What is the difference between EF and EF-S lenses?

Question: This is specific to Canon, but what is the difference between EF and EF-S lenses?
Answer: EF-S lenses are specifically designed for APS-C digital bodies and optimized for the fact that they have smaller sensor and mirror. EF-S lenses are marked with a white square on the mount instead of a red dot that EF-glass has, and can be only used on EF-S compatible bodies (almost all of smaller-sensor Canon DSLRs, up to EOS 7D).
Film and larger-sensor digital cameras (5D, 1D, 1Ds) take only EF lenses. If you have a camera with EF-S mount support (such as EOS 7D, 50D or 500D), you can use both EF and EF-S lenses.
Comment: Do the EF-S lenses still suffer from the 1.6 crop factor i.e. making a 50mm become 80mm - or do you get the proper focal distance as specified on the lens?
Comment: @Vidar: You still need to apply the crop factor to get 35mm-equivalent field of view.
Comment: @Vidar Please see: http://photo.stackexchange.com/a/38915/15871
Answer:
The "S" in EF-S stands for "short back
  focus", which means that the rear
  element of the lens is closer to the
  image sensor than on regular 35 mm SLR
  cameras. The proximity of the rear
  element to the image sensor greatly
  enhances the possibilities for wide
  angle and very wide angle lenses,
  enabling them to be made smaller,
  lighter (containing less glass),
  faster (larger aperture) and less
  expensive. Most current Canon EF-S
  lenses are wide angle.

Canon_EF-S_lens_mount
Comment: That is the real point.  Since the sensor to mount plate distance is the same, in theory, an EF-S lens can be used on any EOS camera (then just crop the vignetted image down to APS-C size).  But reality sets in when the larger mirror hits the protruding rear element of the EF-S lens.  OTOH, maybe an EF-S lens can work via a macro extender.  I've used such an extender with my 60mm EF-S macro on a 7D.  These extenders work on other cameras.  I'd expect that to work.
Answer: Any EF fit lenses you own (usually marked with a red dot near the EOS mount) will work fine with the 5D mkII
Any EF-S fit lenses you own (usually marked with a white square near the EOS mount) won't work or fit the 5d mkII, as these are designed to fit crop sensor cameras like the T2i and not full frame sensors like the 5D mkII
As an addition, some non-canon brand lenses designed for crop sensor cameras do still come with a EF mount, so they will fit on a 5d mkII, but often won't fit the full frame of the image. I have a Sigma 8-16mm that is EF fit and you can see the lens hood on a full frame until you zoom in to around 14mm. It works fine however
Comment: Killer lens BTW, what does it look like without the hood? Can you post a sample? Thanks!
Comment: Sadly the 8-16's lens hood is a permanent fixture to protect the bulbous front element. Also the only full frame camera I have is a film camera, and I don't have those couple of shots I took like that printed off.
Comment: oh man, of course. My GF uses that lens and I forgot you can't take it off.
Answer: EF-s lenses are a slightly different format whereby the rear element sits closer to the lens, this is possible due to the smaller mirror with APS-C sensor. The distance from the back of the lens to the image plane is known as the back-focus distance, hence the s in EF-S standing for short back focus. Other manufacturers have lenses designed for smaller sensors with appropriately smaller image circles but they don't have a different back focus distance.
Having the lens sit slightly closer does make it slightly easier to design wide angle lenses, however I've heard the reason Canon introduced EF-S lenses was so they could scale down existing lens designs as a base for the optical design to avoid having to start from scratch. Hence the EF-S 60mm macro is a 1:1.6th scale EF 100mm macro etc.
It's often said you can't use EF-S lenses on a full frame body (such as the 5D, 1Ds) but this is not strictly true. Canon use a different shaped rear baffle to physically prevent you mounting as the mirror could hit the lens and cause damage. However this can be removed to allow mounting, and since the rear element moves when zooming there are positions that allow shooting. Vignetting is a problem as EF-S lenses project a smaller image circle, but again the image circle can get bigger while zooming so some focal lengths work ok.
Using an EF-S lens on a full frame body would be extreme however the 1.3 crop APS-H sensor of the 1D line is quite amenable EF-S lenses, and the Canon EF-S 10-22mm in particular. Whilst you can't go wider than 12mm, you do get a 12-22mm providing a sorely needed ultra wide option for the 1D. You do get some vignetting at 12mm, which can be fixed apparently if you Dremel off the filter threads :-O
Comment: +1 for the interesting notes of hacking (literally) the EF-s mount.
Answer: EF was the mount for the new EOS system that replaced their FD mount in 1987.
EF-S lenses are specifically designed for the smaller APS-C sensor size, like on the Rebels. They're not compatible on full-frame cameras. These cameras have a white square on the mount's surface, along with the typical EF red dot that all EOS cameras have.
Answer: EF-S lenses are a specific mount that was designed to better suit the new digital bodies.  EF Lenses can be used on both digital and film EF mount bodies, but typically EF-S lenses are not backwards compatible to EF mount film bodies.
Answer: The EF-S lenses are specially constructed for cameras with smaller sensors, so it can't be used on a camera with a full frame sensor. That back lens of an EF-S lens is further back, so the mirror of a full frame camera would hit the back of the lens.
An EF lens is made to cover the full frame, so it will also work on cameras with smaller sensors.
The image circle of an EF-S lens is smaller than the one of an EF lens, to correspond with the smaller sensor. When you use an EF lens on a camera with a smaller sensor, you will simply use a smaller part of the image circle. This has the positive side effect that it will reduce the vignetting significantly.
Generally an EF-S lens is cheaper than the corresponding EF lens, as it can be constructed with smaller optical lenses, and it can make use of the extra space inside the camera given by the smaller mirror.
Comment: @fmark - theoretically, it should be cheaper to build an EF-S lens (as Guffa explained), so for the same money, you could, theoretically, build a better lens of the same equivalent focal length and aperture.
Comment: So, all other things being equal, should a lens of the same spec and price be better quality in EF-S compared to EF?
Comment: @fmark - not necessarily. First, I think it is quite hard, if not impossible, to find lenses of same spec and price (by spec, I mean the *equivalent* focal length). Then, you say "all other things being equal" - what do you expect to change, then?
Comment: Which is pretty much exactly what Canon did with the EF-S 55-250mm f/45.6 vs. the EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6. It gives the same image quality with a reduced size, weight, and cost.
Answer: Small sensor Canon DLSRs will accept both EF-S and EF lenses, but canon made it physically impossible to attach a EF-S lens to the full frame cameras (5D & 1Ds) (due to mirror interference as @Guffa points out). This makes the Ef lenses more versatile as they will work with all canon EOS cameras.
If canon ever make full frame sensors standard on its DSLRs your collection of EF-S lenses will be worth a lot less. This is probably part of the reason that there is no EF-S "L" lens. The LONG-term resale value of EF-S lenses are a bit more doubtful than EF lenses.
Answer: Some of your lenses might be usable on the 5D; others might not be.
Specifically, any EF lens will be usable, but EF-S lenses won't be (see this question for the details). EF lenses have a red dot by the lens mount, and EF-S lenses have a white square.


What are the placards in this picture?

Question: I've always wondered what these things are such an awkward angle. I only see them in Whitehouse shots.
Answer: They are for the teleprompter.  The words are on a screen below, the angle is to reflect to the speaker's line of site...
I'm sure there are different implementations, but that's the basic gist.
Comment: @EvanCarroll, well, I guess it's less awkward than looking down at the podium when you're speaking :)
Comment: It isn't an awkward viewing angle at all. It looks like the page is held vertically in front of you. That is why the monitor is also at the 45 degree angle.
Comment: oh how awkward, I'd think it would be very hard to read that viewing angle.
Answer: These are teleprompters, or more accurately the upper mirror of a free standing teleprompter.  The screen is at the base of the device and can be larger and brighter than would otherwise fit on a small stand.  They place the screen at a 45 degree angle and then place the mirror at a 45 degree angle such that the image looks like the screen is hovering directly in front of the speaker.
Teleprompters are actually used for far more than political presentations, but typically if the speaker is not presenting to a live audience, they will be presenting to a camera.  For camera setups, they actually use a half-silvered (see-through) mirror that will project the text directly in front of the camera lens.  This allows the speaker (such as a news caster) to read a script directly off the camera as they are looking at it.
In the case of live presentations however, they need to be able to engage the audience, which means they need to look around but still have the script close at hand.  Using multiple teleprompters allows for this.

What are the placards in this picture?


Basic Amino Acid Residue Binding Mechanism to DNA

Question: I understand that many protein DNA binding domains bind to DNA via basic residues such as Arginine and Lysine. But what is the mechanism used to bind to DNA and where on the DNA would these residues bind?
Answer: This question has no particular answer.  There are several families of DNA binding proteins, some of them bind specifically (e.g. restriction enzymes like EcoRI which binds to and cuts GAATTC or transcription factors like lac repressor which binds a particular point of the e coli genome about 25 base pairs long) and some of them bind semi-specifically (e.g. zinc fingers which bind GC rich regions), others non specifically (e.g. the sliding DNA clamp).
For all of these proteins, they will have a tendency to have positively charged amino acids facing the DNA because the DNA's phosphate backbone is negatively charged.  There are lots of protein motifs (like the helix turn helix motif) that fits into the major or minor groove of the DNA.  The lysine and argenine are important because they are the positively charged amino acids.  Histidine is also positively charged, but it is not as long and flexible, and doesn't seem to fit as often or as well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA-binding_protein
Answer: I'd make a comment if I could, but our lab has worked with a lot of poly lysine peptides for binding DNA. In our experience, lysine works better than arginine, and both work a lot better than histidine. Histidine has a lower pka, so it tends to be less positively charged at physiological pH. As far as proteins binding to specific DNA sequence, the double helix has two grooves, major and minor. The "sides" of the base pairs are accessible through the grooves, and proteins probably recognize patterns in those grooves. An A-T pair presents a different shape than a G-C pair, and DNA binding portions of proteins can discriminate these bumps and bind to the helix.


Do the following set of Dehn twists generate the mapping class group?

Question:
If $S$ is the surface illustrated below, do the Dehn twists about the red curves generate the mapping class group $\operatorname{MCG}(S,\partial S)$?

http://math.stanford.edu/~pardon/img/dehntwists.png
Comment: Hello, the picture has expired.
Answer: No.  If they did, then they would still generate the mapping class group of the closed surface that results from gluing a disc to the boundary component.  However, in that surface they all commute with the hyperelliptic involution, which is not central for $g$ at least $3$.
In fact, Humphries proved that you need at least $2g+1$ Dehn twists to generate the mapping class group.  This is contained somewhere in Farb-Margalit's primer on mapping class groups.
In the closed surface, these Dehn twists actually generate the centralizer of the hyperelliptic involution, which is known as the hyperelliptic mapping class group.  This is a theorem of Birman and Hilden, which can also be found somewhere in Farb-Margalit.
Answer: Humphries arguments are in
Humphries, Stephen P.
Generators for the mapping class group. Topology of low-dimensional manifolds (Proc. Second Sussex Conf., Chelwood Gate, 1977), pp. 44–47,
Lecture Notes in Math., 722, Springer, Berlin, 1979.
The key argument for the $\ne 2g$ case is that the symplectic group $Sp(2g, \mathbf F_2)$  is not generated by $2g$ transvections (which maybe was well known). Steve and I joined up to present this argument and more in our paper
``Orbits under symplectic
transvections II:  the case  $K=\bf F_2$'', Proc. London
Math. Soc. (3) 52 (1986) 532-556.
and Steve followed this up with much more work in this area.


2013 Russian meteor event, Sonic Boom or Explosion Boom?

Question: In the lastest meteor event in Russia there was a big BOOM heard long after the meteor had passed. In this youtube video we can see at 4:30 the Meteor passing.. then hearing the BOOM at 7:00 , 150 seconds later, so what cause the boom?  Sonic Boom from the meteor entering the atmosphere? or the big explosion that happens a bit later on its decent?
Comment: There's good coverage at [Bad Astronomy](http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy.html), the blog of the astronomer Phil Plait. Note this "UPDATE (23:00 UTC) After looking through more footage, it's become clear that the multiple booms heard were in fact explosions, and not just shock waves from the meteoroid's passing through the air. In some videos, you can see multiple flashes of light inside the contrail, which are clearly from the rock breaking up and then burning up very rapidly and with intense energy—the very definition of an explosion."
Comment: Here are direct links to the Bad Astronomy articles
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/02/16/mt_taranaki_a_circular_volcano_seen_from_space.html
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/02/15/russian_meteorite_fragment_may_have_fallen_in_frozen_lake.html
Answer: The flash seen in this video may not be the glow of initial entry since the camera angle is angled somewhat along the path of the meteor; it is likely the active burning after the meteor has already entered the atmosphere.  The mesosphere begins about 50 km above the earth's surface.  However, the speed of sound in this region is a bit lower than the speed of sound on earth's surface, ranging between $280\text{m/s}$ and $330 \text{m/s}$. Coupled with the fact that we continue to hear less intense popping sounds for more than two full minutes afterwards suggests that the large boom heard is the shock wave, while the following sounds are actually from earlier events.
Meteors tend to enter the atmosphere at between 20 and 50 km/s, although they may be slower or considerably faster than this.  This means that if their journey were straight down through the atmosphere, rather than across it, the trip would take 2 seconds or less.  The trajectory of the meteor across the sky illustrates that it is a more glancing impact.  The fact that the first sound takes 140 seconds to reach the camera indicates that the meteor is about 45 km from the camera.  This is not reflective of the height of the meteor, but the absolute distance of the meteor path from the camera.  There are estimates that the breakup altitude is around 20km.  The following two minutes of reports reflect a linear distance of about 40 km of travel ($120\text{sec}\times300 \text{m/s}=40 \text{km}$), which probably took the meteor about 2 seconds to cover.  So what we hear afterward is like a slow motion recording of the meteors breakup history, slowed down by a factor of somewhere between 40 and 100 times.   If we could have heard these breakups in a frame comoving with the meteor, it would have sounded nearly like a single, continuous explosion. The first and loudest boom we hear is likely not from initial entry, but rather the sonic boom from the meteor's closest approach to the camera.
Answer: When this meteorite entered the atmosphere, it was traveling at approx 36000 miles per hour. Now consider this fact; I have a roof rack that creates a howling sound when I speed up to 100 kph. This howling sound is caused by air moving past the roof rack. I can hear this howling sound with my car windows closed. If there were sensors mounted on the vehicle to sense vibrations, there would be vibrations that could be recorded from the air flowing past the roof rack. Now consider an object entering the atmosphere at an extreme velocity like the meteorite. The atmospheric abrasion not only causes the meteorite to vaporize and glow brightly but as it enters the more and more dense atmosphere, the vibrations set up by the friction of the air would not sound like a howl as my roof rack does, it would be more like standing behind a jet engine totally unbearable, and that's only mild in sound. Now as the object enters further into the dense atmosphere, The sonic vibrations, if you can call them that, become so violent, that the rock cannot take those stresses and as a result shatters. Then you see a bright fireball flash as all the pieces are exposed to the air and quickly vaporize and burn. Being much smaller now and quickly slowed down by the air resistance, you would only find a few little pieces that would cool and rain down. That's why after the bright explosion, you could only see a few wisps vapor trails following the cooling debris. The sonic boom heard by this object flying at this velocity and height would be vey very very loud. Just think if a jet making a sonic boom sounds like a loud thunder clap and not only shakes windows but can shatter them, then try to multiply this by several thousand times and you get what this meteorite did. Now sometimes there are meteorites that don't break up as they enter the atmosphere. That depends much on the composition, often rock, other times pure nickel and iron; which can stand tremendous vibrational stresses, speed angle of entry and most likely other factors that we can only speculate when dealing with speeds such as these traveling through the air. Now just consider this last thought if a piece of the moon, which is, I hear, made of blue cheese, broke off and came hurling into our atmosphere, what that would be like. I'd hate to speculate...just a thought to consider for the future.
Answer: At 4:30, light from the burning meteor reached the video camera. At that time the meteor was still in the air and it did not generate the boom. After 150 seconds the sound waves reached the video which means that the point where the boom were generated was  at a distance of 333 m/s  x 150 s = 49.95 Km from the spot where the video was shot. The reason for the boom could be either because the meteor exploded in air due to heat caused by air friction or because the meteor hit the earth as one major chunk of rock (along with other tiny pieces) and we are hearing the sound due to impact. My guess is that since we hear one big explosion followed by multiple smaller explosion, the meteor has just exploded into several pieces just before hitting earth. The first explosion is due to the exploding meteor and the smaller explosion are due the pieces hitting the earth.


How to choose between web hosting and cloud hosting?

Question: How to choose between normal web hosting and cloud hosting, what are the key points that can make this decision easier.
Does everything I can do in the normal web hosting is possible in cloud one? In Brief, when to choose which?
Answer: I think you are over-simplifying the types of hosting that you could get. Here they are, what they're good for and what they're not so good for:
Shared Hosting
You are on a server with potentially hundreds of other people. There are pre-defined limits, such  as the amount of disk space / databases you can have and the amount of data you can transfer per month. This is the cheapest of them all, sometimes as little as $3 / monthly but beware - as soon as your site starts consuming more than minimal resources you'll be suspended and asked to upgrade.
Additionally, stuff like PHP/SSH/etc are configured in 'paranoid' mode. You might not have access to certain functions and you must depend on your host to install things that you may need (i.e. subversion / mercurial).
This is good for people who want to host a personal or business card type site. An off shoot of this is called reseller hosting, which gives you the ability to create additional hosting accounts for your customers.
Note, this is not PCI/DSS/HIPAA/Etc compliant.
Virtual Dedicated Server
Your site gets its own unique view of a shared server. You can configure your services and software just like you could on a dedicated server, however there are no real resource guarantees. "Bad neighbors" is all it takes to bring your site to a crawl.
I usually recommend this for developers who need a sand box that allows them to configure stuff the way that they want it.
Again, not PCI/DSS/HIPAA/Etc compliant
Virtual Private Server
This is, for all intents and purposes, a dedicated server that comes with a certain amount of guaranteed resources. You'll be the super user, you can do whatever you wish. Depending on  the platform, your resources limits may be able to 'burst' on occasion in order to deal with spikes in usage. Unfortunately, this also means that your resources suffer if several neighbors also need to 'burst'.
I recommend going with a Xen provider if you go this route, you will never have less than what you pay for.
I recommend all new sites that anticipate any kind of traffic start out on nothing less than a VPS.
This can be, depending on the type of hypervisor and storage used made PCI/etc compliant.
Fully Dedicated Server
Exactly as it reads, a server that is yours and yours alone. You can rent one monthly, or purchase one and pay for it to be located in a data center. I recommend going with the renting option first, it requires less investment to scale up if needed. When revenue permits, you can always buy your own servers. By that time, you'll have a very firm grasp on the kind of hardware that you need.
I recommend this for start up companies that can afford a few hundred a month on hosting, or anyone that has to adhere to security standards. If you store CC info of any kind, or any kind of medical / health information, you'll really want exclusive access to your own hardware.
Cloud Hosting
I have built several cloud platforms for some large web hosting companies. I am prolific in development around Xen and even I can't tell you in one clear and concise sentence what 'cloud' is supposed to mean when it comes to IAAS (Infrastructure As A Service).
What you  are getting with most cloud providers is one or more virtual machines that can be allocated more memory or storage as traffic demands, then go back to the 'idle' setting when traffic subsides. Additionally, some offer the ability to make clones of a single instance and connect them together using a load balancer (usually software based).
The thing to watch out for here is mega bills if your site gets hammered. There are many instances where the algorithm that 'auto scales' you works more in favor of the hosting company and less in favor of your wallet. If you get that kind of hosting, make sure that switch stays glued on manual. In many instances, just turning on a cache is sufficient to meet an increased traffic demand.
Amazon and others have clearly posted that their offerings do not meet the guidelines set out by security standards such as PCI/DSS or federal standards such as HIPAA/HITECH. This isn't so much a caveat of using a hypervisor, its a caveat of using a shared storage network.
In summary:
The kind of hosting you get is really incidental, what matters more is how you plan your network. For instance, you might have static.domain.com using a light weight http server that has the responsibility of serving only images and media, thereby drastically reducing the load on your production server.
Additionally, smart caching of dynamic pages (and/or) the queries that go into making them let you squeeze considerably more out of any platform.
I'd get a few VPS servers, or perhaps a dedicated server and a couple of VPS servers. The other thing I'm adamant about doing is splitting up my DNS, if my domain can't be resolved .. all the caching and fine tuning in the world is not going to help.
Its really hard to say what would be 'best' for you, I'm not sure about the complexity and needs of your project. However, hopefully, the above gives you some insight into the pros and cons, whatever way you decide to go.
Comment: A properly-configured shared hosting setup can be PCI-DSS compliant. See requirement 2.4: https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/pdfs/pci_audit_procedures_v1-1.pdf
Comment: @Lèse majesté While it _can_ be, I don't agree that it _should_ be. I will not submit any installation for certification unless I have strong limits on who can upload files that the public can execute.
Answer: That's an interesting and far-ranging question. I'd say the primary difference between "normal" web hosting and making use of a cloud-based service is on-demand (or dynamic) scalability.
A "normal" web hosting service usually provides a certain level of service (cpu cycles, bandwidth, storage space, etc.) for a fixed price per unit of time. You pay that price regardless of how much of the service you actually use. If your needs exceed the service level then you are stuck in most cases.
The idea behind most cloud services is that the service level varies, sometimes wildly, and that you pay for only what you actually use.
Consider Netflix as a use case:  I bet the Netflix service level spikes in the evening and nighttime hours on weekdays and most of the time on weekends (in the USA). So their service level needs Friday night at 7pm are vastly different than Tuesday morning at 9:30am. Using a "normal" hosting service, they'd have to pay for "Friday night level" service all the time whereas with a cloud-based solution the amount they pay varies as their service level grows and shrinks on demand.
Answer: With cloud hosting you have to watch out for hidden costs. As most cloud hosts charge for usage when you get a heavy burst of traffic you could get hit with a large hosting bill for that period. Most cloud solutions do not have the ability to place a limit on resource used so there isn't usually a way to limit your costs when experiencing bursts of traffic.
Thats the downside.
The upside is that your website will be able to handle those large bursts of traffic which a traditional single shared or dedicate server may not handle as well.
Comment: The hidden charge are the same for overages on any host, normal or cloud. However, many of the cheap solutions offer unlimited bandwidth.
Comment: "The hidden charge are the same for overages on any host, normal or cloud"

Not true

Most normal hosts simply cut you off if your usage is too heavy. Cloud hosting on the other hand auto scales. The problem is with cloud hosting you cannot limit that auto scaling and can end up with large unexpected bills.
Answer: Let's say you're an executive at a large corporation. Your particular responsibilities include making sure that all of your employees have the right hardware and software they need to do their jobs. Buying computers for everyone isn't enough -- you also have to purchase software or software licenses to give employees the tools they require. Whenever you have a new hire, you have to buy more software or make sure your current software license allows another user. It's so stressful that you find it difficult to go to sleep on your huge pile of money every night.
Soon, there may be an alternative for executives like you. Instead of installing a suite of software for each computer, you'd only have to load one application. That application would allow workers to log into a Web-based service which hosts all the programs the user would need for his or her job. Remote machines owned by another company would run everything from e-mail to word processing to complex data analysis programs. It's called cloud computing.


Should single product pages generated from affiliate product feeds be "noindexed"?

Question: We plan to import tens of thousands of products from affiliate product feeds to a brand new site, where each product will have its own page with identical title and description as the original. I worry that too much duplicated content will give search engine penalties. Should these pages be marked with a "noindex" robots meta tag to avoid the penalty issue?
Answer: If you know these pages will be duplicate content then you will definitely want to make sure you tell Google not to count them as "real" pages. I would say a better option is to use canonical URLs as that is a more semantic indicator of what is going on. These pages are duplicates of an original and you're telling Google which page is the original. Plus that way even though the pages won't be listed in the search engines they should be crawled and you can benefit from the internal links structure they have to offer. If you cannot do canonical URLs then definitely block these using a noindex meta tag or HTTP header. Blocking them via robots.txt will also work.


Split Screen Online Echo issue

Question: If I add a second controller when playing COD:BlackOps online anybody who talks has a bad echo.  Its almost like we are receiving two different audio streams even though we're using the same output.  And when I turn off the 2nd controller the echo stops.  Anybody know how to fix this?
Answer: You guessed correctly, you are receiving two audio signals.  Lets step back and think of how split screen sound works.  Assume you and I are playing split screen.  If someone shoots at me, I have to hear it (even though your character may not be in range to hear the gun shots).  So essentially two audio feeds are being fed through the speakers.
Now what your discussing is clearly a bug (I have a feeling this won't be the last one thats found on an obviously incomplete game).  Both yourself and your friend are essentially receiving a unique audio feed of the in-game chat.  In order to prevent this from happening you must mute your friend and he must mute you.  Here is a ps3 forum post describing the problem and solution.  If this doesn't work try plugging a mic into one of the controllers and sending audio chat to the mic (not the speakers) or actively mute all players who join the game. It looks like a patch may be coming for the issue.
Hope this helps

Split Screen Online Echo issue


SPList.Delete() vs. SPWeb.Lists.Delete(SPList)

Question: Assuming I already have the list object, is there some difference between calling its Delete extension as opposed to removing it from the Lists collection? Why would I ever choose the latter?
Answer: Basically both methods do the same thing, but SPList.Delete() is a method of SPList object, where SPWeb.Lists.Delete(guid) is a method of SPListCollection object as SPWeb.Lists represents a SPListCollection object, so you can easily understand, in most of the cases you will find SPList.Delete() suitable to your need - because it is straightforward and also efficient as you dont get the collection first (negligible though), i tend to always follow the first one
It's hard to find cases where you may find SPWeb.Lists.Delete(guid) more suitable, one possible cases (highly unlikely situation) - say you have a list of list-guids which you need to delete, then rather than getting SPList reference for each and every list you can just delete the list using this method


Indian-English usage of "Kindly"

Question: I have noticed that the word "Kindly" is used a lot by some Indians speaking English as a second language.  Does anyone know the origin of this?
Comment: @ShreevatsaR: The origin of why Indians tend to use the word more frequently than native speakers.
Comment: Are you asking for the etymology of the word *kindly*? Its meaning? Or something else?
Answer: The meaning of kindly is hopefully clear: "kindly help me" means "please be kind and help me" (or "please help me out of kindness"), etc. It's a word used for polite requests; a bare "help me" is impolite relative to "kindly help me".
If you're asking why kindly is more common in Indian English than elsewhere, it's just one of the hundreds of things that have remained in Indian English long after they have gone out of fashion elsewhere.
Searching Google Books for "kindly do this" and looking through the first ten pages, most results, besides a few from India, seem to be from British and some American books, pre-1920. Examples:

"If our friends will kindly do this for us, we shall feel indebted to them." [The Penny Protestant operative, 1842]
  "Would you kindly do this?" [Letter from Florence Nightingale, ≈1886]
  "If you will kindly do this, I will be very thankful" [Southern and Southwestern Railway Club, Atlanta, 1914]
  "If you will kindly do this I will pay you for the two together" [Anthony Trollope, 1864]
  "Would you kindly do this library another favor and again place it under obligation?" [Washington State Traveling Library, 1913]

and so on and on (there are hundreds of results), and most interestingly, one 1886 book showing it must have been standard in England:

The first thing that strikes you on landing in America is the want of deference and courtesy among all classes. Not only from the inferior to the superior, but vice versa also. The maxim noblesse oblige has no sway there. In England, speaking to an equal or a social inferior, "Kindly do this," or "Please give me that," is general. In America the "kindly" and "please" are carefully omitted…

[From context, he doesn't mean it's used only with inferiors, but even with inferiors.]
Anyway, given that kindly was standard, this word for politeness entered India when English did—during colonial rule—and it has stayed on. Why something has continued to exist is not a question that can be answered (inertia?); perhaps the right question is why it went out fashion in the UK and US. (And I'd be interested to learn.) My guess is that either the phrase became clichéd, or such politeness came to be deemed excessive. In the US it seems to have taken on a slightly sarcastic meaning: Wiktionary says

kindly
  2. (US) Please; used to make a polite request.
Kindly refrain from walking on the grass.
Kindly move your car out of the front yard.
Usage notes
(please): Kindly is used in a slightly more peremptory way than please. It is generally used to introduce a request with which the person addressed is expected to comply, and takes the edge off what would otherwise be a command.

Well, in Indian English it happens to have retained its original meaning, is not peremptory, and is a request rather than an expectation. (And in general it seems safe to assume that Indian English expressions are not sarcastic, and to take them at face value.)
Answer: It is hardly ever possible to find strong reasons for why a language is used in a particular way. Why do British speakers use "Autumn" much more than Americans?
I (UK speaker) find Indian English very full of words and phrases which sound polite, and sometimes old-fashioned, and it may be that this reflects some cultural habits in India. I suspect that Americans may have the same reaction to British usage.
Comment: Agree with colin , It reflects the politeness and Indian Culture in some ways.
Answer: In an Indian language like Hindi, we say Kripaya. Translated to English it literally means kindly.
Similarly, other Indian languages also have the same pattern. For instance, Kannada Dayavittu, which also translates to kindly. Hence, we Indians mistake kindly to mean please.
Answer: I understand this comparing to my first language (Portuguese). There're some words in my language that translated to English there are two words. I used the Google translator to find if the words "kindly" and "please" are the same in Hindi, and guess what, the answer is yes!
Answer: 'Kindly' is used towards elderly as a mark of respect or to the person of respectable stature.
'Please' is a polite way of expressing the same with anyone.
In societies such as India, social hierarchies often determine the way a person is addressed.
Comment: This is an interesting answer; kindly complete it by editing to add citations.
Comment: Great meta-example here, with the use of the phrase "the same". Archaic elsewhere, really only still used in legal wording.
Answer: My Asian experience is mainly with Malaysia (formerly Malaya). English is very widely spoken especially among the immigrant Chinese and Indian population.
Lots or forms which are archaic in Britain are used, often in the most endearing way. For example the expression 'take your sweet time'. In Britain it is nowadays only ever used in sarcasm, e.g to someone who is holding up the rest of the group by taking too much time over things 'OK, take your sweet time!'. But in Malaysia if they want to emphasise that there is absolutely no hurry they will say 'alright, no hurry, take your sweet time.'
Please also bear in mind that out East, courtesy and good manners, especially when dealing with Europeans are considered paramount by many people.
Answer: The word 'Kindly'is used, especially for official writings such as email & leave request form to express a request and to sound polite. It is a step ahead of 'Please'.
It is usually a substitute for "could you please" of American English.
It is used instead of 'please' to avoid the imperative tone. E.g.: "Please fix this!" sometimes is imperative (order), and not a request.
But,  "kindly" always means request.

Indian-English usage of "Kindly"


Future Utility of Nikon D200

Question: I have a Nikon 200 with the AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm and one SB-800 Speedlight. I'm wondering about how much I have to spend additionally if I sell this equipment to get something substantially better--i.e., with better specs and more advanced easier-to -use features that will carry me into the next few years of photography...
Answer: That all depends how you define "substantially better", "better specs", and "more advanced easier-to-use".
The D200 was/is a nice camera and plenty of photographers have created lots of visually pleasing and revenue-generating images with that camera.
If you're learning photography, the D200 is quite capable and I'd focus on learning things about shutter speeds, aperture, lighting, and composition before spending more money on gear.
If you understand those things and there are some specific features you desire or usability concerns that you have, provide a bit more information with details and we can probably address them.
Answer: I've had a D200 since a few weeks after it went on sale here, and I'm not planning to "upgrade" to anything any time soon.
It does what it needs to do and it does it exceedingly well.
I was at one point thinking up buying a D3 and relegate the D200 to backup duties, but concluded it wouldn't be a good way to spend my money, so I bought a D70s as a backup instead and used the rest of that money for more lenses.
You sound like you're getting carried away in the upgrade madness that is the DSLR world, best you step back and consider exactly why the D200 doesn't do what you want it to do now, when it did do it yesterday.
You'll most likely conclude that it's a perfectly good camera that does everything you need it to do and more, that you've hardly even scratched the surface of its capabilities.
Anything you buy to replace it would have to be in the class of a D3 (or whatever replaces it), and won't be "easier to use".
Those "more advanced features" are mostly/merely gimmicks for gearheads, things to put in a marketing brochure or website that have very little practical use. Remember that as long as the camera has a good shutter it's a good camera, and the D200 has an excellent shutter.
It also has an excellent light meter and AF system, not required to make a good camera but very handy indeed.
And then there's all the other stuff it can do that most people never use. While not as many gimmicks as the "modern" consumer cameras, those gimmicks are just that, baubles to lure the unwary who don't realise they're just gimmicks and not things of any practical use.
You're far better off ditching that 18-200 and getting some quality lenses instead. It's not a bad lens, for a hyperzoom, but then again all hyperzooms are pretty shoddy overall.
Answer: A decent lens would be a good start. Any 18-200 superzoom tries to do all things, and ends up doing nothing particularly well. The Nikon 18-200 is a very good 18-200, but even so.
I'd suggest something shortish and fast, a 35 f/1.8 or a 50 f/1.8 will do wonders for action and indoors, available-light photography. The D200 is a very capable camera still. And the fifty can be had for a song.
Answer: "More advanced" and "easier to use" are often, but not always in opposition.
I used to have a Nikon D40, and sold it to get a D200. The D40 was easier to use, and the results I got straight out of the camera were more pleasing to me then than the ones I got from the D200. The D200 images needed more post-processing to get to the same level that I appreciated then.
The things I appreciated (and still do!) with the D200 are: in-body AF motor, easier to change options like WB and ISO, and the back AF-ON button.
When I think about it, I wish I had better high-ISO quality and full frame. But I've also realised that the things that hinder my photographic developtmen aren't the D200 or my lenses, it's the lack of time and the lack of commitment to photography.
If you want to "breath new life" into your gear, I'd recommend getting the 35mm f/1.8 DX. It's available for about $200 and is an excellent lens with the D200.
To specifically answer your question, I'd say getting a Nikon D7000 would give you a leg up on features and also ease of use. According to Amazon, you'll have to pay $1,250 for the body, and you might get $400 for the D200 used. The lens and flash don't need to be replaced.
Comment: "D40 was easier to use, and the results I got straight out of the camera were more pleasing"

that's because the D40 does some white balance, saturation, and contrast boosting in-camera, something advanced users (those the D200 and up are targeted at) don't want their cameras to do :)
Comment: @jwenting indeed, this can be a bit of a perceived letdown when starting to use a more "advanced" camera.

Future Utility of Nikon D200


Using a Facebook Page as a social plugin to get friend requests from website visitors

Question: Can I use my personal Facebook Page as a social plugin on my website, in order to get friend requests from visitors of that website?
I want to generate friend requests through the website, is there a way to use a Like button from a Page to do so?
Answer: No, there is not a way to do that and I would imagine it violates Facebook policy


What are proper settings to capture sun rise time-lapse?

Question: I am a newbie to SLR world. The infinite settings are now a curse than a boon to me.
I would like to shoot sun rise in time lapse mode. The problem is, the photographs taken before sun rise are clear, but the when sun is out, the picture is a burn out.
The cameras are not as powerful as our eyes in respect to switching between 2 brightness levels. But I would like to know the settings to capture original brightness as we perceive.
The cam is Nikon D5100. Lenses [18-55] and [55-200] VR.
Comment: You need to be able to allow exposure to change - ie an auto setting.
Comment: possible duplicate of [Metering strategies for time lapse](http://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/24460/metering-strategies-for-time-lapse)
Answer: This is general comment - not D5100 specific
I assume that the exposure is NOT locked for all of the sequence but can vary. As light level changes. This may be an option. You need to be able to allow exposure to change - ie an auto setting.
You may need to experiment with spot / centre / wide exposure settings. Depending on which of these you use the foreground composition may have an undesired effect on lighting. eg with wide exposure setting the foreground may not increase in brightness as rapidly as the sky near the sun does - so the average scene exposure will be progressively lower as the sun rises. Changing to spot or centre may make a significant difference. This may be the single greatest thing you can easily do to improve things. (But, it may not work :-) ). This plus exposure bracketing and/or HDR may help a lot.
You can also probably set eg auto-ISO so the camera backs off in ISO setting as the scene brightens.
Try taking some shots yourself and find out what settings give you the results you want at various light levels and then look for an auto exposure strategy that works.
IF you can set the camera to shoot exposure brackets in time lapse mode then set them as wide as possible and use what works best from the sequence.
If the exposure is locked for the whole sequence (seems unlikely) you are "in trouble". Some solutions that comes to mind then are

External timer that takes timed sequential shots. Camera will autoexpose each time. This would also allow exposure autobracketing or HDR which otherwise may not be available in sequential mode.
Getting desperate - A graded neutral density filter which is moved with time or light level. This would be an excellent solution functionally even with autoexposure and is not actually very hard to achieve if you have appropriate resources - but is not the sort of thing you'd usually need to turn to.


How deep can I dig in the diamond mine?

Question: I'm playing the diamond mine mode in Bejeweled 3, and I could only dig to 240 meters. As I go deeper, the game gets harder. Is there a limit to the level I can dig, or is it an endless mine?
Answer: The following gameplay video shows that the game goes on till you fail. After 980 meters, the gauge displays "MAX" instead of meters, and you can dig till you fail.
Answer: I don't know if there's a limit: presumably, you win at 1,000 meters, given that the depth meter has only three digits.
Here's, however, a youtube video showing off a depth of 960 meters. Keep on digging!
Answer: My record was 1700 meters and 3,360,000 points... So i think you can go as deep as you can til you fail..

How deep can I dig in the diamond mine?


Migration sharepoint 2007 to sharepoint 2010

Question: While migrating our existing sharepoint portal from MOSS 2007 to Sharepoint 2010 we need to find out all customazation has been done on site.
customization like Custom Workflow , Content Types or Features etc..
How we can find out all customization done?
Is there any way using which we can list out all customization?
Answer: When prepping for an upgrade you will want to run the pre-upgrade check on 2007.  It was originally introduced with SP2, but improved with the Oct 2009 CU (also included in SP3).  This will analyze your farm and also provide a detailed list of all features installed or referenced.  Any missing features will be identified by GUID and must be cleaned up prior to migrating or you risk a failed upgrade status.
"Customizations" that do not include features such as those manually created via the UI or SharePoint Designer are much more difficult to find.  You can perhaps develop some powershell scripts that look for things, but in most cases you will go site by site and review the Content Type, Site Field Listing, and connect to SharePoint Designer to see if Workflows exist.
In my experience, the feature related customizations have been the only real issues.  Missing features, or features that do not support the upgrade (some Fab 40 templates) come to mind.  Custom Site Definitions can also be problematic.
Answer: If you didn't already - upgrade your MOSS 2007 Farm to SP2 + October 2009 Cumulative Update (or newer), then go to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\Bin and type in the command:
stsadm -o preupgradecheck
This command won't change anything in your farm, but will generate a report about your farm health, customizations, features and all stuff you will need to migrate. Don't even try to migrate without using this command :) Good luck.
Answer: In addition, after you get your report these may be helpful:
If you install PowerShell on your servers you can use the following to extract custom solutions to wsp using the following (I got this from someone else, but I don't recall, so if anyone knows, feel free to add the attribution):
<code>[System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("Microsoft.SharePoint")

function Get-ScriptDirectory
{
  $Invocation = (Get-Variable MyInvocation -Scope 1).Value
  Split-Path $Invocation.MyCommand.Path
}

$farm = [Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPFarm]::Local

foreach ($solution in $farm.Solutions)
{
  $solution.Name
  $location = Join-Path (Get-ScriptDirectory) "Solutions"
  $location = Join-Path $location $solution.Name
  $solution.SolutionFile.SaveAs($location);
}
</code>
Additionally if you have features that are missing but show installed you can remove them via STSADM or this tool prior to upgrade:
Feature Admin
Answer: The best way I've found to identify customizations is to do a directory comparison of your current environment against a clean install at the same patch level. Ideally, you'd compare the SharePoint Root Folders (or 12 Hive in SharePoint 2007), the web.config files and the GAC.
I outline one method of comparing SharePoint Roots with PowerShell on my blog at:
http://tomresing.com/2010/06/15/powershell-sharepoint-features-comparison/
Answer: As others have said, the preupgradecheck is critical and must be done in the 2007 environment. It's also wise to run the Test-SPContentDatabase PowerShell cmdlet on all servers in the 2010 environment before you attach/upgrade the databases.
preupgradecheck will identify those items in the 2007 environment, but Test-SPContentDatabase physically checks the references in the database against the physical bits on the box to ensure everything referenced is installed. If Test-SPContentDatabase doesn't come back clean, you'll likely have errors or warnings in your upgrade that could produce bigger issues down the road.
Edit: Updated to include this blog post out on Joel's site for the use of the upgrade PowerShell cmdlets (including Test-SPContentDatabase).


Is it possible to replace a ceiling fan speed controller with a switch?

Question: Is it possible to replace a ceiling fan speed controller with a switch? I just bought a house that had a ceiling fan with no light, which used a fan speed controller on the wall with different speeds. I added a light to the ceiling fan and would like to replace the fan controller with a light switch, that will turn both the light and the fan on. You would have to control each with the chains that hang from the fan. I replaced the fan controller with a light switch and it didn't work. Does it need to be connected differently? I only connected the 2 black wires and the ground. It is a one pole switch.
Comment: There is 2 wiree in the box is 14-2. (one is hot)
Answer: Sure you can do this. The fan speed controller should have 2 terminals, swap it with a single pole switch.  If it's a digital controller it might also have a neutral - just put a wire nut over it and only connect the switch between the hot wires.
Answer: Have you considered a wireless remote? Replace the fan speed controller with a switch. Install the remote contoller between the fan and the and the ceiling box. A handheld battery remote controls fanspeed and lights with dimming They have them at most home centers. They cost about $35.


Set theoretic image of a base change of a morphism of schemes

Question: Let $f\colon X \rightarrow Y$ be a morphism of schemes.
Let $g\colon Y' \rightarrow Y$ be a morphism.
Let $X' = X\times_Y Y'$.
Let $f'\colon X' \rightarrow Y'$ be the projection.
We are interested in the relation between the set theoretic image of $f'$ and that of $f$.
Namely $f'(X') = g^{-1}(f(X))$?
Answer: Yes. The containment $f^\prime(X^\prime)\subseteq g^{-1}(f(X))$ is immediate from commutativity of the relevant cartesian square. Suppose conversely that $y^\prime\in g^{-1}(f(X))$. So $g(y^\prime)=f(x)$ for some $x\in X$. Since $y^\prime$ and $x$ map to the same place in $Y$, there is $x^\prime\in X^\prime$ with $f^\prime(x^\prime)=y^\prime$ and $g^\prime(x^\prime)=x$. In particular, $y^\prime\in f^\prime(X^\prime)$.
The existence of $x^\prime$ follows (basically) from Matt E's answer to your question Set theoretic image of the structure morphism of a fiber product of schemes.
Explicitly, to get $x^\prime$, choose a maximal ideal $\mathfrak{m}\in\mathrm{Spec}(k(x)\otimes_{k(y)}k(y^\prime))$, where $f(x)=y=g(y^\prime)$. Then the composite $\mathrm{Spec}((k(x)\otimes_{k(y)}k(y^\prime))/\mathfrak{m})\rightarrow\mathrm{Spec}(k(x)\otimes_{k(y)}k(y^\prime))\rightarrow X\times_YY^\prime$ sends the unique point of the source to a point $x^\prime$ with the desired projections to $X$ and $Y^\prime$.
Answer: Look at the universal property of fiber products, and consider maps of a single point into your space (let's assume there's a fixed base field we're working over). If a point maps into both $X$ and $Y'$, and if both projectns of that point agree in $Y$, then we get a unique map of that point into the fiber product. On the other hand, points in the fiber product project to points in $X$ and $Y'$ that both project to the same point in $Y$. Thus, the points in the fiber product are pairs of points in $X$ and $Y'$ that have the same image in $Y$, so your guess is correct.
(Note: I'm not an expert, so anyone can feel free to disagree).


Do you reuse Io Star Iodophor Sanitizer?

Question: I understand that Io Star Iodophor Sanitizer is reusable, but it seems cumbersome.  Do you reuse this sanitizer?
Answer: Like you mentioned it seems rather impractical to reuse Iodophor beyond the 18 hour window that you normally get. Once it has been diluted to the recommended to 12 parts per million and you've used it. Theoretically you could store it in a plastic bucket with very little head space and reuse the santizer next time you need it.
But I still wouldn't trust it, Iodophor seems to leech in to the plastic over time. i.e., it turns the plastic brown. That said, I do keep a spray bottle at about 50 ppm around the house for when I need to spray down a carboy opening or some random equipment. (A practice I picked up from a local brewery)
My typical use for large batches of sanitizer is to just use it for the couple of hours I need it and then pitch it out.
Comment: I like the spray bottle idea. Will try.
Comment: +1 for spray bottle. Also I use it on plastic. It does make it look nasty-brown, but it does not hurt it.
Answer: This article  has an interview with a scientist that works for the company that makes B-T-F Iodophor. He says that as long as the solution as the color, it should work. However he suggests making a new batch after 24 hours maximum.
Comment: really great answer!  Thanks so much for adding this!
Answer: I think it is reusable so long as you store it in an air tight container. This is because the active ingredient will evaporate. You can test this at home by making up as small amount of solution that is slightly brown in colour and leaving it for about a day in an open container. It will turn clear.


Is it possible to fake acount information on a Dev machine?

Question: I have a virtualized dev machine that is disconnected from the network. I want to add a local user (from the vm) to an attendee list. Can't do it because this user.. being local... does not have an email address. Any suggestions?
Answer: I just tested this by adding a local user account on my WFE.  As long as your WFE isn't a domain controller you can add a local account by doing this:
WFEName\LocalUserAccount
That authenticates for me and there isn't an email for this user...
Comment: As you can see from the above screen shot, this does not work for me.
Answer: Can't you do this in Central Administration?
In the SSP you can edit personal information of a user, I think the e-mail address also. It's visible in the My Site settings.
PS: I can't see the screenshot, perhaps because I'm not logged in on Google Docs?
Answer: If you're on a standalone box you can always create a windows account for the dummy user, then add them to the site as Matt said (WFEName\LocalUserAccount). That should be pretty straight forward; you can add as many dummy users as you need. You must create a windows account for the user before you can add them with this method though.
Not sure if it's just me, but I can't see your screenshot.


In Skyrim, how do I know which soul gems I've filled?

Question: When I am recharging weapons, how am I supposed to know the soul gems that have souls I've trapped in them? Also, where can I find the spell "Soul Trap"?
Answer: If a soul gem has a soul in it, the soul will be listed after the gem's name in parentheses, so for example, a petty soul gem with a petty soul in it is a "petty soul gem (petty)".
If you find you've captured a weak soul in a strong soul gem, such as a "grand soul gem (petty)", you can empty the soul gem by dropping it on the ground and picking it up again.
The Soul Trap spell can be purchased from most mages, I believe the mage in Dragonsreach (Whiterun's castle) is the first place you can find it, if you start out following the main quest.
Most of the time, it's easier to use a weapon that has soul trap built in when you want to capture souls, if you're primarily playing as a fighter or archer rather than mage.
Answer: When recharging (R2 or RT) it will only allow you to use the gems with souls in them. The power of the soul inside will directly effect how many enchanted uses it will give you. Gems with souls in them also have the level of soul in brackets next to them (if I recall correctly). For example "Greater Soul Gem (Lesser Soul)" is a greater soul gem that is being wasted on a lesser soul.
You can find what level of soul each of the creatures in Skyrim has here.
A few mages that will sell you the spell usually at a good price. I'm pretty sure the mage in Whiterun's castle has one. An alternative is to disenchant and enchanted Soul Trap weapon (that's how I got it).
HINT: A good method for taking souls is to enchant and bow and take animals from a distance. Petty souls are still souls and since their easy to take, you will have piles of them.
Good luck and happy soul taking!


What are the benefits of Av vs. Tv vs. Manual exposure modes?

Question: So what's the benefit of using one over the other? The way I understand it, in Av or Tv, you only have to adjust the shutter or aperture, and the rest is done automatically for you...is this correct? Is there some advantage shooting with Av/Tv that I just don't know about?
Comment: See also [What advantages does manual mode have over aperture priority mode?](http://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/934/what-advantages-does-manual-mode-have-over-aperture-priority-mode)
Comment: I know two professionals who have **taped** their mode-dial to Aperture-Priority mode. I use it at least 85% of the time.
Answer: First, I don't know, which advantages of Av/Tv you don't know about. :-)
For me, these modes are very useful, when I do not have time for full manual setting and I do not want to use full auto mode.
Sometimes for example I need the camera not to choose shutter speed less than 1/250 (when I use my telephoto zoom) but I am sure, the camera will choose acceptable F-number.
When I have camera on tripod and shoot some static objects, I use aperture priority as the time can be 20 seconds, when necessary.
The priority programs give me relative freedom to set only, what I need without need to care about the other settings. So I can better focus on photo itself - composition etc.
Sometimes I also use full manual mode - when I have enough time and want to fully control the camera.
Answer: The advantage of aperture or shutter priority modes over manual is the same as any automation: when it works right, it takes labor out of our hands and makes life easier, allowing us to concentrate on other things. And on modern cameras, the automatic metering is pretty good — it basically does the right thing most of the time. And, if you get to know your camera, you can judge pretty well when it won't.
The advantage of these modes over full automatic ("P" mode, usually; for "program") is that there is more than one way to arrive at any given final exposure value: you can mix and match aperture, shutter speed, and ISO in several different ways with the same final result for exposure, but with very different effects on the composition. (Briefly: faster shutter freezes motion; stopped-down aperture gives more depth of field; lower ISO reduces noise.) When you use full automatic, you get whatever (usually middle-of-the-road) balance of these things that the auto-exposure program works out. Av or Tv (or Sv, for ISO priority, on some cameras), let you choose — and directly control — the aspect you care about most for composition, while letting the camera work out the exposure to match the metering.
Answer: The "advantage" of Av/Tv (and to some extent P) modes is that the camera takes care of correct standard  exposure while you take care of the creative (artistic, effects) aspects of the shot.
The "advantage" of M mode is that you have total control (for good and bad) on the exposure as well as the creative aspects.
Answer: The Av & Tv modes are where the camera sets the settings it thinks is correct for the shot.  The manual setting allows the photographer to have the control of all the settings to produce the shot wanted.


Is it possible to enable the WebKit JavaScript Inspector in mobile web browsers?

Question: I would love to use the Web Inspector development tools that come with webkit on a mobile browser.  Does anyone know if it is possible to enable web inspector on say the Android web browser ??
Answer: Actually it's not just a part of safari since google chrome has it too. The web inspector is a part of the webkit engine used by safari, google chrome and if i'm not wrong by the default browser in android devices. But, the web inspector is currently unavailable on any webkit based browser on mobile device.
Answer: Surprisingly, Blackberry is the first to give this to mobile developers. http://www.berryreview.com/2011/04/15/hot-webkit-web-inspector-on-the-blackberry-playbook-for-web-developers/ Hopefully this concept (especially the remote inspector) will make its way to Android soon.
Answer: Turns out that the remote web inspector is also available via a Private API on iOS5:
http://atnan.com/blog/2011/11/17/enabling-remote-debugging-via-private-apis-in-mobile-safari/
and is used in this tool:
http://www.iwebinspector.com/
Might be worth trawling the just release ICS sourcecode to see if there is a similar un-published API in the stock android browser.
Also you might be interested in a "light" solution, in the form of this remote debugger:
Weinre
though its using JS rather than being built into the browser the way web inspector is.
Answer: This is now possible on Android too: https://developers.google.com/chrome/mobile/docs/debugging
Answer: Its still possible to see the source of any page with syntax highlighting (HTML only without CSS or JavaScript) by adding view-source: before the URL in chrome.
Answer: Web Inspector is an integrated part of the Safari browser, thereby it is not going to be available for other browsers, like Opera Mini, Android browser or what ever.
Comment: I'm sorry, but you are wrong. The Web Inspector is not exclusive to Safari.


Examples of board games with good/interesting rules for trading?

Question: Trading is in my opinion often an overlooked aspect of rules for board games. The lack of such rules often results in players modifying or making up these rules themselves. While making up the rules can be part of the fun I was wondering if you know of any games that already have good such rules/mechanisms? Any examples of games that make trading and the interaction between multiple players when doing so an interesting part of the gameplay would be appreciated.
Answer: Settlers of Catan is a classic game with trading elements.  Each player needs to build roads and buildings with various resources (wheat, clay, ore, sheep, wood), but most players will have scarcity in one or more of the resources needed; thus, they must trade resources with other players to be able to complete purchases.
The key is that you need all of the resources, at some points, to win the game.  There is no strategy where you can get by on just three or four of the five, so you must trade often to win.
Often times you will see resources traded at uneven ratios.  A few groups add more advanced sorts of trading, such as futures, but those are not allowed in the basic rules.
Comment: I think Catan is a good game which involves a lot of trading; I wouldn't have said there is anything especially innovative or memorable about its trading rules/mechanisms.
Comment: The addition of sea trade makes this kind of straight forward trade work for Settlers of Catan. The ratios for sea trade could however be discussed. I really like the idea of blind auctions as it keeps all the players equally engaged, avoids players entering pacts (cheating) and is more exciting when revealing the winner.
Answer: I always like that the rules for Civilization seemed to encourage bluffing when trading -- you had to give them the number of cards you said you were going to, but you didn't have to be 100% truthful about what you were giving the other party.  (or maybe that was just the way our group played ... I don't have a copy, so can't verify the rules for trading)
Comment: Good point; can't believe I didn't think to mention this game.  Civilization rewarded - no, demanded - aggressive trade, because trade good *acquisition* was a mix of all types goods, but *value* increased geometrically with sets of the same type of good.  But you can't trade single cards - minimum sets of 3 - and some of the cards were 0-value 'booby traps' that had bad effects when received.  The tension between need-to-trade-to-complete-set and fear-of-trap was a beautiful gameplay motivator.
Answer: Container
One of my favourite trading type games is Container. The idea of container is that a person has a number of elements to their island.

A group of factories
A group of warehouses
A Port

The interesting mechanic of this game is that a player must produce items in their factory and sell them to an opposing player. They CANNOT sell to their own warehouses.
The opposing player then stores those goods in their warehouses.
An opposing player can then visit the port to purchase the goods from the warehouse, to then ship to "the island" in their container ship. A player CANNOT visit their own port to purchase goods.
A player must set their own prices for goods in the factory and goods in the warehouse.
When the player ships to the island, a blind auction takes place to see who purchases the goods. A player can choose to purchase them for themselves for the maximum bid, or choose to take the max bid in cash, plus a matched amount from the bank.
Each good is worth more at the end of the game to different players based on a random card drawn at the start, which makes the bidding process very important.
I love this game because you need to work with other players to beat them, its an odd feeling to sell cheap, so that you can buy back your own goods, but you are all competing in a real market situation with each other.
Comment: I've never heard of this game, but you've really got my interest up, now.
Answer: Twilight Imperium has an interesting trade mechanic: Each player has two 'trade contract' cards (varying from 1-3 in value).  When a trade phase happens (which in TI3 is a player decision) you gain goods equal to the value of other players' contract cards you're holding.  Then you can trade your contracts to other players.  (This sequence means you don't start to profit until the turn after you made the trade.)
Not all races have equal contracts - trade-oriented races might have a 2 and a 3, while warlike ones have two 1s - so bargaining power is uneven.  But as an alternative to hosting a trade phase, a player can take the 'trade phase' order and use it to cancel all existing contracts... and a player who is the only one not profiting from trade will be tempted to do so, setting all the traders back by two turns while they reestablish profitable deals.
Contracts can be broken unilaterally at pretty much any time.  Going to war automatically breaks them.  So good trade deals can discourage conquest.  It's a nice interaction.
Comment: Sounds interesting. I´ll have to check this out.
Comment: I should have noted that TI is not primarily a trade game, certainly not in the sense that, say, Settlers is.  Nevertheless trade is one important gameplay component.
Answer: Genoa, or as it was originally published, Traders of Genoa.
Here's a game where just about everything that anyone does involves making a deal with another player.  And everything in the game short of future promises can be part of the deal - wares, small orders, large orders, privileges, messages, extra-move tiles, everything.  It's a little daunting at first, because you don't always know how much everything's going to be worth at the end of the game and it's hard to cut tougher deals with the person in first place when you don't know who it is.
This is by far the best negotiation game I've ever played, much better than Chinatown or Who's The Boss?
Answer: Roll Through The Ages with The Late Bronze Age "expansion".  It's a dice game that's quick to teach, quick to play, and has trading (which people often forget about, but it's really very useful!).
Also consider Bohnanza (aka: That Bean Game).  Quick to teach, plays fast, and it's all about trading.


Is there an RPG or RPG setting for Un Lun Dun, and if not, how and how easily would one go about making one?

Question: I'm honestly a complete noob to tabletop RPGs, having only read the manuals for DnD 4th edition and never having played, but I'd like to know if an RPG or setting for one exists for China Miéville's book Un Lun Dun. It's a personal favorite, and I think it would make for some great gameplay. If not, how would one go about creating a setting and in which RPG, and how difficult would this be?
Answer: There is not anything official/published RPG-wise for Un Lun Dun.  There is some adaptation of content for Mieville's world of Bas Lag for D&D 3.5e in Dragon Magazine # 352, one of the last "real" Dragon magazines.  China Mieville talks a lot about his playing Dungeons & Dragons and how it informed his novel writing.
Un Lun Dun, however, is more childen-urban-fantasy driven and probably not a good fit for the crunch of D&D. As there's no published game for it specifically you'd have to adapt it yourself, but Little Fears, the role-playing game of childish terror, would be the best direct fit. In a pinch you could probably use Underworld, Monsters and Other Childish Things, or even Dresden Files if forced to. If you want a free one, Neverwhere d6 is based on the Neil Gaiman book of the same name, and Un Lun Dun is nothing if not Gaimanesque.
Un Lun Dun is very fanciful - there's conflict/combat but it's pretty abstracted, so if you're rolling the content yourself really any rules-light game would serve.
Answer: I would also recommend reading Neverwhere which I consider "the original". If you want something more generic GURPS is worth a look. Since Un Lun Dun can contain close to anything as long it is absurd enough you may use several of the GURPS extension books from Blood Types to Black Ops.
Also the Kult RPG might be worth a look. There are many parallels to Un Lun Dun. Kult is not suitable for minors, though.


Update Google+ account over email

Question: I'ld like to upload images and post text message to my Google+ account over email. Is there a solution available?
Answer: No there is not currently a way to do this until the write API for Google+ is available or Google releases it as a feature.
Answer: You can use IFTTT to automate stuff. You can use your mobile Facebook email to update Facebook after you update Google+. IFTTT will sync your account every 30 minutes (if not every hour).

Update Google+ account over email


Why does the grate of my charcoal grill keep rusting?

Question: By the end of every summer it seems like the grate of my charcoal grill is rusty. Does anyone know how I can keep it from rusting and whether or not the rust is unhealthy?
Answer: Rust isn't bad for you, with the possible exception of men who have hemochromatosis. Even then, I don't think that the uptake from iron oxide is very high.
The reason rust forms is due to the high heat the grate is exposed to. Unprotected iron will rust when exposed to the air, and the speed at which it does so is dependent on heat (and moisture). So as the heat increases the rate of oxidation increases significantly. Moisture in the air also causes the iron to rust more quickly, as does the moisture in food as it is cooked.
To remove the rust, use a wire brush before and after each cooking session. Applying a layer of oil to the grate before/after cooking on it will help to keep the rust off. In time, you can (depending on the exact composition of your grill) develop a "seasoning" coating on the metal similar to what you would develop in a cast iron skillet.
Comment: +1 from me, didn't even consider the high heat playing into it, even though that makes perfect sense.  Also, the seasoning comment is spot on, our grill has this now and I no longer have to oil it every time I use it.
Answer: Are you covering your grill when not in use?  If not, it's likely getting rained on/in, which will lead to rust.  Another issue might be condensation from the humidity this summer, but I haven't seen that lead to rust in my personal experience.
As far as I understand it, the rust won't hurt you, but it may change the taste of food cooked on it, so you probably want to get rid of it.
We cover our grill after use, and have never had a rust issue, but I know another effective way to prevent rust is to keep the grates oiled.  I always wipe down the grates with an oiled rag or in a pinch, a ball of aluminum foil before and after cooking, but you can also get a small spritzer bottle, fill it with vegetable oil, and spray it down.  This should help prevent rust going forward.  Do not spray oil on the grill while it is on, it will flair up and you will burn yourself!
Some people also don't clean their grates regularly, because the fat from previous meats' cooking is supposed to help prevent rust.  This is the "least active" method of rust prevention, if you're going to go this route I would recommend leaving your grates dirty after cooking.  Then after you pre-heat the grill, before putting your food on, give it a wipe down with a wire/bristle grill brush to get off what you can, assuming you prefer your grates clean before cooking.  They'll get dirty again as soon as you put your food on, then just continue this cycle :)
Comment: +1 - Humidity can definitely cause condensation, but so can condensation, and much more rapidly.
Comment: I do keep my grill covered by a vinyl cover at all times when not in use.
Answer: The problem that I've seen is that you just can't treat your grill grates like a cast iron pant -- the high heat will bake off any protective oil.
For my most recent POS grill (propane, not charcoal), the grates were enamel coated so managed to survive a dozen or so uses, but the burners get so damned hot that they've cooked off the enamel, resulting in rust forming in a nice little line along the grate.
I think this is the same problem that my step-father ran into on his grill, as well.
Your best bet is cleaning and oiling after each use (which I admit, I don't do), and not cooking over too hot of a flame (which again, I don't do that one either).
I have no idea if some brands's grates hold up better to this problem than others, or if we're just expected to replace them every few months. (or years, I've had grills that lasted years without rust problems)
Comment: Why not simply use stainless steel? I don't clean the grated too often - I do oil them BEFORE the cooking and they never rust
Comment: @IMHO I would if I knew where to get ones of the right size for my grill.  (actually, no I wouldn't ... I'm getting a new grill next year, this one sucks ... maybe for the next one)
Answer: As @IMHO has stated, stainless-steel grates are the most effective way to avoid this problem. I have a set of stainless-steel grates for my weber kettle and smoker, they've never rusted and I even clean them once a year in the dishwasher. (Yes, they do fit - just barely.)
They are a bit more expensive, but are worth the investment, as they are more durable, longer-lasting, and require less effort to maintain.
Comment: Just picked up a stainless grill - one downside is that stuff sticks to it like no-body's business. Be sure to oil that stainless grate with a high smoke-point oil just before you slap down the food.
Answer: My weber kettle is going on 3 years old and the stainless steel grate has been nothing but a rust issue I do live in Florida so high humidity is a factor but it's out of the elements but still get rust
Comment: Welcome to Seasoned Advice! Your post does not answer the question. Rather, it seems like a "me too" comment. When you have gained enough rep you will be able to comment on any post. Please take our tour and visit our help site. (Links are on the top right of the screen in the help dropdown.) You will see that we are quite different from other blogs and forums.


How to play .wmv file with a MSS1 stream encoded?

Question: Just wondering if anyone know how to play .wmv file with a MSS1 stream encoded?
Answer: Try MPlayerX Version 1.0.17, better support for WMV than VLC (MMS1 is ok for me).
Answer: According to this discussion, you may be able to play MSS1-encoded movies with MPlayer (Windows only). If you can wait a little while longer, VLC should gain the ability to play them in version 2.1. With VLC 2.0.3, I can at least hear the soundtrack (Codec ACELP (Sipro)).


Folders are disappearing from Safari's Bookmarks Bar

Question: I have used the Bookmarks Bar for years for my main site to keep bookmarks that I use.  The sidebar is far less frequently accessed. Over the past week, entire folders are disappearing from bookmarks bar, taking countless sites that I use. I updated Safari recently to 5.1.2, and security update. I am running OS X 10.6.8. I booted from an external drive with SuperDuper, backed up a few days ago, but it was missing the folders.  These bookmark folders have been stable for years (as a system).
Answer: Do you have iCloud turn-on for your bookmarks? I did and found horrendous anomalies with my bookmark folders between my iMac, MacBook Pro, iPhone, and iPad. I could not get the issue solved and so far no solutions for it. My only recurse was to turn off iCloud/Bookmarks and restore my original bookmarks from backup and sync with iTunes. That solved my problem.


What is cloud computing?

Question: I hear about "cloud computing" all the time, but don't know what it is.

What is it's purpose?
Why do I need it?
What problems does it solve?
What problems does it create?
Answer:

What is it's purpose?

To allow people to use machines online without being concerned about where or what a machine is. This enables you to scale up quickly without physical infrastructure.

Why do I need it?

You probably don't as a home user, although if you use Google you already use it.

What problems does it solve?

It solves a lot of the infrastructure issues by abstracting away the hardware layer. If you need a new server it is a matter of minutes to get one rather than months lead-time at a traditional hosting provider.

What problems does it create?

There is a different problem of managing non real machines, care must be taken not to loose them.
Problems can be difficult to diagnose (or at least require different skills)
You can't use hardware appliances (eg a firewall) in the same way that you can at a traditional data centre
Answer:
What is it's purpose?

The general purpose of cloud computing is to get the cost and difficulty of setting up infrastructure to support your business applicaion needs off of your plate and onto somebody else (like Google, Amazon or Microsoft).

Why do I need it?

Need is a strong word.  You may need it because you cannot afford to implement the type of infrastructure one of your line of business application requires.

What problems does it solve?

In general, it helps address issues of scalability and availability (although this is debatable).  It also helps solve the problem of getting infrastructure up quickly to meet business needs.

What problems does it create?

In my mind, mostly security concerns.
Answer: Commonly, it is services, programs, platforms over the internet.
It makes the services available wherever there is internet available. Look at Google apps or the newly announced MS Office suite for the internet. You could use them wherever you want., without being tied to your computer and your installation/licence.
The problems it creates are mostly in the realm of privacy. Your data lives in the cloud - as you want to find your documents from wherever you are too. So Google not only has your search results, blog entries, navigation history in Chrome, emails in gmail, your location through android, your pictures with gps coordinates, but also your documents?
Answer:
What is it's purpose?

To provide applications which can be accessed over the internet, regardless of where the user is and what local data storage capabilities they have.
Anything accessed over the internet could be considered "cloud".  Gmail is "cloud email".  Superuser.com is "cloud crowdsource technical support".

What problems does it solve?

The theory is that service providers like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon (to name a few of the big providers) can build a better and more reliable datacenter than you can, and at less cost to you.  The service provider also manages the application version upgrades and data storage issues for you.  These can reduce the costs you would have of trying to run these services yourselves -- compare the costs of managing an Exchange server, for example, with Gmail For Domains.
It also gives you/your staff/your team the ability to have access to the same working environment wherever they are -- the computer at home has access to the same tools that the computer in the office does.  And if either computer dies, the data is safe in the cloud.

What problems does it create?

Firstly, you are now even more dependant on your internet connection.  If there is an issue with your connection, everyone has a problem.
Secondly, you lack immediate control over your data -- if the service provider fails, there may not be able to retreive it in a timely manner, if at all.  Also the data is subject to the local laws wherever the service is hosted -- Canadian companies using US service providers would have their data be subject to US search-and-seizure laws.  Finally there is the lack of ability to demonstrate to external auditors that company data is both safe and secure, since the service provider's procedures may not be visible to you.

Why do I need it?

Well, that's up to you, based on your assessment of the above.  It may provide you the ability to do more with less, and to effectively outsource parts of your IT infrastructure.
Answer: Its purpose is to remove the burden of maintaining your own servers and reduce initial capital expenditures. You only pay for what you actually use rather than having to budget for peak demand up front.
Amazon, Google, and Microsoft have a lot more cash than you do to create their own data centers. You can leverage their economies of scale and the lessons they've learned usually cheaper than doing things yourself.
Comment: Don't forget the smaller players like Rackspace Cloudservers (formerly Mosso formerly Slicehost) and Linode.
Answer: I think one could summarize cloud computing as a way of storing/accessing/processing data from a remote source. The cloud is a term for the internet, so it can be said that it is most things that are done and stored there.
The intended benefit is that there is less reliance on the local computer for work and storage.
Some downsides include privacy of materials stored and processed. There is also the needs and limitation of an internet connection such as security, speed and availability.
You probably want to consider this if you are making an application with strong ties to the internet or the benefits that the internet provides. Wikipedia has a lot of general information.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing
Some more recent examples of Cloud computing would be the new Unreal Tournament game played through a browser or Valve's new Cloud System of allowing users to have their saved games available on any computer with their client.
Answer: Cloud computing refers to the provision of computational resources on demand via a computer network.
Cloud computing can be compared to the supply of electricity and gas, or the provision of telephone, television and postal services. All of these services are presented to the users in a simple way that is easy to understand without the users needing to know how the services are provided. This simplified view is called an abstraction. Similarly, cloud computing offers computer application developers and users an abstract view of services that simplifies and ignores much of the details and inner workings. A provider's offering of abstracted Internet services is often called "The Cloud".
Answer: Cloud computing is nothing more than what Google is doing since they started: software to create a reliable system on top of unreliable commodity hardware.
Nowadays, it also includes the management of the resources and also the automatic (on-demand) assignment of resources to specific applications.
Answer: Cloud computing refers to access services like storage service, computing service,etc. & application services like email service,etc. are provided to cloud consumer on demand over internet. Advantage of cloud computing is it provides cost saving, scalable & self provisioning services. Security is still one of the concern in cloud computing.

What is cloud computing?


'waiting for network connection' error on boot

Question: When I start my system, all the process is perfectly normal, until this message appears: 'waiting for network configuration' after that one there comes 'waiting up to 60 more seconds for network configuration' and finally, like after 3 minutes of waiting, there comes 'booting system without full network configuration'.
Normally, at home I'm connected through a normal wired internet connection, but when I need to take my laptop to any other place without a wired internet connection like work or the university, the above mentioned messages appear and well... I really get a bit pissed off.
Is there any possibility to make my system stop trying to configure the network at boot when I have absolutely no network to configure?
I don't really mind modifying my system settings every time I come home or go to work so, maybe if there is a solution like 'well this is going to stop the booting network configuration, but when you need to use a wired network you will have to reconfigure it' it's going to be perfect.
Comment: I agree, this is a really dumb change for laptops.
Answer: There is a bug report with some proposals how to overcome the issue.
bug 811441
good luck


Why does Pharaoh refer to the Plague of Locusts as death?

Question: Why does Pharaoh refer to the Plague of Locusts as death?
וְעַתָּה שָׂא נָא חַטָּאתִי אַךְ הַפַּעַם וְהַעְתִּירוּ לַי־הֹוָ־ה אֱלֹהֵיכֶם וְיָסֵר מֵעָלַי רַק אֶת הַמָּוֶת הַזֶּה
Answer: Because after Arbeh there was no food left in the fields. Barad destroyed what was ripened already and Arbeh took care of the rest. (Rashi in end of Va'eirah)
Answer: Torah Temimah has an interesting comment on a different point: why does Pharaoh ask for the removal "only of this death"?
He answers based on an episode in the Gemara (Taanis 8b), when a community was threatened by two dangers, plague and famine. People were unsure which one to focus on in their prayers (as is the proper thing to do, as the Gemara goes on to point out, and as is codified in Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chaim 576:15). R' Shmuel bar Nachmani recommended that they pray to Hashem to eradicate the plague, since "when the Merciful One gives plenty, it is to the living that He provides it" - i.e., that the cessation of the famine would necessarily lead to the end of the plague too.
Pharaoh used the same logic. The Plague of Locusts, like all of the other plagues, was accompanied by pestilence (Shemos Rabbah 10:2). He was canny enough to realize that he need ask only for "this death" - the locust infestation that was causing a famine - to go away, and automatically the pestilence would disappear too. (Whereas with the other plagues there wasn't this direct relationship, since they didn't attack Egypt's food supply.)
Answer: Rav Shimshon Rafael Hirsch (as well as others) point out that this was the first time locusts had reached Egypt. If they were not eradicated before they managed to lay their eggs, it would become a permanent and recurring plague. This would be the death of Egyypt because it would destroy all future agriculture. This was not a temporary plague that would disappear once things went back to normal. The very existence of locusts, even as a normal event, would be the death of Egypt.
Answer: The Malbim give two alternate answers:He was referring to the Smell sort of like it reeked like Death.alternately he says it could mean they where disease ridden and would cause Death.


How should I resolve the issue of smaller tappable area due to smaller buttons on iPad mini?

Question: Now that iPad mini has been released, is there anything an UI designer needs to look out for? I understand that the resolution and screen ratio remains the same, and I've been hearing that no change needs to be done for the existing apps. However, everything is now ~80% smaller on screen, which means that the buttons are now smaller. I am especially concerned about the Navigation bar at the top, where the buttons (back/edit/add buttons) were already quite small but will now be even smaller. I can see that as a potential problem for users with big fingers, but increasing the button size means that the Navigation bar height would have to be increased as well, if that's even possible. Is there another way of fixing this? Also, how does the 44x44 point minimum tappable area apply to iPad mini?
Comment: Great question. The thing is, the precision and size of human finger doesn't change with the introduction of a 7-inch version of a device, so take the pixels as cues on inches on the original device instead.
Answer: According to Microsoft guidelines,  comfortable touch targets are 9mm is size,  or smaller with at least 9mm in between each. Moderate is 7mm and minimum is 5mm. I would check whether your application follows those guidelines. If the action that the user will have to take is frequent or mission-critical,  make the targets 9mm or a close to that as you can.
Windows Phone 7 touch guidelines:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsphone/develop/hh202889(v=vs.92).aspx
PS those are backed up by extensive research.
Answer: There is nothing special to optimize for, if you stuck to the recommendations for the minimum target sizes in the first place. The targets on the new iPad mini are exactly the same size as they would be on the iPhone 3G(S), as the screen resolution is the same (in pixels per inch). So, you shouldn't have any trouble. If you now have trouble with targets becomming too small, you did not stick to the guidelines in the first place.
Answer: Not having seen an iPad mini I can only theorize:
I'd say take the cue from Apple.  I assume they've given the mini a good round of user testing and if they haven't changed the pixel dimensions of the buttons on built in apps (iTunes, App Store, Settings, etc.) then it's probably OK.  People will adjust to the 20% smaller size, their field of view will be focused tighter on the 20% smaller display and gestures will tend to be slightly more accurate.  I think.


Why does my latch not retract when I push or swing the door shut, but will retract when the knob/lever is used?

Question: This just started today. I have to turn the knob in order for the latch to retract. Before, I could just push to door shut and the latch would retract when it hit the plate on the door frame. But now it just hits hard against it. Other than that, the door knob works perfect.
Answer: You may have a deadlocking latch bolt, which in addition to a normal door latch has a plunger. When this plunger is retracted (which happens when the door is closed), the spring loaded mechanism on the latch is disabled. This prevents someone from using the credit card trick to open the door from the outside, so the only way to open the door is by unlocking it and turning the knob.  In other words, it's for security.

Sample image from doorware.com, no affiliation
My guess, assuming this is an external locking door, is that this plunger is either jammed or some of the internal mechanisms that it activates have jammed.  You can unscrew the door knob and remove both sides, then unscrew the latch and pull it out of the door.  From there, try some lubricant (silicone spray and graphite powder are my preferred lubricants for locks, WD-40 will quickly dry and attract dirt).  And if it still doesn't work, it's probably time to go to the store to pickup a new doorknob.
Comment: Come to find out, some internal mechanism broke and is jamming it. My solution was to switch the latch with a door I don't use that much.
Comment: I think it's called a "deadlocking latch bolt" and the extra part is called the "plunger": http://www.doorware.com/specials/help-center/faqs-door-locks.cfm#q10
Comment: @JonathonReinhart thank you! I've updated my answer with the proper terms.
Comment: AKA *"deadlatch"*. Also a video describing what it is for here http://youtu.be/ShWybszO4ik
Answer: The exact same thing happened to us last week.  We called Schlage, the manufacturer, and they said that part of the internal mechanism was broken. Because they warranty the mechanism for life, they sent us a new mechanism with instructions on how to install it.  It arrived just a few days later, and installing it was a simple task. Now we can just push the door shut again without having to turn the knob.
Answer: The answer provided by @BMitch is good, but here's another suggestion:
Check to see that the plate on the door frame is actually making contact with the angled part of the latch.
It's possible that due to thermal expansion or contraction of the door or frame, the plate is now striking the latch on the non-angled part causing it not to retract.
Answer: The latch bold was sticking on my front door. It's a schlage dead latch. I called the company after fiddling with it. Something had clearly gone wrong with the latch itself. After a little time on hold I got through to customer service. She was able to determine what model I had because there is no model number anywhere on the thing. Long story short my product and possibly yours has a life time warranty on parts. She put the order in and true to their word 5 business days later the latch showed up and I just finished installing it. No problems, it's not hard to do. FYI Customer service number is 1-888-805-9837.
and there was no charge.
Comment: I have the same problem. Called Schlage and they are sending a new latch right out. Their agent was great.
Answer: The tongue of the door latch leading from my garage to the kitchen began malfunctioning just as described above.  It would retract when either knob was turned, but not when attempting to close the door without turning a knob.  After reading everything written above, I concluded that I was looking at replacing some or all of the internal mechanism.  With that realization in mind, I decided to just hit the thing a few times with a hammer.  Unbelieveably, that seems to have worked, and now the tongue isn't sticking any more.
Comment: I love it, the great American way to fix things, hit it with a hammer ;)
Comment: Beautiful! This worked for us too. We hammered the stuck tongue perpendicular to the door until it retracted back into the door and then it closed normally.
Comment: Yeah, so, I tried hitting it with a hammer and I broke it more.  I got it to go in, but then it wouldn't come back out again!  Which thus rendered the lock useless.  Luckily I had another one laying around, so I took the whole internal mechanism from that one and replaced it.
Answer: The part you are refering to is a hardened pin designed to prevent someone from cutting the latch with a hacksaw to gain entry.
It is a part of the backset mechanisim.
The backset will need to be replaced. Most are lifetime guaranteed for mechanical defect, and commonly replaced by the manufacturer, or purchased at most building supply stores.
I work in such a place on Vancouver Island in Canada. This is a very common problem, with a very easy remedy.