"start from the beginning" vs "begin from the starting"

Question: What is the difference between the following two sentences? Do they both mean the same?

Why don't you start from the beginning?
Why don't you begin from the starting?
Comment: One is a common idiom: "start from the beginning". The other is never heard, for complex reasons the answerers explain.
Answer: Your first sentence is fine. Your second sentence is not.
Begin and start are both verbs, so  they can be interchanged.
The equivalent noun of begin is beginning.
The equivalent noun of start is start
(Beginning and start are synonyms and can be interchanged.)
So your second sentence should be:

Why don't you begin from the start?

That is, beginning and start are both "regular" or autonomous nouns. They function the same. They have their own dictionary entry as nouns. The fact that beginning ends in -ing just indicates a different formation. Compare: building. No one doubts that building is a noun!
(Nouns such as beginning and building were evidently made from the verb + -ing centuries ago, but they long since began to be autonomous nouns with all the features of other nouns, such as start (for example, they have plural forms (beginnings, buildings, starts) and they are modified by adjectives. They have their own dictionary entry as nouns.
However, starting is a gerund. It is the -ing form of a verb acting as a noun. As such it has properties of a verb, not a noun. For example it can take a direct object, it is modified by an adverb. It is not a permanent or autonomous noun. Look up starting up in a dictionary: it will redirect you to the verb start. (At least the six  dictionaries I tried did this.) This indicates that starting is not considered an autonomous noun (rather, start is).
We don't say Begin at the starting. We say Begin at the starting point Thus we use starting as an adjective. It is also a gerund, as in "Starting the race from the beginning is a good idea." Notice that starting can have a direct object, when it is a gerund.
Now, to slightly complicate matters, since both begin and build are verbs, they can also be used as gerunds: beginning and building. But these words as gerunds can be thought of as different words from the autonomous nouns beginning and building (discussed above) As gerunds, they act the same as the gerund starting:
Beginning (gerund) at the beginning (noun), she read all the letters.
Building (gerund) a large building (noun) takes time.
But we just don't say:

Starting (gerund) at the starting, she read all the letters.

So starting works as a gerund, but it is not an actual noun, (or a regular noun, or an autonomous noun, or a noun proper--take your pick of terminology).
One can say
In/at the beginning (noun), God created...
but we don't say:

In/at the starting, God created...

We could say
In/at the start (noun), God created...
Comment: I love your answer. I would like to ask why do we have a noun *start* but don't have a noun *build*?
Comment: We do have a noun *build*. In fact, as a noun, *build* can mean more than one thing [return to etymology online and also you can push the little blue book for dictionary definitio](http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=build&allowed_in_frame=0)
Comment: Then why don't we have the *begin* as noun? I mean, in general, why some verbs have their nouns form exactly like them while the others are not?
Comment: @Ooker I don't know the answer. I am not a historical linguist. This would be a wonderful question to ask on ELU. I would like to know also. In general I know that English began to reassert itself by the time of Chaucer (14th century) after being dominated for 300 years by French after the Norman invasion of 1066.
Comment: I have raise [that question](http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/227650/why-some-verbs-have-their-nouns-form-exactly-like-them-while-the-others-are-not). Hope to see you there.
Answer: The first sentence is the more common usage, although technically both have the same meaning. The first sentence is a very common phrase, however, to the extent that most people hearing the second would probably assume that it was an intentional "twist" on the more common phrase.
"Start" and "begin" can mostly interchange as verbs, but "starting" is not often used in the same sense as "beginning". Theoretically, they are the same to the extent that they are both gerunds formed from verbs that are near synonyms. However, "starting" is more often used in phrases: "starting up", "starting line", "starting place", "starting point", "at starting". I don't know that there is any theory to explain why; it's probably just the way the usage has developed.
Answer: As has been stated, "start from the beginning" is a common idiom used as an instruction to describe a series of events in chronological order, from first cause onwards.
Begin from the starting, however, can only make sense if a "starting" is being used a noun, rather than a gerund.
If an engineer is explaining how an electric motor works to his students, an electric motor has two modes: starting, and running. Once you understand the starting, you can understand the running without much additional information, so typically, a teacher will arrange his notes to begin from the starting, and then work on to the continued running.
But while in theory it could be used as a sentence... Google n-grams show this word has almost no use, and searching Google books shows those words used together only when starting is used to modify a subsequent word: starting-point, starting premise, starting condition, starting block.
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=start+from+the+beginning%2Cbegin+from+the+starting&case_insensitive=on&year_start=1800&year_end=2015&corpus=15&smoothing=3


Find shortest prefix to generate original string by overlapping

Question: Given a string $S$, I want to find the prefix string $P$ of shortest length, such that the original string $S$ can be generated by concatenating copies of $P$ (where overlapping is allowed).
For example, if $S = atgatgatatgat$, I want to find $P = atgat$; $P$ is the smallest prefix of $S$ that can be concatenated (in this case three times, starting at indices $\{0,3,8\}$ of $S$, where the first and second copies overlap but the second and third copies do not overlap) to equal $S$.
Obviously, there is an $\mathcal{O}(n^2)$ algorithm by checking each prefix of $S$, but a colleague mentioned it might be possible to do it in $\mathcal{O}(n \log n)$. I'm thinking of using suffix arrays for different prefixes of $S$ but haven't quite been able to proceed from there.
Answer: What you are looking for is called the quasiperiod of a string. If such a string has a quasiperiod of $|S|$ it is called superprimitive, and can not be covered by a substring.
A method for computing it in $O(n)$ time is given in "An On-Line String Superprimitivity Test" by Dany Breslauer. You might also be interested in "Of Periods, Quasiperiods, Repetitions and Covers" by Alberto Apostolico and Dany Breslauer.


Problems with audio in Ubuntu 12.10

Question: After installing updates and rebooting, I have some problems with 64 bit Ubuntu 12.10 running kernel version 3.5.0-34-generic.
The most obvious problem is that audio does not work but there are other problems such as the reboot menu on the Ubuntu (Unity?) login screen does not work (I can click on it and a very small empty popup window appears) and when rebooting, the machine gets stuck in the shutdown screen (I'm using the xubuntu-desktop package, so the shutdown screen says "Xubuntu").
Logging into Xubuntu works fine except for the missing sound.
When logging into Unity, the system menu at the top right has the same problem as on the login screen (empty, very small).
The output of dmesg contains notes on found audio hardware (see blow) and hwinfo --sound also gives me information about found hardware but also contains an error message (see below).
Where to look next to pin the problem down and find a resolution?
Thanks!
Relevant dmesg output.
[   13.067650] hda-intel: 0000:01:00.1: Handle VGA-switcheroo audio client
...
[   13.952341] input: HDA NVidia HDMI/DP,pcm=9 as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.0/0000:01:00.1/sound/card1/input9
[   13.952459] input: HDA NVidia HDMI/DP,pcm=8 as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.0/0000:01:00.1/sound/card1/input10
[   13.952562] input: HDA NVidia HDMI/DP,pcm=7 as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.0/0000:01:00.1/sound/card1/input11
[   13.952659] input: HDA NVidia HDMI/DP,pcm=3 as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.0/0000:01:00.1/sound/card1/input12

Output of  hwinfo --sound.
$ hwinfo --sound
> hal.1: read hal dataprocess 2669: arguments to dbus_move_error() were incorrect, assertion "(dest) == NULL || !dbus_error_is_set ((dest))" failed in file ../../dbus/dbus-errors.c line 282.
This is normally a bug in some application using the D-Bus library.
libhal.c 3483 : Error unsubscribing to signals, error=The name org.freedesktop.Hal was not provided by any .service files
14: PCI 1b.0: 0403 Audio device
  [Created at pci.318]
  Unique ID: u1Nb.59eWIJiira0
  SysFS ID: /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1b.0
  SysFS BusID: 0000:00:1b.0
  Hardware Class: sound
  Model: "Intel Audio device"
  Vendor: pci 0x8086 "Intel Corporation"
  Device: pci 0x1c20
  SubVendor: pci 0x1028 "Dell"
  SubDevice: pci 0x0498
  Revision: 0x04
  Driver: "snd_hda_intel"
  Driver Modules: "snd_hda_intel"
  Memory Range: 0xd8b60000-0xd8b63fff (rw,non-prefetchable)
  IRQ: 45 (245 events)
  Module Alias: "pci:v00008086d00001C20sv00001028sd00000498bc04sc03i00"
  Driver Info #0:
    Driver Status: snd_hda_intel is active
    Driver Activation Cmd: "modprobe snd_hda_intel"
  Config Status: cfg=new, avail=yes, need=no, active=unknown

23: PCI 100.1: 0403 Audio device
  [Created at pci.318]
  Unique ID: NXNs.ukALa87MFX5
  Parent ID: vSkL.xBHHillLvg6
  SysFS ID: /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.0/0000:01:00.1
  SysFS BusID: 0000:01:00.1
  Hardware Class: sound
  Model: "nVidia Audio device"
  Vendor: pci 0x10de "nVidia Corporation"
  Device: pci 0x0be3
  SubVendor: pci 0x10de "nVidia Corporation"
  SubDevice: pci 0x0862
  Revision: 0xa1
  Driver: "snd_hda_intel"
  Driver Modules: "snd_hda_intel"
  Memory Range: 0xd8080000-0xd8083fff (rw,non-prefetchable)
  IRQ: 17 (7644 events)
  Module Alias: "pci:v000010DEd00000BE3sv000010DEsd00000862bc04sc03i00"
  Driver Info #0:
    Driver Status: snd_hda_intel is active
    Driver Activation Cmd: "modprobe snd_hda_intel"
  Config Status: cfg=new, avail=yes, need=no, active=unknown
  Attached to: #9 (PCI bridge)

Answer: I once had similar problems trying to use HDMI to access builtin monitor speakers.  A simple work-a-round was to unplug/re-plug in the HDMI cable after rebooting.
this somehow caused the speakers to then be acknowledged.  You may also try configuring System Settings ==> Sound ==> Output.

Problems with audio in Ubuntu 12.10


Verify that an item was actually changed, not just opened and closed

Question: I have been asked to create a workflow that will notify a certain individual whenever someone other than him either creates a new item or modifies an existing item.  I have run into a problem in which the workflow runs even if someone only opens the item, does not make any changes and closes the item.  Apparently, SharePoint includes this as a "modified" event.  I need to make sure that SharePoint differentiates between this event and an actual modification in order to start my workflow or in order to make a decision within the workflow so the correct message is sent, i.e. item has been modified.  I should add that I do not have access to the server so I cannot use Visual Studio to create my solution.  It needs to be entirely out-of-the-box and done thru the workflow or list.
Answer: You have to create an item updating event receiver, and you need visual studio, period.  I guess you could do it in sp designer, but I always avoid sp designer.
http://karinebosch.wordpress.com/walkthroughs/event-receivers-walkthrough4/
remember there is adding event added, updating and updated.
LOL: By the way, you dont need access to the server to develop, you have to have your local environment, create a visual studio solution, create a event receiver, build, package, and send the wsp for the IT team to install it using powershell
Answer: This will likely be a fair amount of work using a workflow but since you can't use visual studio this tutorial will show you how to compare the field values to their previous value in a workflow. Then you will need find the changed fields (maybe store them in a variable) and send them to your user.
Answer: Why do you need to use a workflow for this? Have you tried using the standard alerts that come with SharePoint? You can sign him up for an alert or have him sign himself up for an alert whenever any item is changed and email him immediately. It seems this is exactly the sort of situation that alerts were made for.


Is it possible to workaround the maxlist setting in proftp?

Question: I help admin a website which runs on a shared host. The host uses ProFTP and is using the maxlist directive to limit the number of items returned in a directory listing. One other thing to note is that I don't have shell access to the server.
I'm currently attempting to place the entire site under version control (git). The server doesn't have this installed so I've decided that I'll pull the site onto a local server, put that under git and write a script that will use FTP to upload new versions of files.
The method I've decided to use to pull the site is to create a python script which uses the ftplib module to connect and transfer all files. I've tested it on a small scale and it works quite well, but unfortunately there are directories on the main site which have more than maxlist files, so as it stands my script won't be able to get the entire site. Does anyone know if there is any way to workaround the -maxlist- setting, or if there are other methods I can use to achieve what I need?
Answer: You could try fetching the list of all files starting with a, then b and so on.


I need expert support for using MS testing tools for automated performance and functional testing

Question: We are a software company using VB.NET and ASP.NET heavily, and recently have tried to use Microsoft Ultimate to do automated testing, but ... it doesn't work for us.
We believe that we are doing something wrong, and we are looking for an expert that can guide us through the process.
Anybody can recommend an expert? Individual consultants or companies are OK.
Does anybody in Microsoft provide that support?
Answer: Microsoft has professional services who can help you get started if you want to go down that route.  You could bring in someone to help with Visual Load Testing and have part of the contract be teaching your staff and getting them up to speed.  I know for sure they do this for Visual Studio Load Testing and I'm pretty certain they have something similar for their functional testing with Coded UI.
Outside of that, I know plenty of people (myself included) who could probably help you get up and going, but having never gone through the process of hiring a consultant, I can't give you much direction there.
Answer: I'd write this as a comment but since my rep from SO doesn't come with over to this site I'll write it here.
"... it doesn't work for us." What doesn't work specifically?
As far as MS support you should be able to log several help tickets with your Visual Studio license, though I am not sure they will just "teach" you how to use Coded UI, it's more there for issues you may run into when using Coded UI. That being said my team has used them before for specific questions/issues and they've been very helpful.
Give that a shot, otherwise I'm positive there's a group of people here (myself included) that could help with any issues.
Answer: Try Getting Started guides, first of all, e.g.:

Getting Started with Load Testing in Visual Studio 2012

Web Performance and Load Testing with Visual Studio 2012 – Remote Execution

If they don't help you can try to contact Tarun Arora.

Tarun Arora a Microsoft Certified professional developer for Enterprise Applications
and he has many testing-related posts in his own blog.


How do I remove artifacts from animated gifs based on high quality pngs?

Question: I know due to the limitation to 256 colors I can not do much but I've noticed some large animated gifs look very high quality. What is a the secret (I use Gimp)? A special reduction of colors or being lucky and the video being appropriate (low colored maybe)?
Comment: Do you have some examples you could show us?
Comment: maybe by applying smoothing to each frame in the animated gif. just a quick thought, hope it helps. there's have to be software programs that allow you to do that, sorry nothing specific comes to mind right now.
Comment: How does the title of your question relate to the question itself?
Answer: This might not be what you're seeing, but, contrary to widespread belief, GIF images can have more than 256 colors.  A GIF file can contain many frames.  That's how animated GIFs work — like the more complex video representations, they can store a sequence of frames (with timing information).  I may have the terminology wrong here, but the individual image frames can be smaller than the overall picture frame.  For example, you can have a 100×100 image, with a sequence of 50×50 frames, if all the animation occurs in a quadrant of the overall image.  This reduces file size by avoiding the need to duplicate the static portion of the image n times when only a small portion is actually animated.
The "gotcha" is that each frame can have its own color map.  Remember I mentioned timing information?  A GIF file can contain many frames that tile the overall image space, have different color maps, and are displayed with a delay of zero.  Here is an alleged example:

which I downloaded from Cyde Weys' blog.  Note: I have observed in the past that some image software — specifically, programs that don't support animation — render only the first frame of such a file, and so do not produce the desired display.
Oh!  On first reading, I missed the fact that your GIFs are manifestly animated.  Well, what I wrote above still applies.  You might have, for example, a sequence of six frames for each animation update (e.g., every 30 ms): one with a delay of 30 ms, followed by five with a delay of 0 ms. These might form a 2×3 tiling of the animated region, and you can have 256 colors in each tile, for a total of 1536 (6×256) colors.
Answer: [Self answer]
I found it. It's called 'Dithering' when converting to "Index mode". e.g. in Gimp when doing indexing to 256 colors there's also an option to Dither with a couple of algorithms.
It creates a smoother transition.
It does look worse, but if the original has sufficiently limited range (e.g. most of it being dark brown) then it might look almost the same. But if it's very vivid and complex (e.g. encompassing all basic colors in complexity) then it will show.
Answer: You did not provide any actual examples, so nobody can give specific details, only general guidelines. Further, without seeing the actual artifacts you are referring to, we can only guess as to the issue you have because there are several different things it could be.
Animated GIFs are not special, they are just a pile of GIFs displayed rapidly in a row.
The artifacts that you experience are likely due to the limited color palette that the GIF format provides. As you have found, you can use dithering to make an 8-bit image look better, but that is only one of the options. Depending on the graphics program, some provide more options, some provide less, and many of the options have different settings and modes. One animated-GIF program that I used years ago was ImageAlchemy. It had numerous options to smooth, blend, dither, crush, etc. the palette in a variety of methods and with different algorithms.
Another artifact you may be experiencing could be due more to your viewer than the file. Some animated-GIF programs have the ability to super-compress an animated-GIF so that it removes all unchanged pixels from each frame so that only the changed parts are stored. This usually only has the effect of making the file smaller, but some viewer programs have trouble with it (they are not fully GIF89a format compliant) and show the animation poorly.
Not surprisingly, the method that will give the best results depends entirely on the specific image. Some images will do fine with a direct palette mapping, others will need to be dithered, others still will require more advanced color transformations.
In addition to the GIF-specific options, another thing you can do to get better quality GIF images is to use an image-editing program to manually reduce it to 8-bit color. That way, you have better control over the color transformation since the reduction done during the format conversion/save may not be sufficient whereas the color tools in-program can provide greater accuracy and more options.


Why did all Uppandavas (Abhimanyu, Ghatotkach and all other children of Pandavas) die in the Kurukshetra war?

Question: Was there any specific reason as to why all of pandavas sons die in the kurukshetra war? Some reason associated with their karma of their previous births?
Comment: because the rest were on the side of adharma, and satyameva jayate.
Comment: I'm talking about the upapandavas, abhimanyu, ghatotkach and all other children of pandavas.
Comment: One reason is destiny.
Answer: Why Abhimanyu died in younger age is explained in The Mahabharata, Book 1: Adi Parva: Sambhava Parva: Section LXVII:

And he who was known as the mighty Varchas, the son of Soma, became Abhimanyu of wonderful deeds, the son of Arjuna. And before his incarnation, O king, the god Soma had said these words to the celestials, 'I cannot give (part with) my son. He is dearer to me than life itself. Let this be the compact and let it be not transgressed. The destruction of the Asuras on earth is the work of the celestials, and, therefore, it is our work as well. Let this Varchas, therefore, go thither, but let him not stay there long. Nara, whose companion is Narayana, will be born as Indra's son and indeed, will be known as Arjuna, the mighty son of Pandu. This boy of mine shall be his son and become a mighty car-warrior in his boyhood. And let him, ye best of immortals, stay on earth for sixteen years. And when he attaineth to his sixteenth year, the battle shall take place in which all who are born of your portions shall achieve the destruction of mighty warriors. But a certain encounter shall take place without both Nara and Narayana (taking any part in it). And, indeed, your portions, ye celestials, shall fight, having made that disposition of the forces which is known by the name of the Chakra-vyuha. And my son shall compel all foes to retreat before him. The boy of mighty arms having penetrated the impenetrable array, shall range within it fearlessly and send a fourth part of the hostile force, in course of half a day, unto the regions of the king of the dead. Then when numberless heroes and mighty car-warriors will return to the charge towards the close of the day, my boy of mighty arms, shall reappear before me. And he shall beget one heroic son in his line, who shall continue the almost extinct Bharata race.' Hearing these words of Soma, the dwellers in heaven replied, 'So be it.' And then all together applauded and worshipped (Soma) the king of stars. Thus, O king, have I recited to thee the (particulars of the) birth of thy father's father.

Same chapter further says:

they who became the five sons of Draupadi, those bulls amongst the Bharata princes, were the celestials known as the Viswas.

Why they were killed in younger age is explained in below post:
Upapandavas: Why were they killed?


How significant is slippage in a successful quant fund?

Question: On average, how much slippage (measured in lost % return potential) is typical for an operating quant fund that trades in, say, major U.S. equities?
Comment: IMO, this question is impossible to answer.  There is no "typical" amount, certainly not that anyone here could address.  Please try rephrasing it in terms like "how important is slippage in [specific area] quantitative equity trading and what techniques are used to address it?"
Comment: @Shane Let me chew on specific areas. I'd prefer to stay away from techniques to address as my question was intended to be observational only. That is, I'd like to start to understand how significant slippage usually is compared to ideal returns, but not (yet) to try to improve on whatever that slippage is.
Comment: I agree with @shane, and would vote to close. The question is too generic, and those who have some first-hand knowledge of slippage would not post it on such a public forum. This question is easier to address: http://quant.stackexchange.com/questions/43/is-there-a-standard-model-for-market-impact .
Answer: It depends almost entirely on the size of the positions the fund is trading.
More specifically, it is a function of the liquidity of the stock.
ex-post liquidity can be observed from volume in aggregate and time & sales, in particular.
ex-ante liquidity can be estimated (often reasonably well using a bucketed look-back approach)
It also depends on whether the fund is trading to provide liquidity(against momentum), or remove liquidity(momentum following).  In the case of the former the slippage can often be negative.  In the latter, slippage increases as trade size increases.  Slippage can be lowered by using an algo like vwap, IS, twap, etc...  But trades take longer to place under these block break-up approaches.
For large US equities, you can consistently trade in the low thousands of shares multiple times per day, with little to no impact on slippage.
This guy is generally considered the expert on this topic:
http://www.courant.nyu.edu/~almgren/
his papers describe some novel approaches to minimizing slippage for large blocks.
Answer: The slippage is going to largely depend on the benchmark used and vary wildly depending on what kind of order working is being done (all day vwaps, pair orders working for a few minutes at a time)
Given that in my experience I've seen strategies that turn over infrequently with long running volume driven orders (hours, pov/vwap) using vwap as benchmark give up 20-30% in annual returns.
On the other hand I've seen strategies that turn over frequently and have short hold times have no slippage relative to the benchmark used (derived from tick/order book data).
But that is anecdotal, going to be hard to find good numbers since it requires disclosure of information that most want to keep private.
Answer: I can chime in with some figures and what it means for slippage to be significant.
First, some figures, as discussed by Zoltan Eisler form CFM. CFM refers to some of its strategies as "slow alpha". These models make directional (~0.1%) predictions over horizons from 1/2 to few hours.
According to these parameters, their US long-short equity fund has a pure annual PnL of 30%/year. On a daily turnover of 0.5% of the market's, their impact costs are close to 15%/year (as estimated by the Barro's square-root law). Clearly, these numbers live somewhere in between the realms of fiction and reality, but are nonetheless illustrative.
More details on this back-of-the-envelope calculation are here.
Second, slippage is also significant in the sense that it should be optimal. Indeed, some quant funds target an optimal slippage. Assume that the in-house best execution strategy is being used (exclude pure passive/market-making executions), so that there are no easy improvements there. Intuitively, if your slippage is too low, you should kick the market a bit more, and throw some more volume at it. If your slippage is too high, you should be a bit more gentle.


Is there any advantage to waxing vinyl siding?

Question: My 20+ year old siding can get pretty moldy and grimy in one year. I wondering if waxing it, after I clean it, would help reduce the mold and dirt accumulation and give it new life. I see car waxes that say they can be used for waxing vinyl siding.
Comment: I would say the biggest advantage is if you have a tournament coming up against the Cobra Kai.
Comment: Waxing usually has to be done less often then shaving.
Comment: LOL. Ok, maybe a spray type wash and wax formula, not a paste wax.
Comment: What kind of cleaner/wax did you use on your vinyl siding?
Answer: Yes, We use a cleaner/Wax, with a polyurethane base.  /  formulated from concentrate. We venture the material from the container through our power washer, using a wax/cleaner nozzle in our wand. its usually a one step cleaning, and the poly base fills the tiny pits in the siding caused by exposure to the elements. your finish is smoothened  with a poly-glow effect.  This protection prevents mold/as the surface is sealed. houses in worse than normal condition, gets 2 applications.  After treatment, the finish is much like a newly waxed vehicle, and the water beads, and runs off, with a dry shine. usually after proper application, it only needs spraying with garden hose to refresh luster.  Every 3-5 years, you can expect to re-apply.


What is this vocal style called, and how can I learn it?

Question: The vocalist Jonny Craig from bands like, Dance Gavin Dance, Slaves, and Emarosa, uses a technique to intensify a sustained note and/or phrases, and I can't figure out how he does this, and continues to do this without needing surgery to fix a polyp or nodules from improper technique. When he does it, it sounds like a throaty, raspy, powerful, soulful note. It's kind of a mix of unclean (harsh) vocals and clean vocals. So, my question is this: what is the technique called, and how can I learn it?
Comment: Are you talking about the effect at the end of each phrases around e.g. https://youtu.be/7-9_8QFxjwI?t=70 or something else?
Answer: This style of singing is known as singing with an aspirate tone. It is desirable in pop music for many reasons that are not necessary to list here.
You can create this sound by not moving an adequate amount of air through your vocal cords; the result of improper vocal resonance and escaping air produces the aspirate (raspy, airy, wispy) sound you find attractive.
This kind of singing generally doesn't hurt the human voice, however, the nature of your question itself is indeed the reason why people have vocal issues.
In the music editing process, certain musical frequencies are amplified and diminished to make a more desirable recording (mix) which is what you are used to hearing.  You will never be able to achieve the volume of vocal rasp heard in the recordings because it is amplified for aural effect.  People run into problems when they don't know this and try to recreate the sounds as loudly themselves.
Frequencies are also manipulated to make the vocalist's voice sound more powerful and full, certainly much more so than in real life.  Behold, the magic of music production.
Hope that helps.
Answer: Him live and him in recording are pretty similar, he can do what his voice promises live. Maybe not perfectly, but he also strains his vocal chords sometimes which is extremely dangerous. His full potential, IMO, was in both Downtown Battle Mountain albums, take Blue Dream and Surprise, I'm From Cuba Everyone Has One Brain + Swan Soup, Purple Reign, and Open Your Eyes and Look North.
While he definitely uses a bit of falsetto, he mostly shows off his natural capabilities live, (I would watch some of his live performances with Slaves and Dance Gavin Dance, and his solo tours) he has a very soulful voice, its melodic, natural and ear catching. Possibly one of the best vocalists I've heard in the genre besides Tilian Pearson who can hit super high and moderately low notes in one whole song entirely.
Jonny is made fun of so much that it seems like he hides his true potential and I really hope in the new Slaves record coming out soon, he shows his potential, because in True Colors, he hit notes I've never heard him hit before, which was sick, so I hope all the best on there new album, his voice might really shine with this album.
I'm saying from experience and hearing him live and in studio. Now, if you want a sort of fake high voice, but admirable vocalist, Patrick from Too Close To Touch has a definitely super high and airy voices but in his live performances, he barely hits his notes because he sings in so much falsetto and so much pitch shifting is used and heavy production, and also it was blazing hot and his outfit didn't agree with our southern heat and he probably would've passed out if he would've stayed there any longer.
But yeah, Jonny Craig definitely does what he puts out there. You won't be completely disappointed, he sings with all his heart and soul on the stage so, no music production doesn't play completely in this but, somewhat it does. Hope this gives you an idea of what live vs. studio sound is with him. :)


MP3 RIPOFF problems

Question: I am using RIPOFF to rip CD's and convert the files to MP3. The problem is that it is putting the files into the HOME FOLDER, rather than the MUSIC folder. This is risky as I accidentally lost a whole lot of system files! How do I change this please. H E L P !
Can I open a terminal to do that? I don't know how to open a terninal even...
Answer: Inside the RipOFF Preferences you can set the Output Folder where your files will be stored, defaults to your home folder but it can be changed by simply clicking the "Save" button and choosing the new destination folder as shown in the next screenshot:

You can gain access to the Preferences window by pressing Ctrl+P when in the RippOFF Application.
Good luck!

MP3 RIPOFF problems


Are dark walnuts ok to eat?

Question: I bought a bag of walnuts from the local farmers market (in NZ), but some of them are dark colored on the outside and almost black inside. Is this normal and are they ok to eat?
Also noticed some of them are slightly open.
Comment: In my experience, walnuts get progressively more bitter as they darken, and black ones are inedible due to poor taste.  I haven't noticed any ill effects from consuming slightly darker ones though (not moldy ones of course).
Comment: I am eating some right now.. hence the reason i am looking up this page..these ones taste fine and I bought them for 6kg from a bulk foods lady!
Answer: I'm not sure what causes it and what food safety issues may be involved but I used to have a walnut tree and got a few from time to time that looked like that. I had a small taste once and they were really bad, not worth keeping. I'd put it down to some sort of rot and  I live in Tasmania with a relatively similar climate.
Looking for a reference on common causes the best I've been able to find is from "Diseases of Temperate Zone Tree Fruit and Nut Crops" by Joseph M. Ogawa and Harley English that has a section on kernel mold of the English Walnut, which I'm guessing is the most common variety in New Zealand. This is from a Google book preview that I can't copy / paste so I'm skipping over some parts probably not relevant using an ellipsis:

Under certain conditions several fungi are able to penetrate the walnut shell and cause cause a moldy condition of the kernel. This disorder varies from year to year depending on environmental factors. The invading fungi commonly coat the kernels (...) and also may form masses of greenish blue or grayish-black spores. (...)
The weakly pathogenic fungi that cause kernal mold belong to genera such as Aspergillus, Penicillium, Alternaria, and Rhizopus. These organisms may invade the nuts as early as midsummer if the hulls (husks) have been damaged by sunburn, drought or husk fly.

The book is available for limited preview / purchase for anyone further interested in the topic, but I think the short answer is they'll taste nasty (regardless of any safety issues) so probably best disposed of and maybe complain to the supplier if you got too many in that state and ask for their comment.
Answer: The black is " california walnuts".  Yes can be little bitter in taste. But they are baged an sold that way. Rather give to the squirrels. Ha they enjoy em.
Answer: That is an English Walnut, which are mostly Grown out west.
The Eastern parts of US have Black Walnuts. They taste much better but are hardly ever sold in stores. You have to harvest them yourself. Some are sold in the baking isle but they are horrible tasting.
Comment: So the horrible tasting ones are the same as the ones you harvest yoursellf, but taste very good? How come?
Comment: @Richard ten Brink: prob. the ones in the store are very rancid. I imagine super expensive also since it is almost impossible to crack them and extract the nut in pieces.
Answer: Do not fear if you see, that the inside part is black and  if inner inside is white, because color is due to "nogalina" a dark brown color that emerge of the shell when wet lingering a more extended time in ground before harvesting.
Comment: Nogalina= Walnut ink, used for Leonardo and Rembrand in their paintings

Are dark walnuts ok to eat?


Closed hi hat and foot hat at the same time?

Question: I'm just learning how to play the drums and I'm stumped by the notes on the staff in the book I'm practicing with. It has a closed hi hat and a foot high hat that you're supposed to play at the same time. How in the world do you do that?
Comment: It would be great to see this. Any chance you could scan a few bars and add them to your post? Then we'll be able to see if it's a mistake, or if we can suggest ways to play these HH notes. **Welcome to Music.SE, BTW!**
Answer: I guess from your description that it's something like quavers (eighth notes) on closed hh, with occasional pedal splashes (e.g. on the second beat of each bar). To play this, your foot should be down on the pedal most of the time. Lift it up right before the pedal splash is due (after you've sticked the preceding note), and then put your foot down again to make the pedal splash at the right time.
Normally for a pedal splash, you'd "stamp" your foot and lift it up right away to let the note ring and give it that splashy sound, but in this case, just press it down and leave it down until the next one, giving a much drier sound.
If the stick notes continue, so there's even one on the very same beat as the pedal note, try to sync your hands and feet so the stick hits the hi-hat at just the same moment it closes. It's not critical, though, because the pedal note is there, so unless it's for an exam or similar you might choose to omit that stick note. Drummers get a lot of leeway about interpreting parts.
If you're used to playing one open hh note in a bar of closed hh notes (e.g. the music says to have the last note of the bar open), then this is pretty similar: it's just that you're hitting the pedal harder, to deliberately make a noise (when usually you try to change open-to-closed hh quietly), and you're hitting it a little sooner, so that it's closed when you stick it.


Is the drop rate constant for bosses?

Question: If I farm King Leoric over and over again, will I get the same drop rates every time? Or is there some kind of reductions on the drops after the first time?
Answer: The first time you kill a boss on Normal you have a higher chance of getting better items than any subsequent kill.  Later difficulties and kills have a lowered chance.
http://www.diablo3farming.com/2012/04/16/droprates-on-bosses-discussed-in-d3-beta/
Answer: "Later difficulties and kills have a lowered chance." I would also like to point out not just lowered but very, very low.
Myself and 3 other people cleared Nightmare setting and combined in total for all bosses (so effectivly loot from 4 full runs) we got 2 Yellow items 0 Gold 0 Green. We ofc got some yellows from champion mobs etc but bosses seem to have a lower drop rate than champions mobs. Got more chance getting yellows from rock piles than you do from bosses.

Is the drop rate constant for bosses?


I would like to set up a ubuntu OS on Amazon web server, how do I do this

Question: I am trying to set up a virtual OS (ubuntu, windows) on amazon web services to run apps 24/7 and to have anytime I log in on the internet. Is this a possibility to do and if so how?
Answer: You can choose one of preconfigured AMIs on your Amazon EC2 instance. There is one with Ubuntu Server 11.04 inside: https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/B007IJK9FM/ref=%20mkt_ste_ec2
Answer: Setting up a virtual machine running any of several operating systems is certainly possible in Amazon Web Services.  The EC2 service is specifically built for this purpose.  There is an introductory video on the linked page, it tells the story.
Documentation for AWS EC2 provides step by step instructions for setting up a virtual machine running any one of several Linux distros or various flavors of the MS Windows OS.  The process is described here.


Do I have to buy a full bitcoin to get the price increase?

Question: If I buy half a bitcoin at $500 and the value of a bitcoin goes up to $1000, does that mean I earn 1 bitcoin or do I have to buy a full bitcoin to get the price increase? How does it work? Please give me some examples.
Comment: I accidentally flagged this as primarily opinion based, sorry.
Answer: If you have 0.1 BTC and the Bitcoin price is $10,000, it is worth $1000.
If the Bitcoin price becomes $20,000 you will still have 0.1 BTC but it will be worth $2000.
Answer: I'm not sure when you say "If I buy half a bitcoin at $500" whether you mean you paid $500, or whether you mean the price of one bitcoin was $500 and you paid $250 for half a bitcoin.
If you buy half a bitcoin for $500, that means the value of one bitcoin is already $1000. The price can not increase from $1000 to $1000.
If you buy half a bitcoin when the price is $500, you paid $250, which means if the price increases to $1000 then you can sell your half a bitcoin for $500.
I think you should rephrase your question. Or maybe this is fundamentally an arithmetic question, rather than specific to Bitcoin.
Answer: 1 kg tomato is $10,000 today.
If you buy 1/2 kg tomato today, you would have paid $5000 today to buy that.
If 1 kg tomato becomes $20,000 tomorrow. What you have in hand is still 1/2 kg of tomato. but you can sell that 1/2 kg of tomato for $10,000.
Answer: Bitcoin is like any other investment, you will profit/lose the percentage Bitcoin changes on your capital investment.
If you invest 100$ into Bitcoin and Bitcoin increases 10%, you will earn 10% on the $100.
If you invest $10 into Bitcoin and it drops %50, you will lose %50 of your initial investment.
With there only being 21 million Bitcoin possible to be mined, only a select few will have full bitcoins in the future.
Edit:
The earnings/loses will only occur when you cash out. BTC also has associated fees, so when depositing say $200, the amount of BTC received will not be exactly worth $200.
Comment: My apologies I have should have mentioned your investment will grow, that it wouldn't be an immediate return. I will edit it in.
Comment: It's important to realize that you only see the profit if you sell your bitcoins.  If you keep them, the price going up and down only notionally affects your investment; look at [this question and the answers](https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/q/62896/10658) for more details.
Answer: Technically you don't earn anything until you sell it.  So just consider it like any other commodity:
Start off with 0 bitcoin and $500

Buy 0.5 bitcoins for $500.

You now own 0.5 bitcoin, and $0. You've exchanged one item, dollars, for another, bitcoin.

Bitcoin price goes up relative to the dollar.

You now own 0.5 bitcoin, and $0. The amount of bitcoin hasn't changed, merely the value relative to another item.

Sell 0.5 bitcoin for $1,000.

You now own 0 bitcoin, and $1,000. You're trading bitcoin for cash, so the relative value determines what you can sell it for, and since that value has changed you can exchange it for more than originally purchased.  However, the amount of bitcoin hasn't changed.  Just its value.
So while the price of bitcoin fluctuates, it doesn't really mean anything until you trade it for goods or cash.  Once you do that, depending on the sell price, you may have increased or decreased in wealth depending on whether the value of the dollar has also changed.  It's an exchange.
You don't gain or lose bitcoin when its value changes.  It simply becomes more or less valuable, and the amount you hold remains the same.


When should we use the versions tags?

Question: For example, when someone asks a question and he is saying I am using Ubuntu 11.04. Should the question also be tagged 11.04 or not ?
Answer: I would definitely avoid adding a version tag just for the sake of having it.
Version tags can be dangerous if the community starts to believe that every question, no matter what, has to have a version tag.
Only version tag posts that provide at least some evidence they are in fact tied to a specific version of Ubuntu.
Comment: This is one of the reasons why I've managed to ask such a question. Because I see some questions that maybe it doesn't need to have a version tag to it. Also we should note that there are so many things change every version as Jorge Castro mentioned above.
Answer: In addition to what Lekensteyn I use the following ideas myself:

If something changed a ton, like say unity, I tag those with the versions so that it's obvious which major release people are using, but I don't tag general stuff like apt, dpkg, or something like that.
Kernel/Hardware/Video stuff for sure since hardware detection is version specific there.
Answer: If I see any mention of version (either software version which I lookup on http://packages.ubuntu.com/ or Ubuntu version) I tag it accordingly.
It could be used for determining the age and relevancy of the question. Tags can be used for searching: https://askubuntu.com/questions/tagged/11.04+upgrade
I find the version tag more useful to questions related to upgrades, bugs, drivers and the use of new software like Unity. Software recommendations and shell-scripting questions are examples of questions where the Ubuntu version does not matter.
Comment: I agree. It might turn out not to be relevant to the issue but it does help people in the future who are looking for version-specific things.
Comment: Yes, you're right. Keep in mind that this does not imply that you should omit the version tags for all applications, applications may still retain a different behavior across versions. Another thing to add: bugs are especially version-dependent.
Comment: So , for specific questions like applications,scripting, coding, the version tags are not necessary. But for major things that concern the version itself ;i.e installation,updating,upgrading,drivers a person should use these tags. am I right ?

When should we use the versions tags?


Why large weights are prohibited in neural networks?

Question: Why  weights with large values cause neural networks to be overfitted, and consequently we use approaches like regularization to neutralize weights with large values?
Answer: Many strategies used in machine learning are explicitly designed to reduce the test error, possibly at the expense of increased training error. Generally,
regularization is any modification we make to a
learning algorithm that is intended to reduce its generalization error but not its training error.
The L2 parameter norm penalty commonly known as Weight decay is one of the simplest and most common kinds of regularization technique which forces the weights to become smaller, by adding a parameter norm $Ω(θ) = 1/2 || w||^{2}_2$ penalty to the objective function.
For example, in linear regression, this gives us solutions that have a smaller slope, or put weight on fewer of the features. In other words, even though the model is capable of representing functions with much more complicated shape, weight decay has encouraged it to use a simpler function described by smaller coefficients.
Intuitively, in the feature space, only directions along which the parameters contribute significantly to reducing the objective function are preserved relatively intact. In directions that do not contribute to reducing the objective function, movement in this direction will not significantly increase the gradient.So, Components of the weight vector corresponding to such unimportant directions are decayed away through the use of the regularization throughout training.
Another simple explanation is when your weights are large, they are more sensitive to small noises in the input data. So, when a small noise is propagated through your network with large weights, it produces much different value in the output layer of the NN rather than a network with small weights.
Note that weight decay is not the only regularization technique. In the past few years, some other approaches have been introduced such as Dropout, Bagging, Early Stop, and Parameter Sharing which work very well in NNs.
There are other interesting findings in this very rich chapter.
Comment: Consider gradient descent algorithm and gradient of the regularized objective function (`L+λR`). After adding the weight decay term (`λR`) learning algorithm reduces the weight vector by a constant factor on each step, before running gradient update.  L2 regularization considers the input X as having higher variance, which makes it reduce the weights on features whose covariance with the **output target** is low compared to this added variance.
Comment: Continue... Simply, if you have `n` weights in a layer of your NN, for each input X just a few of them (e.g. `m` weights) contribute significantly in producing target output and consequently making a decision in the output layer. So, L2 preserves these `m` weights intact and decades the remaining unimportant `n-m` weights (to prevent overfitting and also reduce sensitivity to small noise in the input).
Comment: `The L2 parameter norm penalty commonly known as Weight decay is one of the simplest and most common kinds of regularization technique which forces the weights to become smaller, by adding a parameter Intuitively, in the feature space, only directions along which the parameters contribute significantly to reducing the objective function are preserved relatively intact` would you please explain this more
Answer: Large weights might correlate with certain patterns in the input data (x), this means that the model almost hard codes certain values. This then makes our traing data fit well but our test data fit less well.
You can also use dropout.


How to respond when someone praises about my Japanese?

Question: While talking with some Japanese people in an online form, someone said 日本語上手ですね! to me. I just replied そうですか, but what would be an appropriate way to reply keeping it as less informal as possible. Another important thing is that I believe the OP was being polite to me knowing that I am not a native instead of actually talking about my Japanese as I can speak about it for myself. So, I would like to know of any response more in the lines of I'm humbled or I don't deserve kind.
Comment: Or if you don't buy into the ridiculous Japanese mindset of denying every good thing, you could just say "thank you".
Comment: @istrasci I'd rather prefer not, because the Japanese have the habit of saying favorable things irrespective of the facts. I could probable be making a fool of myself. Besides, being a non-Westerner, thanking itself doesn't sound like a very reasonable response.
Answer: The way to go is usually to just deny it a little.
Something in the lines of :

そんな事ないです。
  まだまだです。
Answer: There could be many ways of saying "I am not good at Japanese." depending on your personal preference and context. My favorites were

いいえ、あまり[上手]{じょうず}ではありません。 No, I am not that good at Japanese.
いいえ、あまり[上手]{じょうず}じゃないです。 Ditto
いいえ、まだ[下手]{へた}です。 No, (my Japanese) is still poor.

いいえ is broadly used when you get praised to express modesty.
Answer: I would say:

そんなことないです。
全然ですよ。
まだまだですよ。

Those means "not at all".
Answer: Somewhat formal 「恐縮{きょうしゅく}です」 can be used to acknowledge a compliment with humility and modesty (like I'm humbled, I think) without necessarily denying the truth of it.  (In your case, busting out this phrase will probably reinforce their impression of your proficiency!)


Mysql dump crashed table for repair

Question: I have a large table which has crashed however when I try to run a repair on the server I have problems with not enough disk space. I would like to dump this table to my local machine for a repair but mysqldump throws error because of crashed table. Is it possible to dump this table for repair locally?
Answer: Is this MyISAM? InnoDB?
If it's MyISAM you could try myisamcheck --safe-recover as the docs say:

"This recovery method also uses much less disk space than --recover.
  Normally, you should repair first using --recover, and then with
  --safe-recover only if --recover fails. "

Here is the reference.
Comment: It is MySAM - I will try --safe-recover.
Answer: This is an old question but for the benefit of others coming here looking for the answer:
We see such question quite a lot and most people miss a really obvious solution. If you don't have enough drive space to do a repair it may be possible to temporarily create the need space by moving other files off the system or even compressing directories that won't be needed straight away. e.g. All those man pages take up a lot of room and compress really well or you might clean out the /tmp directory, archived logs, etc. In a pinch you can also dump and drop all other databases from the system (if that's practical) and restore them latter.
Clearing space may be preferable to moving corrupted database files, which may even get further screwed in the process. Sometimes it's best to think inside the box.
Answer: I solved this issue by copying down database to local machine with more drive space and running --recover.

Mysql dump crashed table for repair


differences in fundamental frequency/pitch between music and speech

Question: I am developping a program, that extracts very expressive frames from a video (meaning: frames, which could summarize a video) for a university seminar. One of my ideas was, to analyze the audio data (e.g.: if it's very loud, there must be sth. happening and so on). I'm using Praat for this analysis. Now, I stumbled upon the pitch, which is supposed to be the fundamental frequency (formant f0). Can anyone tell me what usually happens to the pitch, when somebody talks or when you can hear only music? And do you have any other ideas what the audio data of a film might be able to tell me?
Comment: Maybe instead of guessing at audio features that might be important, you should have the program randomly pick frames and let humans vote on whether the frame is good for summarizing the video, and then go back and find commonalities between the good frames.
Comment: Depends to a significant degree on the music.  Voice tends to have a lot of variation in amplitude, whereas music tends to be steadier.  But rock music, etc, can have a lot of rapid amplitude variation.  I have seen some hints of discrimination of the sort you're looking for with "spectral flatness" (and it's std dev), but nothing I can pin down yet.
Answer: I don't think pitch information is relevant for what you want to do.
The variation of pitch during speech is known as intonation, and can convey emotions, indicate if a sentence is a question etc. However, there is no universal rule as to how pitch variation patterns are mapped to meaning - this is quite language dependent ; and some languages sound "flatter" in terms of pitch contour than others.
While there are some exceptions (say a solo flute performance), music is polyphonic in that several instruments are playing at the same time - and to make things worse some of those instruments might be playing several notes at the same time. As a result, at a given point in time, music is unlikely to contain just a single fundamental frequency ; and when applied to music, Praat's f0 estimator is very likely to yield a noisy and unreliable pitch contour, sometimes jumping from one instrument to the other.
Regarding automatically annotating movies from the audio, here are a few ideas:

Looking for sharp increases in loudness to detect important events as you suggested.
Use speech/music discrimination to help detect scene boundaries.
Train classifiers for common sound effects (explosions, gunshots, punches), and use this to detect action/violence scenes.
Use speaker diarization techniques (along with some face recognition) to detect all lines spoken by a particular actor.
Comment: Can you suggest any software libraries or algorithms for speech/music discrimination?
Answer: If the problem that you are actually addresing is audio/speech signal segmentation and distinguishing between the speech and music, see:
Theodorou T., Mporas I. and Fakotakis N., "Automatic Sound Classification of Radio Broadcast News", Int. J. Sig. Proc., Image Proc. Pattern Recognition, 5(1), 2012
I could be wrong on this but Praat seems to be not so usefull for polyphonic music analysis, except if augmented with some additional pre-filtering for the purpose of segmentation:
Makarand Ramesh, V.; Sahasrabuddhe, H.V.; , "Exploring Data Analysis in Music Using Tool Praat," Emerging Trends in Engineering and Technology, 2008. First International Conference on, pp.508-509


How to bring registration field to index page?

Question: I am using wordpress and buddypress for my site and my registration works perfectly on www.mysite.com/register, i need to bring the registration fields to the home page(index.php). My register page contains 6 about fields, i tried to bring this, but i couldn't do so and i am stuck with this, could anyone know the solution.
Comment: Have you looked to see if there is any widgets that could perform this task? might be worth having a look then defining a new widget area on your template.
Comment: @vince iam searching for it, but i couldn't find one.
Answer: I've not had chance to test it but after a very brief google search I found this - http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/registration-form-widget/
This could be the answer if it works, you could create a new widget area within your page template and then drop the widget in to that area and style the widget to suite.


How much weight will 1/8" plywood sustain for compression?

Question: Plywood would be laying horizontally and be cut 8' x 8". Assuming fairly uniform load, with plates the full top and bottom length of it, is there a compression at which the plywood will fail? I'm assuming it would split or the glue would give at some point?  But is this above 50,000 lb?
Comment: This would depend on the situation, but I'm sure the manufacturer can provide the PSI spec of the plywood you purchased.
Comment: Need more info: are you compressing it through the 1/8" thickness, or along one of the long dimensions? How wide/tall is it?
Answer: You appear to mean compression perpendicular to the plane of the plies.
Depends a good deal on what the plywood grade and material is, and the conditions it's operating under.
http://www.g-lumber.com/pdf/APA_Plywood_Design_Specification.pdf Suggests that between 340 and 160 lb/in**2 for dry service and 105-210 for wet service (for grades appropriate to wet service) so you'll need a fair number of square inches (which you have inconveniently left out of your question) to support 50,000 lbs.
Looks like 476 square inches on the low end to 147 on the high end (of loading) though any sensible person would derate a bit more for additional safety factor, or use 1/8" steel as a shim rather than 1/8" plywood. That's 3.3 square feet to a bit over 1 square foot.
8 feet (96inches) by 8 inches = 768 square inches, resulting in a loading for 50,000 lbs evenly distributed of 65 pounds per square inch, so per the above document you should be safe at that loading.


Do volunteers have to be associated with an event?

Question: I can see volunteers related to event management, but what about managing volunteers for organization roles like marketing, accounting, etc. ?  Perhaps there is a hack to create a dummy event, but wondering if there is a cleaner approach using the civicrm volunteer module.
Answer: We have:

created "Role" as a contact subtype
created a contact record for each role a volunteer can fill.
created a relationship type 'holds role/role is held by'

We then establish  the 'holds role/role is held by' relationship between volunteer and role.
This lets us find all volunteers who hold any or a specific role by filtering on relationship when doing an Advanced Search.
You may still want to use the relationship "volunteer" as described by Squishus Tyrannicus as you may have volunteers who are not assigned to a particular role and you will need to be able to find them.
Working with two relationships can be difficult however, so instead you could create a individual subtype called "Volunteer" or even a "volunteer" tag to help you find all volunteers, even those without roles.
Answer: In CiviVolunteer 1.x, the answer is "yes".  There is an open issue for this.  The CiviVolunteer authors just had a successful fundraising drive and raised over $30,000 to build CiviVolunteer 2.0, which should bring this feature in.
Comment: Looking forward to it!
Answer: You might consider not using the CiviVolunteer extension but just storing volunteer attributes (role, skills, interests, etc.) on the contact record.  If you need to record specific days volunteered, use activities to store details and record volunteer time.
The advantage of this is that you're storing attributes in a natural place for searching and reporting, and using activities mimics the way CiviVolunteer puts volunteer time in activities so you'll be able to do apples-to-apples comparison with time recorded at an event.
Answer: I think what you're looking for is a Relationship.
There's a "Volunteer" relationship by default when you install CiviCRM. To set up a contact as a volunteer with an organization, visit the contact that you would like to assign as a volunteer. Click on Relationships at the top of the page and then click Add Relationship. A modal window will pop up. In that window, you'll want to select Volunteer for under the "relationship type" field. Select the organization that the contact is a volunteer for under "Contact(s)" and fill in the rest of the information as desired.
If you need to assign volunteers to specific organizational roles (accounting, etc.) you can create a custom field and attach it to the volunteer relationship.
Comment: Custom fields on relationships are of limited value.  For example, you can't specify them as criteria when doing an advanced search.
Answer: A lot of this will depend on how you manage volunteers and how you are collecting the information you need about them.
It may be useful to know 'when' someone offered their skills. In which case you could use Activities with a bunch of custom fields to collect their 'offers'.


Why can't I invoke a Perl script with ASP.NET's System.Diagnostics.Process?

Question: I'm trying to use the System.Diagnostics.Process class to run a Perl script from within an ASP.NET application.  The Perl command runs fine when I type it into the command line, but when ASP.NET tries to run the same command it doesn't work.
I suspect it may have to do with input and output stream.  The Perl script takes a long time to run to completion on the command line.  But in .NET the command returns almost immediately, and when I try to redirect Perl script's standard output to see what messages are yielded it shows just the first line and returns.  Using blocking stream reading techniques doesn't fix this; .NET really thinks that the Perl script is outputting just one line, then finishes.
Any suggestions?  As much as I would like to, the script can't be rewritten in .NET.  Here's the code I'm using to launch the process.  I've tried changing ReadToEnd() to a series of ReadLine() calls, but after the first call returns the first line of output the next call returns null.
Process proc = new Process();
proc.StartInfo.FileName = scriptPath;
proc.StartInfo.Arguments = arguments;
proc.StartInfo.RedirectStandardOutput = true;
proc.StartInfo.UseShellExecute = false;
proc.Start();
string output = proc.StandardOutput.ReadToEnd(); // Returns only the first line
proc.WaitForExit();

Answer: Switch the 2 last lines:
lineproc.WaitForExit();
string output = proc.StandardOutput.ReadToEnd(); // Returns only the first

or build a loop that keeps reading from proc.StandardOutput until the script has finished.


How can I use an Xbox 360 controller with a PlayStation 3?

Question: My PS3 has basically gathered dust for half a year since I'm not feeling the controller. What are my most reasonable options for using a Xbox 360 controller on a PS3 (preferably wireless, but I have both wired and wireless)?
Comment: I dont think the thing can be done since both are competitiors in the gaming market. Maybe you could find some 3rd party PS controller that might do it for you?
Comment: @Fredy31: I've definitely seen it done (via Google search), but I don't know my options
Comment: There are adapters, but you may want to be careful with some games that require Sixaxxis (e.g. Uncharted) or the pressure sensitive face buttons (e.g. Metal Gear Solid 4), although I haven't seen a game, where either are absolutely necessary features.
Comment: I wouldn't add this as a new answer, but I can recommend you [this adapter](http://dx.com/p/xbox-360-controller-adapter-for-ps3-100cm-cable-51556), which works pretty good. I didn't have any major issues with it, plus it comes with a turbo adapter which makes certain quick time events easier (I'm looking at you, RE6). Keep in mind it won't support SIXAXIS.
Answer: Based on my knowledge there are two solutions for your problem. To get things straight: The original Xbox-pads won't work out of the box with your PS3 and no solution will provide 100% of the features your dualshock-pads have (Sixaxxis, Trigger etc.).
1. Use an Adapter
There are some Adapters on the market (like the XCM which Blem mentioned) which may be pretty pricy, but let you use your Xbox-pads on your PS3. The XCM does not allow you to use sixaxxis and I don't know any adapter which has this feature. Maybe someone who is using this (or another) adapter and can provide more precise information.
2. Use an cheaper 3rd party gamepad
A second way to play on your PS3 with an Xbox-like pad is to buy 3rd partie hardware which can be used on your PS3. I bought the Speedlink XEOX pad, which can be used on the PC and the PS3. The Deadzones of the sticks are not as perfect as they are on the regular dualshocks, but you'll get used to it. Besides that the pad is wireless, so you don't have any wires through your livingroom (the XCM Adapter only works for the wired pad!). There is one little catch with the speedlink-pad with it's triggerbuttons:

Why can't I operate the trigger buttons (R2 and L2) at the same time?
These two buttons' signals are on the same axis. As such, they cancel each other out when both buttons are pressed at the same time. This gives you optimal control in many games. Alternatively, select the button assignment in the game so that both trigger buttons don't need to be pressed at the same time.

Overall this specific pad is not as good as one of the original pads (Xbox / PS3), but is a good and cheap way to play with a Xbox-like pad on your PS3 (or PC).
Answer: You can't. Not with the hardware that comes in the box. You'll have to get an adapter in order to connect the two. There are wired and wireless available out there.
Answer: You can do it using the XCM cross battle adapter.
As far as I can tell it supports wireless controllers if you also get the xbox pc adapter.
Answer: You can buy an Xbox controller to PS3 adapter from many places.  I found one on ebay and it works well.
Answer: You can use the Xbox Controller on the Ps3 using the USB ports. The buttons are funky and sometimes they won't work. If you're playing a game like Call of Duty Black Ops 2, use the Lethal setup.


If an author does not intend to make much revenue from a book, why not make it open-access?

Question: Many authors do not intend to make much revenue from books (textbooks or research books) they contribute to, yet they don't make it open access. Why?
Comment: Because the publisher?
Comment: Probably because open access is relatively low in the list of considerations for choosing a publisher.
Comment: To me the real question here is "what value is added by the publisher".
Comment: @ff524 Why not choosing a publisher that allows the book to be open access?
Comment: Note that the *publisher* intends to make revenue from the book - or at least not make a massive loss - even if the authors don't. If you're planning to publish it entirely OA, you need a) to find some way of offsetting the publisher's production costs (which are very substantial); or b) publish it yourself. Which of these situations do you envisage? The answers are massively different.
Comment: @DavidKetcheson oh I don't know, let's see: the publisher gets the book refereed (creating prestige for the author by agreeing to publish it following the reviewing process, assuming it's a reputable publisher with high standards); copyedit the book; design a front and back cover; print the book; market the book; sell the book on their website and on Amazon, at professional conferences etc.; send you sales reports and royalties. I suppose you could in theory do all of those things yourself or through a vanity press. Do you also grow and hunt your own food? Generate your own electricity?
Comment: @gnasher729 Most money doesn't go to people who didn't most of the work (viz., the authors).
Comment: @DanRomik Many Stack Exchange users do [grow their own food](https://gardening.stackexchange.com/) or [generate their own electric power](https://sustainability.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/solar-power). And Amazon is starting to offer more and more of those services through [CreateSpace and KDP](http://www.amazon.com/gp/seller-account/mm-summary-page.html?topic=200260520).
Comment: Don't worry most of the books available are still open through GenLib.
Comment: @DavidKetcheson That's indeed one of the main questions behind.
Comment: Because it was a lot of work to write it, so whoever wants it should pay for it?
Comment: @FranckDernoncourt: Where did I talk about receiving money? I talked about people paying. Demonstrating that they appreciate the work by putting their hands in their pockets.
Comment: @DamianYerrick well I guess those would be the people who also self-publish the books they write, printing them on a homemade printing press running on their self-generated electric power, using paper made from a pulp they mixed themselves, while eating their homegrown food. I'm sure they would have plenty of time left over to do cutting-edge research to generate content for the books they're writing.
Comment: @DanRomik I *do* believe the publisher adds value.  I simply said that the question should be phrased as focusing on that, since that is the heart of the matter.
Comment: _self-publish the books they write, printing them on a homemade printing press running on their self-generated electric power, using paper made from a pulp they mixed themselves, while eating their homegrown food._ — Yeah, pretty much.  What's your point?
Comment: Easy answer: Something that's greater than zero is greater than zero.
Comment: @IgotiT [yes](http://opendata.stackexchange.com/q/7084/1652)
Answer: There are a number of reasons why not to, and they stem from the reasons one might want to publish a book, even if you aren't making much if any money:

The prestige of the publisher matters. For many tenure committees, professional organizations, etc. "A Book from BigDeal University Press" > "Some Markdown Files on Github" or what have you in terms of evaluation. In effect, you are getting paid, but in prestige and reputation rather than money.
Publishers take care of a number of things that, if you're self-publishing an open access book you have to do yourself, including copy-editing, layout, and most importantly, finding peer reviewers.
Seeing a book adopted widely (another part of the whole prestige aspect) will likely be more difficult for an open-access book, at least at present, where they are fairly common. Who is going to do the marketing? Has it actually been properly peer reviewed? Are there nice, hard-bound copies available (some of us like reading things on paper), etc.

That is not to say that there are not some very successful efforts in my field to do open access books. Hernan and Robins causal inference book, for example, has drafts and code available online: http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/miguel-hernan/causal-inference-book/
But neither one of those authors is in the position to need much benefit from a book publication, and it's still being placed in a traditional press when it's finished.
Comment: _For many tenure committees, professional organizations, etc. "A Book from BigDeal University Press" > "Some Markdown Files on Github"_ : where by "many" you mean "all".
Comment: In your first bullet, I would go so far as to replace `>` with `>>` (or `\gg`).
Comment: @JeffE In fairness, my tenure committee's response would probably be "Why were you writing books at all?"
Comment: Publishers, even "big-name" publishers no longer take care of copyediting or layout. They expect you to deliver camera-ready copy that they can put their copyright on and sell for a lot of money, giving you peanuts, if at all. I encourage you to self-publish, either by putting a PDF online, or through a self-publishing printers. We just have to educate the tenure committees that publishers are no longer academic, but money-making companies.
Comment: Freely available books are not unheard of in mathematics, either: for example, Allen Hatcher has put up his algebraic topology textbook on his website, white David Fremlin published (under a copyleft license) the source code of his four-volume measure theory monograph.
Comment: Regarding your third point, a lot of books are not properly peer-reviewed either.
Comment: @DeboraWeber-Wulff This will come as a great shock to the copy editor working on a chapter I just completed, which is definitely not camera ready.
Comment: Nice answer (+1). A slightly off-topic question for you, if you don't mind: can you comment on what are _essential_ differences, if any, between the book by Hernan & Robins you've mentioned and the classic treatment by Judea Pearl (and, perhaps, other books on the topic)?
Comment: @AleksandrBlekh As disclaimer, I am not a causal inference researcher. I use computational models, which cheat, and are inherently counterfactual. But I know people who are. My generally feeling is that Pearl's book is more technical and a bit heavier on graph theoretical framing of things. Miguel Hernan is particularly adept at making causal inference concepts clear, and IIRC the book is geared more toward potential outcome frameworks, which are more clearly applicable to epidemiologists.
Comment: @NateEldredge: This is true, but don't you find this state of things very unfortunate? IMHO, a publisher's prestige is a relatively fuzzy concept, based on questionable value (excluding the stance of tenure committees, professional organizations, etc.). By "value" I mean value to science and humankind's knowledge. (to be continued)
Comment: @NateEldredge: (cont'd) All those technical aspects could be easily outsourced to relevant companies (copy-editing, layout, etc.) and academic professionals (peer reviewing). This would take away an unreasonably significant power from publishers ("gatekeepers of knowledge") and place it to whom it belongs - to producers of knowledge (authors, researchers, peer reviewers, etc.).
Comment: @AleksandrBlekh: Well, I'm not saying it's ideal.  But this comment thread is hardly the place for a detailed discussion on the current state of academic publishing.
Comment: @Fomite: I appreciate your insights (+1) - they are very helpful (and I have a similar sentiment about the Pearl's book upon a very brief review of its contents). I will definitely make sure to read the Hernan & Robins' book eventually, as I'm interested in causal inference.
Comment: @NateEldredge: I guess, you're right about that :-).
Comment: @DanRomik _where by "many" you mean "all"_ — No, where by "many" he means "most", but (from personal experience) definitely _not_ all.
Comment: "nice, hard-bound copies available" doesn't make sense to me -- you could have a print-on-demand version of your open-access book so people who want a hard copy can order one.
Answer:
Many authors do not intend to make much revenue from books (textbooks or research books) they contribute to, yet they don't make it open access. Why?

First, while authors may not "intend" to make much revenue, that still does not mean that they will happily give up whatever revenue they are actually going to make (and keep in mind that the actual amount of revenue is impossible to predict with accuracy at the time an author needs to make this decision). So if an author feels that making their book open-access will lead to a loss of revenue, then unless that author is sufficiently generous, passionate about open-access, and/or financially well-off, not insisting on making the book available as open-access would be a completely rational decision, regardless of whether the publisher would give permission or not.
Second, and more importantly in my opinion, after you have spent a few years and a huge amount of labor and creative energy writing a book, the idea of giving it away for free is simply ... uncomfortable, even for purely psychological reasons. I decided to make my book open access and am quite happy with my decision, but I can completely understand and respect authors who have made the opposite decision, and don't think such a decision should be criticized by anyone who hasn't gone through a similar creative journey themselves.
Answer: As the entry level for self-publishing is now very low, there is a whole swamp of the low quality content. Once you join this swamp, it is very difficult to raise above it, as nobody can find you. A good quality content initially belonging to this swamp takes long time to be noticed, if ever.
It is critical to have the public reviewing system not for picking best of the best but first for discarding the really low quality junk. Automated search tools, even Google technologies, cannot do this properly, as the junkwriters are often much more experts in "search engine optimization". Hence they trash with lots of revenue generating ads around somehow always takes if not the first then at least a second place in the search results.
The only way known for me to mitigate this is to link (or publish in) the official website of the notable university. Web search will take this into consideration, but the option is not easily available for all potentially good publishers.
It is the lack of the serious public reviewing system that hinders publishing of the free content.
Answer: ff524 basically answered in the comment: publishers don't usually allow it. Just as with journal articles it might be possible to negotiate publishing under an open access license for a fee. Sometimes it is also possible to negotiate being allowed to publish a "preprint" version on your homepage or a preprint server such as the arXiv. Typically this is a version without the editing and layout work done by the publisher.
Of course authors can just decide to not publish with a publisher (or self-publish) and just upload the book to their homepage, as many people do. You will miss out on royalties (not a big deal, as noted in the question) and marketing efforts of the publisher.
Comment: "Of course authors can just decide to not publish with a publisher (or self-publish) and just upload the book to their homepage, but this has basically the same status as articles that are not peer reviewed." I must say that I disagree with this.  On the one hand, part of the peer review process is the prestige of publishing in the most competitive journals.  There is no "Annals of textbook publishing," and (at least) in many academic fields, publishing textbooks is viewed more like service than research...
Comment: In my opinion, a high-quality self-published textbook nowadays confers most of the rewards of traditional publishing.  The main differences are: (i) the royalties, which are usually rather nominal but a few people (think Stewart of Stewart's calculus) can make real money.  (ii) the marketing.  Because the publisher wants to sell the text, they have resources available to promote it that most individual authors lack.  Those with sufficient web-presence or social media savvy can compete with this, but most academics do not have the time or skills for this.
Comment: On the other hand, I don't think that textbooks are "peer reviewed" -- parts of them are looked over by people designated by the textbook company, but not in the same way.  Moreover, textbooks are not published solely because their content is innovate or novel -- there is no way to explain the flood of nearly identical calculus textbooks in these terms.  They are published because the publisher thinks they can make money....
Comment: With the textbook company I signed with, part of the agreement is that they publish it for say... 3 years, and afterwards I can do what I want with it as all rights revert back to me. That could be fairly common.
Comment: By the way, in the above comments I had in mind mostly *textbooks*.  I see now that the OP didn't specify.  When it comes to a *research monograph*, prestige of the publishing company does play some role.
Comment: @PeteL.Clark: I agree with you, the distinction is not as important as for articles. And you are right that peer review of books in general cannot be compared to peer review of articles. There is however a selection procedure, in the sense that serious publishers don't publish anything that gets submitted to them. Of course if you are already an established and visible researcher in your field there may be little difference to publishing with a publisher and on your own homepage.
Comment: -1 because the answer is incorrect. Most publishers allow open access books, the author just has be ready to pay for them the same way they pay for OA journal articles. See e.g. https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/open-access-policies/open-access-books.
Comment: @Allure: that's what I say in my answer: with many publishers you can publish under an open access license for a fee.
Comment: Your answer implies most publishers don't allow open access books though. I haven't done thorough studies, but my sense is that most publishers allow it.
Answer: There is a point about human nature - people tend to value things according to how much they have to pay to get them. An author might well feel that if people can download something for free from a website that it will not be valued. As a user of some excellent free software and the recipient of some excellent free advice here, I know that this is not always true, but other users and other authors might not agree with me.
There is also the obverse to this - that some people will ask, "If it's that good, why is she giving it away?" This meshes with the belief that anything which is valuable can be "monetized" and anything which cannot have a numeric value put on it, does not have value.
Again, I think that the internet is changing these perceptions, but not for everyone and not in every circumstance.
Answer: I'm surprised at all the answers given because they all seem to miss the point.
If you publish something open-access, you need to pay for it. An author publishing a non-OA book receives author royalties. The same author publishing an OA book has to pay the publisher. The price is not cheap. Check out Cambridge University Press's website on OA books.

How much are your Book Processing Charges?
  Our standard charge for a monograph of up to 120,000 words is £9,500/$14,500/€13,000 (excluding any applicable VAT or local sales tax), and £55/$84/€76 per additional thousand words. We are usually able to offer a discount of £2/$3/€2.5 per page for camera ready copy.
  We do, however, consider each book individually. Additional fees may apply depending upon the complexity of the work.

It's one thing to write a book and make little/no money. It's another to actually lose money writing the book. Yes, CUP's website also says you will continue to receive royalties, but OA means the content is available for free. How many people will pay for the book when they can already read for free?
tl; dr: authors don't make books OA because it doesn't make economic sense.
Comment: Good point. Going through a publisher is optional though.
Comment: @FranckDernoncourt it might be just me reacting to the term 'open access', since it has a very specific meaning in my experience. If you're thinking of "why not just make the book freely available on the author's website without engaging a publisher", that would be a different question entirely.
Comment: "you need to pay for it" if you go via a publisher. These book processing charges don't represent actual costs that you would incur if you just hosted your book online yourself (which costs ~nothing).


Sugar cookie dough is dry and real hard

Question: I used my moms sugar cookie recipe that our family and I have used for years. For some reason the dough was real dry and crumbly. I took it out and formed it and it was real hard. It calls for at least 3 hours refrigeration. Well now it is even harder. It usually is on the stickier side. Is there a way to save it?
Answer: Did you measure by cups or otherwise by volume, as opposed to by weight? I'd bet that this is the issue, too much flour compared to the rest of the ingredients. Have you made these cookies often enough that you can feel when they're right? You can still save them by adding everything else a bit at a time, and feel for the right texture. Feel, don't look, and let your fingers tell you the answers. Take your time and listen to your fingers. It sounds cliche, but I think it is your best shot.

Sugar cookie dough is dry and real hard


Rebirth, transfer of memories, what is it?

Question: I have a person in my own family who's aware of his past-birth. He knew it by age 7 only. When family started investigation 'they found it all true. How he has died in his last birth, how much of children he had, what work he was doing when he died and etc. I want to know what the buddha said about rebirth and transfer of memories to a new born? Moreover I wish to get more examples.
Answer: As for conciseness it arises and passes. At death it passes in one body and arise in another. This process don't end at death or with brain damage or death. As this instance passes away the next state arises with persistent sense impressions.
Sense impressions are tied to the mental body while conceptual impressions are tied to the physical body. So if you get brain damaged you cannot think and perhaps learn new concepts but past impressions stay, [Mahā,nidāna Sutta] these sense impressions do persist beyond death as part of the Bhavanga Citta. Recallability depends on the level of hindrances. [(Nīvarana) Sangarava Sutta] The mental impressions that remain are part of the mind (Nama) which does not die at death but passes away in one body and arise in another. For further understanding perhaps you can study the Buddhist rebirth process.
Jhana meditators can recall past lives since sense impressions have persisted. 5 Hindrances is one case of we cannot remember and as meditation overcomes this you can remember better. [(Nīvarana) Sangarava Sutta]
Also see: How can the idea of reincarnation be true if all the information of who we are is already destroyed
Answer: Spontaneous past lives recollection per Buddha can be found at Khajjanita Sutta
For modern day research, look up late Dr. Ian Stevenson  University of Virginia School of Medicine
Answer: The Khajjaniya Sutta explains whatever experiences from the past are recollected, they were never "I", "me" or "mine". The Khajjaniya Sutta explains the mind was mistaken in the past, i.e., ignorant, to regard experiences as "I", "me" or "mine". You would probably need to look elsewhere for an explanation of reincarnation since the Khajjaniya Sutta refutes the idea of "I existed in the past".
Note: The Pali term "pubbe nivāsaṃ" at the start of the Khajjaniya Sutta does not mean "past lives". It means "previous dwellings". In his new translations, Bhikkhu Bodhi uses the term "past abodes".
The term similar term 'nivesā' ('fixations') is also found in the Haliddakani Sutta, which provides a good explanation of the idea of "dwellings".


Occupancy grid maps

Question: Why do we take probabilistic approch to model the environment for robots in occupancy grid maps.The assumption is always taken that each cell on the grid map is either free or occupied.So why have probabilitic approch?
Answer: As the wikipedia page of Occupancy grid mapping explains, the result of the mapping process is a binary 1 or 0, occupied or not, the decision itself may be based on noisy data, which involves the probabilistic assessment of prior information to infer the posterior probability of the occupancy.
Comment: So because the sensor is noisy so we need to take the measurements from sensor 9-10 times and then we estimate.Like if i take 10 mesurements and i obtain 7 times the grid cell to be occupied and remaining 3 times free.Then to capture this data.I use probability.Right?
Comment: What is posterior probabilty of occupancy? Is it same as the probability of a grid cell being occupied ?
Comment: You have your prior belief if it is occupied or not, you take a measurement and consider the probabilty of that measurement being faulty and use bayes' rule to obtain the final or posterior probability of occupancy. Prior=before measurment, posterior=after measurement has been "combined" with the initial (or prior) belief
Comment: You can measure multiple times, you can track object where they are moving with a given probability, you can combine noisy measurements with other noisy measurements, there are a lot of options
Answer: Cause of the intrinsic noise in sensory data, we have to consider a probabilistic model (mostly Gaussian) for the sensor measurements. As a matter of fact, the description and definition of the mapping problem will be probabilistic. The goal is to compute the most likely map given the sensor data and commands given to the robot:

In occupancy grid mapping as the most simple method, each cell (grid) is a binary random variable:
Answer: If you want to incoorporate our sensors properly you first need to build a sensor model. This model tells you whenever your sensor measured something, what is the probability that this is the real value. You will get a distribution.
So when you measure 1m there is a prob. of .5 that thus measurement is true and a prob of .3 that the real distance ist actually 1.2m. To process this information you will not just modify one cell in you map but all adjacent cells. You need to to merge the distribution into the map.
HP Moravec - Sensor devices and systems for robotics, 1989 - Springer (original certainty map paper)
Probabilistic Sensor Models (lecture on this topic)

Occupancy grid maps


Is epimysium same as fascia?

Question: I have read that epimysium is dense regular connective tissue made covering the a muscle like bicep brachi. at the same time we have fascia that is made of dense regular tissue and covers muscles. so are they same or different how can we describe it and differentiate it?
Answer: Epimysium is the specialized fascia located at the muscle.

Epimysium is a layer of connective tissue, which ensheaths the entire muscle. It is composed of dense irregular connective tissue. It is continuous with fascia and other connective tissue wrappings of muscle including the endomysium, and perimysium [1].

The fascia that covers muscle is named deep fascia:

The deep fasciae envelop all bone (periosteum and endosteum); cartilage (perichondrium), and blood vessels (tunica externa) and become specialized in muscles (epimysium, perimysium, and endomysium) and nerves (epineurium, perineurium, and endoneurium) [2].

References:

Wikipedia contributors, "Epimysium," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Epimysium&oldid=540536396 (accessed June 27, 2014).
Wikipedia contributors, "Deep fascia," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Deep_fascia&oldid=593605746 (accessed June 27, 2014).
Answer: As I understand it epimysium is not only fibrous but also contains more elastic fibres than fascia. As such it is more 'loose' than the 'dense' fascia.  It lies immediately on the surface of the muscle (epi = on, mysium = muscle) below the fascia. The deep fascia which is denser lies on top of this.
Answer: Fascia is a widely used yet indistinctly defined anatomical term that is concurrently applied to the description of soft collagenous connective tissue, distinct sections of membranous tissue, and a body pervading soft connective tissue system. Inconsistent use of this term is causing concern due to its potential to confuse technical communication about fascia in global, multiple discipline- and multiple profession-spanning discourse environments. The Fascia Research Society acted to address this issue by establishing a Fascia Nomenclature Committee (FNC) whose purpose was to clarify the terminology relating to fascia. This committee has since developed and defined the terms a fascia, and, more recently, the fascial system. This article reports on the FNC's proposed definition of the fascial system.
Reference:
http://www.bodyworkmovementtherapies.com/article/S1360-8592(16)30259-5/fulltext
Answer: "A fascia"
A fascia is a sheath, a sheet, or any other dissectible aggregations of connective tissue that forms beneath the skin to attach, enclose, and separate muscles and other internal organs.
"The fascial system"
The fascial system consists of the three-dimensional continuum of soft, collagen-containing, loose and dense fibrous connective tissues that permeate the body. It incorporates elements such as adipose tissue, adventitiae and neurovascular sheaths, aponeuroses, deep and superficial fasciae, epineurium, joint capsules, ligaments, membranes, meninges, myofascial expansions, periostea, retinacula, septa, tendons, visceral fasciae, and all the intramuscular and intermuscular connective tissues including endo-/peri-/epimysium.
The fascial system interpenetrates and surrounds all organs, muscles, bones and nerve fibers, endowing the body with a functional structure, and providing an environment that enables all body systems to operate in an integrated manner.
Reference: http://www.bodyworkmovementtherapies.com/article/S1360-8592(16)30259-5/fulltext

Is epimysium same as fascia?


What are the dimensions of the State Alchemist pocket watch?

Question: I want to cosplay as Roy Mustang for Halloween but as I was looking at the costumes online I noticed the cosplay pocket watches are tiny! The biggest one is 5cm. But in the anime, they look like a full palm-sized pocket watch. I was wondering if anyone knows the actual dimensions of the State Alchemist pocket watch?
Comment: I doubt they ever give the actual dimensions of the State Alchemist watches, but from a cursory search of the internet, 5cm would be a fairly normal-sized pocket watch, particularly if it's for the entire thing (case and all). Normal measurements are done of the movement, which is the thing inside the case, and ~40mm seems normal for that.
Comment: Official licensed product: https://www.amazon.com/Fullmetal-Alchemist-Brotherhood-Necklace-Accessories/dp/B005CFO8RE
Answer: Here are some images of the watch as it appears in the hands of various characters, this should give you an idea of the size of watch you want:


How can I get the Command, Option, and Control keys to work properly using QuickSynergy and two Mac OS X Lion machines?

Question: I have two Macs, a MacBook Pro (server) and a Mac Mini (client).  Is there a trick in getting the Command, Option, and Control key presses to get passed through to the client machine?  It doesn't seem to work.
Answer: This is a known bug that is scheduled to be fixed in 1.4.9.