Are there any languages built to facilitate implementing design patterns?

Question: Often it is not obvious how to implement a given design pattern in a language. Sometimes it is difficult or cumbersome. Are there any languages built to make using design patterns easy and effective?
Comment: Expressive languages don't need design patterns.
Comment: Relevant: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/327955/does-functional-programming-replace-gof-design-patterns
Comment: @ChaosPandion Ah. I read your comment and left mine before I read Jon's answer, which I promptly +1'd after reading.
Comment: @ChaosPandion I'm not sure what you mean by that. A design pattern is a recurring solution to similar problems. Just about every language, every paradigm, and every application domain has patterns that emerge.
Comment: @Thomas Owens - My comment was a **much** poorer version of Jon Purdy's answer.
Answer: The important thing is that a design pattern isn't intrinsic to a language; it's quite literally just a code pattern at which many developers have independently arrived. The design patterns that emerge in a particular language are considered the idiomatic, preferred way of solving certain kinds of problems.
Sure, there are countless MVC "frameworks" out there, but they're really just using MVC as a label for the underlying good practice—modularity and orthogonality between data model, presentation, and user interaction.
A language cannot be designed to make "using design patterns" easy and effective, because design patterns emerge from the design of the language. You cannot design a language around patterns that will appear as a result of its own strengths and deficiencies. All you can do is design a more expressive and powerful one. If the popular idioms and patterns for a given language are cumbersome to implement, it simply means that the language itself is cumbersome.
Tautologically: in a more expressive language, it's easier to express yourself.
Answer: Design patterns (idioms) are usually a symptom of a programming languages short-commings. As languages improve, patterns will become intrinsic.
Comment: And new patterns will emerge, for the problems we solve are endless.
Answer: Consider these points:

Design patterns indicate disconnect between the desired functionality and what the programming language provide
This disconnect can be easily created artificially by taking some concept from one language and trying to implement it in different language
Most of the existing design patterns have been found like that -- some nice smalltalk solution does not directly fit to c++, so it becomes a design pattern
Nice thing about design patterns is that it allows programmers to think more about how to solve the problem, and less about how the programming language features work
There really cannot be any language that helps implementing design patterns, since every language has different patterns that are common but still requires a pattern. So anything you do in language design, there is always a way to find a pattern which you didn't consider in the original design.
Answer: I don't think it's the language feature to offer design pattern, infact no language does that. Developers themselves design patterns and makes use of the language in that. MVC, MVP, MVVC are design patterns which can be applied to any language.
Also, there are some IDE, that help you leverage the design patterns. Like in case of Visual Studio 2010, you can make use MVC design pattern by selecting the ASP.NET MVC template.


Explaining trigonometric equations

Question: I want to know what is the best way to teach simple trigonometric equations, such as $$\sin x=0$$.
Should I use the trigonometric circle or the sine graph? Which is better?
Comment: Tough to answer this with no context. Solving this type of equation is usually part of a curriculum where both the graph and unit circle have already been introduced. Who is it you are teaching?
Comment: Are there any standards that you are supposed to teach to? What do the standards say?
Comment: You might wish to check out Jenna Van Sickle's doctoral dissertation [**here**](http://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:132221): **A History of Trigonometry Education in the United States: 1776-1900**.
Comment: Yes, of course unit circle and the graph,  have been introduced. It is at 10th grade in my country.
Comment: "Which is better?" Why do you assume that one way is "better" than the other?
Answer: Since the students have already been exposed to the unit circle and the graph, I would give them the equation and ask for discussion of how to figure it out.  If the students come up with the answers themselves they are most likely to remember it far better than if you tell them.
If they only come up with one way, present the other way as well.  If they have no idea, present both ways as tools and ask which would help.
I believe self-discovery is best.
Answer: Start with the unit circle to give them an intuition for what it means (& see this answer for some diagrams that might help).  Then teach students how to plot a function from input-output pairs (if they don't know that already), and put that skill to work so that they are deriving the graph from the intuition.  This will permit a deeper understanding than presenting the graph first, and help students be able to figure out key points (like, "does this one start at 0 or 1?") when they've forgotten memorized graph specifics but retained the original intuition of where the curves comes from.
Answer: Start with triangular approach first , and then go to unit circle approach
Comment: Can you explain *why* one should do it this way?
Comment: -1 for lack of explanation and detail. Have you tried this approach successfully? Can you say more?
Comment: The right triangle approach to cosine and sine is not adequate as a definition, because it only makes sense for angles between zero and $\pi/2$. Looking at the unit circle, it's clear for which angles the $y$-coordinate is zero. Looking at right triangles... what would a "triangle with side length zero" even mean? One *can* make sense of the idea, but it'd introduce a lot of needless confusion, and it's even worse for angles larger than $\pi/2$.

Explaining trigonometric equations


Install BootCamp drivers Windows 10

Question: I am looking for the exe files for BootCamp drivers for Windows 10. I installed Windows 10 on my Mac 4 months ago using the ISO and BootCamp assistant but then I reinstalled it directly on the partition which made the BootCamp drivers go away, and now some things (such as right click and two finger touchpad scrolling) don't work. I want to get the drivers without having to reinstall Windows (at the beginning Mac gives you the BootCamp installation files as an exe but I can't find them anywhere online.)
Answer: NEW SOLUTION
Open Boot Camp Assistant, and click on "Action" in the menu bar.

Click on Download Windows Support Software.
OLD SOLUTION
You can download the drivers from Boot Camp Assistant.
First, uncheck "Create a Windows 7 or later install disk" and "Install Windows 7 or later version", leaving only "Download the latest Windows support software from Apple" option checked. It should look something like this:

Make sure you have a USB drive connected, and click continue. You should see a screen like this:
.
Select your drive and click on continue. It should download it to the connected USB drive.
Reboot into Windows, and install the support software from the USB.
Edit: I found Brigadier, a software that fetches and installs the drivers for you on Windows. I'll take a look at it, when I have more time.
Comment: @kirill2485 Hi, I added a new solution. Can you try the new solution (top of my answer)
Comment: I don't see those options in BootCamp assistant :( http://imgur.com/a/64YAv (it's a large gif so give your browser some time to load it)
Comment: Also, just tried using Brigadier.exe and it downloaded it but it failed to install because the version of BootCamp it downloaded was designed for Windows 8.1: http://i.imgur.com/jWn0VAx.png
Comment: @kirill2485 What if you download it from Mac OS X? What is your Macbook model? I'll try downloading it for you.
Comment: its an early 2015 MacBook Pro Retina 13 inch
Comment: +1 for Brigadier. I needed that because my USB drives are all formatted with other formats.
Answer: As of today Windows 10 1809 (October) will not work with bootcamp!
- windows will not find drivers
- windows will complain about selected drive
- etc etc
Use Windows 10 1803 (April) and bootcamp should work like it's supposed to.
Answer: Actually they do work... in powershell run the installer for the force switch. Apple puts a check in the installer for each model. The 1809 compatible installer must be downloaded from a Mac that was built after 1809 was released. Example Mac Mini 8,1. Create the boot camp installer from that hardware and you can run that installer on previous versions of Apple hardware in the CLI with the force install msi command..

Install BootCamp drivers Windows 10


Why aren't hyperlinks opened in a new window?

Question: Just wondering, why hyperlinks don't open up in a new window. I know I can always open the link by right-click -> Open in a new window. Just a suggestion !
Comment: More answers, including keyboard shortcuts and a user script, at [make links posted by users open in a new window](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2275/make-links-posted-by-users-open-in-a-new-window).
Answer: Hell, no!
As Jakob Nielsen puts it:

Opening up new browser windows is like a vacuum cleaner sales person who starts a visit by emptying an ash tray on the customer's carpet. Don't pollute my screen with any more windows, thanks (particularly since current operating systems have miserable window management). If I want a new window, I will open it myself!

You can easily choose to open a link in a new window by using a middle-mouse click, shift click, or whatever your OS and browser supports. But don't force it on me.
Comment: Wait... I'm *not* supposed to empty an ash tray on the customer's carpet? No wonder sales were down...
Comment: @animuson I had a high school friend who sold vacuum cleaners door-to-door for a while and dumping an ash tray on the customer's carpet was actually part of the company-sanctioned pitch.
Comment: Then obviously some have different preferences. So why can't that be in a setting so people who feel the opposite could override the default behavior?
Comment: @toddmo: because every time a new preference is added you increase the complexity of the site; the developers have done a great job of keeping SO simple. At the same time it is *trivial* to use the `SHIFT` key when clicking on a link to open that link in a new tab. That little trick lets you, the user, control if that link is opened in a new tab *on a link by link basis*. When there is a much more powerful and flexible alternative available, the cost of making this a site preference is just not worth it.
Comment: what year is this? oh no my resources!!! please this is terrible. Sites now will typically warn you if you are leaving their when clicking on a link in "their" content. And as mentioned in my post these things are often referential in nature meaning having them both open is useful. the times i've clicked a link and closed the tab because i was expecting a new one is annoying.
Comment: Though I couldn't agree more: amazing how a 15 years old post is still linked to from all over the internet. (I mean: opinions *could* have changed. But they have not, in this case. And neither as for the stupid "Reset form" button.)
Comment: I feel like this is a terrible generalization and there is a time and place for `_blank`.  Maybe not on SO, but definitely somewhere.  Also, what about automatically including the little "open-in-new-window" icon like wikipedia or similar?
Answer: Opening links within the same tab conforms with W3C principles. Automatically opening links in new tabs is difficult for sight impaired users and for security purposes. You can open links in new tabs using your keyboard short cuts.
Comment: Unfortunatly [WAI](https://www.w3.org/WAI/) is still not ranked high enough in the list of consideration when designing new apps or web-services - it's nice to see that some people trying to push its importance ;)


Does your decision to upvote/downvote depend on the current score?

Question: For example, do you more or less likely to upvote the currently high score answer? Do you ever upvote a question or answer because you think "it does not deserve negative score." although you don't particularly like it either.
Comment: I am most influenced if there is a down vote or a vote to close where I think the vote is a bit lazy and the person who has posted is making an effort or has asked a question worth asking. One recent example looked trivial at a casual glance, but wasn't really. It wasn't clear what OPs background was, but it was an intelligent question for a beginner, though trivial for an expert. I like to encourage beginners who are making an effort.
Comment: Yes, current score conveys information which may influence my impression of the post. I am strongly opposing "compensation votes", though, since I think those are causing more damage than help.
Comment: For the most part I ignore the current score completely. There are two exceptions. If a question has a negative score solely (so far as I can see) because it's 'too easy', even though it's not totally without context, I give a compensatory upvote even if I would not have upvoted the question otherwise. Similarly, if I see that a correct answer has been downvoted, I will upvote even if it doesn't quite meet my normal standards for an upvote. (In my view downvoting correct answers is simply vandalism unless they're appallingly badly written or violate a request for hints only.)
Comment: This is, to some extent, related: http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/questions/17036/is-upvote-downvote-related-to-the-answerers-reputation
Comment: And see also this: http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/questions/2234/a-minor-gripe-about-upvoting-things-that-have-been-downvoted
Comment: [This](http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/questions/9972/up-vote-down-vote) question is very similar to the current one.
Comment: While I believe the odds that I vote on a post that I see are mostly independent from its score, the odds that I see a post do depend on its score, and consequently the odds I vote on a post do depend on its score. It is also possible that score affects how much attention I pay to a posting, which would have some influence on my voting.
Comment: Is this about what people actually should do? Or is this about what people should try to do? The two are completely different questions.
Comment: No to both questions. in math.se , I consider user's stats before up/downvoting
 and mostly upvote answers to my questions if they are unvoted. in other se sites I upvote whatever I find helpful and do not downvote. in stackoverflow I mostly understand why a question is up/downvoted but in math.se voting is less disciplined.
Comment: What is the accept supposed to mean here? You ask for what people do. I feel it is strange to accept one answer that describes one apporach. If there were a synthetic answer summarizing different approaches then I could see the point. But this accept feels strange.
Answer: I mentally assign scores to answers, and my probability of upvoting the answer depends on how much its actual score exceeds the score I have assigned. I am very unlikely to upvote an answer that I feel has more than enough points already, and I am more likely to upvote an answer that I feel is under-appreciated.  I'm not sure this practice is defensible, and I don't mean to defend it here, or even to recommend it.
I do not downvote questions just because i think their score is too high; I only downvote answers that contain significant errors.
My voting habits for questions are very different.
Comment: I think i am voting similarly, but for both answers and questions.  It seems to me that if everybody were voting without taking into account the current score, then the score would grow linearly with the number of views.
Comment: "I'm not sure this practice is defensible, and I don't mean to defend it here, or even to recommend it." I am very sure it is defensible. And, effects of not more practicing it, are on occasion bemoaned all over the site.
Comment: @quid, you are probably right, i was suggesting a rough idea.
Comment: I think one should avoid to grade posts. It's destructive. If ten persons vote up because the post is useful to them, why should a group of about ten persons exploit their power to correct the score of aesthetic reasons?
Comment: @Lehs  you misrepresent this post. No where is it suggested that votes should be corrected. It is said no additional upvotes are added if there are already sufficiently many. The formulation "exploit their power" seems completely unjustified. The "power" that is exploited is the power to **do nothing whatsoever.**
Comment: @quid: it seems that you are right. But unfortunately, it is possible for a little group of voters to control a sort of grading totally, in spite of if the same number of other users found the same posts useful.
Comment: @Alexey I think you have some point, but still this is not quite correct, since views can be contributed by viewers that cannot vote. And,  it seems reasonable to speculate that among the earlier viewers there are more potential voters than among late viewers.
Answer: This really is a psychology question. One has ones ideals and principles and then there is reality.
Ideally, I try to ignore how many votes a question/answer already has. I believe that (ideally) voting should always be based on the content and not other external things. I do not factor in whether or not other people have already "liked" the post, but I just ask myself if I find the post worth my vote.
If the question is interesting and isn't just the statement of a problem, then I will upvote. I might also upvote if I think a question is well worded and shows the context. So, I might see a basic calculus question where the OP is clearly expressing his/her confusion. I never vote based on who is asking/answering. From time to time one might come across a user who in general asks "bad" questions and it is tempting to downvote everything this user posts, but I refrain from this.
I often also upvote questions that I am answering. If I think a question is worth answering, I think it deserves and upvote.
Sometimes I see a "hot question" in the side bar and from there I am directed to the question. I will then sometimes upvote the question and the best answers.
I also often upvote competing answers.
Comment: I agree wholeheartedly with your sentence "If...a question is worth answering (then) it deserves and upvote."
Comment: "I believe that (ideally) voting should always be based on the content and not other external things." Could you elaborate why you think so? By contrast, I believe that the (final) score of a post should (ideally) depend on the content of the post and not other external things.
Comment: @Rafflesiaarnoldii while it is true that there is no final score in a strict sense  most posts attain some score in a relatively short period of time and then stay pretty stable there. Anyway, we are discussing an idealization. My key point is really to point out the difference and especially a certain incompatibilty between: "*I* vote on  the post based on content only" *and* "The post is judged on its content only" I find the later more relevant, and  indiscrimnately doing the former can be detrimental to the later while not having much value I can see in itself.
Comment: @quid: I think I see what you are saying. One might believe that to each post is some ideal score that reflects the value of the post. I don't necessarily see it like this. For me voting is my way to indicate what I think is useful/helpful/interesting for me (or the site in general). So if I see something I like I vote it up independent of the current score of the post. Now, then, I do believe that if everyone did this, the "final" score of the post reflects how much the community values that post. This is, of course, not perfect since now all post get evaluated by all. Does that make sense?
Comment: I guess I just try to follow http://math.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/vote-up: "*Whenever you encounter a question, answer or comment that you feel is especially useful, vote it up!*"
Comment: Thanks for the reply. Yes, exactly this: "not perfect since now all post get evaluated by all." (assuming the "now" is a "not") On smaller sites this is actually less of an issue. But, still, your approach is certainly reasonable.
Comment: @quid But there's no "final" unless the post is locked. I remember situations (usually on metas, not main sites) where I'd upvote a downvoted post thinking "it's not *that* bad", and came back later to see it with higher score than I expected; now the score seemed too high!
Comment: Whereas Thomas seems to see some intrinsic value in his voting being not influenced by externalities. As said I cannot see this and would thus be interested in learning the reasoning behind it. Especially since things being as they are for most the fact that they look at one post rather than at another is already the first externality.
Answer: Yes. Three examples:

Often, questions are closed for being poorly posed (because, for example, the OP didn't understand the site), but they are improved and re-opened. When this happens, I believe that the barrage of downvotes is unhelpful - they were intended for an old version of the question, not for the new, nicely-worded version. So I upvote. My upvote is not for the brilliant question, but rather for "balance" - ideally the downvoters would remove their downvotes (so no "balance" would be needed), but this rarely, if ever, happens.
If a question receives an upvoted answer then the question is removed from the "unanswered" queue. Therefore, if I see an interesting question with a half-hearted/mediocre answer (subjective!) which doesn't actually answer the question (perhaps it addresses a boring special case) and the answer is on +1 then I will downvote. This puts the question back in the "unanswered" queue, where hopefully it will get some more attention.
Suppose an excellent post comes late to the party, and although excellent it is never going to catch up with the other two equally excellent answers, each of which are on +8. So I upvote the new answer and do not upvote the other two answers, even though they are deserving of my upvote. Again, this is for the sake of "balance".
Answer: I vote up if the question or answer gives me something of value. Since I don't know why others did vote up or down that is uninteresting for my voting.
Answer: Some answers are great, and most readers of such an answer would be inclined to vote it up. Moreover, such answers correlate with good questions, which are highly up-voted and so attract more attention. Thus one might expect to see answers with hundreds of up-votes. I suggest that the rarity of such a score is because voters take the existing score distribution into account. Perhaps the thought is "This answer is in the top 2%, but not in the top 0.1% as its present score implies. I don't need to add my increment to its overvaluation". Conversely one might think that a good answer deserves a higher rating than it has presently.
These are merely my own thoughts; I am happy that others think otherwise. For good reason, there is no guide set down on what to consider before voting, not least because any such guide would (in my view) be absurd, unimposable, and much disputed.
Answer: My up/down votes are independent of the current score of the post. The content of the post is what ultimately influences my choice to either vote up or vote down. I'm much more likely to up vote a late post that thoroughly answers the question as opposed to an early post that just barely scratches the surface.


Unavailable for a phone interview and they haven't called back to reschedule. How to remind them politely?

Question: I could not attend a telephonic interview since I was in a driving class when they called. I have since sent them an email apologizing and provided a better time at which she could call me (at their request). It has been 3 days and they still have not called me. How should I politely remind them?
Comment: Was the call unscheduled, or did you forget that you were unavailable when you scheduled the phone interview? The former is very strange, and the latter might mean they are no longer considering you.
Answer: Call the person who had called you for the telephone interview. There is a fair probability that the person might not have come across your apology or hasn't read it for some reason.
Calling the interviewer in person, apologising for the mistake and explaining your situation might be a better choice than sending an email and waiting for the answer. If your position and the reason for not receiving the call are explained politely in person on the call there is a fair chance for you, I believe.
Answer: It may possible that position is filled or she forgot to call you or she did not read your apology mail by mistake.
So what you can do is call her directly and tell little bit your introduction so she can recall things that Yes this is guy to whom I called for interview then you apologize if require. I think she will definitely set interview timing for you and will take interview if position still available.
Answer: In my own experience, I once missed the call from my soon-to-be employer. I checked my phone 15 minutes after they called. I immediately called them back and apologized. He was cool with it and then we had a good discussion. I would say do not hesitate, if you can call them it would also show you are genuinely interested and also consider calling them back which is always a nice gesture. Go ahead and call them! Good Luck!


How did Obi-Wan survive the trip to Naboo?

Question: In the beginning of The Phantom Menace, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Qui-Gon Jinn were sent by the Supreme Chancellor of the Republic to discuss a settlement to stop the Trade Federation from blockading the planet Naboo, but were attacked by the Trade Federation on the orders of Darth Sidious. After surviving the attack, they managed to escaped to Naboo by stowing away on a Trade Federation invasion ship heading to Naboo. The invasion army was made up of battle droids, so there shouldn't have been a need to pressurize the cabins, or pipe in oxygen. How, then, did they survive the trip to Naboo?
Comment: For the record, how they survive isn't mentioned in the Official Novelisation, Junior Novelisation, Cine-Manga graphic novel, Tokyopop Manga Graphic Novel, Official tie-in Graphic Novel, Phantom Menace Adventures comic serial or the official Movie Storybook. All of them simply have the Jedi boarding the ships, then getting out again shortly afterwards on the planet's surface.
Comment: Used the force, he did
Comment: @CHEESE I was thinking about those, but it's unclear how those work. Do they take O2 out of the water? They don't appear to have attached oxygen tanks. Also, they shouldn't help for pressure.
Comment: Well, they did have those oxygen breather thingies that they used underwater
Comment: It was a long time ago in a galaxy far far away. The laws pf physics that we take for granted may not have applied. e.g. Medichloriants don't exist in our galaxy.
Comment: @Paul: Well note the difference between universe and galaxy. 2 galaxys in the same universe can't have different laws in physics. 2 diferent universes could have. But starwars just asumes to be in another galaxy which is far far away but still in the same universe. So starwars assumes our physics have Medichloriants which we jsut don't know about. So therefor your whole point is invalid.
Answer: While a robot may not require oxygen to function, that does not mean it is vacuum-compatible. Many materials are perfectly ok at normal to low air pressures but will outgas at near-vacuum pressures. The consequences range from nothing to popping open like a bad tire. Lubricating products are particularly troublesome, and we don't want the grease boiling away and rupturing the joints. The item also has to be free of sealed internal voids or the shell of those voids needs to be able to contain the pressure difference. This is obviously much more difficult and expensive to design.
The same would apply to the cargo area of any transport vessel. Parts of the ship that must be exposed to vacuum are designed as such, other parts get the cheaper treatment.
So, if you are designing a machine for use exclusively within an atmosphere, it is simply easier to transport it within a compatible atmosphere.
Comment: Also worth mentioning, it is very hard to cool electronics in a vacuum, since there is no medium to transfer the heat over.
Comment: If I was designing the ship I would probably use pure nitrogen for such compartments, and get longer lifetimes out of pretty much everything. Oxygen is nasty stuff, no sense including it if it's not needed :)
Comment: @hobbs But then you'd have to go to the trouble of pumping oxygen out (or nitrogen in). With a normal atmosphere, you can just use the parent ship's air. With a vacuum, you could just not bother making the transport airtight. With pure nitrogen, you have extra work that may not be worth the gain.
Comment: Counter-point: I'm pretty sure that in episode 2 of the Clone Wars we see battle droids functioning properly (albeit clumsily) while in the void of space
Comment: @Shokhet - R2D2 (and others) were astromech droids, *designed* to work in the vacuum of space (to perform necessary repairs etc). Battle Droids - or at least the ones built to target Naboo - might not necessarily be designed to be used in near vacuum.
Comment: @Luke: that doesn't necessarily mean that it doesn't damage them, though.  (They're obviously considered thoroughly expendable, so the fact they were sent into a vacuum doesn't prove much.)  Perhaps they can survive in a vacuum long enough to perform simple tasks, but regular repeated exposure would leave them useless?
Comment: @Bob: I'm not sure that a non-airtight transport would survive reentry.  That's basically what happened to Space Shuttle Columbia.  (But things may be different with Star Wars technology.)
Comment: @Luke In the same movie R2-D2 and a buncha other droids work on the outside of a ship in space
Comment: @HarryJohnston Star Wars ships have demonstrated over and over again that they can land and take off multiple times without refuelling, with fuel tanks that are small compared to the ship itself. There's no point in using aero-braking when you can just as easily slow down using your main propulsion - the only time we see an unpowered reëntry (as in Columbia) is Grievous's ship in Ep 3, and that was non-orbital, "fall straight down" descent. Orbital speeds are very high, they're not something you want to slam into an atmosphere unless necessary - with our technology, it *is* necessary.
Comment: @Luaan: there's no need to aerobrake, but I'm assuming that a combat landing craft has to reach the surface as quickly as possible or risk being shot down.  (Although perhaps they were designed specifically for use against Naboo, which was only minimally defended.)
Comment: @HarryJohnston Well, we're talking about a trade federation. Sure, they have weapons, but they're most likely designed to target backwater planets and protect their trade interests. They're still mainly cargo ships, not military vessels.
Answer: The film's tie-in "Incredible Cross-Sections" book states that the design of the landing craft wasn't bespoke, it was based on an earlier design for a cargo ship, one intended to be staffed by a living, breathing crew.
That being the case, trying to vacuum-proof a ship that was originally intended to contain an atmosphere would present a number of fairly obvious design difficulties
Comment: +1, good answer. -1 for not hand-drawing the rectangle.
Comment: I would upvote but you are at +42 and I don't want to spoil that.
Comment: @Pwassonne - A few more votes and I'll be at +69
Answer: It took about an hour to land the Space Shuttle; given Star Wars technology I have to assume the invasion ships could do so far more quickly.  According to these calculations a single cubic meter of air will last one person for two hours, so assuming the ships were pressurized there would be more than enough air.
Why would they be pressurized?  Well, for one thing, the mother ship was pressurized (presumably due to the presence of all of those pesky humanoids) so if you wanted to load the landing craft from the mother ship it would be much more convenient for them to be pressurized too.  Also, the landing craft might sometimes need to be piloted by or to carry humanoids, so they need to be designed to be pressurized; having them pressurized only some of the time would probably complicate the design.
Even more importantly, as Royal Canadian Bandit points out in the comments, if the ship held vacuum you'd have to repressurize after landing before the droids could exit.  In the meantime, they'd be sitting ducks.
Comment: +1. The landing ship doesn't need equipment to maintain a breathable atmosphere. *Temperature* is likely to be a consideration; the ship will heat up from atmospheric friction on re-entry, and you want the droids sealed in to keep them cool. Finally, if the interior of the ship is in vacuum, you would have to *repressurise* when you landed, which would be inconvenient. All in all, it makes sense to just build an airtight box.
Comment: I'd argue that a faction with breathing commanders and robotic lackeys would still ensure most, if not all of their smaller craft contained pressurized atmospheres so that said breathing commanders could simply hop into the closest functioning one in an emergency. Restricting what resources those breathing commanders could utilize would be... inconvenient at best.
Comment: Excellent find.  So you won't *necessarily* need a humanoid pilot - but it might still be a good idea to have the option, just in case you run out of pilot droids. :-)
Comment: And never mind: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Pilot_droid
Answer: I think temperature would be a larger concern. There's no reason to heat a ship with droids (presumably you would dehumidify the ship to prevent condensation). Granted this is Legends, but Kyp Durron ejected in a message pod and was subjected to the extreme cold of space (short term), but survived

Durron realized that he would be unable to escape the black hole and rushed to one of the craft's message pods. Utilizing the Force to deaden the vast pain, Durron crammed himself into the message pod, the inside of which could barely hold a child. Despite the breakage of many of his bones, including those in his limbs and ribcage, Durron managed to squeeze himself in to the message pod and placed himself in a hibernation trance.. The pod fired away from the doomed Sun Crusher as the superweapon spiraled into the black hole.
When they discovered Durron's broken body in the message pod, Solo and Calrissian were shocked at the extent of Durron's injuries and pried him out of the small container. The young Jedi opened his eyes long enough to check that the two superweapons had been destroyed before sinking back into his hibernation trance to heal.

We already know canon Jedi can force themselves into a state where they breathe less. I don't think it's unreasonable to assume a canon Jedi could survive a short term temperature drop.
Comment: In this case, we're talking about re-entry, so overheating seems more likely to be a problem than freezing.  But I *think* that in real-world space travel the problem isn't keeping the interior of the vessel from becoming too hot so much as keeping the hull from becoming too hot. Star Wars vessels must have solved the latter problem, perhaps via some kind of energy shield.  The details don't matter too much - regardless of what it is exactly that keeps the hull from overheating, it would almost certainly keep the interior from overheating as a side-effect.
Comment: they land with thrusters/antigrav/whatever  operating, that means they don't need to air brake so there's not the same friction heating caused.


Is "Fight or Flight" distance genetic

Question: If you took a newborn animal and completely isolated it from its species, would it be capable of assuming a fight or flight distance preset by its species, due to their being no basis for what could harm the animal?
Comment: What do you mean by "distance"? Can you give an example?
Answer: It probably is somewhat genetic.  A good example is pigeons.  When you approach them, they turn their back to you so that if you get close enough they can escape / fly away.  I'd be surprised if this is only a learned behavior, but I also note that pigeons who have been fed let you approach to a closer distance than other birds, so in this example a distance is not completely hard wired.
Such behaviors are more likely a combination of learned and genetic, especially as the animal becomes more complex (has a larger brain).  This is a major concern of 'ethology'.
I think few inherited behaviors are completely inflexible.

Is "Fight or Flight" distance genetic


Can the treble clef be used instead of the bass clef in piano music?

Question: I have been learning the piano for a few months now and I am having trouble learning the bass clef. I have played other instruments that use the treble clef so I know it well. Can the bass clef be transformed to the treble clef in piano music? It seems like it would be much easier to read. Is there a compelling reason not to do this? Thanks.
Comment: I guess, transcribing the bass clef to treble clef for some pieces **yourself manually** could be a way for you to learn the bass clef, or at least support your learning process. But don't worry, with more practice than just a few month you'll be able to read bass clef as fluently as the treble clef.
Comment: You could use octave and double octave transposed treble clefs See the images https://musescore.org/en/node/165461 . Or equivalently 8vb 15vb transpose lines. As others have said this is bad from the pedagogic pov.
Comment: Thanks for all the info.  I'm going to continue to learn it.  It's been harder to memorize than I thought it was going to be.
Comment: If you try and fudge things, then you may end up with confusion like this question  https://music.stackexchange.com/questions/51331/why-is-the-treble-clef-in-the-lower-staff-parenthesized
Comment: _"the center of the G clef tells you where G4 is then you know the space below it is an F. From that orientation you then read relative changes."_ As the center of G clef is always at the second line (isn't it?), wouldn't be easier just to think about the position of each note in G clef, never mind where is the center of the clef?
Answer:
Can the bass clef be transformed to the treble clef in piano music?

Yes but please don't.

It seems like it would be much easier to read.

No. You will be making Middle C be a line in one staff and a space in the other. Bass clef continues directly from treble with middle C being the one ledger line between them.

Is there a compelling reason not to do this?

Pretty much all piano music uses bass clef. Intentionally ensuring that you can't actually read any music from the instrument you are trying to learn seems like a bad idea.
Answer: It is common for piano staff to change clefs. There can be passages with both hands playing G clef or passages with both hands playing F clef. You really need to read both clefs, and getting familiar with C clef is a good idea too.

Can the bass clef be transformed to the treble clef in piano music?

How can you do this with printed music without re-writing it?
But it makes no sense to put the effort into doing that instead of learning the different clefs.

Is there a compelling reason not to do this?

Yes, readability.
The reason different clefs exist is so notes can fit conveniently onto a 5 line staff. Below shows what happens if you take notes that fit F clef and then put on a G clef...

...you get a nightmare of ledger lines. Or, if you transpose up two octaves to get the notes reasonably well centered on G clef and then put an octave line under it, you get something that is kind of misleading appearing to be a scale starting on A4 rather than A2.
Try to read the interval changes rather than line and space letters. So this...

...should be read like "ascend two thirds, no accidentals" rather than "F A C."
Of course you must be aware of the letters, but it's more like the clef gives you an orientation (the center of the G clef tells you where G4 is then you know the space below it is an F. From that orientation you then read relative changes.
Comment: @Rosie F: but if you become fluent just in reading notes on the treble and bass clefs, you will never be able to transpose keys on the fly, while if you become fluent at reading interval changes, you will be able to transpose keys on the fly (although this gets really hard if there are too many accidentals).
Comment: @Rosie, you're exactly right. Reading should be "chunked" and a visual/motor reflex. I didn't mean literally recite intervals in your head.
Answer: If you really want to learn to read bass clef, do the opposite of what you are suggesting. Rewrite the treble clef parts in the bass clef, and learn by total immersion. Any music notation software can do this easily.
But spending time playing only the left hand parts of pieces will probably work just as well. Choose pieces where the left hand has plenty of notes to read, not just a few simple chords - for example Bach's two-part inventions.
Comment: https://music.stackexchange.com/questions/31250/how-can-i-learn-to-read-bass-clef-score-more-naturally has some good suggestions as well.
Answer: Since generally speaking the bass clef is played with l.h. and treble with r.h., and the hands are different, it makes sense that music for piano is written using both clefs. I imagine nearly all piano players would understand and appreciate that.
However, if you wanted to transcribe the bass clef notes so they sat in a treble clef, you could do that. A lot of work, and they'd have to be played at least an octave lower than written - no big deal there - and in the long run, more work than learning the notes in that pesky bass clef.
But you're probably only cofused with note names. Actually, they're just two out from those in the treble clef: the B that's on the middle line, treble, moves to the line below on bass, and retains its name. Not the same B, obviously! But B nevertheless.
Another way to look at it is that the bass clef continues down from where the treble leaves off - leaving a big space for middle C (on its own leger line), whether middle cC is part of the treble or bass clef.
So, yes, it's quite possible, but you'd be doing it for every piece for the rest of your life. Is that really worth it?
Comment: I believe that the exercise of rewriting from the bass clef to the treble clef would probably  help a person to learn to read the bass clef, and at some point they might not feel the need to rewrite to the other clef. In other words, it becomes a learning aid by forcing them to read the lower clef.
Answer: Actually the bass clef seamlessly fits below the violin clef, which means, you will recognize a cross-system scale easily.
If you are prepared to write all your scores yourself, this may be an option, but fairly few will be able to play from that.
The bass clef is not that difficult, and it is worth the effort to learn it.
Answer: If you had to, you could use an octave or double octave clef, like the second one displayed here:
The '15' indicates that symbol is to be read as 2 octaves away (a single octave is represented by an '8'); the direction of which is identified by the position of the number.
The second symbol here with the 15 below the treble clef would be analogous to a bass clef with the notes 2 positions higher. a 'Middle C' on this clef would play as C2, or the C two ledger-lines below the bass stave.
Comment: None of these are used for piano music.
Comment: Eww, is that double-octave-down on an alto clef? Nasty! :)
Answer: By convention (at least since about 1780), piano music is notated with 2 staves in 1 system called the Grand staff:

the upper staff with the Treble / G clef (for the right hand)
the lower staff with the Bass / F clef (for the left hand)

Purpose
Before answering your question, let's first understand the purpose of the above convention:

The piano has 88 keys ranging from A0 to C8, and the approximate center is the Middle C (C4) near where you are seated, and this coincides with how Middle C is notated in BOTH Treble and Bass clefs with just one ledger line.  So keys assigned mainly for the right hand (above Middle C) are nicely notated within the Treble clef staff lines while keys assigned mainly for the left hand (below Middle C) are nicely notated within the Bass clef staff lines, with less frequently used keys needing ledger lines and 8va notation.  See image below (source):

Most frequently used notes in piano music are approximately C2 to C6 which is nicely spread out across the 2 staves as you can see above, requiring at most 2 ledger lines.  It's easier to read notes without ledger lines, so if there are anomalies, engraver would do a "8va" notation or use a clef change in either system.
For example, to notate the following excerpt from Mozart's piano sonata illustrates how when the left hand plays notes in the higher register, the lower staff is changed to the  treble clef (to avoid excessive ledger lines) until the clef changes to the bass clef again when the left hand's notes are back in the normal register:

Answering your question
Now that we have covered the purpose of the Grand Staff convention for notating piano music, I can now answer your question:

Can the bass clef be transformed to the treble clef in piano music? It seems like it would be much easier to read.

Yes it can, and yes, it would be much easier to read provided the notes that the left hand is playing fits in the treble clef as in the Mozart sonata example above.

Is there a compelling reason not to do this?

Yes, when the notes that the left hand is playing is mostly below the Middle C.  Since this convention has been around for a few hundred years, practically every music written for the piano where the two hands need to cover C2 to C6 range (or more), it is easier to read the music when the left hand is notated in the Bass clef.  Therefore, learning how to read piano music notated using the Grand staff is a MUST for serious pianists.


Decrypt iOS standard encryption without device

Question: In order to remove the encryption from an iOS binary on the App Store, it first has to be executed on a ARM capable device. Is there a way to do this without access to a device?
Comment: Yes, that's correct
Answer: In order to remove the iOS app encryption (called FairPlay), you'd need to do one of the following:

Run the app on a physical ARM device and dynamically decrypt it.
Run the app on a virtual ARM device and dynamically decrypt it.
Statically decrypt the app.

Number 1 is the most common approach used, but it's out of the question since you're asking how to decrypt the app without access to a physical device.
Number 2 seems to currently be out of the question since the only emulator I was able to find that supposedly "supported" iOS is iEmu, which is now defunct.
Number 3 is theoretically possible, but based on my Googling, nobody has yet written a static decrypter for FairPlay.

N.B. iOS-based reverse engineering is definitely not my area of expertise, so perhaps someone can provide a better answer and/or correct any incorrect assumptions I've made above.
Comment: To answer this you need to have detailed knowledge of fairplay on apps. I think the research available publicly all let the iOS loader decrypt the encrypted sections and dump them from memory once decrypted. This accomplishes what 99.9% of researchers need. Few people have exploring the DRM itself as a goal. Perhaps they rely on the UID key? A quick check would be to diff the same apps encrypted sections on two different devices of the same model. It would mean Apple would need to dynamically sign apps per device though and store UID keys, which they've said they don't do. Maybe GID? Hmm...
Comment: IDAPRO has an ARM emulator called QEMU. Will it sucessfully load the app to the point it can be decrypted? Note: I haven't yet purchase the latest IDAPro, so no chance to try it out
Comment: I have just done a similar check - took an IPA extracted from the different iOS device. It installed to my device without a problem, but when I tried to run it I was asked to enter iTunes password (did not do that), and there was interesting line in syslog: `kernel[0] : AppleFairplayTextCrypterSession::fairplayOpen() failed, error -42004` `com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (UIKitApplication:THE_APP_PACKAGE_NAME[0xdc32][203]) : FairPlay decryption failed on binary.`
So I think we can confirm that applications are re-encrypted for each user.
Comment: Looks like app encryption is linked to iTunes account, not to specific device. Details here: http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/2A351C60-A4E5-4764-A083-FF8610E66A46.html (they seemingly use the same FairPlay encryption for songs and for apps)
Answer: My answer What you can actually do is to look for "cracked IPA apps", which basically mean they are decrypted (FairPlay encryption removed). There are many sites like this one (AppAddict).
Note
I had to do that since I upgraded my jailbroken device to iOS 8.4 (Pangu jailbreak). The iOS8.4 jailbreak disabled debugger tools like Clutch, which I used to decrypt binaries. Maybe the iOS 9.0 jailbreak allows them to work again.
I couldn't even get to decrypt some older versions of Facebook or Tinder. That's when you really rely on the community to have uploaded their cracked binaries.
Please note that I am not supporting piracy. Linking cracked IPA resources is meant for reverse engineering and research purpose. In this point of view I find it helpful to provide decrypted ("cracked") binaries of free apps to the community (via AppAddict for instance).


Is the fastest gun in the west solved?

Question: Is the fastest gun in the west problem solved? Is it really a problem?
Comment: I don't mind seeing the early votes. I just hate it when an answer is immediately accepted. I feel like better answers aren't even attempted when that happens.
Comment: darnit, I was going to ask the same question, missed it by 3 hours I guess. I was going to call it the "Sundance Kid" problem. :-)
Comment: Starting bounty because I really like Greg's solution
Comment: @Jeff I wasn't focusing on the FGITW problem at all, but on hiding vote counts on answer for some time (e.g. for as long as the question is on the front page) to avoid the bike shed effect. But this may be the wrong proposal to support in that vein, fair enough
Comment: Is it just me? I have no frakking idea what's going on here!
Comment: @pekka why are you dredging this up now? Random orderings of posts with the same score was, and is, the best solution. There is no FGITW problem that I am aware of after that change, and according to at least one academic study based on our data, there never was a FGITW problem to begin with..
Comment: I really want to post an answer saying only '**NO.**', but that doesn't have enough characters (nothing a few empty pictures can't remedy), and I would be a 'slow gun', not a fast one. (2+ years late.)
Comment: Surprisingly, the "mother" question was not linked to this one. I added the link.
Answer: I had an idea for this that I submitted to uservoice a while ago, but I can't seem to find it now so I'll recreate it:
When casting a vote, the effect of that vote would be delayed for all other users for five minutes or something. You would be able to see the vote effect, so that you could easily confirm that your vote was actually cast. But everybody else would see the effect of that vote five minutes later.
This would allow each answer to be voted on its own merit, at least for the first few minutes. From the point of view of a user, the site would appear to work exactly the way it does now except it would look like everybody else was off having a coffee break whenever you cast a vote.
Comment: yes, this is one of the few proposals that I liked
Comment: Perhaps the default sort could randomise the order of posts with the same number of votes. Then the only bias toward the first answer would be that it would be visible the longest.
Comment: I see that despite Jeff liking this proposal, it's still not implemented.  I'm assuming the problem is that an answer that may only deserve a +3 score gets a +10 score because nobody knew that it was already voted up before they got to it.  If so, the answer is simple, just display all answers in a random order, regardless of score, for the first hour or so after a question is posted.  Then everybody can see the scores and vote up/down accordingly, and there's no inherent bias towards early answers.  If an answer is accepted, of course, that could go right to the top anyway.
Comment: @sskuce - No answer "deserves" a +3 score and not a +10 score.  Upvote if it's useful, downvote if it's not, don't vote if you're not sure.
Comment: But the first answer would still be at the top, and if we've learned anything from elections, its that being on top is a HUGE advantage.
Comment: I really like this idea, and the mixed ordering idea, also perhaps, if you can only accept an answer after an hour would help encourage higher quality answers
Comment: What I don't like in this solution is that question view would be inconsistent for different users.
Comment: I disagree. This would make a great point of SO moot: Currently, garbage answers will get down immediately.
Comment: I'd +1 but that would change the votes away from forty-two...
Comment: @Greg: I like your proposal, though I don't understand why all votes have to be delayed for five minutes. I suggested a modified solution below (at the bottom of this list ;)
Comment: The Gregs proposal is great, however I'd extend the 5 minutes to 1 hour. 5 minutes is still too short if we want to get higher answer quality.
Comment: @sskuce, agree to the Kevin's comment, moreover, by displaying the vote count you totally negate the genial Gregs proposal. Of course there would be a bias, because the people would look at higher voted answers first, regardles of the order.
Comment: Ya I call it the "Break Effect". If you are one of the first 5 posters on [Break.com](http://www.break.com) your comment is almost guaranteed to be one of the featured comments
Answer: Nope

No matter what Jeff says, Fastest Gun in the West is still a massive problem:
If you are the first to post an answer you have an almost 50% chance of it getting accepted, if you post the 5th answer you only have a 2% chance of getting your answer accepted.
0   50477    46.305
1   26680    24.475
2   14516    13.316
3   7609     6.980

Comment: OTOH, if you have four answers, at least one of them should be pretty good. People with taste are more likely to censor themselves. Fifth answers are often (but not always) redundant and clueless.
Comment: Lots of people (and Jeff) don't like this statistic, on one hand, when an answer is posted you have no idea if 10 answers or 1 answer will be posted, so the stat is valid. It basically saying that if you are first its more likely your answer will be accepted, similarly being jon skeet or better still rq, makes it much more likely your answer will get accepted. It does not take into account the number of answers or if the question is a community wiki (can not do this yet)
Comment: Late to the show here, but this doesn't take into account the likelihood of the first answer being at least as good as any subsequent answers, which I would argue is also quite likely for *most* questions.
Comment: I've noticed that most of my questions get 4 answers
Comment: Hm, that's a good point about one-answer questions.. I've relayed that bit of your question into a comment on http://stackoverflow.com/questions/951056/what-interesting-stats-can-i-obtain-from-the-stack-overflow-data-dump/1004428#1004428 (yay, circular linking!)
Comment: How do these figures stack up for questions with exactly four answers?
Comment: Note to self: read rest of answers, as Jeff answers this (albeit using 5 as the magic number)
Comment: I suspect that this *understates* the problem. Knowing the fastest-gun problem, people will only take the time to write a good answer if they think they can answer significantly better. So we should expect later answers to be better; and yet they are being accepted less.
Answer: I guess the question is really: is it a problem?
There are several different aims to the site:

Get a specific answer to a question as quickly as possible for the sake of the questioner
Get a full, detailed answer to a question over time for the sake of future visitors
Allow developers to show off :)

Getting a quick answer in serves two purposes:

It may serve the first site purpose in minutes (or less - I think my fastest was to have an answer posted and accepted while the question was still saying "1 minute ago").
It shows other potential answerers that you're answering along a particular line of thought. For instance, if I see Marc Gravell answering about a particular topic, even with just a quick answer, I probably won't bother any more; he's likely to say everything I would, unless I've got a completely different idea.

The main problem I see is that of positive feedback - an earlier answer will often get more votes (and keep getting more votes) than a better, later answer. That's not always the case, but it does happen. (And I'm fully aware that I'm usually the beneficiary of that.)
Comment: Delaying the effect of *votes* by five minutes would be reasonable - and may well reduce the problem. Not sure about delaying the actual answers themselves by five minutes - that removes the benefit of my bottom bullet, and may actually lead to *more* answer duplication.
Comment: There's "as quickly as possible" and there's "quickly". I think a 5 min delay, as suggested, would not diminish the value of SO as a place where you can get quick answers.
Comment: I fully agree with Jon, and it's what I have been doing.  I still think it's something that should be done automatically, though.  A more dynamic site?  However, I think Jon forgets a fourth important aim, which is central to me:  give a good use to my time.  I.e. not to spend 20 minutes or more writing a reasonable answer only to find out another person wrote almost exactly the same.  I'd much rather prefer to use the time in perfecting that answer (if possible) or answering another question.
Answer: Let's look at whether it's really a problem.  To find out, we need to focus on questions that:

Have more than one submitted answer
Have one accepted answer
Have not been closed

Other answers haven't included these criteria, and I think that's a big problem.  For example, if you don't filter out questions with only one answer, well then of course the first answer is going to be much more likely to be accepted - because duh, it's the ONLY answer.
If you're playing along at home with SQL Server, the query to find the questions I'm focusing on is:
SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT pQ.Id) AS Questions
  FROM dbo.Posts pQ
  WHERE pQ.PostTypeId = 1
  AND (SELECT COUNT(*) FROM dbo.Posts pA WHERE pQ.Id = pA.ParentId) > 1
  AND pQ.AcceptedAnswerId IS NOT NULL
  AND pQ.ClosedDate IS NULL

Out of those 88,975 (Oct 19, 2014: 2,379,173) questions, how many of them had the first answer accepted?  The query I used was:
SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT pQ.Id) AS Questions
  FROM dbo.Posts pQ
  INNER JOIN dbo.Posts pA1 ON pQ.AcceptedAnswerId = pA1.Id
  WHERE pQ.PostTypeId = 1
  AND (SELECT COUNT(*) FROM dbo.Posts pA WHERE pQ.Id = pA.ParentId) > 1
  AND pQ.ClosedDate IS NULL
  AND NOT EXISTS (SELECT Id FROM dbo.Posts pA WHERE pQ.Id = pA.ParentId AND pA1.CreationDate > pA.CreationDate)

Turns out 49,989 (Oct 19, 2014: 1,013,791) of the first answers were accepted, or about 56% (Oct 19, 2014: 42.6%) of the time.
The AND (SELECT COUNT(*) FROM dbo.Posts pA WHERE pQ.Id = pA.ParentId) > 1 was missing here.
If the SQL query as it was was really what Brent Ozar used, this number is likely to be in excess of the "correct" number.
The next question would be, "How often was a later answer scored higher by the viewers?"  The query I used was:
SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT pQ.Id) AS Questions
  FROM dbo.Posts pQ
  INNER JOIN dbo.Posts pA1 ON pQ.AcceptedAnswerId = pA1.Id
  INNER JOIN dbo.Posts pA2 ON pA2.ParentId = pQ.Id AND pA1.CreationDate < pA2.CreationDate AND pA2.Score > pA1.Score
  WHERE pQ.PostTypeId = 1
  AND pQ.ClosedDate IS NULL
  AND NOT EXISTS (SELECT Id FROM dbo.Posts pA WHERE pQ.Id = pA.ParentId AND pA1.CreationDate > pA.CreationDate)

Turns out 3,167 (Oct 19, 2014: 128,257) times, a later answer has a higher score than the accepted (earlier) answer.

That's 6.34% of the first answer accepted had a later answer with a higher score in June 2009 and now, in October 2014, it's 12.65%.
With the June 2009 "first answer accepted" statistic suspect, comparing a later answer with higher score as a percentage of multiple answer questions: it was 3.56% in 2009 and 5.39% in 2014.
The SEDE queries.
Comment: When looking for questions to answer I don't look at questions with accepted answers as there seems little point in adding to a discussion which is effectively over. If I find the question title interesting or intriguing then I'll view the question anyway.
Comment: those stats say nothing about whether the first or later answers were the better answer.
Comment: Sam - how do you propose to measure that statistically from the database?
Comment: vote counts aren't a measure of the quality of an answer?
Comment: Do lots of people check questions already marked as answered, in order to check/vote the non-accepted answers?
Comment: The history of views by date isn't stored in the data dump, so I can't determine that.
Answer: The premise of the question is invalid: it is based on an assumption that the "fastest gun in the west" phenomenon is a problem, which I believe to be incorrect. One of the problems with forums is noone posts there because it takes a day or two (minimum) to get an answer. The fact that the system here encourages quick answers is a good thing. Usually if you have a programming related problem you need an answer now.
Answer: I'm brand new to Stack Overflow and think the speed thing is a problem. I'm enjoying answering questions and love the feedback from reputation. What I hate is writing a detailed, reasoned answer and suddenly getting an Ajax notification "there are 2 answers; reload to see them". I feel like I have to beat the timer. I'm already answering questions more quickly or leaving a short answer to go back and edit later.
I think the solution is to somehow delay votes and randomize the order for a few minutes until several answers come in. Then let the best answer win.
Comment: Which is awkward.  I'd rather just write the answer and have done with it.
Comment: This does feel irritating
Comment: Nelson, the solution to this is to write an accurate, but not detailed, answer, post it, then come back and add detail. I'll often post an answer, come back and add links and post that, then come back and add the code sample.
Answer: Here's some other data that Sam Saffron put together
Looking only at questions with 5 answers:

Answer #           # of Qs     Percentage of total
0                  2524        26.196
1                  1982        20.571
2                  1918        19.907
3                  1715        17.800
4                  1496        15.527

where:

Answer # is whether that answer was the first, second, third, etc to arrive, and
# of Qs is the number of questions where that is the accepted answer.

Looking only at questions that received 2 answers within the first 5 minutes

Answer #           # of Qs     Percentage of total
0                  8069        35.073
1                  6508        28.288
2                  3972        17.265
3                  2094        9.102
4                  1054        4.581
5                  558         2.425

Personally, I think that looks totally reasonable
Comment: It may look like being first is a slight advantage, but I'd add to these stats the warning that correlation does not imply causation.  It is often the case that the first answer is the obvious answer to an easy question, and so the first answer does have a slightly higher likelihood of being the right answer.
Comment: @Bill  If that's not a form of causation, I don't know what else.
Comment: @MarioRossi The question here is whether being the *first* to answer gives an advantage in being upvoted.  I'm saying that it doesn't, but being *right* does.  The first answer isn't always right, but it often enough is that the two can be confused.
Comment: @Bill  On the contrary, the question here is FGITW.  From that point of view, we should consider only the second table, which is saying that answering a question within the first 5 minutes gives you a chance of 63%.  Nevertheless, my main interest here is not votes or reputation but the strong feeling of wasting my time.
Answer: I don't really think it's a problem. I'm rarely the first to answer, which means I have to write better (or at least longer ;)) answers in order to catch up. I'll never catch up with Jon Skeet rep-wise, but I've got 22k so far, and almost all of it has been earned on questions where I was not the first to answer.
It doesn't really bother me. The questions where "first answer wins" are usually the ones where only a few upvotes are going to be given anyway. In the longer-running questions, where all the real upvotes are given, there's plenty of time to jockey for position.
Comment: As I have said several times before, the point is not reputation.  It is how many times you have felt you have wasted part of your time by repeating things already said, and how that time could have been used in answering (or perfecting the answer of) other questions.
Answer: Two-minute initial no-voting period?
Three-minute prohibition on edits for answers posted very quickly; say, within a minute of question posting?
Answer: Here's a metrics question:
Of the questions that have the first 2 answers within 10 minutes, what's the upvote difference between the first and second answers, and is that upvote difference statistically significant?
I've had several occasions where I've submitted a nearly-identical answer within 60 seconds of the first one, and there were a huge difference in votes. Weird... first because I would have expected this forum to be more merit based (as long as answers come in quickly, who cares whether one arrives in 4 minutes and the other 4 minutes 30 seconds), and secondly because why should I care about votes anyway? I have this strange urge to be less rigorous, go ahead and post my quick answer first, then go back and edit it to have the right links & stuff, especially since there seems to be a time period after the initial post when corrections/additions are accepted without it being called an "edit".
I'd suggest deciding what qualities of answers you want first (correct & complete answers that are reasonably quick) and coming up with social rules to encourage those qualities. SO's pretty good but issues like this make me wonder.
Comment: It's a slow query, but [here it is](http://odata.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/q/2794/quick-answers). The answer, for the 155117 questions on SO with at least 2 answers within ten minutes to 30/5/2010, the first answer has a score of 0.69 more than the second answer. (I know you asked for up-votes only, but the query took 104 seconds as is!)
Comment: Upvotes and downvotes are **NOT** the point!!!  The point is the best **usage of our collective time**.  A proper statistic would be how different the responses during the first 5 or 10 minutes are.  Difficult to measure, but in my experience you will see a lot of repetition and thus waste of time.
Answer: My suggestion
is similar to Greg's. But instead of delaying every vote for 5 minutes, I would:

show the answers immediately,
but show no votes at all (except your own) for the first 10 minutes or so after the question has been posted. (For viewers, instead of 0 the vote field could display votes show in 3 min).
Then after the 10 minutes have passed, all votes will be displayed at once, and the usual process takes place, as it is right now (no more delays).

 The part of my old answer
for which I got some down-votes and the bashing comments below:
I really feel this being a big problem. That's why I try to commit my answers quickly, only with the main aspects. Afterwards, I'm re-editing it to fill in details (like source code examples) to improve its quality. But this process is:

not really comfortable, since I have to go over my answer at least twice and I find it kind of stressfull to be one of the fastest guns in the west (especially when some "popups" show how many others have answered in the mean time).
Sometimes it results in weird comments that are only valid for a couple of minutes, until I have filled in detailed examples.
Here is an example where I even got a down-vote that was not corrected after I re-edited my answer.
Comment: Reading the above, I feel you are part of the problem, not suffering it?
Comment: I disagree. If you're getting "weird comments" and even downvotes, then I'd say your first answer was just not ready for posting. So,  you're just trying to get to be the first answerer, as you're *aware* that first answers are likely to get more votes? I dislike that, a lot.
Comment: I'd say the problem is the system and the voters. Furthermore, I do improve my answers quite quickly, and when I vote answers up, I look through other answers and upvote similar ones as well, even if they don't have upvotes yet.
Comment: I try to post only when the first answer does make sense already. I checked 10 of your answers, 9 of them edited by yourself afterwards. Maybe your first answers were just not ready for posting ;)
Comment: Sure I edit after posting too, sometimes even in the 5 minute grace period. But I've never received weird comments or downvotes for any first revision. And I surely don't post partial answers knowing that I am ging to improve it right away. How many of those 10 were first answers?
Comment: I haven't looked for that. In fact I do like it when people improve their answers... And I think the same applies for me: I used to write very thorough answers that subsume several others and therefore were committed quite late. The others all got a lot of upvotes, mine maybe 1 or 2 by "late viewers". Only after several such situations I changed my behavior and started to list all the aspects, then commit the answer and later-on edit the answer if I want to add details to the aspects. Hope with this explanation you agree that the root cause of the problem is the voting behavior/system itself.
Comment: I don't see how my comments could be interpreted as bashing, but they surely were not intended that way. Sorry about that. That aside: I wonder if the quick non-revoked downvote on [your example](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7332758/what-makes-other-languages-faster-than-java-in-terms-of-rapid-development/7332792#7332792) is related to this. To me, it surely is an example of FGITW: a single-line answer posted within 3 minutes after the question was asked, and then enhanced *a lot* 7 to 12 minutes later. But why couldn't the downvoter simply disagree with both the short and long answer?
Comment: Sure, maybe he disagreed and did not comment on it. I did feel a little bashed here because I mainly want to give good answers, only secondly fast ones. Furthermore, many others have mentioned in this thread that they are using the same technique, without getting down-votes. That no longer seemed objective to me.
Answer: I'll answer from my personal point of view, which is not upvotes, downvotes, selection of the best answer or even reputation.  My main concern is: wasting my time, or if you prefer, not being collectivelly more efficient.  How many times I have spent 5 or more minutes writing an answer only to discover that another person was producing / had produced a very similar if not exact same one?
Some strategies that I have tried:

Answer only questions that have been unanswered for a couple of hours.  Challenges:  To skip questions with only wrong answers (usually just one or two).  Not providing additional points of view.
Answer only questions that after a couple of hours have only 3 answers.  Challenges:  In many cases the 3 answers are duplicate (and possibly wrong) ones.  Very few questions to answer at all; usually only those very badly stated.  Additionally, I have noticed that duplicate answers are produced even after much more time than writing it would have normally required.  A bit off-topic, but this would mean:  a)  We are extremely slow typists,  b)  Many of us abandons SOf for important periods, only to come back and press "submit", c)  We answer questions without reading previous answers, or d)  We answer question after reading previous answers, probably trying to synthesize the best of them.
Be the fastest gun in town and try to announce to others my intention of producing an answer with a one-liner, leaving up to them to judge if my sketched answer sounds good enough or not.  Challenges:  Other contributors percieving that that's all the answer I'm going to produce and elaborating on it (precisely what I'm trying to avoid).
(Current)  Like 3, but being explicit in my intentions of ellaboration.  Challenges:  Wishfully none.

None of them has worked very well so far.
My proposition is to have the site informing the user that other people is already working on answers as soon as they enter the first character, and not as late as when they press "submit" (way too late, for everybody).  Indication of the number of other people, names, reputation, maximum reputation (within the group), response length, etc. could also be very useful to me in deciding if to continue answering or not.  Using the language of economics: make it a perfect market, where everything is a personal choice, but as well informed as possible.
Also useful: the ability to queue questions that I have chosen not to answer for later review.
Another alternative is to lock the question for a while.  And/or after certain number of answers have started to be produced.  However, somehow I'm more inclined for what you could call the liberal model, which also seems consistent with both the philosophy of the site and many opinions expressed here.
If this information is already available, please let me know how to access it.
Comment: No, please don't "solve" this problem by doing 3. That's precisely the problem.
Comment: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/35291/when-answering-could-we-be-informed-that-the-following-people-are-already-answ
Comment: *My proposition is to have the site informing the user that other people is already working on answers as soon as they enter the first character.* While interesting, new users may find this pretty demotivating. If someone were to try to answer for the first time, seeing 3 others with 10k, 40k or 100k rep answering may make the person stop. That would basically be the market working against new competition (going by your analogy).
Comment: Moreover, although I understand  why you are saying this, I dont think the SE model is equivalent to a "market". The points system is a reputation based system, and is not a virtual economy type system. This makes a huge difference to the type of behavior we should encourage and the type of environment that is present.
Comment: @AsheeshR  I think you are overlooking an extremely important part of my proposition, which is to be reminded about the question once interest has subsided, either to review the answers and learn something new, complement the answers with comments, or provide completely new answers and perspectives in case everybody missed them.
Comment: @AsheeshR I beg to disagree. You can find a pretty complete economic system here. Questions= demand. Answers= offer. Reputation/Votes= currency. Bounties= Stock Exchange (capital for capital) . What question to answer= what to produce (at the micro-economic level). Research on my own or ask a question= what to consume. Etc, etc, etc. I have even seen behaviors proper of very aggressive (aka "dynamic") markets. Disclaimer: I do agree that analogies are always limited and very frequently misleading. But I'd say this is precisely what makes SE more sucessful than other question and answer sites.
Comment: Stack Overflow because of its huge size appears like a virtual economy. However, if you look at the smaller sites, you will see that the system behaves like an almost perfect reputation points system. I wasn't specifically referring to SO, but to the entire network in my comments above. However, I overlooked the fact that FGITW occurs only on SO, so this discussion is limited to it. In which case, yes. SO does behave more like a virtual economy, than a rep system.
Answer: Maybe it has been suggested before, and it may not be popular, but why not set the timestamp of the answer to the last edit, and sort the answers with equal votes accordingly?
Comment: then you'd have people game the system by editing it repeatedly to get the top position.
Answer: To break up your jQuery code into functions, do you do it the same way as in JavaScript?
I would argue that there are still plenty of examples where the first or second to answer are not the answers that end up getting selected or with the most votes...

Is the fastest gun in the west solved?


How is my question off-topic?

Question: My question, Utility company wants me to sign easement contract for $1 has been closed as off-topic.  I would like to know why.  I don't see this as being any different from asking about selling a house and how to determine what the price should be.  I am certainly not asking for legal advice as one commenter implied.
Answer: If I was going to write answer to your question it would have several key points:
1) read the entire contract.
2) see what easements are currently on the recorded property documents.
3) consult a local real estate attorney to see what are your options.
Beyond that I don't know what else to say.
which is why there was a comment about it being a legal issue.
Comment: Well a warning about it decreasing the value of my propery would have been helpful as would some hint of how to estimate either the decrease in value or the or the value of the easement.  An easement is just a fancy way of saying your selling some rights, it's no more or less a legal issue than selling your house or car.

How is my question off-topic?


LEGO Torsos cracking

Question: I have just recently acquired the new crossbones' hazardous heist, and suprisingly, not even a week went by and my really sweet Black widow figure already has a small crack in her side. Will This damage the whole side? I'm really worried, does anyone else have this problem? How can I fix it?
Answer: I would go ahead and contact LEGO customer service and tell them about this. They will want to know as they have high quality standards and this might indicate a defect bigger than just your copy. Also, they are more than likely to offer you a free replacement figure - keep that one safe and disassembled until the one you have is too damaged.
Answer: Depends on where the crack is. If it is near joints like the legs or arms, then probably you should find a way to seal it. Else other than design purposes it won't harm the figure
Answer: From experience the only problem from cracks in the side is that the arm is very loose and the legs don't have a good connection to said torso. Otherwise it is just an unfortunate look.

LEGO Torsos cracking


How bad is baggage theft at Johannesburg airport?

Question: South Africa's Johannesburg's airport has a reputation for stolen and rifled baggage and a quick Google search returns many travelers reporting similar stories. My question, is how bad is the situation now. I noticed that many of these reports are older--from around 2006--and that the airport authority started a campaign to resolve the problem. Has the situation improved in 2011?
Comment: I was in South Africa last year for the World Cup and went through the J'burg airport in/out of SA. Coming into South Africa, they stole my friend's Canon SLR camera + lens. Of course we didn't realize it until a day later in the trip. Absolutely do not pack anything in your luggage that you would be upset if stolen, and certainly don't pack any electronics/jewelry/cash of any value.
Comment: When I flew from London to Cape town via Johannesburg in August they made me take my bag out and recheck it. Which on top of being annoying seems like it must go past more sets of hands and increases the likely hood of things going missing. In saying that my bag wasn't tampered with but my camera, lens and cash were all in carry on so there was nothing of value in there.
Comment: Interesting. We've heard from several people that it's safer to recheck your bags in Johannesburg instead of letting them be transferred through. I agree with you though that, rechecking does seem like an opportunity for me people to have access to your bag. Maybe they're counting on the fact that owners of transferred bags won't find out there's a problem until after they've left Johannesburg...
Comment: That makes sense about not noticing until your finial destination, i was basing my argument on the fact that more sets of hand touch it this way. Either way it apparently happens a lot.
Comment: Just had 2 Canon SureShots stolen from my luggage in J'burg this week. Checked them in with Kenya Airways on KQ763 - bags were locked - when I arrived in Nairobi, the locks were cut-off and the cameras missing!!
Comment: Recently I had friend where the airline wouldn't accept the bags more than a hour or two before the flight. The rechecking might be related - the longer the bags are sitting somewhere in the system, there are more opportunisties to tamper with them.
Answer: I can't find the reference now, but there was a great story that an organisation was testing security at airports around the world, by taking a suitcase to the airport and leaving it there, timing how long before it got stolen or identified.
The exception was Johannesburg, where the car was hijacked enroute, and the suitcase never made it to the airport ;)
Anyway...
Apparently in the last year, luggage theft has been reduced by 60% which bodes well.  Baggage pilfering is down to 0.6% of all bags that pass through the airport, which when you think about it is still bad, but if you lock your bags and use the bag wrapping machines available, it'll deter the opportunistic thief.
Comment: +1, if you take simple precautions and avoid putting anything valuable that will show up on a scanner then they won't bother.  Don't be an easy target!
Comment: I would say the figure is 0.6% not because things have improved, but because (a) more people know how bad that airport is and don't put anything valuable in, and (b) many people probably simply do not report the theft of smaller items.  The 0.6% figure masks a much higher probability that your bag will at least be opened and looked through.
Comment: The same forum, 2 comments below that one, a passenger mentions that this is still a problem, and almost always transit luggage is tampered with, while the statistics take into consideration all luggage.
Comment: There's always going to be unreported crime, but we have to measure it somehow :/
Comment: 0.6% sounds OK. I have no solid reference but some anecdotal evidence (casual conversations with people in the biz) that 1% luggage lost (that's including all forms of loss or delay, not only theft and not necessarily lost forever) is "normal" so at least the same order of magnitude.
Answer: Last night we had a story on Carte Blanche (a South African investigative reporting program) where they said that there are about 140 000 incidents of theft at OR Tambo per year, so the situation is still really bad despite lots of measures put in place. They showed CCTV camera footage of how the thieves know exactly where the cameras are and grab bags off the conveyor belts in such a way that nothing can be seen in the cameras.
The bottom line is just that you should never ever put anything valuable in your luggage if flying anywhere in SA - just keep valuables in your hand luggage. Period.
See the following link about the mentioned show with interviews with the head of security and with the Police.
Comment: There is absolutely no way we (or anyone else, save a handful of specialists) could make sense of an absolute number like 140000 (out of how many movements? how does it compare to other airports in the region and in the world?) so this story sounds more like lazy sensationalism than anything else.


Can a rear end collision cause damage to the brakes?

Question: My 2017 Subaru Outback was rear-ended a week back. I took it to two independent body works shop for damage estimates. Both shops were in agreement and said the following:

The rear body panel needs replacement.
The rear floor is crushed and needs replacement.
The right side bracket, energy absorber and impact bar need to be replaced.
The lift gate needs some repairs.

Both the shops also said that they don't feel anything else is damaged and that the damage is more cosmetic than functional. But, as it is customary, both the shops also said that something more may come up when the actual repairs begin.
Today, after about 6 days from the rear-end incident, when I applied brakes, I felt that my brakes slipped. This is something I never experienced prior to the incident. It felt similar to the case when EyeSight applies ABS on identifying an imminent collision, but I'm sure it was not ABS.
When the rear-ending happened, I had my car's breaks fully pressed as I had come to a complete halt at a safe distance from the car in front of me. So the car behind me hit me when my car's breaks were fully pressed.
The last useful piece of information is that the driver behind me tried to avoid the collision and tried to drive the car to right, thereby hitting the right rear end of my car. I expect that the car was at about 25-35 mph.
My questions:

Can a rear end collision cause damage to the breaks (or braking system)?
While both the shops told me that the car was safe to drive, is it possible that AWD system of the car may have been disturbed due to the hit being to right rear end?
Answer: It's possible that the Eyesight system might be out of calibration after the accident.
It's under warranty, so I'd take the car to the dealer for a checkup; they're going to know more than a body shop about what might affect your ABS system.


Measure and compare energy consumption

Question: does anyone know of a platform/forum where people measure and compare the energy consumption of their devices?  I bought an energy metering plug, and now I can find out how much electricity my dishwasher, microwave, kettle, hairdryer, etc, consume. But I have no idea if their level of consumption is good or bad, unless I can compare with those of other people, to learn whether I should use different appliance settings, or even buy new appliances! Anyone know of a site of forum where I could get such info?
Comment: Be careful when interpreting the numbers from your energy meter. Many consumer metering devices are rather inaccurate when it comes to measuring low power(< 10 watts). Also be aware that different settings on a device may have a significant impact on electricity consumption (e.g. brightness levels on a TV).
Comment: These are great answers, but I would like to see someone address what I see as a missing piece: The difference between what manufacturers or regulators estimate and what consumers actually experience! The experimental data from those groups is probably higher quality, but you never know if they missed something about how the product performs in the wild. Some kind of decentralized platform would be great to get at that, no?
Answer: tldr: Look at power rating of different appliances (show in W or kW typically), or most simply try to buy Energy Star appliances.
The first thing that you should know is that if you are trying to be as sustainable as possible the manufacture of the products must be considered. If the appliance has a short life or low energy consumption throughout its life then it is likely that the manufacturing methods (material use, process, etc) will contribute much more to the environmental impact of the product.
If you really wanted to have a somewhat accurate estimate of the impact of one appliance over another you should find or do LCA analyses. This typically is not practical for most small appliances, and realistically the differences may not be clear between products from different companies.
However, if you make the assumption that the manufacturing methods are similar between products and want to make a judgement solely on energy use you can try the following websites. Or try searching "database of energy consumption of appliances"

https://www.energystar.gov/products?s=mega
https://cacertappliances.energy.ca.gov/Pages/ApplianceSearch.aspx
http://www.energyrating.gov.au/ (Australian database)
http://www.tpcdb.com/ (Computer focused),
http://www.energyefficiencydatabase.com/index.html
http://eetd.lbl.gov/sites/all/files/lbnl-184403.pdf (it sounds like this database should be useful once operational)
Comment: Welcome to Sustainable Living! Nice first answer. I've added the links from your comment to your post.
Comment: In many countries a lot of appliances must have the energy star rating and expected consumption on them when they're sold. Which means that that information is usually available even if it's not required where you are - the Australian database site, for example).
Comment: Thanks a lot for the great links! I also found https://energyuse.eu/ which is supposed to be for people to measure actual consumption and share some tips. Site does exactly what I'm after, but sadly does not seem to be very active.
Answer: Multiply the power with time you use the device and concentrate your efforts on the key expenditure contributors. You should google for the typical and best devices in the class: what is normal and how good can it go and what are natural, environmental implications for producing the most energy efficient devices? Yes, that is also important. If you use a lamp once a year for couple of minutes then it may be not the best idea to buy an ultra-expensive and poisonous led lamps.
Actually, you better record your figures and lend the power meter to the friends. You do not need the meter anyway and you do not save environment if you buy individual stuff. You must share. The friends may report you their recordings as extra benefit. Meantime, you can approximate the consumers quite closely by plain your hand. The energy waste inevitably takes the form of heat (you may notice that light and sound do not take a lot of energy away). The evil is the entropy, the thermal motion at microscopic level and you increase the amount of evil when heat up anything. So, the warmer is the device, the more evil it is.

Measure and compare energy consumption


What happens if a monk is called for jury duty?

Question: Is it possible for a monk to be called for jury duty in the U.S.A.? If so, does the Buddhist religion prevent them from taking part int he judicial process, as it involves passing judgment on others? Furthermore, would it be considered an offense for a lay person to be a member of a jury that had to decide on a death penalty case?
Comment: Generally speaking, if you are called to serve on a jury for a death penalty case you are asked if you object to the death penalty.  If you answer in the affirmative you will (usually) be excused from serving on that jury.
Comment: I live in Canada and the death penalty was abolished in the late 1960's. So no problem there, but the Ahimsa question still arises.
Answer: There is another question on here about whether or not a buddhist can harm another person https://buddhism.stackexchange.com/a/7767/471 it claims that the buddha said that judicial action wasn't blameworthy.
So you could get away with saying that taking part in judicial action was not blameworty, but if it was me, I would have great difficulty in judging whether or not they had actually committed the crime. And it would be upsetting to discover that they were innocent but my vote was for guilty.
Answer: How can it happen that one having left home would still have such duty?
Actually, and that is a serious matter, most countries do not let people go fort, is unknown for them. My person does not know how western monks generally manage such, staying citizens and leaving home: how should that work in accordiance with Dhamma-Vinaya?
Furthermore, would it be considered an offense for a lay person to be a member of a jury that had to decide on a death penalty case?
Sure, to the amout of deed, and it's the kamma of killing if agree by thoughts, signs or deeds.
(Note that this is not given for stacks, exchange, trade or entertainment but for release from this wheel)
Answer: As a monk one should not involve one self with govement, law and lay peoples activities other than at a spiritual advisory capacity inline with the Dhamma and Vinaya.
So getting onself excused is the best option. There is also a further karmic consiquance if the one gives or endorse a guilty verdict.