How to do periodic Sql Server performance monitoring and troubleshooting?

Question: What are the best tools and processes for periodically monitoring and troubleshooting sql server performance issues?
Answer: Something that we use is SQLH2 (SQL Server Health and History).  It's created as an add on pack from Microsoft and has a good set of "get you going" reports for SQL Servers, and it's free!
SQL Server Health and History MSDN
If you are only looking for periodic heath checks, then you can set these reports up on a schedule to email them to you weekly.
If you start to notice a problem, either from the reports or from user reports then you start to look into Perfmon and SQL Trace for clues and more specific diagnostics.
Comment: I saw this from another post you made and set it up in a few minutes.  Very good stuff.
Answer: I got roped into being the 'DBA' for my company. I was tasked with this same thing. I came across a blog by Brent Ozar about it.
Perfmon is a great way to get started with performance testing. More in depth approach is using SQL Server Profiler. I just downloaded a free ebook from redgate.
Comment: Moderating you +1 for using my blog. ;-)
Answer: One of my favorites on Sql Server 2005 is Object Execution Statistics.  All of my data access is via stored procedures, so this report shows stats for all procs with currently cached plans.
Right-click a database -> Reports -> Standard Reports -> Object Execution Statistics
Anything that is running slowly or too often will stick out like a sore thumb.
Answer: SQL Server Profiler's good.
I wrote an article for Simple Talk that included using profiler to get slow-running queries
http://www.simple-talk.com/sql/performance/finding-the-causes-of-poor-performance-in-sql-server,-part-1/
What I tend to do is run that kind of trace weekly and keep historical results in a table in a monitoring database (somewhere other than the production server). That way it's pretty easy to see trends from one week to the next.
Answer: We've been using an open source tool called zabbix.  http://www.zabbix.com - runs on mysql/php.
It does perfmon collection and graphing.  Also monitoring/alerting.  You can pull any perfmon counter.
Some of the statistical analysis is a bit weak, so we are dumping hourly stats into sql server for custom reports in reporting services to answer questions such as - when will my server be running at an average of 65% CPU if usage continues in a linear fashion?
Answer: I have been using a great product, Veritas I3, that keeps track of the load of the SQL server and may give you recommendations on missing indexes etc.
I Veritas I3 you can see how much CPU, IO, memory, execution plan etc that every single SQL Statement are using.
But I have to dissapoint you, the product is not for free. :(


What are higher and lower criticism?

Question: What is historical criticism (also known as higher criticism)? What is textual criticism (also known as lower criticism)? How can they help us understand the scriptures? How can they interefere with our understanding of the scriptures?
Answer: For starters, none of the terms are very descriptive of what these disciplines actually set out to do.  Lower criticism can be seen as the study of what lies below the text and Higher criticism can be seen as the study of what lies above the text.  In practical terms, lower criticism looks at the range of extant manuscripts and other evidence and attempts to reconstruct the content of the text from those clues.  It a discipline that has application in non-Biblical texts (Josephus presents many interesting problems, for instance), but due to the exceptional number of manuscripts available to us it's flowered in New Testament studies.
Higher criticism tries to put the text in the historical context in which it was formed.  Is the text objective or does it distort its subject because of some vested interest?  What can we learn about the culture and people who produced the text?  How does the text fit with the other texts from the same time and place?  An example of a non-Biblical higher criticism problem is whether or not we know what Socrates actually taught.
The other terms  are synonymous, but have slightly different connotations. Historical criticism examines the history of a text before it reached final form and Textual criticism examines the history of a text as its transmitted (by hand).  If the former terms signify something like a stack, the later terms signify a timeline:
              Higher
                ^
                |
Historical -> Text -> Textual
                ^
                |
              Lower

So Historical criticism begins with the study of oral tradition (Form criticism), earlier written sources, if any, (Source criticism), and editorial decisions (Redaction criticism).  If we expand the timeline, it looks something like this:
|-------Historical--------|
Form -> Source -> Redaction -> Text -> Textual

Textual critics often use the pre-history of the text and higher criticism to make decisions about which of the available variants are most likely given equivocal manuscript evidence.

Now you might notice that so far we haven't talked much about the text itself or what it means.  Part of the reason is that much of the best evidence for both types of criticism is data that does not relate to the meaning of the text.  For instance, historical criticism's crowning achievement is the discovery of Q which can be obtained with a bit of set theory:
Q = (Matthew ∩ Luke)\Mark
Quite a bit of textual criticism is simply an application of statistical analysis.
But the other reason is that both criticism techniques are intertwined with interpretation in ways that aren't simple to pull apart.  Like echoes in a wave tank, perturbations in one discipline have ripple effects in all directions.  The meaning of a text is partially derived from its historical context and often the best information about the historical context comes from the text in question.  Which of several textual variations is judged most authentic can be a product of the reconstruction of the culture in which the text was created.
Discoveries in historical and textual criticism have massive positive impacts on the interpretation of the texts they examine.  Modern views of Mark have done much to restore the Gospel as an equal with the other three, for instance.  Careful examination of Biblical manuscripts have resulted in surprising and profound insights into the very earliest accounts of Jesus.  The scholarship represented by these approaches to hermeneuteics ought not to be forgotten or dismissed.

The number one problem with both higher and lower criticism, in my opinion, comes from the temptation to build castles in the clouds.  Since meaning is not the primary framework for these disciplines, their conclusions may cease to be related to what the author(s) of the text intended to convey.   There's a risk that, as N. T. Wright comments, "the quest for the divine turns out to be a quest for self-discovery".
Answer: Jesus told us the source of his teaching:

Joh 14:24 ... and the word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father's
  which sent me.

The Old Testament is the word of God, and Jesus "spoke the dark sayings of old."
And he told his disciples to teach others the same thing:

Mt 28:20 Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have
  commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, [even] unto the end of
  the world. Amen.

He said that the Holy Ghost would remind them of everything he taught them:

Joh 14:26 But the Comforter, [which is] the Holy Ghost, whom the
  Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring
  all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.

Since the source of the New Testament is made clear by the New Testament itself, higher and lower criticism imterfere with our understanding of scripture by throwing doubt on God's word.  Sensus plenior presumes that the source of Jesus's knowledge of himself is the Old Testament, and an active dialog with the father through "dinner theater" similar to those of the prophets. As such it is a type of source criticism based in faith rather than disbelief.
Jesus saw a prophecy that when he was 12 he was to "rebel" and so he stayed in the temple to teach as a way of rebelling without sin. The story of the 9 kings of Chedloamer was his source. He could say, "I only do what I see the Father doing in the scriptures".

What are higher and lower criticism?


What do the Latin American language academies do?

Question: The Real Academia Española is the main, official language academy of the Spanish language. But there are also country-specific language academies in most Spanish-speaking countries. What do these language academies do? Are they official offices with staff working every day, or just conferences of people that meet occasionally? Do they typically have public buildings that one could visit, or are they closed organizations?
Comment: I don't know enough to give a full answer, but I do know that i) the introduction to the DRAE indicates that they all collaborate on it (and I presume the DPD is the same); ii) they make joint decisions about things like alphabet reform; iii) the Mexican academy publishes a [dictionary of Mexicanisms](http://www.academia.org.mx/dicmex.php).
Answer: Argentina has its Academia Argentina de Letras that has close relation with Real Academia Española. In its homepage it describes its activities, address, regular meeting schedules and general goal. Here is its institutional page. They have a building and permanent staff as well. They also promote events and attempt to keep track of changes in the language and keep contact with Spanish academies from other countries mostly Latin American.
Answer:
But there are also country-specific language academies in most
  Spanish-speaking countries. What do these language academies do?

From Wikipedia:
The Association of Spanish Language Academies is the entity which regulates the Spanish language. It was created in Mexico in 1951 and represents the union of all the separate academies in the Spanish-speaking world.
The Association convenes every four years, led by a permanent commission composed of a president, secretary general, the RAE treasurer, and four board members drawn from the associated academies and which rotate annually. During the Third Congress of Academies, held in Bogotá, Colombia, in 1960, an agreement was reached whereby the governments of countries with a member in the Association would be obliged to provide financial support to their respective academies and the greater Association.


Will I lose root with the AT&T OTA 3.0 update?

Question: I have the option to do the over the air 3.0 update from AT&T for a HTC Inspire 4G.
Will I lose root?
Comment: Didn't you miss to put an important information in your question? The device for example?
Comment: Why would there be a Honeycomb update for a phone, since it's only meant for tablets?
Comment: @onik: The 3.0 probably refers to the at&t/htc version (and not android)
Answer: Generically speaking, if you've only rooted the device and haven't actually installed another ROM, you should be able to apply the OTA update, but you will lose root because of it. You can always root again.
This is mentioned on several forum threads:

XDA-Developers Thread: Root and OTA updates
androidforums Thread: Rooted GNex - What will I lose if I OTA update

As one can see by the posts on each one of the above threads, there's a device agnostic consensus. Users report that OTA updates are possible on rooted devices, but root is always lost.
The reason behind this is that updates essentially replace or add system files, and the permissions on these files that the rooting process has changed to give you root access, are changed to the ones that come with the update, that don't allow root access.
Answer: You can also try using an app such as Voodoo OTA Rootkeeper to protect your root. On supported phones, it can preserve root through an OTA update. It must be installed and set up before you apply the OTA update.


Cold start, squeaking noise last for few seconds and its gone

Question: 1.7 CDTI, Astra, 25000 miles, Car makes squeaking noise for 1-5 seconds straight after start, depending on the temperature it was sat overnight in the cold which is below freezing temperature and then noise is completely gone. Took to garage for yearly service, they changed the glow plug and left it overnight to see the problem occures, the next morning(the weather was mild) it was completely OK. Now after few weeks the problem is back(the weather has been cold). I'm completely novice when it comes to engine anatomy. Still I suspect, its has to do with the temperature. Help please.
Comment: My best guess is a slipping belt.
Answer: I'm with R.  I believe it's probably a slipping belt.  Some cars are notorious for that if the exact OEM belt isn't used.  My Mitsubishi is one of those.  Off the shelf (even high end, "guaranteed not to slip" type) belts from parts stores like to slip and squeal even when tightened to spec.  OEM works fine...
That said, I did once have a very similar squealing sound on start and it was the engine oil pump starting to fail.  A few months later it seized up.
Answer: Slipping belt like the others have said, or possibly a squeaky pulley bearing. I have the latter on my '12 Focus. It only occurs at just the right humidity and temperature, so the shop has never been able to reproduce.


Recover from losing personal PGP

Question: The computer I was using which is the one I used to sign the Ubuntu code of conduct got a hardware problem and I lost it. If I want to continue my work on launchpad, how can I proceed to recover, recreate or reset the whole process so that I can relate my PC again to launchpad with the PGP?
Answer: Launchpad Recovery
YourAccount/ImportingYourPGPKey
Renewing your key
You may have set your key to expire. You can update your key's expiration date and republish it.
Step 1: Open Passwords and Encryption Keys.
Step 2: Select the My Personal Keys tab, select your key and open the property window by pressing Space Bar or double clicking with your pointer. Select the Details tab of the property window.
Step 3: Set a new expiration date or choose never. Close the property window
Step 4: With you key still selected, select Remote > Sync and Publish Keys from the menu. Choose the Sync button.
review the source https://help.launchpad.net/YourAccount/ImportingYourPGPKey
Answer: Launchpad allows you to continue working with more than one PGP key associated with your account. All is not necessarily lost just because you lost one of your PGP keys; as long as you are using one of your authorized PGP keys, you can continue to sign stuff.
In Launchpad, under your account settings, go to "Change your OpenPGP keys" page, and use the Import Key functionality to import another key. And this time, don't lose it.
If you have data encrypted with your original PGP key that can only be decrypted using that key, then you are out of luck for obtaining that information. But you won't lose your Ubuntu Code of Conduct signature by adding more PGP keys to your Launchpad profile.

Recover from losing personal PGP


Is there one or more "proper" finger picking styles/techniques?

Question: Essentially, if there is some collection of proper techniques that have distinct rules or characteristics about them, that's what I'm looking for.  There's not one particular artist or type of music I want to play, I just want to know how to recognize styles when I see/hear them.  Or is it more common for a style to be associated with a specific player, like Lightnin' Hopkins or Rodrigo y Gabriela?
Answer: Assuming you're not interested in classical-style fingerpicking (which is an entirely separate subject), there are no set "rules", per se.  Folk-style fingerpicking, like folk music generally, is a product of people figuring out how to make the music they want to make, without necessarily caring too much about orthodox conventions.
That said, probably the most widespread style of fingerpicking is called "Travis Style", named after Merle Travis.  In Travis style, the thumb plays an alternating bass note on the quarter notes while the fingers (maybe just one, maybe all four, depending on the player) play a melody line, often syncopated, on the top three strings.
Bob Dylan's "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright" is a good example of Travis-style picking---there are hundreds of other excellent examples too, of course, but I picked this one because most people have heard it.  Here's the tab for the first two bars (it's capo'd at the 4th fret).  The thumb plays the first five notes, which are all bass notes:
<code>$A 3 $D 2 $E 3 $D 2 | $E 3 $B 0 $G.0.$D.0 $1 0h $6.3.$1.1 $B 0 $D 0 $G 0 | $A.0.$B.1
</code>
(still trying to get the hang of this jTab thing)
Doc Watson, Mississippi John Hurt, and many, many others also primarily played in a Travis picking style, but it's definitely not the only way to go.
Modern fingerpickers do pretty much whatever they can to get the sounds they want out of the guitar.  Michael Hedges is the probably the most well-known example of a fingerstyle player who used all sorts of unorthodox techniques, including tapping, slapping, using a looping pedal to lay down a background part that he could then play live over, etc.
Leo Kottke is an interesting example of how technique influences style.  When he was younger, he played using a more folk-style technique, but eventually that gave him tremendous hand and wrist problems.  So he switched to a more classical-style technique, which is more ergonomic and has resulted in a slightly different sound for him.  He can still play all of his old stuff, of course, but it just sounds different, and it seems as though the new technique has influenced his songwriting, too.
Answer: You can take a classical style and incorporate it into your playing in a different idiom: See: Joe Pass or Steve Morse (who also is/was a master of pure classical finger picking as well).  See the first four albums by the Dixie Dregs....
Also a combination of Flatpick and Fingerpicking is an oft used style : See Steve Howe -"The Clap"
Chet Atkins was right up there with Merle Travis - if we're defining a country style as well...
Let's move to the Blues: Freddie King -a plastic thumb pick and a metal index-finger pick helped to define a modern blues style of playing. Honorable Mention: Albert Collins who out and out just plucked with his thumb and fore-finger producing notes that would burn through your brain like lasers through styrofoam....
All of the above were trend setters with different styles that will help you to choose your own style...
Comment: For that matter, Wes Montgomery did pretty well with just his thumb.  And in the rock world, Lindsey Buckingham and Mark Knopfler were/are amazing fingerstylists.  Whatever gets you your sound...
Comment: Right On: I thought about those two, and Robbie Krieger after the post.....George Benson made millions paying homage to Wes as well :>)


Would you recommend Windows Vista?

Question: Windows Vista in generally considered not much of a success by microsft and I've heard many computer support shops recommend against it. The typical opinion is to stick with XP then upgrade to 7 but I am just curious as to how many people here do recommend vista.
Comment: What environment are you supporting? How many seats? Are your apps internally or externally developed? What sort of users do you have? How controlled is your hardware?
Comment: No Adam I am interested in someone saying yes they have recommended vista because they required _____.
Answer: I have a Vista laptop that runs fine, but no I would not recommend anyone pay to upgrade to it with windows 7 getting closer to launching.
As for a business decision: If you're lucky, Windows XP is on all of your machines.  In our case we have 2-4 thousand XP machines, but some of our software breaks in Windows Vista.  We're documenting that and looking into costs for newer versions, but we will not be buying new versions until we've tested them on Windows 7.
There is no business advantage of changing to Vista for us, but we will most likely look at moving to Windows 7 and updating things so that we do not fall behind as an organization.
From a company aspect unless you have a business case for moving to vista, don't bother.  You can stay compliant with PCI, GLBA, and SOX without it, and all of your users are used to it.
Spend your time familiarizing yourself with Windows 7 and start updating documentation for end user guides.
Answer: My organization decided to stick with Windows XP, which for me is torture, since I use Win7 at home.
As for running Vista, I personally have had ZERO problems running it on my network, and no problems with laptops in my department using Vista Business.
Most of the anti-Vista stuff I've run into are from non-technical users who have heard "bad things" (think the anti-PC/Vista Apple ads) - and most of these users don't like the way XP works either.
As for recommending Vista, I would, because for the end user, they fixed so many little XP annoyances, like needing administrator approval to plug in a new flash drive (I hate supporting that one!)
Comment: For the end user they also changed how the help desk would walk them through a great many things.  It isn't a technical reason but causing more and more help desk tickets is valid to a business.  If you're considering Windows 7 and don't have Vista, just skip Vista.

If you don't, you'll have users an additional OS to support for years.
Answer: The fact that Win7 includes the "XP Mode" license (for Pro versions) - versus $99 XP downgrade rights on your Vista license - seems to speak for itself.  Kudos to Microsoft, honestly, for having the guts to admit they made a bad call, and move forward.
We've got one intrepid Vista user in the office.

There are some printers he can't use
There are some corporate apps he can't use
There are some administrative tools (for Microsoft products) that he can't use because he runs Vista

Basically, he's got an XP virtual he needs to keep running in order to successfully perform his job.  We'll need a better scenario than that before we get a desktop OS change approved by management.
Comment: Hey, you just described me! ;) Although I am putting RC on my laptop tonight.
Answer: I'm running Vista Business SP1 and Vista Ultimate SP1 and have not had any issues.  I haven't seen Windows 7 yet, but I have heard that it is very much like Vista just easier to use.  If I had a choice now, I would wait until Windows 7 comes out and go straight from WinXP to Windows 7.
-JFV
Answer: I would wait for Windows 7, it has a lot better performance than Vista and is much easier to use. It is also remarkably stable, even while it was in Beta I didn't have a single problem with it despite daily use.
I would not recommend Vista for almost any environment, I'd rather go for Windows XP instead.
Answer: When answering the ultimate question of whether to upgrade to the latest and sometimes greatest version of Windows, one must always distinguish between consumer and business recommendations.
First for the consumer, Vista is a significant improvement over XP in useability and reliability. The only thing to keep in mind is that Vista loves the latest hardware. The Vista experience is quite different on a brand new machine as compared to a 3-4 year old clunker. Minimum system requirements = minimum performance. The question then remains; But now that Windows 7 is in RC shouldn't I wait to buy a new PC? If you are asking that then my answer is yes, YOU should wait.
For a business, a major consideration is user training. In our organization, all new PCs purchased within the last year or so have come with Vista. But, before being put into production, they are imaged with our standard XP-based load out. Our goal is to have a standard workstation OS version across our entire organization for obvious reasons. Unfortunately, the fact that Vista won't run well (or at all) on our older machines means that we will upgrade when one of two things occur. Either we get to a point where most of our workstation hardware has been replaced or Windows 7 comes out and is as light and airy as the Betas and RCs have been. I'd love to upgrade our users to Windows 7 and I hope the performance claims are true.
Another option for businesses that is gaining popularity is to virtualize the desktops and move them to the server room. A company moving to this solution wouldn't even have to fork over much for thin clients. They could instead use the existing workstation hardware as the client.
Overall, I'd say it is an exciting time for OS technology. So the answer to your question is maybe. :)
Answer: I updated to Vista at home, and have come across no major problems.  It does take a bit of getting used to as many things have been renamed and moved, and MS seemed to take a lot of flack for what is an all round better OS.
Saying that, I wouldn't reccomend anyone upgrading to Vista from XP.  I would recommend taking Vista on a new computer and not taking the option to downgrade.
But historically, "new" OSes have had many detractors, it just seemed to be more intense this time.
Win95 had its detractors, everyone whinged about 98, NT4 was a resource hog, no one liked ME (which was fair, it was rubbish), 2000 broke too many things, XP was too different from 98 and 2000.  XPSP1 introduced incompatibilities, and XP SP2 broke every security program.  And all of these required at least double in hardware to what was needed previously, and didn't support half the hardware that people already had.
From a corporate point of view, Vista and v7 introduce a lot of things that will take getting used to - redirecting writes to the registry and "program files" being major, so it's not just a case of popping it in as a direct replacement.
Comment: I've recently upgraded to Windows7.  As I've come from Vista it really feels like "Vista SP2", rather than a whole new OS.
Answer: Our work specifically recommends against Vista due to a single critical application incompatibility. That still hasn't stopped several users installing it anyway and just living with the grief. With Win7 around the corner, we've been designing around the application incompatibility since  we know we'll have a lot more Win7 around than Vista, probably within a month of release. This is a case of end-users pressing IT change.
Answer: With Vista, I've found that shares perform poorly compared to XP / Server2003 - for example, XP clients with mapped drives are disconnected nearly immediately after use, causing minimal or many-second delays when reconnecting.
Also the Explorer UI on Vista has some unacceptable delays - for example opening a folder containing photos that haven't been previously indexed can take many seconds to process before it allows you to select a group of photos.
Other than that, Vista is quite good.
Answer: I have XP, Vista, and 7 (on my Mac) as virtual machines. Best to worst: 7, XP, Vista.
I'd wait until Windows 7 comes out, personally. It's much zippier.
Comment: Where does OS X fit in to your best to worst? Just curious.
Answer: Running Vista myself at home for the past year+, I have had little to no problems.  However, I usually do not recommend it to my users, as the interface is 'different' and much clunkier to work with.  Users typically hate change and Vista can be a huge change (especially with browsing the computer).  Add to the fact that Vista has a bad rap, users go into it with a negative attitude, which makes them even more intimidated/infuriated.
As others have said, I would have them either downgrade to XP (if possible for there system) or wait for Windows 7 to be released.  While 7 is 'different', it does give you a slightly more XP'esque feel.  I think in the end you will have happier users.
The few times I have recommended Vista, was for full usability of a Tablet PC and another for a really sweet deal on a laptop (where XP downgrade was not offered).
Answer: Most of the really good and useful changes are under the hood and also mostly directed at running Vista in corporate environments together with Server 2008 - making maintenance, deployment and configuration much easier than with Server 2003 and XP.
For a consumer end-user however these changes matters very little (except perhaps some improvements in stability which however is countered by what often feels like a slower UI response even though the operations themselves are actually faster than in XP). What they see is some rather annoying UI-changes and a bunch of useless extra consumer-oriented bloat.
So, for a company, sure - go for it, there is much to gain - but you've got to upgrade the lot and have an Active Directory and server environment that really can take advantage of Vista as well - and the technical know-how (and need) to do it more effectively than with previous generations. Many Windows administrators know practically nothing about what a real Microsoft environment can and should do for them ^^
This far into 2009 however, I'd say wait for Windows 7. There's only a few months left and Windows 7 is practically the same now rather mature code-base as Vista - with the same maintenance features but with some decent user-side tweaks (and some more really neat enterprise features).
Answer: If you need to use more than 4GB on a Windows machine, I've heard Vista 64-bit recommended over and over .  I use it, and it runs great.  Windows XP 64-bit was a nightmare for me.
Answer: Windows 2000 (version 5.0) was a great advance in the Windows NT line of operating systems, but it lacked some features and the polish that came with Windows XP (version 5.1) a year or so later.  I think that Windows Vista (version 6.0) and Windows 7 (version 6.1) are analogous.  Windows 7 is going to be more polished, and the nearly three years since Vista's release has been enough time for major hardware and software vendors to get their acts together and write their code code correctly, so Windows 7 will not suffer from as many of the problems that plagued Vista at release.
I used to think that the ideal situation was to keep all corporate machines on the same Windows version, but I have changed my mind as of late.  Save your money and just use whatever version comes on the machine when you buy it.  You will have to make sure that your Group Policies and scripts are configured appropriately to work on multiple platforms, but you would have had to check them all anyway for a mass-upgrade project.  You can use Vista right now for testing with your line-of-business and custom in-house applications; if they work on Vista, they should work on Windows 7.  (You could use the Windows 7 Release Candidate for testing, but you may encounter problems that won't exist in the release-to-manufacturing, and you would waste time troubleshooting.)
If you need new machines now, but you want to skip Windows Vista and have only XP and 7 in your environment, go ahead and buy them with Vista, and then purchase Windows Client Software Assurance (SA only, not an upgrade license).  This will entitle you to upgrade to Windows 7 when it is released (for less money than an upgrade license) and will give you other benefits as well.

Would you recommend Windows Vista?


Force through quantum mechanics

Question: In classical physics force is:
$$F=\frac {dp}{dt}$$
How about quantum mechanics?
In Old Quantum Mechanics momentum is: $p=\hbar \cdot k$ so force will be:
$$F=\hbar \frac {dk}{dt}$$
what does $\frac {dk}{dt}$ mean?
Answer: It's still true in quantum mechanics – it's a "Heisenberg equation of motion" – but both sides are operators. However, because we often want to find the spectrum of the Hamiltonian in quantum mechanics – a set of possibilities – and the properties of the energy eigenstates, the importance of the force is diminishing. The force may be written as $i[H,p]/\hbar$, so it's the commutator of the momentum with the Hamiltonian, but we often need to study the whole Hamiltonian and not just its commutators with other operators. That's why the potential energy $V$ appears much more often in quantum mechanical calculations than the force – even though the latter may be written as $-V'(x)$ if a potential is known. Note that $-V'(x)$ is the result of the calculation of the commutator $i[H,p]/\hbar$ for Hamiltonians $H=p^2/2m+V(x)$.
Answer: Just to add to Luboš' excellent answer: if you haven't seen this sort of thing before it can be helpful to think in terms of expectation values – that is, the average of the possible outcomes of a measurement – rather than the whole spectrum of possibilities. In these terms Newton's second law (in one dimension) becomes
$$ \frac{\mathrm{d}}{\mathrm{d}t}\langle p\rangle = \big\langle-\frac{\mathrm{d}V}{\mathrm{d}x}\big\rangle$$
where the right-hand side is more or less $\langle F\rangle$.
If you're interested in finding out more about this the keyword to Google is the Ehrenfest theorem.
Answer: The quantum analogue is the Heisenberg equation where the bold font denote matrices (Heisenberg and co-workers developed the matrix formulation of quantum mechanics)
$$\frac{\mathrm{d} \mathbf{p}}{\mathrm{d}t}=\mathbf{F}$$
The split $p=\hbar k$ where $k$ is the wave vector (or wavevector) is also valid in relativistic quantum theory. Wave vectors $k$ are also used in classical mechanics but the definition is different and does not use $\hbar$ of course [*].
Since $\hbar$ is an universal constant the meaning of $\frac {\mathrm{d}k}{\mathrm{d}t}$ can be obtained directly from $\frac {\mathrm{d}p}{\mathrm{d}t}$. The former is the variation of momentum in units or 'packets' of $\hbar$
$$ \frac {\mathrm{d}k}{\mathrm{d}t} = \frac {1}{\hbar} \frac {\mathrm{d}p}{\mathrm{d}t}$$
[*] The wave vector in classical mechanics is introduced using Fourier transforms.

Force through quantum mechanics


Can I use the cutout for a drop-in sink to install an undermount sink?

Question: My daughter has bought another home with granite counters and a drop in sink.  Can a professional put in an under the counter sink  in the existing  hole with some modification by him or is this just simply impossible?
Answer: I hate to be a wet blanket on this one, but you are not going to like my answer.  It will be very difficult to find someone that will attempt to do what you are asking for an in place, already installed granite counter top. Since you have a drop in sink, the cut out is probably not polished and the cut edges are not routed. In the fab shop, they use lasers and computer aided cutting tools to get perfectly shaped holes. Cutting in the field is hardly ever done. The process of attaching the under side bowl is not as difficult as the cutting and polishing, but will require some type of custom support to hold the bowl in place while the epoxy cures.
Depending how large the counter is, it may be cheaper and safer to have it taken out and done at the fab shop.
Answer: Yes, get a sink that is larger than the existing hole, and the installer can cut/router out the additional amount.  Finding a sink that is an exact match will be nearly impossible.  As well, the cutout on the existing hole is likely to be not as neat as one would like for an undermount.


What is the right age to start learning to play violin?

Question: I heard that it becomes very difficult to learn to play violin after a certain age (14 IIRC). Is that correct? And what is the reason?
Comment: Is there even a "right" age?
Comment: I'm mainly wondering about the subjectivity of the question.
Comment: @Rebecca, I see. Maybe I should rephrase it to be less subjective, like asking if there is a study or something supporting the claim?
Answer: Like with learning a foreign language, the brain gets worse at learning new things once a person has matured. The Suzuki method starts kids on musical instruments at around 4, but many start after that. I'd say that it's definitely possible to start in the late teens or after, but it'll be harder. You'll have better luck if you already know a different instrument.
Here's an interesting article: Why it's hard to learn new things.
Answer: I'm not sure whether learning violin is ultimately easier or harder as a young kid, but I guarantee you, teaching older people is much easier.
The high school students I'm teaching now are also much easier to teach than I remember myself being at age six. As a result, their progress for the most part is faster than mine.
Also, I've heard that the problem with learning violin at latter ages isn't so much cognitive as it is physiological. The relevant bones and muscles need to develop in a certain way as a child in order for certain tasks on the violin to be more practical.
I know of one person in his 60s who started in his 40s and can now play Sarasate's Zigeunerweisen, albeit somewhat watered down. Of course, I think this person is more an exception than a rule.
You may not become virtuosic starting at an older age -- but most kids quit half way through anyway, yet we still teach them. In the process of teaching violin we're also teaching music -- and I don't think there's a starting age for music itself.
Comment: There is a physiological advantage to starting earlier. I'm amazed at how my kids (after a few years of Suzuki) can use all five left-hand fingers pretty much equally, but my pinky finger is still slow, clumsy and weak after many years practicing guitar as an adult.
Answer: I think kids can definitely learn some things faster than adults and music might very well be one of those things, but we should take into account some other reasons why kids learn some things easier (aside from natural predisposition):

Lots of free time: No job, mortgage, kids, spouse, etc. to worry about.
Encouragement: Kids are expected to not be "experts" at things and it is easier to find support for a young beginner (from people in general or a prospective teacher as well) than for an older one.

The right age to start violin (or almost any other instrument for that matter) is as soon as he or she can hold one that is size appropriate. Or blow into onw in the case of instruments that require this and for which you need certain parts of your body more developed like the lungs.
If that time has passed then it is definitely not "too" late to learn to play the instrument and enjoy it as long as realistic expectations and goals are established regarding the possibilities of a professional career.
Comment: You say: _"The right age to start violin (or almost any other instrument for that matter) is as soon as he or she can hold one that is size appropriate."_ I would add: and he or she enjoy the music of this instrument and wants to learn.
Comment: @ogerard - definitely. I would say that eagerness/enthusiasm are possibly more important than anything else. Started mine on sax and guitar at 5 or 6ish and they still love music 4 years later.
Answer: I've been a professional violin teacher for over 20 years and I specialize in teaching young kids, though my students have ranged in age from 2.5 years to 78 years, and from beginner to conservatory-bound.
If a child (usually age 3 or older) can focus on a single task and take instruction for 10 minutes or more, you can think about finding a teacher and starting an instrument.  If not, get that child to SING!  And have fun with music.  Play music at home, sing, dance, and enjoy-- any style you like.  Or enroll in one of the thousands of classes for having fun with music.  Listening and singing develops the ear.  Furthermore, if the child loves music, learning an instrument will be much easier and lots more fun when the time comes.
By the time people are in their teens, our brains are not as much like a sponge, and our bodies have a slightly harder time learning the fine motor skills that make the difference between a fantastic and a decent violinist.  I know a few excellent professional classical violinists who started at age 14 or 15, but none who started any older.  Folk music has a much more accessible culture and fewer limitations.
If you are over 2 years old and really want to play violin for fun, DO IT.  It has more benefits and joys than I can to list here.  The beginning is a little rough and goes a lot easier if you have a teacher who explains things well and is patient.  You can get to a good level of proficiency in a couple of years if you practice a little.  Then you can play at the Irish pub jam, learn to improvise, or whatever you like, and the skills are yours for life.
Answer: The answer to this is that you can learn the violin at any age.  The difficulty is a person problem not an instrument problem.
People confuse how long someone has been playing and the age that they started.  So for example someone who starts the violin at age 50 will take the same time to get to a certain standard with equal amount of practise as someone starting at age 5. But the way that these two will be viewed is different.  For example a child starting at 5 and taking 10 years to get to a certain stage could be viewed as good for their age. An adult starting at 50 and after 10 years getting to the same stage will be probably be considered as average for an amateur adult.
Another aspect that confuses people is that many children who start any musical instrument find it extremely difficult regardless of what age they start, and many give up playing because they find it difficult, but it is those children who find playing the violin difficult not the fact that the violin itself is difficult to play.
In order to be clear about this question of age, we must be very careful not to confuse the time taken to learn something with the age at a particular level.
From my own experience of starting an instrument (not violin) as an adult at age 42, and learning it faster than students who started as children I experienced some really peculiar ideas from music educators which included the idea that as I was an adult I should be able to do things above where I had got to simply because I was an adult, they failed to realise that everyone of every age has to learn all aspects of playing as a beginner.  (I will admit that it was a second instrument.)
What I would say in answer to this question is that any age is suitable for someone to start the violin. It is important to remember that the vast majority of violin beginners do not go onto study violin with a view to having a career in violin playing.  Adult violin starters usually already have a career and are not interested in starting again.
I have found from my own experience that the biggest difficulty facing an adult starter is being taken seriously by music education providers, but at least I have managed to prove that age doesn't make any difference to standard or speed of learning, what is more important is a connection and flair for playing a particular instrument.
I will also add that an adult who didn't learn to read music as a child at school from my experience of adult late starters will have long term music reading problems in much the same way as an adult who left school with out being able to read and write.  Difficulties with reading music should not be confused with lack of playing ability.
Answer: I know this thread is old but I had to answer. For me the right age was 59. That's when I started learning to play the violin. I know I will never make it to Carnegie Hall, but then that wasn't my goal to begin with. I just love playing music. So it depends on what your goal is.
Answer: Studies have shown, at least in a public school setting, that starting students at age 9 or 10 is the earliest that causes a significant increase in ability by the time they graduate. I'd say therefore that age 9 is a good time to start!
But really, any age is a fine time to start. As with anything, older is harder, but never impossible.
Answer: I'm a thirteen year old, and I've been playing for three and a half years. I love my violin, and I'm very good at learning songs by myself. However I have trouble with sight reading, and my plucking finger gets blisters very easily. I play boldly as well.
I also love to sing, but I just can't see myself doing that as a profession. I would love to play professionally as an adult, but I'm not sure if I started too late as well. As you guys pointed out, Suzuki has kids start at four.
In our middle school orchestra I'm second chair, and my friend Elisabeth started at the same time as me. When we played in sixth grade we were the only students allowed to play with the seventh, and eighth graders in performances.
Answer: I am decent recital level player, short of being a true virtuoso artist though, and there is little doubt that my break in continuity of studies during mid-teenage has been extremely difficult to compensate for later in life.  It is possible to get back on track with intense practice OF THE RIGHT KIND, assuming you have a fully developed ear for relative pitch and you were correctly grounded in the fundamentals of the instrument to begin with.  To start violin playing in middle age is a tall order, and the exceptions who might have a meaningful degree of success are likely to be musicians from some other instrument or discipline already, with the time and dedication to take it on.  Still though, a very tall order.  Not to discourage anybody - I would be the last person to do that - but a reality check for "seniors" is probably warranted: If, in your golden years, you get the impulse to learn a muscial instrument and you do not come from a true musical/musician background, I would strongly advise against the violin.  Choose an instrument - piano, fr'instance - where at least you know that when you press a key or take some clear action a definite tone/note will sound.  The complexities of learning to read and understand music, and start from scratch on violin to boot, as a senior, is silly.  A final word on this general subject to over-eager parents wishing to push their kids into instruments.  Yes, very noble, and I completely endorse getting them somehow into an appreciation of the musical arts.  Absolutely.  But if your child does not appear to love music, plain old music [any kind, doesn't matter], that is a pretty reliable sign that they will not suddenly "discover" a hidden talent for playing an instrument, let alone violin which is the toughest one to learn.  It is the same as any other natural affinity.  You can tell if a kid is naturally gravitating toward sports, or dance, or scientific stuff - just as examples - by observing his or her behavior.  Do they naturally seek out those things?  It's the same with music, maybe even moreso.  Don't force a kid to learn an instrument unless the child has expressed and displayed through natural behavior that he or she has real "itch" for it they want to scratch.  Then, if so, consult a teacher, see if the child can do simple things like sing back a pitch and so forth.  If it appears all the lights are green, give it serious try.  My own opinions, having taught all ages and levels, seen obvious patterns of what does and doesn't pan out. Hope this was helpful.
Answer: You don't need absolute ["perfect"] pitch to excel at violin or any other instrument.  What you must have is unblemished relative pitch - means you must be able to sing any interval up or down without hesitation from any root. That's all. Perfect pitch for string players can actually be an annoyance more than a help. First of all, even if you have the knack of perfect pitches, you are going to use relative pitch in your playing and reading 99% of time anyhow. Also, perfect pitch can be a PITA because of the slight but annoying perceived difference to the ear between a tempered note and a true violin note within a particular key. Believe me, perfect pitch is the least of your worries.
Comment: What does the question have to do with perfect pitch?
Answer: I would say 5 or 6, but also with an asterick: if the child has some "natural ability" and good ear, it could be successful. Otherwise, I would suggest doing a year or 2 of piano first, so the ear gets used to the pitch of the sounds. This is going to be a good foundation also for learning notes, rhythm and some theory too. Then violin would be easier, at least that was my experience.
I had a good ear, but not absolute pitch.


What bonuses do the different types of city-states give in Civ 5?

Question: What bonuses do each of the different city-state types give, and do they ever change?
Answer: Military will periodically gift you units.  Cultural give you a boost to your per turn culture accumulation.  Maritime gives you extra food at your capital, and small bonuses elsewhere.
Which military units you get depends on the age you're in, as does the amount of the bonuses for the other two, so there is a benefit to getting a tech from a new age to increase the bonuses.  Being Allied instead of just friendly will also increase the size of the bonus or the frequency with which you are given units.
Its also worth mentioning that regardless of the type of city-state, if you are allied with them, they will give you any luxury or strategic resources that are within their borders.  This can be useful to trigger "We love the king" days in your cities to increase the growth rate.  When cities demand a resource you don't have, you can use the Diplomacy summary screen to see which city-states have that resource and then consider boosting your rep with them.
Comment: The bonuses scale with what era you're in as well. This means either more advanced military units, or more food|culture / turn.
Comment: Yep, that was what I was getting at in the second paragraph.
Answer: Cultural give your empire culture each turn you are at least friendly with them
Maritime gives your cities extra food (favoring the capital)
Militaristic gives your civilization contemporary military units.


Why do we test electric fields with positive charges and not negative ones?

Question: Is there any difference between using a positive versus a negative charge to test an electric field?
Comment: Are you asking about the definition "The electric field intensity is defined as the force per unit positive charge that would be experienced by a stationary point charge, or "test charge", at a given location in the field" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_field#Definition  ?
Answer: You can use a negative charge to test an electric field. You just have to remember that the electric field points antiparallel (opposite) to the force on the charge, rather than parallel to it (in the same direction). That's just a convention, though; we could have defined the electric field to point with the force on a negative charge, and physics would work the same, except for a couple of negative signs in some formulas.
Answer: There is no fundamental difference between positive and negative charges.  Anything that couples to positive electric charge couples to negative charge and vice versa.  Practically, the main difference is that negative charge is on electrons and positive charge is in protons in atomic nuclei, so on a day-to-day basis they play different roles.  However, these signs are reversed for antimatter, so we see there really is nothing special about the sign of a charge.
Answer: You can also use the negative charges. What happens is that usually the positive charges are used because, by convention, these are the charges that they decided to use to determine the direction of the electric current. Besides, you can see it from this perspective: negative charges can move on the "lattice" and they are more "fun", while the protons are "boring", there are always "stuck" in the atomic nucleus.
Answer: you can also take negative charges to define potential of a point.there would be electric field due to a -ve charge Q also and when you bring a point charge q(having -ve charge) near Q then you have to do work against the field.(because same charge repel each other )
Comment: What is a -ve charge?
Answer: You can also take negative charge as test charge but in this case charge will move opposite to the field lines
Answer: we take positive charge as a point charge because positive charge has a high potential and electrons are always move from lower potential to the higher potential.so , we use positive charge as a point charge
Answer: Because negative charge has attraction with positive charge which is not sure test
Answer: We take positive charge as a test charge because positive charge is higher potential and negative charge is lower potential.  Therefore, influence of positive charge on other charges is greater than negative charges.  We can also take negative charge but the effect will be lower.
Comment: What?  This is totally wrong.  The absolute potential of -1 charge and +1 charge is exactly the same (one unit of charge).


How to get film developed as a donation?

Question: I have a group of special needs kids that received some disposable cameras as a donation. Now I have the expense of getting them developed. The cameras have 27 exposures. I was hoping to find a school that would donate their kids and learning experience, but haven't so far. Do you have any ideas for me?
Comment: I'm not clear - what exactly are you asking?
Comment: I think she's looking for ideas for somewhere which might donate the time and cost of development.
Answer: I would image most schools are only set up to do black and white photography, as it is easier and less expensive (or was when I was doing it)  Finding a school that can process color photos (I assume yours are color film) is probably a long shot.
You could ask a printing business (or Walmart etc) if they can do a special rate for you.
You can also just develop the negatives and ask for a contact sheet like below, which contains a small print of each picture, all on one page.  Costs will vary, but you might save half the cost over getting prints of the 27 shots.
Then if you want regular prints made - prints will I think be cheaper if you get 30 copies of one shot, rather then 30 individual shots from different rolls.  If they took all the shots at the same time and place, maybe you could pick out a representative set and print out a few for everyone (but do check the cost of doing that vs just getting the rolls all developed and printed in the first place or you may end up adding work for yourself and not saving much money).
Answer: It would depend on the area you're living in, but it might be possible to get local business support for the processing -- especially if they can earn a bit of public goodwill out of the deal. A feel-good blurb in the community events section of the paper can go a long way towards gaining a good reputation and customers. If you still have a local photo finisher, they might be willing to work at cost even if they can't afford to cover the whole thing out of pocket -- especially if they can get some goodwill out of the deal too. (And you can always try the Walmart angle -- I'm sure they'd like to undo some of the damage Robin Williams did to the blue-vested photo department.)
You can shop it around to your friendly neighborhood service clubs and organizations as well -- you know, the Lions, Moose, Elks, Kiwanis, and that sort. They usually have a pet charity (I know that the Elks in my area were all about deaf issues when I was growing up), but you never know.


Are squats necessary to reduce body weight?

Question: My partner told me that squats are a basic exercise, that it helps to improve the lungs so you should do squats daily to lift huge weights. Is this true? Are squat exercises helpful to reduce our body weight and belly?
Answer: Yes! Squatting -- as part of a proper regimen of exercise, eating and rest -- can lead you to lift huge weights, improve lung capacity, or reduce body weight. The squat exercises the body's largest muscles and is one of the most basic functional movements. Until the invention of sitting toilets, squatting was a daily necessity for all humans even into old age.
The benefits you get will depend on how you squat. To name just a few variations, you can squat with a heavy barbell on your back, with a dumbbell held in front of you, or with just body weight; you can do a few reps slowly or many reps quickly.
Comment: plus one for the sitting toilets comment!
Comment: yeah that was a good example
Comment: @J.Winchester-do you think doing too many squats and lunges can lead to thighs getting bigger in size (not what I want)? Thanks!
Comment: @Bee, bodyweight squats and lunges will help your strength, endurance and mobility without having much affect on size.
Answer: Looking at the letter of the question, no, you could do deadlifts instead. But in the spirit of the question, yes, you really should do a compound lift involving your legs and back. Try to pick at least one that you can do safely and without pain (front squat, back squat, ball squat, hack squat, standard deadlift, sumo deadlift). If absolutely none of them work and you've researched how to do them properly (Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe and The Insider's Tell-All Handbook on Weight-Training Technique by Stuart McRobert are both good books to look into) then you could do leg presses instead - it's generally accepted that free weights are more productive than machines, but if you get injured doing free weights but not the machines, then in that unfortunate instance, machines are better.
Interestingly, nobody can really agree whether the squat or deadlift is better, even Rippetoe who starts off saying the squat's the best exercise period has a diagram in the back of his book that seems to suggest the deadlift is better. That got a chuckle out of me. I happen to prefer the deadlift because I can perform it more comfortably, also just conceptually because training to lift something heavy off the ground is an incredibly practical movement to train.
As for reducing the belly, I'm a skinny guy but was getting a bit self conscious about my belly sticking out, purely doing deadlifts, overhead presses and pulldowns I got it pulled in a bit. I couldn't really pinpoint which of the exercises was responsible, although I'd be inclined to attribute it to all of them due to the need to stabilise with my core muscles while performing those exercises. I don't have experience myself with fat burning, but I've read from numerous sources (which could be just a bunch of people referring to a single study, I'm not claiming that there's scientific consensus here) that beginners doing weight training see both fat loss and muscle gain.
Comment: +1 good answer. Which diagram do you refer to in your 2nd paragraph?
Comment: Figure 8-2 on page 294 of the 3rd edition.
Comment: Thanks. After checking my copy with that info, it appears to be figure 8-2 on page 287 of the 2nd edition.
Answer: "There are few things graven in stone, except that you have to squat or you're a pussy." -Mark Rippetoe  So according to Coach Rip, yes you should be squatting. Squats are great for the legs, back, abdominal muscles, etc.
As for reducing your body weight and belly that is far more dependent on what you are eating rather than squatting.
Answer: There are three basic strength building exercises: squats, deadlifts and bench pressing.  Direct to your question: do they help the lungs and should they be done everyday? Any exercise helps lung capacity, it's a common fact that only 31% of Americans get proper exercise, which is considered 2 to 3 hours a week...
So, everyday? with heavy weights? No, you need to set goals and based on those goals develop a workout program that you will follow for a long time (with on-going planned stages of change).  Lifting HEAVY everyday a specific body part will lead to injury and boredom and result in leaving you worse off than not doing it.
My recommendation: set your goals (based on what you want and including nutrition), develop a plan (get help if you need developing a good plan) and just do it.
Comment: I would also add the press (i.e. the overhead press).


Should I start mead fermentation at this time of year?

Question: I would like to start a new batch of mead. However currently the air temperatures where I live can reach 30 degrees (Centigrade) and I have no air conditioning at home (so the temperature at home can be about 26 degrees Centigrade). Is it OK to start brewing now, or is it better to wait till autumn?
Answer: It depends somewhat on what flavors you are looking for and how long you want to wait, post-fermentation, to drink it.
Warmer fermentation is going to produce more fruity esters from the yeast, but they also produce more complex (hot) alcohols.   Primary fermentation will finish relatively quickly, but the mead is going to have to sit in secondary for possibly a year or more for those hot alcohols to break down.  More of your end product mead's flavor will be from the yeast.
Cooler fermentation is going to produce a cleaner flavor, both as far as the esters and the alcohol.   Primary fermentation will take a little longer, but you may have a drinkable product in 6 months.   A cooler fermentation's flavors will also be more about the flavors from the honey than flavors from the yeast.
I would wait until you can keep the fermenter at 20C (68F).   You can do this now, if you have an insulated cooler large enough for your fermenter and some plastic bottles that you can freeze and rotate into the cooler.
Comment: I often see people saying that mead should sit for months before it is drunk, but I've had some very nice meads that were completely drinkable on bottling (2-3 weeks from pitching to bottling). And the bottle that lasted for months didn't taste noticably different.
Answer: To a large degree it depends upon the yeast. On one extreme is something like EC-1118 which can handle warmer temps without much of a problem (producing a very dry mead), on the other is something like D-47 (creating a more semi-sweet traditional mead) which (from what I've heard) will start kicking out a lot of fusel alcohols at those temps. Those fusels will take a lot of aging to smooth out, if ever.
That being said, if you can wait you probably should, since any yeast will have more of a risk of producing off-flavors as the temperature rises. Consider setting up a swamp cooler, which is basically just a big tub of water that you submerse your fermenter in, keeping the temp down with ice packs until primary fermentation is over.


Adding goodies to themes

Question: How do I add stuff to themes such as Arjuna-X without losing it when the theme is updated? Are child themes a good way to do it or are there other options? What if a new version of the theme comes out with native support for a feature I added?
Comment: What is Arjuna-X?
Comment: A popular theme.
Comment: Downloadable from the themes section.
Answer: There are three ways to do this
Functions.php
Put your additions in functions.php and back up that file before you update your theme.  Then you can port over any additions as necessary.
Child theme
Build a child theme that adds the functionality - in reality, this would be an even better way to use a custom functions.php file because it wouldn't be overwritten by updates.
Custom plug-in
Completely isolate the new functionality from the theme and add it in using WordPress' hooks and filters.  This way, you lose nothing in upgrades and can selectively turn off features if/when native support is added by the themes.
Answer: My vote would go toward making a plug-in.  Won't be overwritten by theme updates, and you can re-use it on other WP sites.  Writing plug-ins also helps one learn WordPress.
Answer: child themes is a great way, when yout feature a topic of the theme is; other is better as plugin. When you use a child theme, the is it great, when you use get_template_part() and not copy the complete template; its better for update the template and also use hooks for inlcude fetures in themes - better as the new template in the child theme; example. you will add a script to the head; use wp_enque_script or wp_head and not copy header.php in your child theme and add this in the code. When update the header.php in the basis-theme than wotks the update fine.

Adding goodies to themes


How do I motivate a primary schooler to practice musical instrument?

Question: There is a question for an 8 year old, however for a younger child it might be different.
My child can not get through all the excercises and after 3 minutes walks away from the piano. Should I bribe her with ice-cream or money or other rewards?
Answer: What kind of practice are you trying?  One of the key components of techniques like the Suzuki method is to have one parent sit down with the child during practice sessions.  The point is that the child will want to do it if the parent shows some interest in the child's activity.  If you just tell then to practice, turn on an egg timer, and then walk away (or worse, as everyone else has pointed out, bribe them), you turn what should be a joyous thing-- learning how to make music-- into an onerous chore that no one wants to do but everyone feels they should.
Our son really wants to play violin and piano, because he sees a lot of people around him doing it.  My wife plays piano now at least three times a week, and he sits with her and mashes the keys.  He's asked me to play (well, told me, because he's 3), and then proclaimed that my hands were broken because I couldn't.  He's seen our neighbors' daughter play violin--she got accepted to college as a violin major-- and was just awestruck and really wants to try that too.  He even sat still during Itzhak Perlman's performance on The Colbert Report, much to our amazement. Our neighbors have said that some of the most rewarding parenting experiences have been sitting with their daughter for an hour a day while she learns; personally, I'm looking forward to trying that.
Our daughter?  Couldn't care less.  Our neighbor's other kids?  Also, could not care less about making music.  Forcing them would probably result in their resentment, because they are just not interested.
Answer: I am the OP. I eventually used a bribe. One M&M lentil (or skittle) per song (page). In the first 4 months it worked. Later my child stopped requiring the reward and now can practice without the reward and loves the piano. So initial struggle was not worth it. You can bribe and fade it away later.
Comment: Good to hear that she discovered the joy of playing it! The initial struggle might appear "not worth it" to you but it clearly was an obstacle, a difficulty, that had to be overcome first.
Answer: No bribes!  If you reward your kids for an activity then the activity becomes an obstacle, something to be overcome to get what they want.  By definition an obstacle is something to be overcome, avoided, etc.
My son, also 8, just started piano lessons.  He asked for them which helps, but he has to practice every day for 10 minutes.  We're not too strict on the time and sometimes it lasts as little as 3 minutes.  We just stress that he do it every day.  In the future we'll worry about making the sessions a little longer.  Better he look at it as something interesting for a short time that something he dislikes for a longer time.
Comment: "Better he look at it as something interesting for a short time that something he dislikes for a longer time." Nice point.
Answer: As someone you started Piano at 5 and took lessons on and off for 8 years, I would have to ask if the child wants to continue the piano.
Without knowing how mature your child is, or what she may have committed to before hand, I would suggest that piano is either
1) Not suited to her attention span, which should be managed, first
2) Not as much fun as she had thought and she would rather do other things
3) or Lastly, Important to her, but not she may not understand the importance of practice.
Looking back on my time in piano, I practiced far too little. On the one hand, I really only cared for music theory and the sound of the instrument, I never really enjoyed playing.  If I had not been forced to continue, I probably would have taken it up, again, on my own, later.  I would probably have also benefited if my staying in piano had been contingent on practice.  Since both were 'mandatory', the less important one (to my parents: practice) suffered, and I never really benefited from the lessons.
There are also benefits in teaching your child to stick with something they don't like, but I don't think I learned that from being forced to stay in piano.
Answer: No bribes too.
I endorse what Brian says and add - make the practice one of the first things they do when they walk in door before anything else can distract them.
If any bribe - get an after school snack - apples or something cut up and ready for them as soon as they're finished.  They're usually famished and would even eat broccoli at that point!
Answer: My question to the parent is:
Why Piano?
Why not Tabla, Bansuri, Guitar, Sitar etc? Why only Piano?
Just because "you" find it cool? Have you tried to find out whether your child is interested in any of the other above mentioned instruments?
Is she even interested in learning "any" kind of music, or her interest is Photography?
Well, the only kind of Piano I have seen is this. That is not something which one can actually hang on the back and go to college, or walk on roads, or play on bed or sofa, or play while moving.
Okay, maybe there are some smaller sized Pianos too, but my second point is that if she feels that she can actually "show off" her talent in a "stylish" and "unique" way to her friends and neighbors the very same day she learns a new lesson, may be that'll inspire her?
Comment: Your alternative instruments may be a bit _exotic_ for some people, but I like the question _why piano?_ Lack of motivation seems to be the cause here, and looking for more interesting (motivating) alternatives is a good idea.
Comment: @TorbenGundtofte-Bruun You know, the real Piano is considered *exotic* in India. I have seen that Piano only in movies. :) :) Nevertheless my point here was that instead of levying our choices on the children, we should try to expose the child to various possibilities and then let him choose whatever the heck he likes, unlike my husband who is hell bent on making his future child a doctor. He has virtually vowed not to let the child to choose any other carrier! :rolleyes:


Creating a DDoS attack using DirectConnect

Question: I have been trying to hack around with Apex DirectConnect. What I wish to do is to utilize the querying nature of P2P apps like DC to generate a DDoS attack (see links for reference here, here and here).
To quote from one of the references:

These are the steps of a file download in DC protocol:
D = downloader
U = uploader
H = hub

D>H: $ConnectToMe <U's username> <D's IP and port>|
H>U: $ConnectToMe <U's username> <D's IP and port>|
U>D: TCP Connection to D's IP and port

...

The attack uses a vulnerability in the DC++ hubs (Verlihub-0.9.8c, Verlihub-0.9.8d-rc1, Ynhub <
1.0306, Ptokax < 0.3.5.2), respectively in the Client-to-Client communication described above.
The vulnerability is in step 2, when the hub forwards the $ConnectToMe request to the Uploader client
without verifying it. So the Downloader can put any IP address and port it wants in the $ConnectToMe
request and the receiving client (Uploader) will connect to that address, trying to continue the file
download protocol....

But I am falling short of a good tool which will allow me to tamper/forge packets for my purpose.
ngrep gave me good hope, but I guess the project isn't maintained anymore.
Any suggestions on what tools will allow me to tamper with all kinds of packets?

Edit: Being concerned over the low views and no answers/comments, I felt that I should clarify what I am looking for- I need something  on the lines of what Wireshark does as a packet sniffer- sniffs all varieities of packets. But I don't want to just sniff packets, I want to tamper them. There are many available tools to tamper with HTTP requests (like
fiddler). But I need something to deal with all kinds of protocols - IP, TCP, UDP and HTTP headers and payloads.
Answer: I think what you are looking for is Scapy. It can do all you request and more and is under active development.
"Scapy is a powerful interactive packet manipulation program. It is able to forge or decode packets of a wide number of protocols, send them on the wire, capture them, match requests and replies, and much more."


Uninstall Ubuntu 11.10 / Install Linux Mint 12

Question: I'd like to switch my system to Linux Mint. For that purpose I made a live USB drive to boot from. However when booting I'm not asked from what to boot. Ubuntu is just being loaded, and then it doesn't work properly. Do I have to uninstall Ubuntu first? If so, how?
Answer: The BIOS
The BIOS (Basic In and Output System) software is built into the PC, and is the first code run by a PC when powered on. Its job is to check for hardware and load operating systems it may find.
For more information you can check out the Booting article on Wikipedia.

Editing the boot-order
When your computer starts up, it checks all drives for operating systems in a particular order as set in the BIOS's configuration. The BIOS loads the first OS it finds. To make your BIOS check for operating systems on a CD or USB first, instead of your hard drive, you have to edit the boot-order. How you do so will differ from machine to machine.
When you turn on your computer, you will generally get some sort of a splash screen where generally two options appear: setup and boot-menu. These options are bound to a certain key on your keyboard. Generally one of the F-keys, the Escape key or the Delete key.
You need to hit the key associated with the "setup" option, or something similar when the splash screen is displayed. Then shift the values in such a way that USB is on top, anything else is optional. Once you hit save and the machine restarts, it should boot off the USB, provided it is inserted.

Removing operating systems
Operating systems are installed to partitions, sections of your hard disks. When an OS is installed, the installer will generally create or ask you to create the partitions to which the OS will be installed on.
The simplest way of removing an OS is to remove the partitions it is installed on. This will generally not remove any data stored on the disk, a quick format merely removes pointers to data on the disk, so that the data appears to be deleted and can be overwritten by another OS.
Before you remove a partition, remember to backup any important data you might have on there, because it is not easily recovered once you hit "format".
This process is handles by the Linux Mint installer, which means you won't have to worry about it.
Answer: You should go into your BIOS by turning the computer on and pressing either the F2, F11, F3 ,F12 or ESC key while your manufacturer's logo shows up. Then look for something like "boot order" or just "boot" and put the flash drive before the hard drive and then reboot.
Regarding uninstalling Ubuntu, you don't uninstall operating systems, you format the drive and install a new one.
Comment: How do I format the drive?
Answer: Your problem isn't in fact that hard to solve, Lisa.
You say you have made a "Live USB Drive", I take it that you used the utility in ubuntu to make a bootable USB from a Linux Mint image, which is the right thing to to.
Next is booting from it. Insert the drive in a USB port, and reboot your computer. Usually the first image shown will be "ASUS", "DELL", "HP" or whatever brand your motherboard (or computer) is. From here you will have to enter the BIOS, to make the computer boot from the USB drive instead of your harddrive. Since I only own Asus products, I can't give you a complete list of keys vs brands, but I have to press [DEL] to enter BIOS. Other commonly used keys include [F2], [F8], [F10], [F11]. But as said, different brands use different keys.
Now to the tricky part. BIOS's look different, but you will be looking for a section named Boot. In there, you should be able to select your USB drive (either it's listed under your optical drive, harddrive etc., or you might have to select harddrive, and choose from a list, which drive to use.)
Check it out, usually it's pretty straight forward. Just remember to insert the USB drive before booting the computer and entering BIOS.


What are the best ways to implement cross browser css?

Question: What are the best ways to implement cross browser css?
Rule: one approach for an answer.
Comment: Answer: Drop support for IE
Comment: if you can't support IE, you shouldn't be developing on the web. essentially you are writing off a % of your clients customers, from the start. moreover, they tend to be our parents so its pretty disenchanting to ostracize them. but really, thats just the most anti-web stance anyone can take. we aren't talking about native silos, this is webdev: the open web. build for all, or don't build at all.
Answer: You can use conditional comments to fix issues with Internet Explorer. Aside from that, you shouldn't ever need to target Firefox/Chrome/Opera separately from each other, they all support the standards.
Caching shouldn't enter into it; you should be serving the same code for all browsers.
Comment: IE10 will not support conditional comments  - http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2011/07/06/html5-parsing-in-ie10.aspx
Comment: @mvark: well hopefully there will not be a need for conditional comments in IE10, since they are supporting the spec pretty well. Obviously conditional comments will still work with IE6-8 which is their main use.
Comment: ie10 and up do support conditional compilation...aka conditional comments for jscript...targeting that, you can then append .ie10 or whatever class to body element via jscript, thus targeting them
Answer: The best, easiest way is to use a library. Libraries like OOCSS, Blueprint, or 960gs are already engineered to replicate their display across the major browsers. All you're left with after that, most of the time, is your making sure your custom styles are cross-browser compliant and that your markup doesn't produce any problems.
Avoid hacks like the plague if at all possible (yes, use conditionals).
Comment: +1 - I do this.  The size isn't optimal, but the speed of delivering the site goes way up and I have a built in place to optimize my code when the site takes off.
Answer: When I read questions and answers like this I start to think I might be crazy, but I have written fairly complex websites using quite a bit of css, including css3 and other trickiness, and I have never had to resort even to conditional comments.
I do however constantly check my work accross multiple browsers (I code predominantly in Chrome, and test in firefox and ie7) during coding.  When I see issues come up, I just take a step back, figure out why things are rendering differently, and often choose a slightly different approach.
That being said, I do have an intellectual interest it these different hacks and methods.  I particularly like reading about techniques used by CSS3 PIE and modernizr.
The best way to approach cross-browser coding is to be aware of the differnt ways different browsers will interpret your code, and write it in a way that they cannot help but get it right.
Answer: design and develop with web standards
validate your documents, and style sheets constantly!
cross-browser/cross-platform test daily!
at the very least before you submit a pull request or make a commit to a repository.
you should be writing conforming documents anyways, but this is crucial for writing cross-browser/cross-platform css.
note: the true power of validation is not conforming 100% of the time; you'll get super powers once you understand what doesn't need to be validated, can be put off, and should be corrected immediately.
and thats the power: constant validation reinforces the rules of the specifications, and you will be well-versed. constantly cross-browser/cross-platform testing keeps you keen on which browser's user agent style sheets you are doing battle with the most. conform your styles as such, you have even less problems.
you can use libraries and frameworks if you like, but you are abstracting all the hurt and pain out of your workflows and you'll never get the fine-detailed eye for styles that you are requesting here. however, libs/frameworks do a good job of granting you that power, albeit that typically comes with page bloat.
reset.css, normalizr.css, and even the *{border:none; margin:0; padding:0) reset are weapons in your arsenal to equalize the playing field between the browser rending your styles, or its own.
yes, i did recommend the * "hack", with two other options. each has their own place when doing battle with user-agents.
moreover, it is absurd to not take advantage of the flaws certain user-agents have, because said flaws will not render with 100% continuity and need to be addressed. in doing so, the flaws themselves provide you with the perfect hook to feature-detect, or even sniff-sniff them out, so they can be treated accordingly!
use every hack, flaw, feature, non-feature that you can get your hands on to bend the dom and force the browsers inline.
......if you have to. but if you're developing with web standards, you'll find that you won't be needing them as much as you were in the past.
and since you are relying on them less, when you do get an opportunity to use one to address an issue, use it with the quickness! you already know what the problem is, and you also have a solution targeting the problem and nothing else.
each browser has their own ways of being targeted solely, the most obvious being conditional comments.
use conditional comments for ie6-9, and use conditional compilation to render styles for ie10 and ie11.
but again, if you are dwws, and dvwws, you may include them in every document you create, but find the style sheets are barren, hosting a handful of styles merely targeting 1-3 pixel differences, or getting background-colors to stretch out (or not) 100%, etc.
Answer: CSS3 PIE looks pretty promising as a CSS3 compatibility layer.  Of course, there are other cross-browser concerns for previous CSS versions.
Related question regarding IE6, lots of useful info: Should I bother supporting IE6?
Comment: Their homepage doesn't work on my IE
Answer: Prefacing this with a warning against using CSS hacks.
From a pure performance standpoint, caching will be more effective with a single file if for no other reason than it responds once to a single HTTP request from the client. In addition to serving the same file to every user regardless of browser, Conditional comments block downloads in some situations.
To target all your different Internet Explorer versions in a single file there are various CSS hacks. Keep in mind that these will render your CSS invalid (if validation is a concern for you).
body {
    color: red;         /* all browsers */
    color : green\9;    /* IE8 and below */
    *color : yellow;    /* IE7 and below */
    _color : orange;    /* IE6 */
}
The conditional comments blocking is really only an issue in some cases in IE8 when there is a conditional comment. Depending on what you think about supporting Internet Explorer, this may or may not be an issue.
I personally use conditional comments. I personally believe that CSS hacks are awful, and that any performance hit that comes from conditional comments be it real or imagined is not worth the trouble that CSS hacks often cause.
Conditional comments are relatively easy to implement, and there's a great article about their use on Quirksmode. The following will address only IE6:

There is syntax that will allow you to target Internet Explorer of version equal to, less than, greater than, less than or equal to, greater than or equal to a given version number. The example above is one of equal to.
Comment: spare yourself.. never EVER use css hacks, only use conditional statements.
Answer: What I do is use a reset CSS and then conditional statements. The reset CSS fixes almost all of the problems and the conditional fix any problems in IE. If there are differences between the other browsers, I usually try to work around them, such as increasing the width for all browsers or a font size.
I personally use the YUI reset CSS.


A/C electrical problem on 92 Civic

Question: I've had intermittent A/C failure on my 92 Civic DX going on for a couple years now. It's clearly an electrical problem. Normally it's solvable by putting some pressure on the control panel, but sometimes not. Once the system cools down (or dry out?), it seems to stay on well. I've recently done some diagnostics and determined:

When the failure occurs, there's a voltage of about +3 to +9 volts between the blue/red wire out of the control panel (which runs from the A/C switch to the A/C thermostat and eventually the condenser fan relay and A/C clutch relay) and the vehicle body. When it's working, the voltage is +0.8 to +1.8.
Making a connection from this point to the vehicle body (or any good ground) causes the A/C to come on, and then the compressor clutch engages and disengages as it should according to the A/C thermostat.
The ground to the control panel has a voltage of +0.5 relative to the vehicle body, but it does not seem to be affected by whether the A/C or fan is on/off.

My best guess is that the connection inside the fan speed switch (which also acts as a master) or the A/C switch, or the wiring between them, is loose or corroded, but I haven't been able to figure out how to remove the control panel to open it up and test it without pulling off the air mix control cable for the heater, and it looks difficult to reconnect.
I'm looking for advice from someone who's experienced similar problems or has ideas for anything else I could try or how to easily take out the control panel. 'til then I'll keep shorting the blue/red wire to ground. :-)
Update: Is it possible this problem is caused by the infamous ICU capacitor issue?
http://honda-tech.com/showthread.php?t=3089672
I also have several other electrical issues going on: the headlight switch does not work reliably (I'm working around this by putting a jumper between the parking light and headlight fuses in the fusebox so that the parking lights turn on the headlights too) and the wipers sometimes don't work on intermittent mode. Also, some of the lights in the dashboard come and go at random.
Answer: Not sure how Honda's system works, but for BMW's there was a final stage resistor that would go bad and make the system not work right. The system would either run full speed at all times, or not run, or run whenever it felt like. Replacing this part made the system go back to normal.

A/C electrical problem on 92 Civic


Mathematics base for data mining and artificial intelligence algorithms.

Question: Could you give me some clarification about data mining and artificial intelligence algorithms? What mathematics base they used for? Could you give me starting point, in mathematics, to understand these types of algorithms?
Comment: To give an example, David Ferrucci, who led IBM DeepQA/Watson's win on Jeopardy, said he it was destined to be a hybrid system: a team of 20-25 people for 4 years from multiple disciplines, including NLP, computational linguistics, game theory, stochastics and optimization and other disciplines worked on it.
Comment: @Zagorulkin, you might want to ask this question on [computer science.SE](http://cs.stackexchange.com/).
Answer: As Paxinum mentioned, AI algorithms are sort of solving optimization problems. You would need to solve maximum and minimum problems.
You may use neural network or classical programming methods or both of them in the same program.
It depends on which problem you struggle. If Image processing or voice recognition includes in your program then neural network would be the best choice because the classical programs would have many steps to solve the problem and it may produce unacceptable delays for some inputs because many comparing steps will be required in it for all possibilities but the neural networks would act at the same speed (approximately) for all kind of inputs.One of the big disadvantage of neural networks is required many self learning steps to know how it must react for an input. Many input and output examples can be  needed  to get the best AI's network. If we do not teach enough with many examples, some results may be very absurd . That can be big risk for critical AI applications such as airplane control system.  Some problems can be needed graph approach because teaching process can be very long  and neural network can be enormous.
For example, If you want to do a chess program, you may give values of chess pieces.Thus, The computer can decide which step is more valuable.
while doing my chess program, I used the following values for chess pieces.This will help to give metrics on branch of the graph.
The king : uncountable  (Theoretically infinity because you cannot lose it.)
The queen :8
The rook  :5
The bishop:4
The knight:3
The pawn  :1
After that you would need to play for each pieces for yourself and to see which pieces of opponent can be gotten. You need to add positive value of the piece that you got. And then you need to play for the opponent but you will assign negative value of the piece that you lost . You can apply more and more deepness to enlarge the graph to see benefits and loses. I have added 2 deepness (Play for me-Play for opponent-Play for me-Play for opponent, It lasts about few second to move) You will get a final value for each first step. Now you need data mining to find max benefit and minimum lose.
I found max value after playing each steps and then If there are  more than one the same value, I also focused on maximum possible step for my side and minimum possible step for the opponent side. Thus, I would have maximum playing area but the opponent can have minimum area.There can be created many different strategy for better play. I just wanted give an example.  There can be found many different strategies. I do not claim it is the best strategy for chess game. The chess game is very complex game and you may need to add the best known starting strategies and some database moves that are already known as the best moves.  Mostly during final of the game, you will be alone with your AI software if you cannot add all possible known best moves. I think such database will be enormous if you want add many best known moves and it is not practical games applications because a huge database will be needed.
Finally, AI is very deep subject in math world , we are on the shore of that huge ocean yet.
Comment: "For example, If you want to do a chess program, you need to give values of chess pieces." I'd not say you *need* to. What you actually need is to assign a value to each *position*. That doesn't mean that assigning values to pieces is not a good idea; it certainly is, because it simplifies assigning values to a position (after all, professional chess players do, which is a strong hint that it's useful).
Comment: @celtschk: I changed my strong expression. As I said , I just wanted to explain my method . Of course there can be many different strategy. Thanks a lot again for advice
Answer: You need combinatorics, mostly graph-theory. If you want to mess around with neural networks, it is probably a nice idea to throw in some analysis as well.
All AI algorithms are sort of solving optimization problems, so linear algebra (with the least square method) is essential. Now, singular value decomposition and data mining goes hand in hand, so more linear algebra is needed.
Fundamentals in logic is needed to understand some concepts in other areas in AI,
such as constraint programming. This can be used for solving minesweeper or Sudoku.
Comment: could you give me a good start up point to learn data mining fundamentals?
Answer: Artificial intelligence is a really vast field, and there are a lot of misconceptions about it. One of the most spread is that neural networks are great :) Actually, they are slow, and not very accurate. But they have a very popular name indeed.
As one that works in the field, using and writing algorithms, I hope to offer a correct insight on what is all about.
The main mathematics used here is statistics. Most of the algorithms relate to big data manipulation - and the natural steps towards it go though statistics. Most of the algorithms in AI, like neural networks, flann, decision trees, etc, are ways to automatically classify and sort data, by means of statistical models.
Their ability is that they can learn and use those statistics in a way that's easy for someone without a math or computer science background. By example, if you have a database with medical records and conditions, you can feed it into an "intelligent" system and it will make probabilities out of them - when someone enters a hospital, he/she can be quickly classified by a system, based on the prior experience learned by the algorithm.
Another area of AI, as stated by the other posters, is optimization. Many optimization tasks cannot be performed in a timely manner. So, many algorithms try to find an approximate value by searching randomly a highly dimensional space: genetic algorithms, random forests, etc.
By example, a face detection algorithm will have to search a space of about 10.000 dimensions to find out what a face looks like, to be able to recognize it in other photos. Different mathematical methods for search space reduction can be employed, like SVD. But a great success was found with random algorithms - randomly pick a few dimensions, find the most useful, store it, and repeat the process until you have a good enough search space.
My advice is to focus on a specific field and learn gradually. Data mining is one of them. Computer vision can be another way, and sound/audio language processing as a similar alternative. Text processing (at a language level) is a very interesting direction - think about Siri.
Finally, a link to one of the most impressive pieces of AI I have seen lately. It's pure math. Optimizations, more exactly. Dancing drones
Comment: I have grown in the 'neural network is bad' era as well, but I belive it is staging a revival. Check deep networks ..
Answer: The base for what you ask about is really statistics! So the basic math you need coincides with the math you need for statistics: calculus & real analysis, probability, linear algebra (from a practical standpoint, this may be the most used by you, since it is really used EVERYWHERE, learn it by heart, not only concepts but also manipulative skill).  This are the three most important, then some others: combinatorics, optimization, and, for what it is worth, I have found that abstract algebra, especially group theory, is also very useful, but a lot of people is doing very well without it ....


How to resize portrait PSDs to landscape orientation without getting pixelated?

Question: I have a PSD available in portrait orientation but I want it to be resized to landscape mode for creating its PowerPoint templates. I am completely noob to Photoshop, hence can anybody guide me to convert the portrait mode PSD to a landscape PSD without the the images in it getting stretched out?
Comment: I assume from the wording that the file has _multiple_ images in it in a layout, and the question is about moving those around. That makes this pretty far off topic.
Answer: Resizing image while not constraining proportions will make it look rather squashed, distorted and otherwise not flattering. Why not resize it to fit with some negative space on the sides (or one side), it might even be good to put some text next to it, or even use two portrait-orientated images on the same page if you think looks better... This is not an answer to your question, but it's worth thinking about it...
Or the other solution would be to crop it to fit your dimensions, but you will be losing a large part of your image which is on the other hand questionable on flattering your images... For this, use the crop tool or the Canvas Size operation (Image->Canvas Size).
And another thing, pixelization occurs when you enlarge the with or height (or both) of the image, so you might have a small image, or you need to be reducing the size of your image to achieve what you want...
Answer:
You could rotate 90°. But that probably wouldn't work for the image.
You can crop but you will lose a large part of the image that way.

Conceptually, there doesn't seem to be anything else you could do (in any program with any image type) if you don't want 'the images in it getting stretched out.'
Answer: Have a look at something called seam carving or liquid rescaling. I'm not sure of any implementations, just the theory, but there are some links in the Wikipedia article.