What films to watch before Avengers: Infinity War for better understanding?

Question: Can anybody tell me what movies I should watch before Avengers: Infinity War for better understanding?
Comment: The fact that Marvel is so good in connecting all of their films, watching all of them definitely makes sense.
Comment: The problem with not watching them all beforehand is that you'll essentially have spoilers for the characters' futures.
Comment: I like KutuluMike's answer. I'd add Captain America: The Winter Soldier to his Recommended list because Captain America's relationship with The Winter Soldier plays into Civil War.
Comment: http://digg.com/2017/how-to-watch-all-of-marvel-cinematic-universe
Answer: We don't really know, since all we have to go on is the trailer. This is the culmination of the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe to this point, and every superhero we know of is going to be in it. So, the easiest answer is all of them.
Just based on what happens in the trailer, though, we can at least say the following (NOTE: These are not in order; after deciding what you're going to watch you should watch the movies in the order they were released):
Mandatory

Avengers and Age of Ultron - Infinity War is a direct sequel to Age of Ultron, and in those movies, we learn about Thanos, the Tesseract, and the Infinity Stones, plus are introduced to the Avengers roster itself.
Captain America: Civil War - This is practically an Avengers movie as it is; Infinity War seems to pick up the story of the "fugitive" Avengers where it ends in Civil War, especially when it comes to Steve Rogers.
Thor: Ragnarok - Chronologically, it seems Infinity War begins very soon after Ragnarok ends, and picks up Thor and Loki's story from that point. From the trailers, we can guess that events in Ragnarok play a crucial role in kicking off Infinity Wars.
Black Panther: Not out yet, but the trailer implies that T'Challa and his home country of Wakanda play a major role in Infinity War, so you'll probably want to see that too.
Guardians of the Galaxy: A good chunk of the movie follows the Guardians, and one in particular has a very close relationship to the film's antagonist. This film is also the first to actually explain what an Infinity Stone is, though you'll get a refresher in Infinity War.

Recommended

Doctor Strange: Also introduces us to an Infinity Stone, and some other non-Avengers characters.

Thor: The Dark World: The last of the known Infinity Stones, unfortunately, is in this movie. Though, if you want to skip it, all you need to know is:

 The Aether is an Infinity Stone, Jane Foster found it, and after Thor beat the bad guys, the Asgardians gave it to The Collector for safe keeping.

Guardians of the Galaxy: Volume 2: The roster changes a bit from the first movie to the one we see in Infinity War, though you really just need to know:

 Mantis has psychic powers.

Suggested

Ant-Man, Spider-Man: Homecoming: Introduce characters that haven't been in an Avengers movie yet. They do appear in Civil War, though, and it's unlikely their solo backstories will play too heavily into Infinity War, at the least due to time constraints, so you may be able to give these a pass.

The rest of the movies (Iron Man series, Captain America series, Thor, and especially The Incredible Hulk) you probably don't need to see if you're short on time. You can pick up the majority of the characters background and abilities from the Avengers movie, at least, likely enough to get you through Infinity War.
Comment: You can probably edit out "ant man" form the suggested films list now.
Comment: If you want the absolute bare minimum, I would argue that *Black Panther* isn't actually strictly necessary. There's really not much you need to know about Wakanda as far as *Infinity War* goes and what you do need to know, *Civil War* already tells you.
Comment: Even being one of the upvoter but I will still suggest to move GotG 1 and 2 to Mandatory after seeing the film. Ant-man and homecoming can be fully skipped.
Comment: +1 for that Thor 2 tip! :D A largely forgettable movie that wasn't even trying... That climax sequence and Loki scenes were watchable though...
Comment: I would add to your notice on GotG V2 that it provides a lot of backstory on the relationship between Gamora and Nebula, and the relationship between Thanos and his "Daughters". Although that's not *mandatory* information for Infinity War, it is a pretty major point of the movie and very relevant.
Answer:
Can anybody tell me what moves I should watch before Avengers: Infinity War for better understanding?

According to Kevin Feige, no additional Marvel films need to be seen in order to understand what's going on in Avengers: Infinity War.

QUESTION: Can you enjoy the film if you aren't up to speed on the Marvel Studios movies to date?
KEVIN: We believe that every movie we make needs to feel like a standalone piece of entertainment -- that you can walk in cold and enjoy, with a beginning, middle and end. We always ask that question in our research screenings. Do you feel you needed to have seen the other movies?
People who have not seen the other movies say 'No.' People who have seen the other movies can see the connections. That's the balance that we want to find: making a film that will appeal to people who've never seen one of our movies. It's an entertaining self-contained story, but it will work on a much deeper level for people who are following along.

This in mind, if you want to know why some characters look/behave they way they do, and the dynamics of the relationships between some characters, then yeah, watching a few of the previous films would be a really good idea (in which case I would recommend something extremely similar to @KutuluMike's list).
However, do any of the previous Marvel films actually need to be watched, as perhaps a typical sequel might demand of its prequel(s)? Not at all.
Comment: Your quote does not back your words of "full understanding"
Comment: @SK19 Care to elaborate?
Comment: At the end you write "However, do any of the previous Marvel films actually need to be watched, as perhaps a typical sequel might demand of its prequel(s)? Not at all." which is true and matches the quote. But your bold text speaks of "Full understanding" and that cannot be said, for example its hard to come up with why "Person X has Stone Y" or why killing Loki and other Asgardians is a bigger deal than it may seem at first.
Comment: @SK19 Tadaa.. removed "full".
Answer: Reviews that I've read of Infinity War do suggest that the movie is enjoyed more by people that are more invested in the characters and that as a stand-alone movie it doesn't work as well as Keven Feige suggests.
The other suggested list answer is excellent but with full knowledge of Infinity War I do slightly disagree with its suggestions.
I've attempted to cut down the list as small as possible for people that don't want to spend forever filling in the blanks in their MCU coverage.  I don't think its critically important to explain the location and capabilities of all the Infinity Stones prior to Infinity War, which explains why I skip the underwhelming Thor The Dark World.  As an example, by missing this movie its not clear why the Reality Stone is with The Collector, but at least that character and his interest in the stones is clear from Guardians of the Galaxy.  I feel this is justified as the Aether from this movie doesn't really act like the Reality Stone.
This is also not a "best of the MCU".  If that were the case, I'd probably drop Age of Ultron, elevate Black Panther and include Captain America The Winter Soldier.  It really is an attempt to introduce characters and concepts in as few movies as possible.
Mandatory

The Avengers.  This movie can substitute for the origin story for much of the core team allowing you to skip all the other "phase one" movies.  They do a great job of subtly filling you in, for example it introduces what happened to Cap in his first movie and explains how he ends up in the present day, and who the Asgardians are.
Guardians of the Galaxy.  This is the movie that properly introduces the Infinity Stone concept to the franchise.  The Guardians are very prominent in Infinity War, especially as two characters have an important relationship to Thanos, the primary antagonist.
Avengers Age of Ultron.  Probably the weakest movie on the mandatory list and I have toyed with dropping it down to being recommended only.  Importantly it introduces Tony Stark's fear of failure and planning for the future "big bad" that will threaten the earth.  Its also the origin story for Vision and why he has the Mind Stone.
Captain America Civil War.  This is an Avenger's movie in all but name and will explain the composition of the teams in Infinity War and introduces Spiderman to the MCU.  Peter Parker's relationship with Tony Stark is very important and, although this is expanded upon in Spiderman Homecoming, you see enough of it here to understand how Tony feel protective towards his protegé.  It also acts somewhat as an origin story for The Winter Soldier and gives a glimpse into the world of Black Panther and Wakanda.  (It also includes enough of Vision for you to understand who he is if you happened to skip Age of Ultron)
Doctor Strange.  Doctor Strange plays an significant role in Infinity War so its important to understand him and his capabilities.  Except for a cameo in Thor Ragnarok you don't see him in any of the crossover movies to date.
Thor Ragnarok.  The events of Infinity War happen shortly after the events of Ragnarok.  This movie also allows you to catch up with the character arc of Loki and explains much of the motivation for Thor in Infinity War.

Recommended

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2.  Along with the Peter Parker - Tony Stark relationship, the Guardians - Thanos relationship forms much of the emotional weight of Infinity War, so watching this movie is also recommended.  It also introduces Mantis to the team.
Black Panther.  Although plot-wise this contains very little to link it with the overall MCU story arc, Wakanda is a key setting for Infinity War and its a great movie to round out the experience if you have time.


What is the difference between the two kanji pairings for 'jellyfish'?

Question: I am aware that animal names are generally written in katakana (although sometimes hiragana), but kanji is sometimes used. I stumbled upon the Japanese word クラゲ, meaning jellyfish. The dictionary said that there were two different kanji combinations for the word: 海月 and 水母, both pronounced as クラゲ. The first means 'sea moon', and the other, 'water mother' (possibly 'aquatic mother'). What is the difference between the two and are they interchangeable? If not, which is more appropriate if either at all. Any dive into nuance (Why strange words like moon and mother were used) could be useful.
Comment: Don't start trying to make sense of multiple 義訓 writing and (often non-existing) nuances between them. There lies madness.
Comment: Don't know the full story, but seems that "jellyfish" in Chinese is 水母, so that might be a lead.
Comment: If 海月 is of Japanese origin can we just assume that they called it that because it looks like a moon in the sea?
Comment: There's a quite rambly analysis of it [here](http://homepage2.nifty.com/kunimi-yaichi/hobby/jelly-fish.htm)
Answer: According to 大辞林, 水母 and 海月 are 熟字訓{じゅくじくん} ways of writing the same word.  (See the angle brackets?  Those indicate 熟字訓.)
熟字訓{じゅくじくん} readings are a type of 当{あ}て[字]{じ}.  They're "word readings", where an entire kanji compound is given a reading.  (Usually, readings are given to single kanji.)  As Wikipedia explains, these are established word readings assigned to a group of kanji; established means, more or less, that people commonly know how to read them.  This is the opposite of 義訓(ぎくん) readings, which are not established and usually require furigana to be read.
How is this relevant to your question?  You asked about the difference between "the two words for 'jellyfish'".  But they're the same word!  It's just written more than one way.  (In fact, it's also been written 水月, 久羅下, and 鏡虫.)
Look at 大辞林's entry again.  If they were different words, they'd have separate dictionary entries.  If they were the same word but had important differences, the dictionary would probably make a note of that (as in the entry for いとこ), or divide it into senses and show a particular kanji where the difference matters (as in the entry for つく).  In fact, I checked three other dictionaries, and not one mentioned a difference between them.
So I don't believe there are any important differences.  Even in the idiom listed by 大辞林, 「水母{くらげ}の[骨]{ほね}」, it's easy to find it written online with the other kanji.  Personally, I'm going to keep writing it クラゲ.
Comment: Oh, gotta love how many combinations there are for `いとこ`!


How to calculate concurrent users in jmeter through number of threads configured during the test

Question: If my total number of threads are 100 i.e 100 requests are being sent to application with say in 100 seconds.
So requests are made to server but is there any formula which can give concurrent users simulated when 100 requests/threads are sent by jmeter?
How many concurrent users are accessing the system?
Comment: Real users or actual connections?
Comment: Concurrent users is a phony metric unless you can characterize what the probability distribution looks like for user traffic.  100 concurrent users does not translate to 100 concurrent requests.
Answer: This depends on the ramp up period as well. For example if the total number of threads are 100 and ramp up period is given as 5, then this equals to 20 threads getting executed per second.
So if you want all the 100 Users to act in a second, give the ramp up period as
1. Although even this doesn't ensure concurrency.
For closer results and simulation use the Synchronous Timer.
Answer: I don't think you can calculate it. Instead try to monitor it. All web-servers should a way to monitor current number of active connections. Start monitoring, start JMeter tests, check results.
JMeter users do not compare to real users as load-tests do not simulate real users. Real users have random think times on each action, while most load tests fire requests as fast as they can.
Load-testing is more about finding bottlenecks in your infrastructure and which part scale badly. Therefor I would ramp-up virtual users until it breaks and find out why it breaks. Then think about if this would be a problem in the production environment.
If you have already have visit statistics like page requests per second on a comparable system then you perhaps can calculate how many virtual users are enough to represent an realistic test, but wonder if this is what you want to test.
Also read:

https://www.soasta.com/blog/the-effects-of-using-think-time-to-adjust-level-of-load/
http://www.webperformance.com/library/tutorials/CalculateNumberOfLoadtestUsers/
http://techbeacon.com/how-many-virtual-users-do-i-need-load-testing
Answer: Use the field "Number of Threads" to set as many threads as required for your load test (eg. 100).
The field "Loop Count" is used to set the number of times each thread should run for eg. 100. You can select the checkbox 'Forever' if you want to threads to run as the checkbox suggests.
Answer: Let's split your question into 2 parts:

Concurrent users
Requests per second

Concurrency depends on your test plan and application response time. JMeter acts as follows:

It starts all threads within specified ramp-up period
Each thread starts executing samplers upside down (or according to Logic Controllers)
When thread doesn't have any more samplers to execute or loops to iterate it is being shut down

So if you add 100 users make sure your test plan run long enough so all of them could have a chance to act simultaneously. You can use JMeter HTML Reporting Dashboard or Active Threads Over Time Listener in order to monitor actual concurrency. See JMeter Test Results: Why the Actual Users Number is Lower than Expected article for more detailed explanation.
Requests per second also depends on application response time. For example, if you have 100 virtual users and application response time is 1 second - you will able to send 100 requests per second as JMeter samplers are waiting for the server response. If response time will be 2 seconds - you will be able to send 50 requests per second, etc. Concurrency can be controlled via Constant Throughput Timer or Throughput Shaping Timer and monitored via Server Hits Per Second graph or aforementioned HTML Reporting Dashboard
Answer: In JMeter Thread Group you can use Ram Up Period (In Seconds) field to calculate how many request you want to send to server.
Please follow below calculation to understand the concept:
<code>Number of threads(users) = 10
Ramp up period(in seconds) = 100
Loop Count = 1
</code>
Formula is:
<code>(Ramp-up Period/Number of threads)*Loopcount
</code>
As per above formula
<code>(100/10) = 10
</code>
So every 10 seconds one request will hit the server with one thread user,
eventually threads are up and running ,each 10 seconds one request is hit by the thread users.
Total number of hits by users is :10 hits to server because 10 users will hit 1 request for every 10 seconds.
Please read here it has given details with examples to prepare your test plan very clearly: http://www.wikishown.com/ramp-period-in-jmeter/.


How do I install new software?

Question: I am aware that Linux distributions usually have 'package managers' to allow me to download and install software from the command line, and that I should also be able to download and compile source code from the Web. But I am not sure about how best to do either of these things on the Raspberry Pi.
Comment: Discussed this with Andrew, Jivings, dunsmoreb in chat - the plan is to turn this into a wiki beginner's guide of sorts, with an answer for each major system. Feel free to contribute additions or corrections to any of the answers here, but please post a new answer *only* to document a new platform.
Answer: Debian
APT is the package manager under Debian, for Raspberry Pi or any other system. The command line tool curl is installed in this example.
You need to be connected to the Internet.
If you haven't done so recently it is worth running,
sudo apt-get update

This updates the list of packages that are available to apt-get.
Then use apt-cache to search for the package that you want to install, in this case,
apt-cache search curl

Every package name or description with the word 'curl' in it will be displayed in a list.  This is useful in cases where you are not sure as to the exact name of the package that you want to install.
Once you have the name of the package that you want, install it as follows,
sudo apt-get install curl

If you're not sure what you're looking for or just wish to browse through what's available, you can alternatively use the menu-driven tool Aptitude:
sudo aptitude

Comment: @AndrewFog I dislike the term `standard Raspberry Pi`. That is a strange assumption.
Comment: Might be worth adding how to uninstall too. Also the format of the other answers works really well, being both concise and informative.
Answer: Arch
Pacman is the package manager used in Arch Linux.
Synchronize Repositories and update System
$ sudo pacman -Syu

Search for a Package
$ pacman -Ss package

Install a Package
$ sudo pacman -S package

Uninstall a Package
$ sudo pacman -R package

Answer: Fedora
Yum is the default package manager used in Fedora.
Update Installed Packages
yum update

Get Package Information
yum info package

Install New Package
yum install package

Remove Installed Package
yum remove package

Answer: MINIBIAN
As MINImalistic raspBIAN is, at its heart, still a Debian derivative, the apt tools are the tools of choice for this really cool OS. Thus, almost anything said about Debian also applies to MINIBIAN, except, of course, since it is not only designed to be "mini", but in fact is minimalistic, there will be a lot of "Ign"(ore) messages while running the "apt-get update" command.

How do I install new software?


Is there a difference between 你无意之中流露出来 and 你无意流露出来?

Question: In a casual conversation, one person didn't know he unwittingly revealed he doesn't like whatever, ice cream. The other person says...
你无意之中流露出来 which translates to roughly to "You let it slip." I think.
So does 你无意流露出来 mean the same thing? The only difference I see compared to the above is the above explicitly references to the subject, ice cream, they're talking about?
Answer: The first one is straightforward - it means showing one's intent unwittingly. The second one is a bit tricky to interpret. It does mean the same thing in the examples you quoted. However, "无意之中" and "无意" are not the same. For example, I can say "他无意上学" (he doesn't intend to go to school) but it is wrong to say that "他无意之中上学". Note that "他" makes no attempt to hide his intent here. "上学" (going to school) simply doesn't cross his mind.
Also, "之中" means "in the midst of doing someting". Grammatically, it's present continuous or past continuous.
Answer: In Chinese, "无意之中" means unwittingly, but "无意" means "不是故意的", that is to say, not intentional.
The former means "you let it slip", the latter focus on you were not intend to do this.
Answer: "無意之中流露出来" == "reveal something unintentionally"
"無意流露出来" does not sound right.  "流露" by itself is somehow unintentional already.  We usually say "無意**顯**露出来" (== "unwilling to or intentionally not to reveal something")


Is collisions between fastlink pulses possible during auto-negotiation?

Question: Auto-negotiation uses fastlink pulses to help a device determine the speed, duplex mode and other details of the link partner. However it is not clear from the ieee802.3 autoneg section what happens if 2 devices send fast link pulses at the same time over what will be a future half duplex connection. Is collision possible between them? If yes how are they corrected?
Answer: Short answer is no. Link speed and duplex negotiation is between a NIC and a port on a network (usually a switch port) not with the network itself. Collisions can only occur once you have established your connection to the network and are attempting to transmit a frame.
Answer: A network connection has dedicated TX and RX pairs, and so the signals do not "collide" during this process.
Collisions occur when the two devices operate in a half-duplex CSMA/CD environment. When one device is transmitting on TX, if it receives any sort of signal on the RX it will register this as a collision, stop transmitting, back off and start the transmission process over again.
The reason for this is that typically a CSMA/CD environment operates with the use of hubs rather than switches/bridges. A hub is a OSI L1 device that simply receives a signal on one port and repeats the signal out all other ports (other then the receiving port). If a hub were to receive a signal on two different ports at the same time, the signal it repeats would be a "combination" of the two signals and unusable.
Comment: I would guess that the correct answer is that it will depend on the hub in question. Most hubs don't really negotiate (dual speed hubs are a bit of a "oddity"; see [here](https://wiki.wireshark.org/HubReference) for more details), but even those that do I would would imagine don't consider the interface "up" until any negotiation is over and won't forward any signal from that interface.
Comment: also your answer clarifies another point that half duplex communication is due to the presence of hubs and not due to the presence of only one pair of lines between 2 communicating entities. thank you again.
Comment: ♦ thank you. if a hub were to receive flps from 2 different devices at the same time would there be a problem?


How to avoid being interrupted?

Question: As a project manager, I think it's important to be heard.  I find that many times, even when just meeting people, I am getting interrupted mid sentence. Can anyone out there provide tips on how to grow past this?  I'm not sure if it's a natural reaction to a personality trait or fixable.  Love to hear any tips to cure this problem.
Answer: Do the people who are interrupting you respect you?  Do you respect them?  It sounds to me like neither side is listening to the other.  Try listening to them first, let them say their piece, then say yours.  People will respect you if you respect them first.

As a project manager, I think it's important to be heard.

I would argue this the other way.  As a project manager, it's important to listen to your team.  If they feel that you are listening to them, their concerns and their ideas, then they will listen to you.  If not, there is nothing you can do to "be heard".
Comment: +1 I'm glad you pointed out the "listening" part.  This is so easy to forget.
Answer: When it comes to being heard, I've found that the more you can formalize the setting (podium, projector, agenda) the more seriously what you have to say will be considered.  You can try repeating what you're trying to say, like a broken record until it's obvious to the (not) listener that they are being rude an interruptive.  You might also consider a short course in public speaking or joining a local Toast Masters group to pick up a few ideas on better making your point.
Meeting dynamics are interesting.  You can count on consistent behaviors, good or bad, from the folks you interact with on a regular basis.
Lastly, it's better to be a good listener, although it's unfortunate that not many people make an attempt at it.
Comment: HI Bob, I like your answer a lot.  Good listening skills will get you far, if you want to be heard.
Comment: Good answer. And meeting dynamics are very interesting. You can learn alot about controlling a meeting. There are a lot of techniques for this. The Exceptional presenter is a great book on this subject.
Answer: If you need to learn how to be heard.
You need to identify how to communicate in context.
Who can we learn from that is great at this? What draws people in? Am I going to answer your question?
Practice telling stories to children.
If you can train yourself to speak with interesting facts and the right words, tone, and phrasing (like successful children's shows do) you
will have hit the right way to keep interest.
Children? Seriously? Yes. Tell me, do more people have a hard time getting children to pay attention, or adults?
This is, of course, only the surface of this. You have a lot to do, and even I am not an expert. Check out your local
Toastmasters club, try to find ways to talk about boring mundane things as if they're interesting.
Once you master being a good story teller, that really only gets you up to people wanting to hear the next thing you say.
Effective communication is another ball of wax that you could write a number of PhD-level papers on, but we don't need to
get that complicated.
Look at people who are great public speakers, people we like to listen to.
What did they do? Why did people listen to JFK? Why did they listen to the Nazi and Soviet propaganda? Why did they listen to Obama? Why aren't
people listening to the most logical, profitable, and obvious ideas? How do these unsuccessful people tell stories? How do you tell stories?
If you need to organize/gather ideas
You need a system to manage this.
It can be a complicated computer system, or just a few scraps of paper. What you need to do is have each "idea unit"
contain what the idea is, what it's going to change, what the change will result in, and how we get to the change. After this,
we can evaluate if the resultant change is valuable, and explore methods to get there.
Bureaucratic systems are helpful, only if you use a light touch. If you start requiring pages and pages of data
for a single concept, it won't work and you'll be stuck in your own mess of red tape. Keep it very simple, an "idea unit"
shouldn't require more than one or two sentences for each of the three requirements I mentioned above.
Lets give two examples of idea units:
Website colour:

The website is green and yellow.
We will hire a web designer.
Lets change the website to black and yellow.

Process change:

We are using the waterfall development method
We split up the team into design, programming, testing and review segments.
We need to switch to Agile

This means there is nobody to "listen to," you can simply refer to the idea unit, and talk directly about it without having to get side-tracked from your "How do I get A into B" discussion.
Answer: I'd interrupt right back with "Sorry to interrupt, but let me finish my thought and then we can talk more about yours." In my experience, most people who interrupt aren't particularly aware that they're interrupting. By apologizing, you're acknowledging that this is an interruption while also indicating that they first interrupted you. All without looking like a jerk, which can easily happen if you start huffing about being interrupted.
Answer:
Speak in shorter sentences.
Break down your ideas into smaller components and communicate only those, in order.
Don't mix statements of fact with questions. Either make a statement or ask a question.
Comment: Consider adding #4, pause between your sentences.  At first they will still interrupt, but after they realize you are giving them a time to comment _after_ your statement, they will fall in line.  It has other benefits too.  Since you're going to pause, long nuanced explanations that tend to distract from the main point are discarded.
Answer: Ground Rules
Every project will have some basic rules that everyone have to follow.  In my experience if you construct the ground rules in a vacuum they will not be as effective if you come to a meeting and ask them, let's have some basic rules for all our meetings.  I am sure other people get bothered by the same behaviors.
Examples of Ground rules are:

No cell phone calls while in meeting
No talking over each other
Challenge ideas respectfully while in the meeting
Use the parking lot for items outside the agenda
etc.
Comment: Looks like someone's a manager-tools.com fan!
Answer: Talk less, and don't say anything unless it's both meaningful and important.  Listen more.  You will learn more and people will listen more to you.  Then you can easily retake control of a meeting, conversation, whatever, because people will stop to listen to you.
If you try it you will see that 90%+ of what most people say is useless.
Comment: I've seen this work.  It's my favorite approach when I'm running a construction meeting.  That being said, it works best when you are in a position of authority at the meeting, which I suppose most project managers are...
Answer: Like bbrown's answer, I confront the speaker immediately and say something like "I'm sorry but I would like to finish what I have to say. Afterwards I will gladly listen to you".
Some of our scrum teams use some form of a token (like a highlighter pen, a small doll or the cap of a champagne bottle) that they pass along during stand-up: the person who is holding it has the floor. Maybe you could use a similar technique.
Answer: Try to write instead of talking.
Answer: If interrupted mid sentence, go back to the beginning of the sentence.  If the offender persists (and they do!), go back to the beginning of the paragraph.  Repeat until they ask why and then tell them.
Comment: Hi Andrew, welcome to PMSE! Could you possibly relate this to an experience that you've had as a PM? Tell us how this worked for you in an [edit] to your answer. Were there times this strategy failed to work? How can one do this without sounding rude? If you can provide more information to back this up, it could be a valuable strategy to those who aren't strong personalities. Good luck, and welcome to PMSE! :)

How to avoid being interrupted?


Algorithm for computing square roots in $GF(2^n)$

Question: Short question: is there an algorithm for efficiently computing square roots in $\mathbb{F}_{2^n}$?
Answer: To complete poncho's answer, if you know some Galois theory. The map $\sigma: x\mapsto x^2$ from $\mathbf{F}_{2^n}$ to itself is simply the Frobenius automorphism (relative to $\mathbf{F}_2$). It generates the Galois group $\mathrm{Gal}\left(\mathbf{F}_{2^n}/\mathbf{F}_2\right)$, which is cyclic of order $n$, and so its inverse (which is, by definition, the square root mapping) is $\sigma^{-1} = \sigma^{n-1} : x\mapsto x^{2^{n-1}}$.
Of course, you can simply notice that
$$\left(x^{2^{n-1}}\right)^2 = x^{2\cdot 2^{n-1}} = x^{2^n} = x$$
(because in finite fields, the whole machinery of Galois theory boils down to repeated applications of the Frobenius automorphism, since it generates the Galois group).
Comment: Ah the Frobenius automorphism was the motivation, I should have seen that. I haven't touched field theory in a decade and I'm rusty :(
Comment: @fkraiem - Let's assume that all you have is the polynomial $f(x)$ and you wish to apply this method to find its square root.  A generator of some kind is needed, right?  How would one determine what generator to use if all they had were $f(x)$?  Will this work with any primitive generator with $degree >= n$?
Comment: @Les What is "the polynomial $f(x)$"?
Comment: @Les And anyway, if you have a new question, please ask a new question. That's not what comments are for.
Comment: @fkraiem - Done.  see [here](https://crypto.stackexchange.com/questions/61195/how-to-use-frobenius-for-finding-square-roots-in-gf2)
Answer: Yes, there is an algorithm for efficiently computing square roots in $GF(2^n)$.
I don't know if this is the most efficient known, but the existence of an efficient algorithm can be shown by observing that squaring within $GF(2^n)$ is a bitwise linear operation, hence it is equivalent to taking the bit representation of the value, and multiplying it by an $n\times n$ matrix in $GF(2)$ to obtain the bit representation of the sequence.  Hence, it can be inverted by computing the inverse matrix, and multiplying by that.
Also, you have tagged the question with the "quadratic-residuosity" tag; however the field $GF(2^n)$ has the special property that all elements are quadratic residues; that is, for any element $x$, there will exist a unique element $y$ with $y^2 = x$.  Hence, in this field, the quadratic residuosity question is uninteresting.
Comment: And that element $y$ will be simply $x^{2^{n-1}}$. ;)
Comment: For anyone else wondering _how_ the heck squaring can be linear, it's of course because [$(x + y)^2 = x^2 + xy + yx + y^2 = x^2 + y^2$](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freshman%27s_dream) in ${\rm GF}(2^n)$. The cross terms cancel in characteristic 2. Confused me for a moment.
Answer: Nothing wrong with the other answers. I just want to point out that if you are using a normal basis representation of the field in question, then there is a very efficient way of calculating the square root. You recall that squaring an element is equivalent to cyclically rotating its coordinates w.r.t. the normal basis. Therefore to calculate the square root you rotate in the opposite direction.
The use of normal bases is one of the more efficient ways of doing arithmetic in $GF(2^n)$ with $n>100$ or so.
Answer: Yes, one common algorithm (faster than $\sqrt a = a^{2^{n-1}}$) is described in Field inversion and point halving revisited (Also revisited in Another Look at Square Roots and Traces
(and Quadratic Equations)
in Fields of Even Characteristic.)
Basically, if you want to compute $\sqrt a$ (modulo a binary polynomial $f(x)$), you split the odd coefficients of $a$ from the even coefficients, say $a_o$ and $a_e$ such that $a = a_e^2 + x \cdot a_o^2$ (note that squaring is just inserting zeroes between the coefficients).
For example, if $a = 1x^3 + 0x^2 + 0x + 1$, then $a = (0x + 1)^2 + x(1x + 0)^2$.
Then, if you consider the square root of both sides, you get $\sqrt a = a_e + \sqrt x \cdot a_o$. You can precompute $\sqrt x$ (depending on $f(x)$, it can be a very sparse polynomial); therefore, you can compute the square root by extracting even and odd coefficients, one multiplication by $f(x)$ (which is fast if $\sqrt x$ is sparse), one addition (xor) and one final modular reduction.


How would you say "No matter how much I try" in French?

Question: I've been having trouble translating
"No matter how much I try" in French.
I can't give any examples because of how confused I am at using "avoir beau de" and "quel que". Where would you put the "combien" or something like "quelle taille il est"?
Can someone give me a good explanation on how to translate "no matter" in French? As in what ever way or manner?
Comment: Could you say "Peu importe le taille que j'essaye"?
Comment: Why not edit your question to add the content of your comment? It would be much better to have it in the question, and then you can delete the comment.
Answer: "J'ai beau essayer" already includes the notion that the speaker has tried hard, so "how much" doesn't need to be translated or "wedged into" the construction.

J'ai beau essayer, je n'y arrive pas.
No matter how much I try, I can't manage.

If you want to be specific, you can say something like:

J'ai beau essayer toutes les tailles, aucune ne me va.
No matter how many sizes I try, none fits me.

The problem you're encountering with finding an exact, more directly word-for-word translation of the sentence you're starting from isn't related to "no matter what", but to the fact that "how much I try" doesn't have a direct equivalent in French. You just wouldn't say "j'ai beau essayer beaucoup" or "peu importe la quantité de mes efforts", even though these are grammatically correct; that's just not a phrasing that's used with "essayer".
On the other hand there's no issue with "No matter how many times I try..." which becomes "J'ai beau essayer un grand nombre de fois" or "Peu importe le nombre de fois que j'essaie".
Answer: "No matter" is "peu importe" or "quoi que + subjonctif" in french. For your example you could translate it by "Quoi que j'essaie" ou "Peu importe ce que j'essaie"
"Essayer" happen to be the same in subjonctive form for "je", but with "faire" it would be "Quoi que je fasse" (subjonctif) and "Peu importe ce que je fais" (indicatif).
Comment: Where would you put "how much"? Could you say "N'importe quel est le taille que j'essaye" or "Peu importe le taille que j'essaye"?
Comment: "La taille" = "the size", so no. There is basically no idiomatic form with an exact equivalent of "how much". "J'ai beau essayer", "Quoi que je fasse" or "Peu importe ce que j'essaie" are all sufficient to convey the meaning of you trying hard but in vain. You might say "J'ai beau essayer encore et encore", "J'ai beau essayer dur", but it's not necessary.
Comment: To add to what DaWaaaaghBabal said you could also say "Peu importe le nombre de fois où j'ai essayé", "Peu importe combien [de fois] j'ai essayé".. ("how much" translate to "combien")


Extracting data from a backup file (.sbu) made by Samsung kies

Question: I had made a back up file containing contacts, , calender, memo etc with the help of Samsung kies which was saved in .sbu format when I owned a Galaxy ace plus. But now I have a new phone galaxy grand quattro and have updated the kies software.
Now the kies software does not show any calender, memo etc which can be restored on my new device.
please help me out with this problem.
Comment: Possibly related: [Samsung Galaxy - Import contacts from sbu file](http://android.stackexchange.com/questions/15653/samsung-galaxy-import-contacts-from-sbu-file)
Answer: Try Smart Switch with this you can easily transfer your backup from your old device to new device with ease.
Check this link.
You must have the old backup folder in your C:/ drive under the Kies folder/backup.
Note-If you deleted this wanted/accidentally done then you have lost your backup and cannot transfer any backup.
Next time onwards please store your backup files in a folder known to you in this way you can open the folder and directly send the backup anytime you want.
Answer: I found that running Kies Restore does a seemingly complete .sbu file extraction to a temporary directory such as:
C:\Users\{LogonName}\Documents\samsung\Kies\sbu\te mp\{NumberID}\{Files Extracted}
One can copy the files from there.


Why do Buddhists cremate instead of burying?

Question: A Buddhist, when dead, is most of the time cremated and not buried. Does this have to do with anything in the teachings of the Buddha? As far as I know, burying a body is more Eco-friendly than cremation. I share with you one of the best answers given by the legendary Neil deGrasse Tyson :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afGkv0IT4dU
Comment: Is a coomon believe that "Buddhist" burn their death, but not true. All kinds of deposite can be met and sure burial is the most common in traditional lands.
Answer: That answer in the video has a parallel in Sky burial where the body is exposed in the wilderness to be eaten by birds and animals.
That practice is unpopular (and, more to the point, illegal) in countries which don't have enough wilderness etc.
Cremation is a standard practice in India and, apparently, was the practice in the Buddha's time. The Maha-parinibbana Sutta ends with the monks telling the local society to do as they see fit (which included cremation).
I think there is a "religious" aspect to it: a Christian might believe in resurrection of the body and therefore want their body buried instead of destroyed. A Buddhist is more likely to see the body as impermanent and not-self (on the other hand Buddhists do collect relics, see e.g. here and here).
As for ecology I suppose that burial is more carbon-neutral, but it takes land, cemeteries run out of space.
Comment: Improper burials can cause ground contamination.
Comment: I have read Mahayana texts about how the body has some influence and that for some time after death there is an effort no to move the body etc   -  i follow Theravada in general  so it seems strange to me - but there defiantly seems to be a lot of importance  on the way they handle the body after death
Comment: @breath see also [How long to leave a body undisturbed after death?](https://buddhism.stackexchange.com/q/5742/254)
Answer: To add to the answers already given, cremation was considered as the respectful way of disposing of the dead. All Buddhas and Cakkavatti kings of the past were said to be cremated. You wouldn't want a body of a virtuous being to be put underground and subject it to disrespectful situations like people walking above, animals digging up body parts, worms working on it, people/animals defecating or urinating above it etc.
Even when they are alive, you always offer high places to them as a form of respect. So the traditional Buddhists are disinclined on putting them underground for the sake of a plant since the event is about paying respect, rather than an opportunity to feed a tree.
Comment: Combustion is considered as the respectful method in Asian countries as opposed to body parts being dragged all over the place by animals and everything else mentioned above. If everybody cremated, you could save acres of land all over the world where you can grow small jungles :)
Comment: Not just one tree if we all do it we can feed billions :D It's all about perspective. If one sees this as a disrespect I guess you could go with cremating the body. But one could argue that burning the body is much worse than being eaten by animals. It's subjective
Comment: Space is only an issue in urban areas
Answer: In historic times it was a practice to wrap the body in a cloth and throw it into the forest or designated grave ward. The clothes used to wrap the body was used to stitch robes. Also the pratice of doing cemetry contemplation was based on such disposed bodies.
Creation is a more cultural evolution than being Buddhist at least in the Theravada perspective, i.e., Buddhist do not have a particular way as to bury or cremate. This pratice has come among Buddhist perhaps due to Hindu and Indian influence and customs. See: search on hindu funeral pyre
For more on this see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyre
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cremation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charnel_ground
Buddhism Practices : Buddhist funeral rites this is the pratice in Sri Lanka, I a not sure if the pratice is the same in other Theravada countries.
Comment: Since Buddhism is about living in good terms with nature don't you think it's time to adopt burial and let go of cremation which also causes certain level of pollution?
Comment: These are cultural things. Besides after cremation the ashers are sometimes put into a river which saves space for burial plots.
Answer: I would guess Asians cremated because they had plenty of trees.
Middle-Eastern people buried because they did not have plenty of trees.
A dead body must be disposed of is some way.
I was told this by Buddhist monk in Asia (however cannot confirm the truth of it).
Answer:
burying a body is more Eco-friendly than cremation

This may not be true. It's the modern assertion that cremation is done in a crematorium using electricity and power. In ancient time people burnt it with dry leaves and twigs, those fuels used same for cooking and other works. Then the ashes from the burnt were used as fertilizers, or scattering back to the earth again.

Does this have to do with anything in the teachings of the Buddha?

I think so. If one study the Sutras carefully, Buddha was the one who most concerned with hygiene, some said toothbrush was invented by the Buddha. At that time, the Bhikhus chewed the willow twigs until became brush-like for cleaning teeth. Cremation is the best method hygiene-wise. During the Black Death, bodies were burnt to prevent the spreading. Most important, it has to be rooted in the teaching that the body is composed by the Four Greats: earth water fire and wind. Among these four, only fire can effectively and immediately disintegrating a body. Also, if one careful in studying the Sutra, in Mahayana Mahaparinirvana Sutra it recorded the Buddha burnt himself by setting out fire from his own chest. In many other Mahayana texts, it reports many occasions of accomplished Buddhists - Arhats, Ch'an Masters, burnt themselves by setting out fire from their own bodies. With all these precedents, if a Buddhist can't burn himself up when dying, he has no choice but to seek aid from external fire <code>:D</code>.
One last less known factor is, when studying the Vinaya, it recorded at that time there was certain magic spell that could cause a dead body walking, or sometimes the corpse-ghost (起屍鬼) can animate a dead body. One story recorded a Bhikhu after collecting discarded clothes from the cemetery he was followed by a corpse, saying repeatedly "return my clothes", stopped at the entrance of the monastery, so the Bhikhu had to walk all the way back to the graveyard, put back the clothes, the corpse then collapsed to that very spot. This incident made the Buddha set another rule about collecting clothes from graveyard. Therefore, cremation, properly destroying the body after confirmed death, can prevent all these hassles. Of import is that, the modern hospital after confirming death immediately sending to mortuary a faulty practice. There's very good details in the Buddhist Sutras describing how a person dying, from beginning to the rest of all consecutive stages. The ancient Chinese would let the corpse sit in the hall for 7 days before burial or cremation. Burial often adopted since maybe the Daoist was quite obsessed with the immortality of the body, and the blood relations between the ancestor and offspring. That's why Fengshui was derived and inspected - another topic.


Mindmaps for project management

Question: What are some practical, everyday uses for mindmaps for project managers? Please don't reply with a list of what could be done with them, but what you really use them for. Why a mindmap? Why does it work for you?
Comment: This is a polling question from back in our site's early-days, (poll as in where every answer is correct). Closing as not constructive. If there is any outstanding info in here that could be added to the [faq] or a tag wiki, please discuss in [meta].
Answer: It's, in my opinion, very useful to create a product breakdown structure.
You can add items and sub-items whenever you need and do updates quite easily.
They are very powerful solutions to give an overview of the solution that was worked out.
Comment: +1 for [PBS (Product Breakdown Structure)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_breakdown_structure), an artifact very much used in [PRINCE2](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRINCE2)
Answer: I use mindmaps for planning, retro / futurespectives, weighing up pros and cons, taking notes in meetings, and presentations. It seems to fit the way my head works far better than linear list or note-taking, and I can go back and re-read the notes or outlines very quickly, while remembering what I was thinking at the time that created the relationships.
I still have a love of pen and paper, but Freemind is also my tool of choice. I've tried a few others.
I find mindmaps work very well with Edward de Bono's "six thinking hats", and have facilitated a number of retrospectives with this model (replace the White hat with gray).
Answer: I have used mind mapping as a day-to-day management tool for about six years and have found that I can no longer live without them for my work. I find that my brain remembers where I have put things on my set of maps and I can usually navigate to the piece of information I want quickly and easily. Switching from a task list to mind maps was a jump from 1-dimensional thinking to 2-dimensional thinking about the work I need to do and it has made me massively more efficient.
Here are some use-cases that I have found in my work; generally I use the first two on a daily basis and the others less frequently:
Dashboard
This map shows me everything I am responsible for in my job, at a high level.
On the right hand side of the map I have delivery responsibilities such as projects I am managing along with nodes representing people that are working for me whose development I need to manage plus other key areas of responsibility such as putting together a training plan for the department.
On the left hand side of the map I have other things that I want to represent as part of my job that don't necessarily fall into the category of delivery. These include:

Notes I have made to discuss with my line manager at our next weekly 1:1 meeting
Books that I want to read to improve my general industry or project management knowledge
Reference notes and diagrams that I will want to refer to all the time such as the list of internal dialling codes, our corporate colour palette, key slides from the latest IT strategy presentation, links to key intranet sites that I have found etc.
Notes on my colleagues that I can use when asked to provide feedback in our annual review process

When I get a new project or responsibility, or find a key piece of information that I will want to refer to again and again, it goes onto this map. I also have an 'archive' node which I keep 'collapsed' (i.e. all sub-nodes are hidden away) and drag items onto once they are done so I never lose any of my history.
Current tasks
This map is an up-to-date view of the tasks that I need to get done. It is a low-level view of actionable items as opposed to the Dashboard map's view of my responsibilities.
The map has four nodes coming out of the centre as follows:

Top-right: High priority, high importance - things I need to get done quickly that are key to my deliveries
Bottom-right: High priority, low importance - things I need to get done but aren't really that important, such as completing my weekly timesheet or booking meeting rooms. Not achieving them will be an inconvenience but I am unlikely to get in serious trouble.
Top-left: Low priority, high importance - things I should be spending more time on in order to progress strategic goals (whether for myself, my projects or my department), for example writing down thoughts on how we as a department should take an approach to testing.
Bottom-left: Low priority, low importance - tasks that I may not get around to doing but I may still want to pick off one or two of them given the right time and energy to do so.

Each of the four nodes has tasks listed under it in priority order.
Whenever I get given something to do I add it to this map. It stays on this map even if it gets delegated so that I still keep the accountability for making sure it gets done - typically I add an icon to show it has been delegated along with the person's name to whom it has been assigned.
As things change I can drag tasks from one of the four nodes to another and once items are completed they get dragged and dropped under an 'archive' node so I have a historical record of things I have completed.
This is my most frequently-updated map.
Objectives
At my firm we set objectives on an annual basis. I use a mind map to capture all of them on one sheet of paper. As I go through the year I review the map periodically and update it with how I am doing against each of them. Preparing for my review meetings is straightforward - I bring the map up-to-date and then bring copies of it to the meetings with my line manager.
Individual project mind maps
Personally, I find that these are very useful when I am first getting into a new project and trying to organise my thoughts about a (potentially new) subject. I keep as much data as necessary about each project here - scope, dependencies, intial risks and issues, budgets, org charts, links to key documents etc. Over time, I find that I do not use these day-to-day as other tools such as the project plan and RAID log take the place of the map but it is still useful to have a 'one-page' overview of the project.
The best example I have for where this came in useful for a project was where I picked up ownership of an IT project that was to reconcile data from a large number of different systems, the feeds from which were all in various states of development. As I was new to the department I found it very hard to keep up with who was working on what and with what system. Adding the data to a mind map made it very easy for me to quickly navigate to some up-to-date notes when I needed them; I found that my brain could easily remember where the information was and it was a quantum leap from trying to work with notes in my office jotter.
Terminology
I have a map that documents terminology and acronyms that we use at work along with their meanings. The nodes are sorted alphabetically (clockwise from the top-right) for ease of use and the map is 'balanced' with an equal set of nodes on both sides. This makes it very easy to look up details on any of the terms used in the office.
Business analysis
I have successfully used mind maps to represent the output of business analysis work on one sheet of paper. In one of my roles we had requirements from three sets of stakeholders which meant that we needed to make changes to almost all of the systems in our department. I documented the high-level requirements in a map, added nodes representing each of the systems and then included icons representing each of the stakeholder groups along with details of what the impact of their requirements were, estimates for the changes etc. I used lines between nodes along with 'callout' notes to detail interdependencies. The result was a one-page document that helped to easily communicate the overall impact of the requirements.
Brainstorming
I have used mind maps in a number of group sessions where we have had a map up on a screen and captured points as we have discussed them. The team then had a say in what nodes related to the others and how the data should be structured to represent our thoughts. An example is where a number of us came up with the content for an IT induction course, throwing lots of ideas up to start with and then structuring the content so that it had a flow to it whilst covering the topics that we all agreed were important.
Comment: Wow. Thank you for this detailed description. Quite an extensive use of mindmaps.
Answer: I'm using mindmaps for risk identification, where nodes are risk causes and leaves are risk effects.
Answer: In my organisation I have never seen Mindmaps used but I have personally used them within my team to gather all the components of our projects and draw a picture of the current status of the project or what we would like to achieve.
Personally I have found them very useful because Mindmaps provides the audience with a visual representation of what's going on. Even if they don't have PM skills they can understand what the project contents are.
I have used the software Mindjet, is not free but it's quite user friendly.
I would recommend you to use Mindmaps at every stage in the project since you can always review your maps and quickly identify variances, issues, etc...
Answer: I use mindmaps in a very limited way, but one use that I have found to be highly beneficial is at project start-up, when trying to get a grip of all of the components and other aspects of the project, prior to developing the first draft plan or WBS. Using a simple mindmapping tool makes it far easier to organise my thoughts and collect ideas from other interested parties, then restructure or arrange / organise them later. Far easier than ploughing through pages of unstructured notes!
I use a bit of software called FreeMind, which works well for me. I have no experience of any other mindmapping tools, so cannot comment on how good FreeMind is compared to anything else.
Answer: I used to use mindmaps in planning my day/week. On the left side I had projects splitted into big tasks splitted into small actions. On the right side I had days of the month. Every morning I was putting some stuff from the left to the right. I defined custom actions which for me looked like prioritizing (adding a number to element), marking as done, marking as delegated and so on...
I still use mindmap when I try to get a lot of ideas about something - for example when I prepare a presentation I use mindmaps to write down everything that I can talk about - it is then easier to sort out which thoughts are connected with others, which are important, and which are not.
Answer: I've used mind maps very successfully for gathering requirements and stories. When projected on a wall in front of a group it's an effective way to capture and reorganize and gain agreement on ideas on the spot.
Answer: I use Mind Maps (XMind is my preferred tool) for the following:

Creating detailed Work Breakdown Structures - it is very easy to create them and, with XMind or MindManager, you can easily export them to many formats, including PDF and share them with larger audiences.
Documenting and communicating high-level scope for my projects - works great with project boards.
Brainstorming ideas (both by myself and with my project team) in a more structured way.
Planning & communicating the strategy I want to apply to managing & executing different types of activities/projects. Examples:

Planning my work for past and future books to publish and sharing the strategy with publishers, my team, etc.
Planning the launch of the websites I work with my team.
Planning study cases.

Generally Mind Maps are inputs to all the project plans I create and also awesome communication tools during the execution of projects.
Answer: I'll add my own experience as well.
Like other answers on this question, my main use of mindmaps for project management is to create a Work breakdown Structure (WBS) for a project. From the first moment I am allocated to a new project I start building the WBS. The structure is very easily changed as more information becomes available. A print-out or projection of the structure (in Organisation chart layout) makes it an excellent tool to discuss with the team an stakeholders.
I also added a small template for the notes section of each element, containing the WBS-dictionary information

Description
Out of Scope
Source
Responsible
Risks
Other comments

With a push of the button everything is exported to Word (with an image of the map included), which makes it easy to share. The fact that both WBS structure and WBS Dictionary is maintained within one application makes it a great timesaver.
I also started to use a mindmap to create our 'Project Initiation Document' (or Project Charter): all relevant information, like background, planning, budget, preliminary risk analysis, stakeholders ... was added to the mindmap until the final version. By exporting to Word I could easily share the draft versions with stakeholders. The only problem was that I couldn't export it to the required template, so for the final version I had to copy/paste all info from one Word doc to the other. But since the titles etc. were alike, this took only a moment.
Finally, some years ago I tried to use a Mindmap as a project dashboard, as others have reported here. But after a while the mindmap became to big and to unwieldy and I abandoned it. After reading others' experiences here, I'm tempted to try it again.

Mindmaps for project management


Why do nouns sometimes take an article and sometimes not?

Question: I don't understand why in some cases, nouns have to add the word "le/la/l'" in front of them (e.g: in the structure "avoir l'intention de..." or "avoir l'air de"). However in some other cases, there is no "le/la/l'" going with nouns (e.g.: in the structure "avoir besoin de" or "avoir envie de"). Why?
Comment: What examples do you have in mind with NPs following *avoir l'intention de* or *avoir l'air de*? It would help describing the contrast with *avoir besoin de la clé* or *avoir envie de la bonne tarte de maman*.
Answer: I don't think you'll be able to find a satisfactory answer to this, because when it comes down to it, language isn't always logical. In fact, these expressions have English equivalents with the same article or lack thereof.

avoir besoin de = to have need of
avoir l'intention de = to have the intention to
avoir l'air de = to have the look of

Why do 2 and 3 have "the" but 1 doesn't? If you can find the answer to that, it's exactly the same for French.
Answer: The examples you give where there is no article are "Locutions verbales", i.e. frozen expressions that have the same value as a simple verb.
There are no rules to sort out locutions verbales. Some of them include an article, some don't, that's the way they are.
You simply have to know them, just like there is no logical way for a non English speaker to guess "to give up" even if he already knows both "to give" and "up".
Comment: Thank you, Jilliagre :) but the ones having article also indicate the same meaning as its simple verb. I still dont get the difference :(


How can a non-physical God create a physical universe?

Question: I was just curious on how God could create a universe of physical matter when God is a non-physical being to begin with. How can a non-physical being create physical matter? Thanks if anyone can answer this question ;)
Comment: How many physical beings do you know which can create physical matter? To create physical matter requires being beyond physical matter, doesn't it?  Anyway, this is a question of philosophy, and not really on-topic here.
Comment: Is energy physical? It can be converted to matter (and antimatter).
Comment: Your rejection is more philosophical than the question.
Answer: Your question is a creative one and as humans we tend to think in human terms.
In our day however we have a greater capacity of understanding how such things could even be possible.
I'm going to use the example of computer games as what might be a humanly relatable comparison. I'm usually not one to use elaborate world-oriented illustrations, but this time I will.
Think of a programmer, and a computer. Perhaps even a game, with a character in it.
The environment is completely virtual, and yet its perfectly possible for it to reflect any system or idea the programmer may wish to present. On a very simple level we can emulate reality through  a game, or even invent our different realities. We can interact with it through a window (monitor or television), and yet even that requires a high level of abstraction and visualization.
If humans can do this with a machine, we could even present the idea that we are ourselves in an environment created by a master programmer, complete with laws of cause and effect, intelligent characters locked into the game, and even characters separate from it, controlled from the outside. Our human characters have the capacity to experience the world in pre-programmed ways through our senses (and really, our senses are just translators for environmental events, which are little more than information).
This idea is not too far fetched:
Psalm 139:16

Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were
  written in your book before one of them came to be.

Some believe this could even loosely refer to matters of DNA, but it implies a design by a higher authority on both events and physical matters.
Luke 10:20

However, do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice
  that your names are written in heaven."

Luke 12:7

Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don't be afraid;
  you are worth more than many sparrows.

You can look through a technological window (the television or monitor) and see the character's gaming world just how it should be perceived. We could speculate that the spiritual realm (where God himself resides) can see us the same way, and even interact with it, the same as many might interact in an online game. Thus we have stories of angels materializing, and things such as miracles (and even sorceries)...created by higher beings who understand the programming, and even have the capacity to exploit it for better or worse.
Creation is in a way a giant program of cause and effect, the programming of which we ourselves know we can alter. Thus even in the bible, you have the stories of the nephilim: Genesis 6:4 where wicked angels corrupted God's creation to an extreme.
So from even our human understanding shows that its perfectly possible to create one realm from another realm as in my gaming example.

Origin of physical matter...
In my personal opinion its easier to picture the creation of a physical realm from a spiritual realm, than a spiritual realm from a physical one.
We know that God resides in a source of light so powerful it can't be approached:
1 Timothy 6:16

who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no
  one has seen or can see. To him be honor and might forever. Amen.

By way of comparison today, we know that when matter decays it takes the form of electromagnetic radiation, and we know light is a visible spectrum of electromagnetic radiation. So we know that the source of matter is energy (we could loosely refer to as "light"), and we know that God is the source of energy itself, and is often associated with light.
Even modern day "big bang" theory has energy as the dominant player, creating the rest of the physical world and reality we know. So its not hard to put an intelligent director (and source) behind that energy that defines our universe.
And yet our universe we can see is only a small part of the bigger picture:

26:14 -  Behold, these are but the outskirts of his ways, and how
  small a whisper do we hear of him! But the thunder of his power who
  can understand?"
Answer: You appear to be making the most prevalent misconception that people make.
That misconception is that the physical realm is the true realm, while in truth it is the Spiritual realm which is predominant. Just so that I do not confuse you let me explain things this way. The physical realm exists in the Spiritual realm. By that what is meant is that the Spiritual realm(or if you prefer the Realm in which God exists.)is an eternal Realm meaning that it has no beginning and no end.
The physical realm on the other hand has both a beginning and an end. All Scientists agree that the universe (or if you will the physical Realm) began at some point in the past, even though there is wide disagreement on both how and when. The most prominent view is the Big bang theory in which the Universe came into being almost instantaneously from the same point in Space from one extremely large and powerful explosion. To me that pretty well describes creation.
All things material have a beginning and an end. that even applies to boulders in that over sufficient time the environment will break the boulder down into smaller rocks. I have personally seen a large rock broken into two pieces by water freezing and expanding.
If the idea of a Spiritual realm is difficult for you to visualize consider this how far does space extend? If Space does not go on without end, the what would be outside of Space and would that also end and so on to infinity.
Indeed Space itself may in fact be the Spiritual realm, and that makes the following Scripture make sense:

MarK 16:19  So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God.

Whatever the case only some power beyond anything our human mind can imagine has to be responsible for all things material at some time in the past, being created from nothing even if it were one tiny atom.
Answer: God is a Physical Being
God is not an non-physical being:
"The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man's; the Son also..." (Doctrine and Covenants 130:22)
More about the nature of God Here.
God Organized Existing Matter to Create the Universe
God did not create matter:

"The materials out of which this earth was formed, are just as eternal
  as the materials of the glorious personage of the Lord himself. … This
  being, when he formed the earth, did not form it out of something that
  had no existence, but he formed it out of materials that had an
  existence from all eternity: they never had a beginning, neither will
  one particle of substance now in existence ever have an end. There are
  just as many particles now as there were at any previous period of
  duration, and will be while eternity lasts. Substance had no
  beginning; … the earth was formed out of eternal materials, and it was
  made to be inhabited and God peopled it with creatures of his own
  formation." (Journal of Discourses, 19:286.)

This truth has also been discovered by scientists today who say that matter cannot be created or destroyed—only its form may be changed.
"In the Beginning": A Latter-day Perspective

The Fulness of the gospel has been restored, and these questions, along with many others, have been answered by modern prophets who continue to receive revelations about God's will and guide us in these latter-days.
Comment: "God did not create matter" What?? So matter is pre-existing?
Comment: Yep. Without beginning, and without end, infinite and eternal. "For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." God didn't make man out of nothing, neither did he make the Universe out of nothing. This concept existed in the Church even before science discovered that matter could not be created or destroyed, only organized or transformed.
Comment: Well that's why the creation was miraculous... anyways I'm guessing this must represent a LDS perspective. It would be good if you could make that a little more explicit.
Comment: I provided 3 links to [lds.org](http://www.lds.org), one of them is even labeled "In the Beginning": A *Latter-day* Perspective. I'm also quoting from the Doctrine and Covenants, which is LDS scripture, it should be fairly simple to conclude that his is an LDS answer without being explicit.


Should double click be avoided in web applications?

Question: I find that double click is a great gesture that could be successfully used in graphical interfaces but for some reason has negative connotation on the web. Should it be avoided at all costs?
Comment: thanks. To me, "online" still means "not using punch cards"
Comment: When you say "online", do you mean "in a browser-based application"?
Comment: Double click to edit an item or double click to go into an item or double click to show an item menu. It is for an online application which allows you to create layouts.
Comment: Yes, browser-based applications as opposed to desktop applications.
Comment: In What context are you thinking? Can you give an example?
Answer: Double-clicking on the web should be avoided because it goes against the general practice of single-clicking links, and would likely be confusing.
Jacob Nielsen says it best:

...double-click must die since it causes novice users great difficulties and since it conflicts with the single-click interaction style of the Web

If your application does a good job of emulating an operating system double-clicking might be a consideration, but even then I don't think it would be worth the potential downsides.
Comment: While I find Jacob Nielsen to be quite extraordinary, and have some amazingly informative resources, I *don't* see him as the be-all and end-all of usability decisions. **Especially** when he's being quoted from something he wrote *15 years ago*. Much of his popular standpoints on usability were written before `AJAX` was a thing. Although much of the basics will always be true, some of his User Experience "decrees" are simply outdated. I believe this is one of them.
Comment: + Double click is windows, there are other OS you know...  and yes, beginners have a hard time doubleclicking. I have a hard time doubleclicking with my left hand... it's hard.
Comment: I do not see how AJAX might change how people expect to click on buttons and links online. It has more to do with what happens _after_ a user clicks. I stand by my statement, and only used Nielsen as a way to back up my opinion. Of course every UX question is going to be answered with "it depends," but that shouldn't stop us from creating best practices.
Comment: AJAX is merely the online version of a UI process which has existed in desktop applications for many years previously.
Answer: I think it's more about maintaining conventions and user's general knowledge of those conventions than anything else. Browser/website interaction has been fundamentally different to OS user interface interaction since basically the dawn of the browser.
In native UI's the convention has been to have a solid, non-clickable window area with UI elements akin to physical buttons, check boxes and such. Hovering may highlight an item, but is used mostly on button hover states and other minor hints. Most hover reactions merely change the cursor to something to indicate a different action may take place, such as the text caret cursor. The double click is synonymous with opening something, a file, a window from a menu item and such.
Website interaction is more like a giant wad of text. Double clicking typically selects a paragraph or line of text and html content, akin to a text editor. Clicking usually means a change in the webpage, either through hyper links or form submit buttons. Hovering therefore has been used to show the responsiveness to clicking of different elements on screen. Hyper links, drop down menus, buttons, etc.
I think it would be unwise from a user experience point of view to try to override the double click behaviour of the browser, however useful you might find the idea.
(edit) That is until your web application becomes so akin to a desktop app that it warrants the need for double click to be used. Google Docs Spreadsheets is a good example of where it's absolutely intuitive for the most part that double click would perform cell based interactions, just like Microsoft Excel and iWork's Numbers do. I forgot to take these into account in my initial answer, but I believe that if the user interaction is such that the UI feels like a desktop application in the way the UI responds to the mouse, then absolutely.
Comment: I agree with the first paragraph, but not as much with the rest.  As enterprises are moving complex business applications to the web many desktop features are coming along with them.  With the paradigms merging, the existence of browser chrome can't always be used to define behaviors.
Comment: Plus for noting, that double clicking in browser usually causes text selection. It's very annoying to have all labels selected after failed double-click.
Comment: I totally forgot about them in my initial answer. See the edit.
Answer: I think it would be okay for certain uses, particularly if you're considering having an object draggable or highlightable on a single click, then on a double click it could be openned. However I would strongly avoid anchor tags being doubleclicked, or anything that only responds to a double click.
Comment: +1 I recently created an internal web app which uses this strategy. I would be very hesitant to make a public-facing website where double-clicks were required.
Answer: Double click is best used as a "nice to have" feature where users do not have to rely on it to use the application.
Comment: +1.  Google maps uses double click to zoom in, but it is not the _only_ way to zoom in.
Answer: Avoidance -vs- Inappropriate?
It's not that double-click should be avoided. It's simply that it has a narrow band of appropriate usage. There is a distinct difference between the two.
An interaction that should be avoided is one where alternatives should be actively sought out to avoid using it, such as with flash banner ads and blinking text.
An interaction that has narrow usage, is one that is useful in very specific niche circumstances. Take for example the oft frowned upon popup window. The use case is where a user explicitly wants to open a new window of specific contents. This is often done as a popout such as in Gmail.
So where does that leave us with double-click?
A double-click can be used to trigger a secondary action that doesn't conflict with the primary action caused by a single click.
I'd take a wild guess that everyone participating in this particular question uses double-click on websites regularly, possibly without even realizing it.
The first example I'll give is native to the browser:
Text Selection: If you want to select a single word, you double-click on it and it gets highlighted. As far as implementation goes, many web-based wysiwyg editors override the browser's default text editing capabilities, and might need to re-implement this particular feature to work correctly.
I do the second unconsciously:
Full Screen: Go to any video on YouTube and double-click the middle of it. What happens? The video goes full-screen. It's not just YouTube, any video player worth its salt online will use double-click to full-screen the video. You might even notice that the first click pauses the video, and the second click un-pauses the video. The interruption is accepted because the video is changing size.
An application where double-click would make sense would be in grouped item selection. If you wanted to select one item, you could click once. If you wanted to select a bunch of items of the same type, you could double-click.
Answer: I too think it to be unwise in anything but a custom, backend system where you can actually 'train' users if you will.
When trying to implement it "into the wild" (publicly accessible web sites) you will quickly find out how many novice computer users think all clicks should be double clicks.  For the users who understand the difference between clicks and doubel clicks you will face issues simply because the idea of double clicking for functionality
Comment: Users double clicking everything is a good point. I'd be wary about the internal system case, having to train users to do something contrary to their normal behaviour generally isn't a good idea.
Answer: In my opinion, double-click should be avoided everywhere, not just on the Web, because people who are just beginning to learn how to use a computer sometimes double-click too slowly, causing two single clicks to be triggered in the code.
If you really need to use double-click, try to make it obvious that double-click can be used, for example, by showing a popup saying what the user can do, the first time the user uses your application.
Just my two cents.
Ad@m
Answer: Well, I'm not sure whether this is relevant to you, but I think think that double-clicking is a problem for iPhone users. If I'm correct, double clicks are not supported for iPhones.
Answer: I think a double click gesture might be handy as an expert or learned behaviour in an online application so long as its implementation did not screw up the experience for single clicking novices....
Answer: Double Clicking is not very intuitive for a lot of users these days. Not to mention in the coming generations. It the world of touch devices, single taps are also more intuitive than double taps.
However, double-clicking or double-tapping is a fantastic feature for power users. Image a time where you have a user that needs to access a secondary action. You could take them into some horrific secondary menu or toolbar. A double click/tap could be a major improvement, efficiency-wise, in the context of an interface.
The question you need to ask is "What is the most intuitive step for the user to take?". If that is a double click/tap, then go for it!
Answer: TiddlyWiki is for example a javasript Web App with double-click editing and keyboard shortcuts. It is widely accepted. So im not sticking with the one-click mantra here. Of course on simple web pages one should keep with it, but on web apps this rule of thumb doesnt make much sense to me.
It depends pretty much on the type of web app, is it orientated to the mass (e.g. nytimes app) or too small group because of its content/functionality (tiddly wiki)
Firefox is my standard browser because with mouse gestures and Tab click action editing i save alot of time. one click mantra sounds like a contradiction to me. As Einstein said "as simple as possible, but not simpler"
Answer: I had an experience where i instinctively tried to double click a link. When I was reading the docs for (Backbone.js and was browsing examples. I clicked the example links in the menu to the left and the page scrolled automaticaly to the example. But when I wanted to visit the example directly i instinctively double clicked the link in the menu, expecting to be transported of site to the example page.
Answer: The main problem with double clicks in a web app is that you will have to create special code to handle this on touch enabled devices.
You can tie together touches with clicks and touch move with drag but you will have a hard time connecting a double tap with a double click.
Drag and drop and regular click is easier to implement - https://mobiforge.com/design-development/touch-friendly-drag-and-drop
If your application is browser based, it will still be accessed on tablets and smartphones. Also, don't forget touch displays for PCs are on the rise.
If you want your application to have a friendly UI across devices maybe it's best to stay away from double click, or you will have to create different functionality for the various devices.
Answer: Correct me if i'm wrong, but the first thing I thought of was that if you use double-clicks, you'll probably have to let the system wait for a tiny bit after any single-click in anticipation of a double-click (assuming the single click performs an action, not just a highlight), which will create a general perception of slowness while using the system.
Answer: The only problem I see with double clicks on a web page is that users may not try it.
Because of the conventions out there, people don't expect double click to do anything.
That said, double-click could be a good tool for your expert users, but you'll have to let them know that they can use it.
Answer: On my side sometimes I recommend double click for some expert actions in browser-based applications. (The main flow is fully visible, under several single clicks)
It's only a nice to have most of all the time. But sometimes it's a real gain for expert users.
Comment: How do you indicate to the user that an action is accomplished by a double click instead of a single?


Buying large quantites

Question: I am new to this Bitcoin thing but I have a closing next week and will have $50K that I am looking to wire to someone to purchase Bitcoin.  Where is the best place to do this?  What about one that does not require ID as well?  Thank you for your help
Answer: You don't say what country, but I assume you are in the United States.
First things first: make sure you have the technical capability to handle the coins and understand how Bitcoin works. You don't want to buy those coins and then lose them due to a technical screwup. Practice first with a smaller amount of money until you are confident you securely handle and store coins.
The better known dealers will require identification. Genesis Trading in NY is one of the larger US brokers.
You can also use an exchange directly such as Bitstamp (in Luxembourg/London) or Bitfinex (Hong Kong) or Coinbase (San Francisco) or Kraken (San Francisco). All will require a lot of identification and verification information. There is an exchange in Bulgaria (?) called BTC-e that has a reputation for not requiring very much information, but they probably require at least a passport scan.
For anonymous trading you will have to use Local Bitcoins, ie individual small time dealers. Each dealer has their own policies.
Your question is kind of a basic question. That you would even ask a question like this suggests that either (1) you need to learn more before trading Bitcoins, or (2) you are some kind of Fed or narc who is looking for information about something they want to attack without really understanding it.
Comment: I need to learn more and am trying.   DO you know of a USD wallet where I can have my funds wired and then buy smaller amts of bitcoin?
Answer: It will be difficult to find a seller willing to sell such an amount of bitcoins to an individual - even with ID verification. To buy such an amount, that individual will need to fill in an anti money laundering / know your customer form. This can be found on bitbargain and I assume other online bitcoin accounts. Bitbargain is the one I use.
Hope this helps
Comment: Thank you.  Do you know of a USD wallet where I can wire my funds and then buy smaller amts?

Buying large quantites