet Nisab.
Your husband is on Social Seciurity and probably has nothing left after expenses like bills, etc, so its possible that he is eligible. But you must consider any savings he has too. That is counted as an asset.
See sociable7.com/zakat
Answer: Zakat is paid under certain conditions:

The person should be Muslim, adult, sane, free (not a slave).
They must posses a certain minimum amount of extra wealth (called nisab), fully owned by them in excess of personal use (such as clothing, food, shelter, household furniture, utensils, cars, etc).
They should have had this minimum amount in possession for a complete lunar year (hawl).
The wealth should be of a productive nature, from which they can derive profit or benefit such as merchandise for business, gold, silver, livestock, etc.
The minimum amount (or Nisab) should not be owed to someone, i.e., it should be free from debt.

so to answer your question, if the debt is too big that ones money(excluding the debt) doesn't reach the "Nisab" then one doesn't pay zakat.
I think having a job might as well be one of the requirements as not having a job is like not having a "productive nature".
If disability is a cause for you to not be able to gain money, then, wallah aalam(and God knows more), I don't think one should pay it, but in the case of someone that makes money even with a disability(say stephen hawking) then I think in that case zakat is a must.
Again old age preventing one to work, wallah aalah, is okay to not pay zakat but otherwise, I'm not so sure.
Remember that the zakat is paying 2.5% only! not more, not less!
Comment: Half of your answer is based on what you think and this is the part which is simply wrong. Having a job is no condition for Zakat nor being disabled one can give his money to another person to trade with it on ones behalf!
Comment: This is the view of the majority of scholars as Allah says. "Take, [O, Muhammad], from their wealth a charity by which you purify them and cause them increase, and invoke [ Allah 's blessings] upon them [9:103](http://legacy.quran.com/9/103)" which is a general not exclusive order and you may refer to [this fatwa](https://islamqa.info/en/75307)
Comment: I am almost sure of what I'm saying, but I say "I think" so that if I said something wrong(I said without revising) people wouldn't take it a 100% for granted
Comment: Neither a not having job nor disability is a reason for not having to pay Zakat the two conditions are nisab and hawl no more nor less. Beside one must be able to feed himself after paying the zakat! Even a child or an insane person needs to pay zakat if these conditions are met (or more exactly his/her guardian needs to do that on his/her behalf)
Comment: an insane person shouldn't, someone who isn't asked to pray would be asked to pay zakat? other points I am not sure but you will have to support your points with evidence
Answer: According to a paper presented by Ahmad Bello Dogarawa, presented at International Conference on Islamic Law and Muslim Minorities in Ghana organised by the Al-Furqan Foundation.

Zakat, the third pillar of Islam, is probably the first pillar of its economic
  system. It represents the first and most important tool for implementing the
  economic justice of Islam and provides sustenance to the economically
  unfortunate, two issues for which Islam is especially sensitive. Zakat is the
  basis for equitable redistribution of wealth in Islam and the most viable tool
  for combating poverty and other social and economic ills in an Islamic society.
  It is an obligation mentioned in the Qur"an about thirty times, in twenty-eight
  of which, Zakah is associated with prayers. This obligation is also emphasised
  in a number of sayings of the Prophet (peace and blessing of Allah be upon
  him).

and

Zakat provides the basis of Islamic social welfare and plays the role of solving
  dangerous problems such as poverty, unemployment, catastrophes,
  indebtedness and inequitable income distribution in a Muslim society, both at
  family, community and state levels.

Given this, I don't think you need to worry about paying Zakat. If anything, given
your circumstances you should be receiving Zakat. Given that you live in the West
you should see social welfare system as being Zakat, it just happens to be implemented
by a Western country. This also suggests that supporting a welfare system in a non-muslim
majority country (as well as a muslim majority country) should be seen as a religious duty.


Recover password or password hash from locked account

Question: I have a locked administrator account. Other accounts are unlocked, but they have no rights. I want to get a password from the locked account, or maybe password hash, if possible.
Comment: It would be nice to know the operating system.
Comment: Windows 7 (or maybe also Windows 8)
Answer: If you have no rights at all, then you are out of luck. There is no way to retrieve the password. Depending on the operating system you can reset the passwords in different ways:
Windows
For windows you will need to reboot the machine and use a special CD to try and reset the password. One tool you can use is this one: http://pogostick.net/~pnh/ntpasswd/bootdisk.html
Linux
On  Linux you need to boot with a live CD, mount the hard drive and generate a new hash for the root password on the live cd using passwd. Then go to you /etc/shadow and copy that hash for your root account to the /etc/shadow on the mounted hard drive. When you reboot your machine the password will be the password you generated on the live cd.
Comment: Thanks! I'm running Windows and this bootable CD was very helpful!
Answer: Windows stores passwords with non reversible encryption, but you can try two things, both with Windows boot disks (which bypass your permissions problems by loading their OS's and mounting your C:\ Drive). First, you could run a program like Ophcrack to try and challenge their NLTM hashes. This will work if they have a weak password, but a dictionary attack can only get you so far. If it does work it will return a plaintext password. Alternately you can just change the password (I like to use the HBCD, which has the added advantage of being an AV boot disk, and can work on Linux and Windows).


How will I know that this state of no suffering will last forever?

Question: Suppose I have reached a state of no suffering. Then what is the proof that suffering won't arise again ? How can I be sure that state of Nirvana doesn't change or decay ?
Comment: I have noticed a pattern in your recent questions that seems to indicate a grappling with just what it means for something to be impermanent. I think some of the confusion comes from the gross understanding of impermanence which implies true endings and true beginnings. In order to dispel some of this confusion you might consider that if nothing ever truly arises, then it cannot truly end.
Comment: I agree that the unconditioned neither changes nor decays nor arises nor vanishes.
Comment: At that point there will also be no doubt. You will know for 100%, due to experience.
Answer: Theravada Buddhist Answer.

How will I know that this state of no suffering will last forever?

A good and important question. The thing is that you can't know whether or not this state of suffering will last forever.
There are especially two (and probably more) important reasons for this.
The first one being that fact that the Buddha didn't want us to accept his teaching based on blind belief, hear-say or something similar. The Buddha's teaching is a practical teaching meant for us to realize through especially meditation practice.
The second reason dives into the nature of reality and how to understand it. There exists different types of realities; Conventional and Ultimate realities.
Conventional realities consist of concepts. What characterizes a concept is that it can be understood by hearsay, logical reasoning, inference or intellectual thinking. In other words, such concepts are not regarded as ultimate reality.
An ultimate reality such as Nibbana cannot be understood by the above mentioned methods. A person born blind can never know colors no matter how others may explain those colors. Likewise, one can never know toothache if one has never had them.
In the same way, insight-knowledge and Jhana can never be known, unless one has attained them. Nibbana, the end of suffering, can only be understood by personal experience, ie. through correct meditation practice.
Ultimate reality is only accessible for insight-meditators, those who attained Jhana and the noble ones.
Lastly, be aware that Doubt (Vicikicchā) is one of the Five Hindrances to Enlightenment. The antidote for doubt is; studying the teachings, finding a good teacher and vipassana meditation practice.
The second Bojjhanga, ie. the Investigation of Phenomena (dhamma vicaya) is also a direct remedy for Doubt, since it leads to personal experience of the Three Marks of Existence (tilakkhaṇa) and how the mind-body complex operates.
Answer: Suffering is a sankhara, conditioned phenomenon. This means it arises from an interplay of certain conditions coming together. Now, whatever is conditioned can be prevented from arising by removing one of its necessary conditions.
A necessary condition for suffering is clinging and grasping, aka attachment.  If you don't grasp - suffering cannot arise.
Everything else in the world is impermanent but your no-grasping can be permanent and unconditional. Just don't grasp, ever. This is unconditional Nirvana, plain and simple.
You know this Nirvana won't decay and suffering won't arise again when you are disenchanted about everything. Since you are disenchanted, you are dispassionate. Because you're dispassionate, you don't grasp.
You get disenchanted when you know how things work and you know what is possible and what is impossible. You know Anicca, Dukkha, Anatta. You know there's no magic. You know no one will descent in a golden chariot to take care of you and make you happy. Because you know, you're disenchanted and dispassionate, because you're dispassionate, you don't grasp. Because you don't grasp, you don't add your opinion to things. When you see, you see what you see. When you hear, you hear what you hear - with no aversion. You don't crave for something that isn't here. Everything is "just so" for you and not otherwise. This is called "suchness" or "Nirvana".
Because you don't crave for something else - your suchness is stable, everything is just so, always. This is not subject to change and decay because it's not fixed, not assembled from conditions. This is called "non-abiding Nirvana".

This Dhamma that I have attained is deep, hard to see, hard to realize, peaceful, refined, beyond the scope of conjecture, subtle, to-be-experienced by the wise. But this generation delights in attachment, is excited by attachment, enjoys attachment. For a generation delighting in attachment, excited by attachment, enjoying attachment, this/that conditionality and dependent co-arising are hard to see. This state, too, is hard to see: the resolution of all fabrications, the relinquishment of all acquisitions, the ending of craving; dispassion; cessation; Unbinding.
Answer:
Suppose I have reached a state of no suffering.

Don't suppose. Let go. No suffering is a mental fabrication and obstruction. You try hard to, but you cannot experience it by intellectual means.

Then what is the proof that suffering won't arise again ? How can I be
  sure that state of Nirvana doesn't change or decay ?

Let go, let go, let go of Nirvana. Sit down to Samatha and meditate, calm the mind, make it useful. Nirvana is beyond graspable, don't try to grasp at it's concept and future of How will I know. Go beyond clinging, go beyond taste. It is the only way to find out.
Answer: To paraphrase another answer, which was deleted ...
Worldly people crave for knowledge of future events, and for "proofs" -- but logical proofs and arguments are unreliable -- and so are various (ancient and modern) meditation doctrines/systems.

Worldly people don't know the difference between right and wrong.
Whereas, a sottapana knows:

The path
The conclusion of the path (nibbana)
That nibbana exists and is good because it's not anicca

The path from sottapana to arahant is as follows

The five aggregates are all anicca, which arouses disgust: so much anicca and so much dukkha -- too much to handle -- that any business with the aggregates is severed (forever).
In a bit more detail, what happens is:

Aniccānupassī (knowledge of impermanence of the aggregates)
Putting the citta in samadhi (to avoid getting upset by the revulsion associated with Aniccānupassī, however the citta cannot be in samadhi until you die)
Dispassion towards the aggregates (which are cursed with impermanence), and so ...
Virāgānupassī (knowledge of dispassion -- no lust for what's anicca, and no ignorance about what is dukkha and/or anatta)
Without lust for aggregates it's "game over" -- except for some residual karma
Knowledge of the characteristics of nibbana -- not conditioned, not anicca, not dukkha, and anatta

Nibanna is found by elimination:

Not the five aggregates (which are anicca and disgusting)
Not the five senses (because also anicca)
Not mano i.e. mind and ideas (because also anicca)
Not some other imaginary/fantasy world (because of dispassion towards mano)
Answer: I like Lanka's answer, but I will give a Mahayana perspective...
Consider how it feels to wake up from a dream and realize that all you felt during that dream was, "just a dream." All the passion you felt while dreaming would dissipate upon waking up with the certain knowledge that it was "just a dream," right?
Now, what if you knew you were "just dreaming" while you were dreaming? Like in a lucid dream? The passion and zeal would dissipate right then and there as you would know it all to be unreal.
One who has achieved Nirvana dispels suffering just like that by dispelling ignorance of how things really are. And this knowledge continues in the mindstream into the indefinite future in just the same way as ignorance continued in the mindstream in the indefinite past.
In short, Nirvana is just the replacement of ignorance with knowledge.
Comment: I'm happy that we have different traditions represented on our site.
Comment: Me too. We all have the same teacher after all :)
Comment: Waking from the dream makes me realize all was a dream but this knowledge is lost again when I sleep. Similarly Nirvana is waking up from the ignorance but I dont see a reason why it cant be lost again... Buddha awakened to the Truth and he knew that he would not return to the world again but what made made him so sure? What was permanent and unchanging aspect of his attainment?
Answer: How will I know that this state of no suffering will last forever?
This very question is a source of suffering. That state has ended with this very question.
Do not trust even one's own knowledge, this too is subject to change.
The arahat knows all states will change, Nibbana lets them all go. In the letting go, the realization of Nibbana arises. Nibbana is not a state, it is a realisation that nothing is eternal, everything is unsubstantial. There is no eternal self, though conditions may - and do - arise where identity correspondingly arises. However, "No Self" is a self-view and an object of attachment.


Test Blank CD/DVD?

Question: How would I test a blank CD/DVD + R to see if it's good.
I have a blank DVD that has a few light scratches on it and I want to see if it is able to burn a home movie onto it.
Answer: No, you cannot check a blank CD/DVD for errors other than having a closer look at the disc itself.

Test Blank CD/DVD?


Do any manufacturers have plans to use turbojets in future aircraft? What is the state-of-the-art in turbojet design?

Question: Turbojets have largely been superseded by turbofans (or turboprops for low-speed flight). Are there any aircraft being planned that would use turbojets?  I'm also interested whether there has been any improvement in turbojet design over the last few decades.
Comment: Technically the turbofan is an improvement of the turbojet design. Maybe THE improvement.
Answer: The first jets were turbojets simply because the turbine could only support its own compressor. They kept an edge for supersonic flight and will be the engine of choice if we ever design another Mach 3+ aircraft. Also, micro jets for cruise missiles and model aircraft turbines are turbojets to keep them simple. However, the analysis of modern jet warfare showed that the overwhelming majority of flight time is spent at high subsonic speeds, and there a turbofan makes more sense.
Now all modern combat jet aircraft use turbofans, even though their bypass ratio is rather low (around 0.5).
Commercial jet transport engines are solidly turbofans since half a century and have slowly increased their bypass ratio to about 9, less for smaller engines. Now three-spool engines or geared turbofans are state of the art, because they allow more freedom in optimizing the rotation speed of the different sections inside the engine.
Turbojets have benefited from better, more heat-resistant materials and airfoils for turbo machinery just as much as turbofans, but modern designs are overwhelmingly turbofans, so turbojets generally represent a much earlier technological level. To give you an example: The first turbojet used in operation, the Jumo 004, had a mass of more than 700 kg and produced 8.8 kN of thrust. The engine of the Eurofighter, the EJ200, is only slightly bigger in mass and has similar dimensions, weighing 990 kg, but produces seven times the thrust of the Jumo 004. With reheat, thrust is more than 10 times that of the Jumo 004, which had no afterburner. The pressure ratio could be increased from 3.2 to 26 (that is the progress in compressor aerodynamics), and the turbine entry temperature from 840°K to 1800°K (that is the progress in materials).
Comment: Aren't turbojets actually the most efficient engines in about the mach 2-3 range, with ramjets surpassing them above mach 3 or so?
Comment: @Sean: Their efficiency at that speed is mostly the efficiency of the intake. The engine's task is to swallow the air coming from the intake and to accelerate it as much as possible. This needs rather simple compressors since the pressure at the engine face is already so high. Turbojets are nothing without their intake at Mach 3.
Answer: Maybe this helps, although from 2013
"Superjet" variable cycle jet engine could power future fighter aircraft
http://www.gizmag.com/ge-aviation-develop-advent-variable-cycle-jet-engine/25556/


Is this patent deemed abandoned?

Question: In reference to the patent: EP2760362A1
Hi. I note there has been over 4 years since this patent was filed (5 years since its priority date) and it is still down as an "Application". Does this mean it is effectively past its deadline and can no longer be granted?
Answer: This patent application is still active, although substantive examination has not started yet. In fact the renewal fees were paid in April 2016 (so it will definitely be active till April 2017). As long as it is not granted, it remains an application.
As far as it concerns the EPO there is no time limit within which a patent must be granted. I am quite sure there is no provision in other major patent offices as well.

Is this patent deemed abandoned?


Is there a way to filter enormous Patent results?

Question: I was just wondering with what tools would it be possible to filter patent results for a particular topic(Or is there a way I could just search through the claims in each patent to confirm novelty). just performed a search on google patents and got about 40,000+ related results
Answer: You can either use keywords for filtering, or something better, use the patent classifications systems put in place by different patent offices. Based on the technical details of the invention, the patent examiners classify each patent application according to a hierarchical classification system; each examiner may assign one or more classification codes to each patent document. You can filter by patent classifications in Google Patents, for example.
The most common patent classification system is the IPC, then you also have the USPC (only used in US patent documents as far as I know) and CPC (this one is based on IPC, but has more codes, thereby making possible to classify the patent documents with more detail). In each of these links you can search for the technical details of your interest, copy the corresponding code, and use it in a patent database (e.g. Google Patents) so that only patent documents with that code or codes are retrieved.
Comment: Classification codes are very powerful. One way to find them is to find some relevant patents and try filtering by their classification codes.
Comment: Classification is also tricky to rely on because  - there are subtle distinctions between classes, things can be misclassified, and the claims determine the class, not the disclosure. For a novelty search that can be a meaningful distinction. Still, I agree, class is a good thing to know about.
Comment: Exactly. Thanks for pointing that out.
Comment: It's true they can get misclassified, but on the positive side your search has way less noise than using keywords for instance. AFAIK examiners should not limit themselves to the claims whenever they classify documents. In some patent search engines, patent families are grouped together, and the classifications thereof too, in which case the likelihood of the family being misclassified is lower since it can be expected that at least one examiner of the family gets it right. But when the examiners are lazy, they classify applications in a very general group and that is a problem.
Answer: Google patents offers many ways to narrow a search. You might start with google patents advanced. It also has an "about" section. You can limit a search by country, status, just look in title, etc. Below is an excerpt from that information. Although google patents is usually used in a more simple way it does have Boolean capabilities and even now supports proximity testing.
Besides google patent, there are many other search possibilities, including The Lens Espacenet, PatentScope and Free Patents Online.
You mention specifically searching in claims regarding novelty. Claims are not usually the focus of a novelty search.

<code>Go to Advanced Search (boolean entry isn't available on the homepage)
Enter your query in a "Search Term" box on the left
</code>
Boolean syntax (USPTO or EPO format): For more complicated searches,
  full boolean logic is supported. The default operator is AND with left
  associativity. Note: this means safety OR seat belt is searched as
  (safety OR seat) AND belt. Each word automatically includes plurals
  and close synonyms, and CPCs can also be used without a special
  syntax, like (safety belt) OR B60R22/00. Adjacent words that are
  implicitly ANDed together, such as (safety belt), are treated as a
  phrase when generating synonyms.
Proximity: You can use proximity operators to boost the score of
  documents if they contain expressions near each other. Note: proximity
  operators only change ranking, not retrieval. NEAR, NEARx, NEAR/x, or
  /xw means matches are a maximum of x words away, in any order. WITH
  means 20 words away, any order, and SAME means 200 words away, any
  order. AJD, AJDx, ADJ/x, or +xw are the same as NEAR, but matches must
  be in the same order.
Example: (safety ADJ/5 belt) NEAR/10 (baby OR child) SAME vehicle.
Searching in title, abstract, claims, CPC: You can search inside a
  specific field using field names. Use TI=(safety belt) to search in
  the title, AB= for the abstract and CL= for the claims. For CPCs,
  CPC=B60R22 will match documents with exactly this CPC, CPC=B60R22/low
  matches documents with this CPC or a child classification of this CPC.
  CPCs can also be used without a field prefix (see Searching by
  keywords and classifications above).
Wildcards, truncation: Although we automatically generate plurals, you
  can instead specify wildcard patterns of words to search. Wildcards
  only work on single words. The top 25 most common matches will be ORed
  together. Note: wildcards only work on English words. The wildcards
  are ? (zero or one character), * or $ (zero or more characters), $x
  (zero to x characters), and # (exactly one character). You can include
  more than one wildcard symbol per word. Examples: saccharide? and
  hydroxyphenyl*.


Failing Windows Updates with Error Code 800719e4

Question: On a number of Vista machines I have now come across the same error - when installing updates everything works fine, until it after it reboots and the rolls back during step 3.  On all occasions (where a simple retry hasn't worked) the error code has been 800719e4.
On my own laptop I have so far tried the following:-

Installed the updates one by one manually - I started on the smallest and one by one have worked towards the largest one which has left me with "Security Update for Windows (KB2286198)" that refuses to install.
Renamed all the files in "C:\Windows\Logs\CBS" to "xxx.old" where xxx was the original name with windows update turned off - no change
Renamed all the folders in "C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution" in the same manner - no change
Attempted to install it manually "Windows6.0-KB2286198-x86.msu" - no change
Tried to un-install IE8 - doesn't work, rolls back at the end (Installing the IE9 Beta when it launched was what alerted me to the issue on this laptop)
Ran a "Fix It" thing from the Microsoft Website - no help (Can't find the link now).
Tried to recover from the disk - but alas my laptop only has a recovery partition (and was unservice packed original).
Ran with nothing running on startup, and only MS services - again no change.

Google is being useless with a load of posts trying to get me to call a telephone number with letters in (presumably an American number)
The error code appears to mean error log full but no one has any idea which log!  The WinUpdate log does indicate the following is the error point though :-
<code>2010-10-23 13:54:48:230 1240 738 Handler WARNING: Got extended error: "POQ Operation SetKeyValue OperationData \Registry\machine\Schema\wcm://Microsoft-Windows-shell32?version=6.0.6002.18287&language=neutral&processorArchitecture=x86&publicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35&versionScope=nonSxS&scope=allUsers\metadata\elements\HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT_lnkfile_shellex_DropHandler_defaultValue, @default, , ewAwADAAMAAyADEANAAwADEALQAwADAAMAAwAC0AMAAwADAAMAAtAEMAMAAwADAALQAwADAAMAAwADAAMAAwADAAMAAwADQANgB9AAAA"
</code>
Has anyone any idea how to fix this once and for all - reinstalling laptop after laptop from scratch is mildly annoying at work where Office and Firefox are the only extras, but even more annoying at home - I don't fancy going through the palaver of reinstalling everything yet again.
Comment: A search for the error code reveals lots of posts over 2+ years from people with the same problem - but no solution.
Comment: Somehow I'd managed to miss Moab's comment otherwise I would have contacted them, but after Microsoft Security Essentials updates started to fail with the same code (installing that meant it wouldn't reinstall either) I just bit the bullet and reinstalled my machine.
Answer: The only advice I can think of is to :

Uninstall all antivirus and firewall
products
Clean the disk a couple of times
using Microsoft's cleaner (cleanmgr)
Follow all the advice given in this Microsoft Support article where it applies:
You cannot install some updates or programs


Can You Identify This Grass?

Question: Can anyone identify this grass or weed that has sprouted up in my healthy fescure? Please see picture. I have a pretty good tall fescue lawn that I have been working on getting out the crabgrass and various weeds with "0.28% Barricade pre-emergent Weed-Feed fertilizer applied in late March and a good post-emergent spot-spray weed killer this spring. So far, so good. The fescue yard really looks great.  BUT...I have a new patch of this unidentified grass or weed with seeds at the top that just popped up a week or two ago as shown in the picture. It's in an area 20x20 feet only...and it was an area that got a good strong dose of the weed and feed in March. The unidentified interloper is a bit lighter shade of yellow-green (at the top of the picture) than healthy dark green fescue (at the bottom of the picture). And it has what appears to be seeds at the top. I live in zone 7. Thank you. Mark
Answer: I'm not very good on grasses, but it looks like Poa Annua.  A variety of grass contained in a standard mix of grass varieties for use in uk lawns.
Comment: Rosie, I think you are correct. The pictures I saw on Google for Poa Annua look almost identical. Thanks so much!
Comment: Yep looks like Pa Annua. People actually intentionally put them in seed mixes? :( It's usually considered a weed. Hard to kill because it's a grass and there may only be one selective herbicide for it. You usually have to kill the whole thing and start over. Spreads pretty fast.

Can You Identify This Grass?


Sitecore scheduled publishing with Publishing service

Question: With Sitecore Publishing Service installed, is it possible to have scheduled publishes. How can do add our custom schedule to the Publishing queue of Publishing Instance.
Comment: You can use the default Sitecore Publishing agent (`Sitecore.Tasks.PublishAgent`). It will use the Publishing service.
Answer: You can use the default Sitecore Publishing Agent. It is found in the Sitecore.config. You can search for it by using Sitecore.Tasks.PublishAgent.
You just need to configure the source and target database (default: master and web). I had asked the same question to Sitecore Support and their response was that the methods from the Sitecore.Publishing.PublishManager class to perform new publishing.
For an example:
PublishManager.PublishSmart(database, targets, languageArray);
PublishManager.PublishIncremental(database, targets, languageArray);

In Sitecore 8.2 Update -2 default PublishAgent works fine and calls the new Publish Module.
Comment: Is it possible to have a similar agent on the publishing service "application"? I mean, I want to be sure that the publishing service publishes even if the content manager is down.
Comment: Yes it is possible but you'll need to write custom code. I would suggest to use hangfire


Corrupt MySQL log file - cannot start the database

Question: My VM ran out of disk space and MySQL wasn't able to write to the log file causing it to crash. Here is the log file:

2017-09-05T11:47:00.636352Z 0 [Note] InnoDB: Initializing buffer pool, total size = 128M, instances = 1, chunk size = 128M
2017-09-05T11:47:00.650903Z 0 [Note] InnoDB: Completed initialization of buffer pool
2017-09-05T11:47:00.654252Z 0 [Note] InnoDB: If the mysqld execution user is authorized, page cleaner thread priority can be changed. See the man page of setpriority().
2017-09-05T11:47:00.667475Z 0 [Note] InnoDB: Highest supported file format is Barracuda.
2017-09-05T11:47:00.669522Z 0 [ERROR] InnoDB: Ignoring the redo log due to missing MLOG_CHECKPOINT between the checkpoint 72827846847 and the end 72827846656.
2017-09-05T11:47:00.669553Z 0 [ERROR] InnoDB: Plugin initialization aborted with error Generic error
2017-09-05T11:47:01.270002Z 0 [ERROR] Plugin 'InnoDB' init function returned error.
2017-09-05T11:47:01.270053Z 0 [ERROR] Plugin 'InnoDB' registration as a STORAGE ENGINE failed.
2017-09-05T11:47:01.270064Z 0 [ERROR] Failed to initialize plugins.
2017-09-05T11:47:01.270071Z 0 [ERROR] Aborting

I've tried to remove the ib_log* file in /var/lib/mysql and set innodb_force_recovery = 3 in my.cnf file. But received the same error. Any help appreciated.
Comment: Did you try `innodb_force_recovery` values 4, 5, 6?
Answer: Was able to do a mysqldump, remove everything. Do a clean reinstall of mysql and import it back. Thanks for the help !


Does Conqueror's Haki have to knock someone out?

Question: I know that it's super rare and basically pitting your will against someone else's, but would it be possible to do other things with it? (Yes, I'm aware that if your will isn't strong enough, you won't KO anyone and that you can fine tune control as well.)
Answer: As stated in One Piece Conqueror's Haki (Haoshoku no Haki), whoever possesses it will have the qualities of a king. So you can control and dominate the will power of people and other creatures like sea monsters, who are weaker than the Haki user. By control, it doesn't mean that you can make people to do something. But you can suppress them for a short period of time and someone who can't bear it will get knocked out.
As explained in Usage and Strengths and Drawbacks of Haoshoku no Haki:

The most common usage of it shown in the series so far is using it to exert the user's willpower onto those with weak wills and rendering them unconscious.

One can also use Haoshoku Haki to destroy things as seen by Shanks when he was able to crack a part of Whitebeard's ship using his Haki.

Another advantage is a proficient user like Luffy can use it to tame powerful and dangerous animals, allowing the user to pacify ferocious beasts such as the Kraken or Fighting Bull.

There are very few Haoshoku no Haki users. Only one in several million people have this ability. So, we see someone using Haoshoku no Haki very seldom, usually when fighting with a large number of weaker opponents. Someone with a strong will will not be affected. We might get to see more use of Haoshoku no Haki in future.
Answer: When two people with conquers haki clash there is waves of destructive energy which might damage someone weak if they were caught closer to the middle. The fight I am talking about is when he fights Don Chinjao. It main looks more violent and no one got very close so there is no proof and it would take two people.
There might be an advanced version like future sight but we have not seen any proof of that either.
It seems to be either an area of effect to use on large groups of weaklings or to be used on top of his other ability in a one on one fight. However, gear fourth takes up all his energy so I doubt he could use both and will likely pick gear fourth over conquers haki. Conquers haki might be the best defense against conquers haki, which would explain why he chose to use it during his fight with Don Chinjao and none of his other one on one fights.
Most of its uses come down to speculation because we really haven't seen it used much, some take what I have said with at least a grain of salt.

Does Conqueror’s Haki have to knock someone out?


Does sauerkraut go bad?

Question: I have had a tupperware of sauerkraut I bought from the grocery store in my refrigerator for almost two months. When/Will it ever go bad?
Comment: In his book [Cooked](http://michaelpollan.com/reviews/cooked-by-michael-pollan/), Michael Pollan spends several pages describing how the different stages of sauerkraut fermentation develop and can go wrong. It will definitely go bad sometime, but it's hard to *predict* *what* can go wrong *when*. SAJ14SAJs answer *Throw your saurkraut away if it shows signs of mold, or if it has an unusual odor* is the most precise answer you can get ;-) The book is an amusing read about BBQing, fermenting and baking bread.
Comment: *making* sauerkraut may go wrong in many ways and lead to quick spoilage. Once properly, successfully made though, and kept immersed in the pickling juice, its "shelf life" is very long.
Answer: Yes, saurkraut can go bad.  It is a fermented product, protected from other micro-fauna growing by the acidity of the juice, a natural pickle created during the fermentation.
Having the juice cover the solids is important to protect them from spoilage.
If the juice gets diluted, or there simply is not enough to cover the kraut do to spillage, being eaten or whatever, then molds and other things can colonize and begin to grow.
Throw your saurkraut away if it shows signs of mold, or if it has an unusual odor.
Still, because of the pickle, it should have a long shelf life in practice.  Still Tasty suggests six months, refrigerated.
Answer: yes, it can go bad and did with me.  I ate a serving and regretted it for a week.  Take no chances, throw it out.

Does sauerkraut go bad?


Time to switch to IPv6?

Question: I am thinking of upgrading our networking situation and am considering a migration of IPv4 to IPv6.  Is it too soon to be considering this move as it looks like much of the networking gear and OSen are ready for it?  Where do I lose out in such a situation?
Comment: Also look into the security matters concerning IPv6 (so you can troubleshoot when needed).
Comment: I would argue that this question is very opinion-based. It is now two years later, and my own feeling on the matter is that the jury is still out whether IPv6 will catch on outside mobile, or whether techniques such as CGNAT will end up winning the market.
Answer: TL;DR: If you're a consumer/SOHO nothing needs doing. If you're providing services, start planning now while there's no rush and no deadline.
Basically, everything is dual stack these days, meaning it supports IPv4 and IPv6 out of the box. The Internet in general is still operating fully supporting IPv4 as much as possible.
At this point, if you're providing services to the Internet -- running DNS, web, email, etc. services. You should be planning to provide those services as both IPv4 and IPv6.
If you're consuming services from the Internet -- small office/home office, larger offices, residential, etc. then there is currently no urgency to convert yourself to IPv6. I suspect as the bigger cable companies start deploying IPv6 the "last mile." Then we'll see more IPv6 traffic in general.
Today, there are a lot of really big things -- Amazon, some of the content delivery networks -- which are only IPv4. So the focus, as I see it, is for the providers to continue working to provide evertyhing in IPv4 and IPv6 simultaneously. The first problem the Internet is going to face is fracturing/islands appearing as the newest areas, where IPv4 addresses are already exhausted, come online as IPv6-only. Those newest areas will need the existing services and service providers to offer stuff over IPv6.
Comment: Actually, the "rush and deadline" have already passed. (in many circles)  Dual stack is common in carrier hardware and most modern OSes, however, consumer hardware is still WAY behind here.  And this is almost entirely because consumer ISPs have yet to embrace IPv6 -- or have done so in manners that are hard to not think are a joke.
Answer: Usually you don't switch from IPv4 to IPv6, you go from IPv4-only to dual stacked networking: IPv4 and IPv6 combined. The IPV6-only internet is very, very limited at this moment.
It certainly isn't too soon to start implementing IPv6: we're rapidly running out of available IPv4 space.
Answer: In general, yes.  If your systems (routers, workstations, servers, etc) support IPv6 and your ISP provides IPv6, then there's very little reason not to move forward, 'tho you'll want IPv4 to remain your default protocol.  And we're talking "dual stack" (v4 and v6), not "turn off IPv4".
There are parts of the world today that simply have no more IPv4 addresses; IPv6 is their only means of connectivity.  In order to communicate with them, you'll have to be on the IPv6 internet -- or they need an IPv4-IPv6 proxy, as the protocols are not compatible. (or they're stuck behind massive carrier-grade-nat (CGN) systems.) Unless you're doing a lot of business with Asia, I doubt you've noticed. (or need to)
The only current drawback that I'm aware of is that the IPv6 internet is somewhat less stable and slower.  Because many providers aren't focusing as much effort on IPv6, they have fewer IPv6 peering connections over slower alternate links, or worse, tunnels.
[My IPv6 is over a HE.net tunnel.  Stock android devices prefer IPv6, and they're HORRIBLY slow to various google properties (play store, youtube) over that tunnel.]
Answer: I think you should first opt to run a dual stack, meaning to run IPv4 and IPv6 next to each other. In that way you can steadily progress to an all IPv6 environment once IPv4 is getting faced out. Some countries do not speak IPv4 anymore (like China) and others haven't opted in for IPv6 or only partially.
Comment: although China is strong in IPv6, they certainly do use IPv4 still. The core of the Chinese academic network (CERNET) is IPv6 but they have plenty of IPv4 users riding over IPv6. However you are right, of course this is the future. It's a matter of judgment, but many people believe that now is the time for all content providers to support a dual stack, ready for IPv6-only users as well as IPv4 users. You could look at RFC6883.
Answer: Yes, time to switch is now.  A couple of often overlooked issues:
Many IPv4 networks are often overloaded, congested and have asymmetric paths, so you don't even know which side is to blame; for an end-user, having a dual-stack IPv4/IPv6 means that it's much easier to switch routes if a given path is congested.  I use IPv6 all the time exactly for this reason; tunnelled IPv6 from he.net is usually of great help, especially since you know it won't be highly asymmetric (so there'd be no guessing which NOC@ to contact if anything goes wrong).
Another benefit of IPv6, especially if you are a content-provider, is that it's much easier to do accounting and tracking, whereas with IPv4 a whole set of NAT'ed customers might all look alike.  Many providers of IPv6 even publish detailed info about their /64 and /48 customers in the public whois servers, whereas I've never even heard of a /32 IPv4 SWIP, even a /30 IPv4 SWIP is not something that's generally supported by anyone.
Answer: The question is now two years old, but the issue still exists.
My answer assumes that you are on the server side, although similar reasoning also applies on the client side.
You would do well to get ready for IPv6. Make sure your you have IPv6 allocations. Test all your systems. Get to the point where you can simply flip the switch by adding AAAA records to your DNS.
Then stop there and consult with management. The main problem is that the number of support calls will go up dramatically. You will have to deal with two main problems: people whose IPv6 is simply misconfigured, and ISPs whose IPv6 is flaky. As long as most users use IPv4, problems on the IPv6 side may go unreported and undetected for hours.

Time to switch to IPv6?


How much does a taxi from Warsaw center to Chopin airport cost at night?

Question: How much does a taxi to the airport cost at night? The ride should be 25 minutes.
Comment: If it were not at night - and the weather is good, it's actually quite a nice walk.  I did it last year - took me just over 2 hours.  Of course, if you have luggage, it changes things :)
Answer: It depends from where exactly in the centre and how much the given taxi charges per kilometre. To give you some background: all the taxis have a table with rates on their side window. Normal daytime rates vary between PLN 1.4 - 2.4 per kilometre, and there is some set multiplier for night rates (the same for all the taxis). Hotel taxis and taxis not in one of the corporations may charge even more.
My best guess is that you should expect to pay around PLN 40 - 70 for the ride.
And in Warsaw you can also use Uber if it makes it easier.
Answer: According to Uber's fare estimator, the ride shouldn't cost more than 30PLN:

If you haven't registered for Uber yet, you can use a promo code to get a free 50PLN ride.


How often should Oracle database statistics be run?

Question: In your experience, how often should Oracle database statistics be run? Our team of developers recently discovered that statistics hadn't been run our production box in over 2 1/2 months. That sounds like a long time to me, but I'm not a DBA.
Answer: Since Oracle 11g statistics are gathered automatically by default.
Two Scheduler windows are predefined upon installation of Oracle Database:

WEEKNIGHT_WINDOW starts at 10 p.m. and ends at 6 a.m. every Monday
through Friday.
WEEKEND_WINDOW covers whole days Saturday and Sunday.

When statistics were last gathered?
SELECT owner, table_name, last_analyzed FROM all_tables ORDER BY last_analyzed DESC NULLS LAST; --Tables.
SELECT owner, index_name, last_analyzed FROM all_indexes ORDER BY last_analyzed DESC NULLS LAST; -- Indexes.

Status of automated statistics gathering?
SELECT * FROM dba_autotask_client WHERE client_name = 'auto optimizer stats collection';

Windows Groups?
SELECT window_group_name, window_name FROM dba_scheduler_wingroup_members;

Window Schedules?
SELECT window_name, start_time, duration FROM dba_autotask_schedule;

Manually gather Database Statistics in this Schema:
EXEC dbms_stats.gather_schema_stats(ownname=>NULL, cascade=>TRUE); -- cascade=>TRUE means include Table Indexes too.

Manually gather Database Statistics in all Schemas!
-- Probably need to CONNECT / AS SYSDBA
EXEC dbms_stats.gather_database_stats;

Answer: Whenever the data changes "significantly".
If a table goes from 1 row to 200 rows, that's a significant change.  When a table goes from 100,000 rows to 150,000 rows, that's not a terribly significant change.  When a table goes from 1000 rows all with identical values in commonly-queried column X to 1000 rows with nearly unique values in column X, that's a significant change.
Statistics store information about item counts and relative frequencies -- things that will let it "guess" at how many rows will match a given criteria.  When it guesses wrong, the optimizer can pick a very suboptimal query plan.
Answer: At my last job we ran statistics once a week.  If I remember correctly, we scheduled them on a Thursday night, and on Friday the DBAs were very careful to monitor the longest running queries for anything unexpected.  (Friday was picked because it was often just after a code release, and tended to be a fairly low traffic day.)  When they saw a bad query they would find a better query plan and save that one so it wouldn't change again unexpectedly.  (Oracle has tools to do this for you automatically, you tell it the query to optimize and it does.)
Many organizations avoid running statistics out of fear of bad query plans popping up unexpectedly.  But this usually means that their query plans get worse and worse over time.  And when they do run statistics then they encounter a number of problems.  The resulting scramble to fix those issues confirms their fears about the dangers of running statistics.  But if they ran statistics regularly, used the monitoring tools as they are supposed to, and fixed issues as they came up then they would have fewer headaches, and they wouldn't encounter them all at once.
Answer: What Oracle version are you using? Check this page which refers to Oracle 10:
http://www.acs.ilstu.edu/docs/Oracle/server.101/b10752/stats.htm
It says:

The recommended approach to gathering statistics is to allow Oracle to automatically gather the statistics. Oracle gathers statistics on all database objects automatically and maintains those statistics in a regularly-scheduled maintenance job.
Answer: When I was managing a large multi-user planning system backed by Oracle, our DBA had a weekly job that gathered statistics.  Also, when we rolled out a significant change that could affect or be affected by statistics, we would force the job to run out of cycle to get things caught up.
Answer: With 10g and higher version of oracle, up to date statistics on tables and indexes are needed by the optimizer to make "good" execution plan decision.  How often you collect statistics is a tricky call.  It depends on your application, schema, data rate and business practice.  Some third party apps which are written to be backward compatible with older version of oracle do not perform well with the new optimizer.  Those application require that tables have no stats so that the db resorts back to rule base execution plan.  But on the average oracle recommends that stats be collected on tables with stale statistics.  You can set tables to be monitor and check their state and have them analyze if/when stale.  Often that is enough, sometime it is not.  It really depend on your database.  For my database we have a set of OLTP tables that need nightly stats collection to maintain performance.  Other tables are analyze once a week.  On our large dw database, we analyze as needed as the tables are too large for regular analysis without affecting overall db load and performance.  So the correct answer is, it depends on the application, data change and business needs.
Answer: Make sure to balance the risk that fresh statistics cause undesirable changes to query plans against the risk that stale statistics can themselves cause query plans to change.
Imagine you have a bug database with a table ISSUE and a column CREATE_DATE where the values in the column increase more or less monotonically.  Now, assume that there is a histogram on this column that tells Oracle that the values for this column are uniformly distributed between January 1, 2008 and September 17, 2008.  This makes it possible for the optimizer to reasonably estimate the number of rows that would be returned if you were looking for all issues created last week (i.e. September 7 - 13).  If the application continues to be used and the statistics are never updated, though, this histogram will be less and less accurate.  So the optimizer will expect queries for "issues created last week" to be less and less accurate over time and may eventually cause Oracle to change the query plan negatively.
Answer: In the case of a data warehouse-type system you can consider collecting no statistics at all, and relying on dynamic sampling (setting optimizer_dynamic_sampling to level 2 or above).
Answer: Generally it's not recommended to gather statistics so frequent on the whole database unless you have a strong justification for that, such as a bulk insert or big data change happen frequently on the database.
gathering statistics on the database in this frequency MAY change the queries execution plan to a new poor execution plans, the thing may cost you much time trying to tune every query affected by the new poor plans, this is why you should test the impact of gathering new statistics on a test database, or in case you don't have the time or the man power for that, at least you should keep a fallback plan by backing up the original statics before you gather new ones, so in case you gather a new statistics and then the queries didn't perform as expected, you can easily restore back the original statistics.
There is a very useful script can help you backup original statistics and gather new ones and provide you with SQL command you can use to restore back the original statics in case the thing didn't go as expected after gathering new statistics. You can find the script in this link:
http://dba-tips.blogspot.com/2014/09/script-to-ease-gathering-statistics-on.html


Do high-content areas of a website need to be white/light-colored?

Question: Many websites that are designed to be easy to read (eg. nytimes.com or ilovetypography.com) use white backgrounds with black fonts to make the content easy to read. Is it necessary to only use light colors for high-content areas or can darker colored backgrounds be equally readable?
Answer: Dark backgrounds are generally considered to be less readable than light backgrounds. A sufficient level of contrast is also very important to readability.
In general, I would recommend dark backgrounds for designs that have a large amount of media content, but very little text. Darker backgrounds can really make photographs stand out and you'll find many photography sites will have a black background.
If you have a lot of text, however, you should use a light or white background. It's easier on the eyes and it mimics what we're used to when we're reading newspapers or books. You can also use light or white for media content, but it has a less artsy feel.
For further reading: Light text on dark background vs.
   readability
Answer: The main concern with this aspect of readability is contrast.  White text on a black background contrasts the same way that black text on a white background does.  White on black is actually easier on the eyes when viewed on light-emitting screens than black on white, because less light is being transmitted.
The black on white, or dark on light, style of most websites is attributable to the paper paradigm.  People familiar with paper documents could easily recognize a word processor with a white background and black text, for example, and that became the norm in computing.  In my opinion it's really a shame; I hate staring at my white screen all day and damaging my eyes.
Edit: Re-reading this now, I should emphasize that I personally find the amount of light blasted at me by white websites to be uncomfortable. I use black backgrounds wherever possible and don't have any issues with readability.  The other answer indicates that this may not be the norm.
Comment: I'm not sure "White on black is actually easier on the eyes when viewed on light-emitting screens ... because less light is being transmitted." is true. If I was in a very dark room, perhaps; but the white on my screen is adjusted so it's approximately the same perceived brightness as a piece of white paper on my desk, and I believe that when I repeatedly look from one to the other, my eyes have to adjust less.
Comment: On the flip side, when I read light text on dark backgrounds, I personally have burn-in (after-image) issues and find them unreadable.
Comment: That's probably possible.  I certainly didn't mean to suggest it couldn't depend on other factors.
Comment: @e100: I'd guess your screen is either extra dimmed (I'd say about 60-70 cd/m²) or light on your desk quite bright, or both :). Anyhow, I'd definitely agree that pupils will have little to do in that case if moving back and forth between printed and displayed text.
Comment: @MatthewRead: I'd rather say "luminance".
Answer: I'd say: let the people choose the right combination for them. Some prefer bright on dark, other dark on bright – it's hard to say which one is better, even if one does some scientific survey on that. Besides, preferences might change as the viewing conditions does. Simple theme switch would be invaluable – not everyone use their own CSS stylesheets. BTW, the couple of papers I've seen about that matter are based on rather short text samples – about a couple of thousand words. It would be interesting to see what happens when text is longer, like a book with about 5 chapters, several thousand words each.
The other answers mention contrast as main factor of readability. I think it's unfair to separate contrast from total luminance while considering this problem. Linked article on bereastreet quotes that "…White text on a black background is a higher contrast to the opposite…". I can more or less agree with the rest of quotation, but this is just plain rubbish :). The contrast, understood as a difference between coolors, is exactly the same. It's the total luminance that's different. Such statement can be accepted only if we'd define something as "perceived contrast". I also think viewing conditions are critical for the convenience of reading. What works nicely in bright light can be painful when sorrounding is dark.
One thing, I think can't be stressed too clearly and firmly about contrast itself is that it should be "right" ammount of it. Not only "sufficient", but also "not to much". I work at the small publishing house and more that often I see poeple choosing bright as hell (POW moved to the blue) paper for their books counting 150+ pages. It's their right as the customers, frequently supported by a claim that "it's easier to read, especially for older (sic!) people, nice, black text on bright, white paper". At the same time I'm doing my own unofficial survey among people who read a lot. All of the asked said that overly bright paper is killing their eyes. Often they go for the older issues – the ones that had their chance to turn "yellow" ;), just to be able to read them comfortably. I think the same is true for the displays. Enough contrast – yes… just not too much of it.
And one more note: when I mention reading text on paper (and paper bright as hell ;)), as a viewing conditions I assume fluorescent light, about 2800-3200 K.
Answer: Putting aside the already well covered issues of readability the target audience of your website plays an important function here. Some groups will respond better to a dark background while others prefer a light background. Hard to give examples of what style suits which audience though as it's highly subjective.


What are the uses of yellow, green, red, blue filters in black and white photography?

Question: Could someone explain the difference in using colored filters for black and white photos? What is the best practice using these filters for portraits, landscapes, macro? For different types of weather: sunny, foggy, morning, evening, and so on?
Comment: possible duplicate of [How can using a color filter help to improve a black and white photo?](http://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/7415/how-can-using-a-color-filter-help-to-improve-a-black-and-white-photo)
Answer: If you are using a digital camera, there is little need to use colored filters, as you can apply their effects in post processing when you do the black and white conversion.
See Are there reasons to use colour filters with digital cameras?
Also How can using a color filter help to improve a black and white photo?
If you are shooting film, then

Red is commonly used in landscapes.  It will darken foilage, and will dramatically increase the constrast in cloudy skies. It will lighten skin if used in portraiture.
Orange behaves like red, but effects are less.
Yellow has a subtle effect - will darken skin slightly.
Green will lighten foilage. It can be used in portraits to darken the skin
Blue will lighten skies, and lower contrast if you want a hazy effect
Comment: Yellow can do interesting things to sky + clouds, too.
Answer: The easiest way to remember the effect of a filter is this: a filter lightens its own color and darkens the complementary color. A color wheel illustrates the concept. Colors that are 180° opposite are complements of each other.
From the color wheel, we can learn that a green filter will lighten some foliage (foliage does not read completely green, but green-yellow), and darken reds (some complexion contains red — be careful because this may make skin complexions a bit blotchy for people with ruddy complexions).
The red filter is the "landscape filter" because it tends to produce dramatic skies — the dark sky against white cloud or snowy peak effect that is so appealing in black & white images. It lends a slightly ghostly effect to green foliage, particularly evergreens.
I've attached some simulated B&W effects on an image that includes sky, foliage, and clouds. This is simulated using NIK Silver Efex, so it's not exactly like using glass, but it's darn close:

Left: Original As Shot in Color; Right: Blue Filter.

Left: Green Filter; Right: Orange Filter.

Left: Red Filter; Right: Yellow Filter.
Answer: color filter DO have a place when shooting digital. Just as with film, they will change the red green and blue levels and thus will keep channels from blowing out or losing shadow detail before the image is post processed, They change the levels of the colors in the camera..
Answer: As others have said, different filter colours will affect the different colours and thus affect the different grays the picture shows.
A way to decide which filter to use is to half close your eyes and see which colours belnd in too much or which stand out too much.
Having compared the pics given by Steve Ross by downloading them a flipping between them in 'slideshow' mode of windows picute and fax viewer, I would suggest that the Red and Yellow filter pics have been mixed up.
Answer: Different filters will change the threshold of black and white. For example, a yellow filter will make the more yellow colors black. You can use these filters to enhance different parts of a B&W image.
Comment: In black and white photography, a yellow filter won't make yellow colors black. A yellow color filter will make yellow colors white.


Any research on how natural language processing can be used to forecast stocks?

Question: Is there any published research of decent quality linking news or unstructured information to asset returns? I know that Thomson Reuters offers its Machine Readable news (MRN), so somebody must use it. But I can't find much in the public domain.
Comment: I assume you mean Natural Language Processing; [neuro-linguistic programming](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuro-linguistic_programming) is something very different.
Comment: @jk3000 yeah, oops, fixed now.
Comment: just saw this, and thoguht it may be related to a q I asked on stats.SE: [Automating statistical correlation between "texts" and "data"](http://stats.stackexchange.com/q/660/292)
Answer: I know that I have seen things like this in the past.  Wasn't there something recently that used Twitter?
Here are a few recent papers as examples, although I will be brutally honest that I don't know if they speak to your decent quality requirement:

"Trading Strategies to Exploit Blog and News Sentiment" (Zhang, Skiena 2010)
"The Predictive Power of Financial Blogs" (Frisbee 2010)
"An analysis of verbs in financial news articles and their impact on stock price" (Schumaker 2010)
Comment: The "Twitter fund" is Derwent Capital Markets, which recently delayed its launch.
Comment: Yes, I heard the Twitter thing. The links are interesting. It seems a hot topic.
Comment: The twitter thing was UK-based both for the underlying papers and the fund.
Answer: Just FYI the Reuters product is called NewsScope.
The selling point is that they provide a sentiment reading per news item so the user doesn't have to do any NLP.
If you have a Reuters sales rep or contact them then they can get you several research/white papers that are interesting. Here are the ones I have been able to find online (my sales rep has provided me with better ones but I didn't save them):
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1558434
Using their Event Indices product:
http://puppetmastertrading.com/images/Reuters_NewsScope_Event_Indices_Whitepaper.pdf
Answer: Deutsche Bank's Quantitative Strategy (US) team put together the following piece on this topic (note: their research is available for clients, but I found that somebody uploaded the piece to a sketchy web site).  In case the link dies, some of the academic papers they site are:

Akbras, F., E. Kocatulum, and S. Sorescu, 2008, "Mispricing following public news:
Overreaction for losers, underreaction for winners"
Barber, B. and T. Odean, 2007, "All that glitters: The effect of attention and news on the buying behavior of individual and institutional investors", Review of Financial Studies, Volume 21, Number 2
Da, Z., J. Engelberg, and P. Gao, 2009, "In search of attention"
Tetlock, P., 2009, "Does public news resolve asymmetric information?"

Their introduction says:

This month we tackle another new dataset: news sentiment. Regular readers of our research
  will know that this is a topic we find particularly interesting, and one that we have already
  done a lot of work in. In this particular report, we take what we think is an innovative
  approach to studying the predictive power of news sentiment; instead of using standard
  linear models, we focus on three non-linear, "learning" type models: classification and
  regression trees, forests of classification and regression trees, and multivariate adaptive
  regression splines. All three of these models are unique in that they allow us to take a datacentric
  approach to our analysis. Instead of predefining a hypothetical relationship and then
  testing it, we allow the data to determine the form of the model. This allows us to better
  understand which variables within our dataset are most important in determining post-event
  abnormal returns. It also allows us to model complex non-linear relationships that may not be
  apparent at first glance.
Overall we find that news sentiment, in conjunction with non-linear models, can generate
  alpha. Even better, we find this alpha is relatively uncorrelated with the more traditional quant
  factors. Of course, there is also a downside. The predictive ability of news sentiment is shortlived;
  the best results are obtained when forecasting only the next five days. Therefore, for
  some quantitative investors, the signal on its own may have too much turnover to be viable.
  Nonetheless, we do show that there are ways for even lower-frequency investors to use
  news sentiment data to enhance their stock-selection process.

A more recent DB Quant piece highlights another recent paper, Dzielinski, 2011, "News sensitivity and the cross-section of stock returns".

Results
  First of all, the author shows that there is, as expected, a statistical and economical
  difference in the returns on news days compared to non-news days. Also, while the direction
  of the difference is in accordance with the sentiment, the magnitude of the difference
  doesn't relate to the news being positive or negative. These differences in returns between
  news and no-news days are actually heterogeneous among stocks: small and illiquid stocks
  tend to react more strongly, as do low book-to-market and high volatility stocks. From an
  industry point of view, the reactions also differ substantially, while still being significant, in
  each group. Interestingly, Dzielinski finally finds that there is a risk premium attached to news
  sensitivity, and that this phenomenon remains after controlling for well-known risk factors.
  The monthly return on the hedge portfolio is significantly different from zero and stands at
  0.95% on average. The strategy still exhibits some significant loadings on some risk factors,
  as could have been expected from the panel regressions in sub-samples.

In the same piece, DB also mentions

Uhi - Reuters sentiment and stock returns
Karabulut - Can Facebook predict stock market activity?
Answer: A cautionary tale on all these approaches it told by Tim Loughran and Bill MacDonald in the Journal of Finance, 2011 (When Is a Liability Not a Liability? Textual Analysis, Dictionaries, and 10-Ks, here).
In their analysis they show that the commonly used Harvard Psychosociological Dictionary is inadequate for sentiment classification in a financial context. Their findings are specific to the analysis of 10-k, but probably also indicative of the general difficulties with NLP in finance. Some findings:

Most misclassifications simply introduce noise in the estimates;
Some misclassifications introduce false positives (eg. "cancer" is normally negative, but in a financial context it is neutral, most likely it refers to an industry sector.
A simple long-short strategy based on positive/negative words count yields small (positive) alphas which are not statistically significant.

There are of course several caveats:

This approach is "mainstream" academic finance, with all its pros and cons (pros: clean approach, reproducible, simplicity suggests a low chance of data-snooping; cons: not strictly speaking quantitative, and - in this case - it doesn't use cutting the edge technology);
The results are based on long horizon portfolio returns (buy/short and hold strategy on a 12-month horizon);
The textual analysis is limited to low frequency information (10-Ks) as opposed to medium/high frequency information provided by news feeds.
Answer: Recent research
A recent article by Frank Zhao is interesting to get started: Natural Language Processing - Part I: Primer.
You will find more papers on this repo (too long to copy all here): nlp_papers
Applications
If you are looking for possible applications of current SoTA research to financial markets, here is a quick list:
Equity

Predict the impact of a particular report on the stock price.
Predict the market capitalization based on the latest available quarterly reports, press releases, etc.
Predict the future earnings growth based on the latest quarterly reports, press releases, conference calls, etc. available.

Fixed Income

Predict the credit rating (default probability) of a particular issuer given its reports (quarterly, press releases, etc). For example, it could be valuable to predict which bonds in your universe will go from BB to BBB (rising angels prediction) and vice versa.

Sustainability

Predict the ESG scores of companies given their sustainability reports. It is hard to manually follow every company in your investible universe to assess their ESG scores (Environmental, Social, and Governance). NLP can help by digging into the companies documents.
Predict the probability for a particular company to join the Norwegian blacklist (from the Norwegian pension fund).

Risk

Predict the risk factors exposure of a stock given its quarterly reports and press releases. If a stock started trading only recently, you have very little information to assess its exposure to risk factors. NLP can help by using the reports of the company to predict its factor exposures.
Predict the correlation/covariance matrix between assets. Useful if you do not have a significant historical period to compute the matrix.

Dataset

XpressFeed from S&P
Neuralyst: NLP Dataset for the Stock Market. Backtesting is free of charge. Disclaimer: I built this dataset.
Daily News for Stock Market Prediction: Toy dataset from Kaggle
Comment: Thanks. This is interesting. A couple of comments. First, twitter sentiment analysis figures prominently. This line of research has been widely debunked (see https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/9932/dd89f7acb727308bafd0cc2e4c17a0698867.pdf) but many practitioners agree based on their own confirmation). Second, many (maybe all) papers in that page show knowledge of NLP, but ignorance of sound testing protocols for investment strategies); while I am not saying the results are artifacts, I am skeptical that they are robust.
Comment: Thanks for the feedback. Could you elaborate on sound testing protocols for investment strategies? Do you mean in and out-of-sample testing, survivorship bias?
Answer: Here is a project in Github https://github.com/cdubiel08/Earnings-Calls-NLP by some Rice University students that uses NLP to analyze earnings calls transcripts.
It gets the transcripts from Seeking Alpha web site, does some NLP, and tries to predict what will happen with the stock price.