Burau matrix of braid

Question: What is the definition of a Burau matrix of a braid? Where can I find a definition?
Answer: The other answer seems to be correct, but in the interest of providing a non-link-only answer, I'll give the definition here.
The Burau matrix of a braid is the matrix representing the braid in the Burau representation, so it's a matrix over $\mathbb Z [t, t^{-1}]$, i.e. the entries of the matrix are Laurent polynomials in the variable $t$ with integer coefficients. The Burau representation is a representation (i.e. group homomorphism) $\psi_n: B_n \rightarrow \operatorname{GL}_n(\mathbb Z [t, t^{-1}])$. As with any group homomorphism, it's sufficient to define it on a generating set and check that the resulting map is well-defined.
We define in block form as
$$\psi_n : \sigma_i \mapsto  \left( \begin{array}{ccc}
I_{i-1} & 0 & 0 & 0 \\
0 & 1-t & t & 0 \\
0 & 1 & 0 & 0 \\
0 & 0 & 0 & I_{n-i-1} \end{array} \right) ,$$
where $I_m$ is the $m \times m$ identity matrix, and $i$ ranges from $1$ to $n-1$. For this to be a valid homomorphism, we need to check that these matrices are invetible and that the braid relations are preserved, i.e. that $\psi_n(\sigma_i) \psi_n(\sigma_j) = \psi_n(\sigma_j) \psi_n(\sigma_i)$ for $|i-j| \ge 2$, and that $\psi_n(\sigma_i) \psi_n(\sigma_{i+1}) \psi_n(\sigma_i) = \psi_n(\sigma_{i+1}) \psi_n(\sigma_i) \psi_n(\sigma_{i+1})$ for $i=1, \ldots, n-2$. I'll exhibit the inverse matrix here, but leave it up to you to check that the computations work out.
$$\psi_n(\sigma_i)^{-1} = \left( \begin{array}{ccc}
I_{i-1} & 0 & 0 & 0 \\
0 & 0 & 1 & 0 \\
0 & t^{-1} & 1-t^{-1} & 0 \\
0 & 0 & 0 & I_{n-i-1} \end{array} \right)$$
With that out of the way, for any braid $\gamma$, to compute its Burau matrix, just write $\gamma = \sigma_{i_1}^{e_1} \cdots \sigma_{i_m}^{e_m}$ as a word in the generators, and then you have $\psi_n(\gamma) = \psi_n (\sigma_{i_1})^{e_1} \cdots \psi_n (\sigma_{i_m})^{e_m}$, which is now easy to compute.
For some intuition, the case $t=1$ is good to look at. Setting $t=1$, we get a permutation matrix. This is the permutation matrix corresponding to the underlying permutation of the braid, i.e. the composite homomorphism $B_n \rightarrow S_n \rightarrow \operatorname{GL}_n(\mathbb Z)$ where $S_n$ is the symmetric group on $n$ letters. The Burau representation is thus 1-parameter deformation of the permutation representation.
The above is, of course, only one of several conventions, but it's the one I usually see chosen in the literature when one needs to do these calculations explicitly.
Comment: This is a great basic overview of the Burau representation. Hopefully the OP sees this answer.
Answer: I personally like Birman's exposition in her book Braids, Links and Mapping Class Groups which gives a very topological introduction to the subject.
I also know that Daan Krammer gives a rather nice algebraic approach in a set of online lecture notes. He also has a list of exercises associated to the notes.

Burau matrix of braid


How to use a vanity URL with Sharepoint 2010

Question: We have a web application at x-x.com and a site collection at /sites/test (https://x-x.com/sites/test/)  We have set up two vanity urls in our DNS so that in theory a user can type https://vanity1/sites/test or https://vanity2/sites/test.  We initially thought that simply editing the bindings for the web application would allow us to us the vanity URLs...it is not working.  Can someone step us through how to set it up so our vanity urls can be used to access our site collection?
Answer: Make sure to also add the URLs into:
Central Administration > System Settings > Configure alternate access mappings .
Answer: Alternative access map is the feature desgined specifically for the purpose you describe.
The instructions I have linked to are for SharePoint v3 (WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007), but remain the same for v4 (Foundation 2010, Server 2010). To my knowledge Microsoft has not provided updated instructions for the 2010 products and does reference this article in some of the 2010 product documentation.
AAM is not the most intuitive thing (well the concept is, but the implementation seems weird at times). SharePoint hard-codes the original URL into the content database and uses AAM to translate the vanity URLs to this. Do not edit the IIS bindings directly otherwise the translation will not happen correctly and you will get HTTP 404 errors seemingly at random.
Answer: Host header site collection is the best option for you
Comment: Can you elaborate on your answer? While it could potentially be correct.. there really isn't enough detail or explanation here.


de-emphasizing cancel

Question: Is it a good idea to de-emphasize the cancel button?

download bmml source – Wireframes created with Balsamiq Mockups
vs.

download bmml source
Answer: Jakob Nielsen said that removing the Reset (or cancel) button helps usability most of the time:

Because Back is such a strong behavior on the Web, it is usually not
  necessary to offer explicit Cancel buttons. If the user asks for
  something but doesn't want it, then you can be sure that it's Back
  button time.
Offer a Cancel button when users may fear that they have committed to
  something they want to avoid. Having an explicit way to Cancel
  provides an extra feeling of safety that is not afforded by simply
  leaving.

Some questions here too: Is it not advisable to have a visible cancel option when performing a action such as delete,
In what sense do your users need to be able to cancel?  If they could just "cancel" by hitting the back button, that would be my advice.
If you need to have the cancel button, I think de-emphasizing it and making it just a text link is the way to go.  That way the users will focus on the Save button, which moves them forward in the process, and the default action is obvious.  If this were an e-commerce process, you'd want to move users forward through the conversion process rather than giving the backwards option (or the getting out option) equal weight.  Having these buttons in the "Save - Cancel" order matches Windows' order (7, at least; not sure about 8), so it feels a bit more natural.
Answer: I'll go somewhat against the general flow here and say that it depends on the situation that you are using them in. Remember that de-emphasising the cancel button is in effect making whatever other option that is presented the default.  So it is more a question of whether it is a better choice to make that the default or not.
If you are asking something trivial with no large consequences, then de-emphasising the cancel button is a good choice.Also when the cancel button is asked as part of a flow of many parts, such as a multi-part form, then it also makes a lot of sense.
In fact, in many situations where you could use a de-emphasised signup button, you should question whether you even need the cancel button in the first place.
However, when the cancel button is there to protect against an action with critical consequences, you should not only not de-emphasise it, but you should make it the default.
When the cancel button appears as part of a prompt.  Imagine the following prompt, and then think about it.

Are you sure that you want to delete your account? All data will be permanently lost.
Answer: Yes, you should de-emphasize the cancel button (resp. style it differently).
No, you shouldn't make it look like a link.
I think styling it as a link gives a false impression. Some might think they could open that "link" in a tab. Some looking for a way to cancel the input might not recognize that "link" because they are looking for a button. And it's simply not consistent.
You should use a different way to de-emphasize it, for example:

by size:

make it smaller (in height/width and/or font size)

by color:

make it colorless while giving the submit form a color
color the submit button in green and the cancel button in red

by position:

position them not directly next to each other (I do not prefer this as you might still easily confuse with them)

by symbolism:

adding a checkmark symbol (or similar) to the submit button and nothing to cancel button

Another way (but never saw it before anywhere) might be to require two clicks on the cancel button before it cancels the form. After the first click the label/button text changes to something like "Do you really want to cancel? All your entered data will be lost.". Someone having the wish to explicitly cancel a form will probably pay attention if this action succeeds and therefor notice the "click again" confirmation.
Answer: I agree with David's answer.
If you must have a Cancel button visible, a link would certainly reduce it's hierarchy. However if it doesn't follow your style guide, you can have two button, just have the "Save" button in green for example, while the cancel in light gray (or a slight difference from it's background).
Comment: wouldn't a light gray button imply that's it's disabled?

de-emphasizing cancel


Is the Shotgun Attachment tactically useful in Modern Warfare 3?

Question: I can't think of any reason not to just carry a shotgun as a secondary weapon with Overkill.  Seems like you'd want your attachment slot for something else.  Was it just added to make a long list of attachments or do some players love this attachment?
Answer: To carry shotgun as secondary weapon you need the Overkill perk (shotguns are primary weapons in MW3).
Assault rifles are great weapons for mid to long range combat, but in close range fall behind SMGs and shotguns. Shotgun attachment gives you upper hand in close combat. However, note, that attachment itself is weaker then "pure" shotgun. Still it's quite handy when you are sweeping a building or you are in any situation with very limited space.
Answer: The real benefit from having a shotgun attachment is the versatility.  It pairs very well with guns that typically don't do good at close range like 3 shot burst m16's or type 95s.  This allows a user to balance some of the weaknesses of a gun with some of its strengths.  A shotgun attachment is much faster then switching to your secondary (and you can't pick up a shotgun as a secondary without overkill anymore!).   While not many people run with this attachment it has its niche for sure.


iOS MobileMe Sync

Question: Hey does anyone know if there is a public framework to sync data between iOS devices using MobileMe?  I've tried googling it and have come up empty.
Answer: Basically, you could use MobileMe as a WebDAV server to sync your data OTA.
This is, for example, what Wallet uses.
Answer: I don't believe that there is yet. Apple have a MobileMe SDK on the desktop, but haven't released anything for iOS as yet. And if memory serves, I can't recall having seen any iOS apps that use MobileMe for syncing, beyond the built-in Calendar, AddressBook and Notes apps.
Comment: Ya, that's was I though, too.

iOS MobileMe Sync


Why my website is not loading correctly on safari browser?

Question: The website is developed in WordPress. It looks perfect on chrom/Firefox browsers but its not looking perfect on safari browser
Can someone help to understand what it the issue and how can i fix it?
Answer: If Safari doesn't load a page or webpage items are missing
Check Safari extensions, or try removing cookies, cache, and other website data if a webpage or site doesn't load on your Mac.
Use the steps in this article if this happens in Safari on your Mac:
You can't log in to a secure website.
A webpage repeatedly reloads or redirects.
A message on a webpage tells you to remove or reset cookies.
Some images, videos, or other items aren't displayed on a webpage, but other page elements load.

Check Parental Controls
If you're logged into a user account that is restricted by Parental Controls or other web filtering software, some pages or page elements might not load if those sites aren't allowed. For example, embedded videos might not display if they're hosted on a site other than the one you're viewing.
Check with your administrator to see if you can get access to the site that you're trying to view.
Check Safari extensions
Some Safari extensions that block ads or other website content can prevent some page elements from displaying. You can temporarily turn off extensions, then re-load the page to see if this is the issue.
Choose Safari > Preferences.
Click Extensions.
Select an extension, then deselect the checkbox "Enable… extension." Repeat this step for every extension that's currently installed.

Reload the page by choosing Choose View > Reload in Safari. If the webpage loads correctly, one or more extensions was blocking the content from loading. Re-enable an extension, then reload the page again to determine which extension is blocking the content you want to view.
If the website still doesn't load with all of your extensions disabled, try the next steps in this article.
If Safari doesn't load pages from a specific site
If only one webpage or website isn't working, you can remove data related to that site to see if it fixes the issue. Use these steps to remove cookies, cache, and other data stored by Safari for a specific site:
Choose Safari > Preferences.
Click the Privacy icon.
Click the Details button.
Search for the name or domain of the website whose data you want to remove.
In the results list, click the domain (like example.com) that has data you want to remove.
Click Remove.
When you're finished, click Done and close the preferences window.

remove history, cookies, cache, website data, for a specific site

If you used the Private Browsing feature of Safari when visiting a website, you might not see the site listed here.
If Safari doesn't load pages from multiple sites
In OS X Yosemite, you can delete website data for the past hour, or past few days if websites or pages stopped loading recently.
Choose History > Clear History and Website Data.
In the sheet that appears, choose the range of data you want to remove from the Clear pop-up menu.
Click Clear History.
remove history, cookies, cache, website data

If you want to remove website data for all of the sites and pages you've ever visited, choose "all history" from the Clear pop-up menu. The option to Remove All Website Data in the Privacy pane of Safari preferences does this, too. These options also reset your browsing history and Top Sites.
Comment: Here is usefull link https://www.lifewire.com/use-dns-to-fix-web-page-not-loading-2260193


de Rham Cohomology of surfaces

Question: Does anyone know a good book where I can find the computation of the de Rham Cohomology of surfaces in R^3 and other classical manifolds (higher dimensional spheres and projective spaces for example) ?
I found Tu's book "An Introduction Manifolds", where a computation is presented via Mayer-Vietoris sequences. However, it does not contain other examples. Does anyone know any other good material?
Answer: For surfaces there's very nice and down-to-earth approach in Fulton's "Algebraic Topology" specially chapter 18 "Cohomology of Surfaces". For higher dimensional classical manifolds including the projective spaces see Karoubi's "Algebraic Topology via Differential Geometry" specially chapter V "Computing Cohomology". All of these use de Rham cohomology.
Answer: Is it important that it be de Rham cohomology? Because any algebraic topology book will compute the integral cohomology of all those examples and more (e.g. Hatcher's "Algebraic Topology", available free online); from this you can find the real cohomology by the universal coefficient theorem. For de Rham cohomology in particular, I would try Bott and Tu's "Differential Forms in Algebraic Topology".
Comment: For the integral (co)homology of many examples, you could also take a look at Neil Strickland's Bestiary of Topological Objects: http://neil-strickland.staff.shef.ac.uk/courses/bestiary/bestiary.pdf.
Answer: For an orientable 2-dimensional surface, it's best to view it as a Riemann surface. Any standard reference on Riemann surfaces (in my day, this was Gunning's Lectures on Riemann surfaces) will work out the deRham cohomology, as well as its decomposition into Dolbeault cohomology. And then if you look in, say, Griffiths and Harris, you can see how to compute the deRham cohomology of complex projective spaces in any dimension.
For standard manifolds that are quotients of compact Lie groups, I believe you can compute deRham cohomology using averaging. I don't know where to find this, though. I vaguely recall learning this from notes by Bott.
Answer: I would like to recommend "From Calculus to Cohomology". Contains several examples and even a chapter 7 : "Applications of de Rham cohomology". It is also so-called "self-contained", but on the downside it does contain some minor flaws which can be quite confusing when reading the material for the first time. I think this is the book you are looking for.
Answer: A detailed exposition of de Rahm cohomology and it's uses is given here
.
Answer: I don't remember exactly, but I think your question and in general your approach to topology should be along the lines of Bott-Tu book.
Answer: check these of J. Harrison and the ivancevics bros
1)http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0807/0807.4991v3.pdf
and
2)http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/math-ph/pdf/0501/0501001v2.pdf
these skip a little Mayer-Vietoris... (but believe me: it is unwise avoid Mayer-Vietoris :)

de Rham Cohomology of surfaces


Check engine light between 1300-1800 RPM

Question: I have a 1995 gmc Sierra hd with the 6.5L turbo Diesel engine in it. I just recently bought it and when ever I hold around 1300-1800 rpm the check engine light comes on, when I take my foot off the throttle and the rpms drop to 1000 the light goes out same with if it push the throttle to 2000 rpm the light will go out. I don't understand why this is happening if you can please help me out, thank you steven
Answer: First thing comes to mind is a combustion problem.
It may be because of the Head Gasket which is a common issue for Sierra. Has your vehicle's oil recently been changed? And also has the gas cap changed? You should first check the oil cap and gas cap because the sensor gets triggerred by the smoke control which also causes the check engine light to blink. If this is the reason it may cause financial problems for you so you should better consider getting your car checked.


Should a violinist use hand strength exercisers? If so, what kind?

Question: Should a violinest use a hand exerciser, by which I am referring to the kind generally used by guitarists? An example of one may be found here.
If so, is there a specific kind and/or tension which is ideal?
Answer: Hand strength is important in the violin, but so is fine motor control.  Why not develop both?  Practicing etudes by Kreutzer (42 Studies) and Paganini (24 Caprices, Op. 1) should strengthen your fingers enough to play almost anything.  Try chord and trill exercises for a serious finger workout.
Here is a graded list of etudes.
Archived version of above link
Answer: The answer to this one is 'it depends on you'
I never felt the need to use one when playing violin, as finger strength was never a requirement, but I do use one now I play guitar as for certain songs I need the extra strength and stamina to hold complex barre chords.
If you feel you don't have the strength or stamina to be able to play the pieces you want consider getting one and seeing if it makes a difference.
Answer: I've never known anyone who has needed to use hand strengthening exercises in addition to normal practice to gain enough strength to play properly - usually the strength needed would come with the regular practice required (and both of these will come gradually, you're not going to be bashing out Paganini's caprices on day 2.) Perhaps if someone had weak hands for a particular medical reason this may be necessary, but in general I'd say it's just not required.
For guitarists the need to hold barre chords and the like much earlier in training means that yes, strengthening exercises could well be necessary - I'm not proclaiming that they're not necessary on any instrument, I just speak for the violin.


Livestreaming Youtube

Question: I have a Vlog on Youtube that I would like to stream live via LiveStream, but the quality looks like complete garbage. It's blocks and just all around not what it looks like in the browser. Does anyone know of a way I can boost the quality of these youtube uploaded recordings so I can stream them from LiveStream?
Comment: what do you mean by `"It's blocks"`?
Comment: Do you have access to the original video file on your computer? If so, you can upload it directly to LiveStream for probably better results.
Answer: What you are asking is extremely difficult without some very expensive and complex software and video studio equipment. I learned some techniques in After Effects that were supposed to make an enlarged video look better (certain blurs and sharpeners, deinterlacing, etc) but I was NEVER satisfied with the results. Every technique made the enlarged version blurry or grainy. These techniques I just mentioned do improve the quality somewhat, but does not magically or vastly improve the quality like what everybody expects expects (not saying you do but in general).
It's would be easier for you just to stream from Youtube Live since it can be set to automatically record and upload your stream once its completed. It does so in HD or at least matches the quality of the stream.
I also find Youtubes general stream quality to be much better than LiveStream's.
Here is the official Youtube user guide on how to setup live streams. The guide little lengthy but it explains all the steps quite thoroughly.
http://support.google.com/youtube/bin/static.py?hl=en&page=guide.cs&guide=2474025
Notice Step 1, Part 8 with information about recording the live stream. Just remember that if your live stream is going to go over 4 hours, which in my opinion is tremendously long, you cannot use the recording feature. If this is one of the rare events or streams that would go over that time limit (maybe a huge concert or music festival) then a solution would be to have an "intermission" where you stop streaming at 3 hours and 50 minutes just to be safe. Then have a nice 10 minute break to do whatever you want!
One important thing to note when recording live streams with Youtube is that you can't edit the recorded stream once it exceeds two hours. This is kind of lame but I understand why it was necessary.
Additionally, it would be a good idea to record a local copy using an HD screen and audio recorder. In this answer I listed a few popular examples of screen recording software.
Answer: This question doesn't really make sense as it is now--the quality of your YouTube videos should have nothing to do with livestreaming.
If your camera takes good video to begin with and the videos look fine on YouTube, then the problem with livestreaming is going to be the upload bandwidth of your internet connection. If you don't have the bandwidth, the stream has to be highly compressed, and will look pixelated (block-y) as a result.
Comment: LiveStream doesn't stream with as good of quality as youtube does. At least IMO

Livestreaming Youtube


Foliation of hypersurfaces in General Relativity

Question: As I understand it, it is usual in GR to define a foliation of Spacetime by a family of spacelike hypersurfaces "indexed" by the time variable. Then, in the context of Schwarzschild metric in spherical coordinates, is it correct to define the same way a foliation of these spacelike hypersurfaces by a family of 2-spheres indexed by the radial variable? Can we find a correspondence with a topological ball of r radius? And does this second foliation possess the same properties as the first one?
Is it correct to think of the spacelike hypersurfaces and of the 2-spheres as families each consisting of infinite elements empiled on each other along the t and r direction respectively ?
Answer: By the Frobenius theorem you get a foilation if the tangent bundle restricted to that space is closed under the Lie bracket. I.e. you take a look at a basis $L_i$ of the tangent space of interest (with $i=1,...n$, where $n$ is smaller than the dimension of the whole tangent space) and check if all the expressions $[L_i,L_j]$ are again vectors within that space.
For spherical coordinates you'll find
$$L_\theta=g_1(\theta,\phi)\partial_\theta+g_2(\theta,\phi)\partial_\phi$$
and
$$L_\phi=h_1(\theta,\phi)\partial_\theta+h_2(\theta,\phi)\partial_\phi,$$
in every patch, so you're good. Probably an example is something like $$L_\theta=c_r \partial_\theta,\ \ \  \ L_\phi=c_r f(\theta) \partial_\phi.$$
Here I didn't care about singularities of any kind. The topology of compact spaces is of course different than others. Do you know the hairy ball theorem?
As far as your question goes, the one dimensional case is even trivial so to speak. But there are some situations in  numerical general relativity and loop quantum gravity, where the point is really to find nice, spacelike foliations, but that's not what you're asking for. As far as restrictions from Riemann geometry go, that should be all.
Answer:
...in the context of Schwarzschild metric in spherical coordinates, is
  it correct to define the same way a foliation of these spacelike
  hypersurfaces by a family of 2-spheres indexed by the radial variable?

Only for 2-spheres beneath the event horizon, i.e. those for which r <  rhorizon.  r = constant describes a timelike hypersurface, if r > rhorizon.

Can we find a correspondence with a topological ball of r radius?

Not sure what you're asking here, but if you're wondering whether the topology of a hypersurface defined by r = constant is S2, the answer is 'no'. Hypersurfaces are hyper surfaces; they are three-dimensional.  Their topology in this case is  R X S2.

Is it correct to think of the spacelike hypersurfaces and of the
  2-spheres as families each consisting of infinite elements empiled on
  each other along the t and r direction respectively ?

Not quite.  The spacelike hypersurfaces are part of a single family, each member of which is a 3-dimensional volume of topology R X S2.  These members are indexed by the radius r of the associated 2-sphere, as long as r < rhorizon.


what to do with old hardware

Question: What do you do with your old / unused hardware? Cables, Hard drives, motherboards, and others peripherals you have around? Stuff that is broken or just too obsolete to use.
Answer: There are a lot of people out there with far more time to tinker with "worthless" parts than I have - freecycle.org. It doesn't head to a landfill AND you don't have to take it any farther than the curb.  Win-win.
Comment: Strange, I'd forgotten all about Freecycle. Thanks for jogging my memory. +1
Answer: We have a company locally that recycles old computers for schools and people who otherwise couldn't afford a computer, so a lot of stuff goes there.  Old parts that can be assembled into computers, I've used for

mail servers
router/firewalls for friends, with m0n0wall
network storage with FreeNAS
Answer: This is what I do with old printers:
Answer: Give it to me!
...
Just kidding :)
Answer: I hate throwing out hardware that still works, I feel that it could always come in useful later, when something breaks and there's a crisis. So it usually ends up in a big box of bits. I'll try to organize it but eventually it gets overrun and I have to throw some out or find a new home for it.
Often working parts will get re-purposed for a home project or used in a friends old PC that needs repairs.
Answer: Broken, bin it (only individual components however - Never bin an entire computer).
Hard drives and cables always come in use, as do PSU's.  Really old motherboards bin, keep the others as spares.
Edit: When I say bin it, I mean dispose of it correctly.  For example hard drives should be securely destroyed/wiped.
Answer: Go green and recycle by giving cat a bed.
taken from Here
Comment: +1 Since the demise of flat topped, warm, cuddly powered-on CRT's in our homes, cats need a place like this!
Answer: In my area, electronics recycling is now required by law. An eco-fee is charged at point of purchase to cover this, and our bottle depots accept electronic devices.
I probably keep more than I should; I still have a huge box of parallel cables. Hard drives I always take apart before getting rid of them. Partly because I want to wipe the data, and partly because I want the magnets. Wipe one of the magnets across the surface of the disc and/or smash it with a hammer. Use the magnets to hold papers against metal storage cabinets. (I also used some magnets to make a coat hook in my cubicle.)
Answer: I recycle what I can, in a number of different ways. Just today I was handed an old laptop, still in working order. What do you do with a 400MHz Celeron laptop? Give it to one of the other staff members to give to his pre-school age grandchildren to play with. Things like cables can become a problem. There are only just so many any of us can find a use for and they accumulate faster than wire coathangers.
Answer: Hm, we trade in our old hardware even the broken one. But I'm not in the purchasing department. Although this question was asked before, iirc.
Answer: Our county has a recycling center that accepts old computer components. I just make sure to remove the hard drives first.
Answer: Sell it on EBay or the like (or donate it, if someone wants it). There are people who cannot afford new equipment, or who like to tinker with old stuff, or need spare parts to keep an important system running. This even holds for computers that no longer work: they can still serve as part sources.
I once got 70 Euro for a broken laptop (wouldn't switch on), as the screen was still OK.
If you can't sell it that way, you dispose of it without feeling bad :-). Most municipalities have recycling centers for this, as computer trash should not be put into the normal trash.
Ah, and give any harddrives a good treatment with DBAN or the like, lest your private data end up in someone else's hands :-). This of course means that broken harddrives must be destroyed, as you cannot wipe them.
Answer: You have some nice tips in you answers. Basically if it is trash, bin it. If it has value, keep it, sell it, give it away. The hard part is determining if it has value :)
Recycling is a good thing, if it is broken but you are creative and can find an alternative use for it, go for it :)

what to do with old hardware


Conditional Probability

Question: 80% of all messages sent across the internet are a spam. 87.25% of spam messages contain the word 'free'. 1% of non spam messages contain 'free'.
What is the probability(the message has the word free | it is a spam message)
Would I need to use the condition probability formula to work this out?
I got the answer as 0.8725 - can somebody confirm if this is correct?
Answer: Yes, $87.25\%$ because that is the fraction of spam messages that contain the word 'free'.
Answer: Yes, you are completely correct. If you were looking for another way to do this rather than the conditional probability you could also draw a tree and see it that way. Either way you will get $87.25$%.
Edit: (For question in comment)
Probability that a message is spam and contains the word free: $$P(\text{Spam}\cap\text{Free})=P(\text{Free}|\text{Spam})\cdot P(\text{spam})$$ $$P(\text{Spam}\cap\text{Free})=.8725\cdot .8=.698$$
Probability that a message has the word free: $$P(\text{Has the word free})=P(\text{Free}|\text{Not Spam})+P(\text{Free}|\text{Spam})$$$$P(\text{Has the word free})=.002+.698=.7$$
Comment: No, the formula is not correct; that should be: $$P(\text{Has the word free)} = P(\text{Free}\cap\text{Not spam}) + P(\text{Free}\cap\text{Spam})$$ But the numbers are right though.
Comment: First, they are not independent; second, if they were independent, then $P(a\mid b) = P(a)$.
Comment: Since they are independent variables doesn't $P(a|b)=P(a)P(b)=P(a\cap b)$?
Comment: Oh wow, I have no idea what I was doing on this problem. I'll have to look back over it. I'm on my mobile now so it'll be later, but Thanks for catching my mistake!

Conditional Probability


Is it possible to derive the "risk tolerance" from the portfolio efficient frontier?

Question: I am trying to solve the Portfolio Optimization Problem using a "Multi-objective Evolutionary Algorithm". After obtaining the efficient frontier, I would like to know if we can infer for each point of the efficient frontier the corresponding risk tolerance parameter (which is related to the investor's preference). Thanks.
Comment: You mean the $\lambda$ in $\mu - \lambda \sigma$?
Comment: Exactly, known also as the "risk aversion coefficient".
Answer: Strictly speaking the risk aversion coefficient depends on the form of investor preferences. Your "multi-objective evolutionary algorithm" may or may not be easy to place in this format. However, it becomes easy if you think about the risk aversion coefficient in mean/variance space if you were a mean-variance variance investor.
In this case you would have utility $$U\left(w\right)\equiv w'\mu-\frac{1}{2}\lambda w'\Sigma w
 $$ with the first order condition $$\mu-\lambda\Sigma w=0$$ multiplying both sides by $w'$ and solving for $\lambda$ gives $$\lambda=\frac{w'\mu}{w'\Sigma w}=\frac{\mu_{p}}{\sigma_{p}^{2}}
 $$ or that the implied risk aversion coefficient given portfolio holdings if you were a mean-variance investor is the ratio between the portfolio mean to portfolio variance.


Coefficients of lacunary series on quasiconformally transformed unit disk

Question: Say I have a lacunary $q$ series $s(q)=\sum_{n=0}^{\infty} a_{n}q^{n}$ , and I have a quasiconformal transformation $\xi$ which preserves the boundary of the unit disk in $\mathbb{C}$ such that if $|q|=1$ then $|\xi(q)|=1$. Is there a method from Teichmüller theory that allows us to explicitly write down the coefficients $b_{n}$ of $s(\xi(q)) = \sum_{n=0}^{\infty} a_{n}\xi(q)^{n} = \sum_{n=0}^{\infty} b_{n}q^{n}$ given some explicit $\xi$?
Answer: The answer is no: pick $s(q)=q$ to be simply the identity, then you would obtain automatically a power series expansion for any quasiconformal $\xi$ preserving the circle, which can't be true since there are some $\xi$ that are not analytic near the origin...


Patent application is in the Public Domain

Question: When there is a patent application submitted for an idea that has been around for years and is common knowledge what can you do?
Answer: When a process or composition has been in the public domain, an inventor can still file an application on what is considered "an improvement patent" that fills an unmet need by todays' users. This is quite common. It may be a less expensive manufacturing process, results which are more precise i.e., look at all the OTC pregnancy tests, a test that can be used at home or in the field, etc. Before considering submitting prior art to the USPTO since what you submit may actually illustrate the need in the industry or "unmet need" proceed with caution an analyze whether a PCT has been filed. I will assume you mean a published provisional, so here are focused steps to follow:
1.Go to Public PAIR and Enter the publication number.
2. Look at the tab "Image File Wrapper" and see if it is currently being examined and what its status is;
3. Next to to the Continuity tab and see if a PCT was filed earlier. If so click on view and you will be directed to the WIPO site.
4. Once there click on the last tab denoting "Documents".
5. Under documents, you will be able to view the search report termed ISR and the Preliminary Examination Report and Written Opinion of the PCT examiner. These items can provide a wealth of information as to whether the application is truly state of the art or an improvement of the art or product by process claim.
Once you get a better idea, then repost your question for ideas on how to proceed.

*
Comment: From the answer "I will assume you mean a published provisional."  Provisional applications do **not get published.**
Answer: One option to consider is a prior art submission to the USPTO under 37 CFR 1.501 and 35 USC 301. See ==> http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s2205.html
This creates a written record of the applicability of the particular patent(s) and/or printed publication(s) submitted. If the patent owner attempts to assert this patent against a third party, the third party may be able to leverage your submission as part of an invalidity defense and/or as part of its own Post Grant Review filing.


ActionScript 3.0 and iOS

Question: In Adobe CS5 you can export games to iOS, but all my research in the past indicated that Apple was not going to support Flash. It's my understanding that Adobe and Apple were working on this at one point and then Apple terminated the project. I was chatting with some other developers about this and one mentioned they were porting an AS3 project to their iPhone. Is there a way to get a Flash App on to the iStore? I don't think so.
Answer: You can't take a flash app and just have it run on an iOS device as-is.  CS5 does have an export process to put projects on a device.  I'm assuming it's running in a VM or is some kind of cross compiler or something.
Using Flash in CS5 for iOS
Answer: Apple changed their mind about Flash-derived apps (as seen here). Developers can use Adobe's Packager for iPhone to convert Flash apps to native iPhone apps. The Flash VM is still not supported in the iPhone's browser.
Answer: Flash CS5 can allows you to export your flash app as a native iPhone app, using the AIR for iOS extension. But in order to create a native iOS app, you need the digital certificate from Apple, which you'll be given only when you register yourself as an Apple developer.

ActionScript 3.0 and iOS


What are the risks of a rogue Access Point?  What lessons can be learned from the Wifi Pineapple?

Question: I'd like to educate colleagues and peers on rogue access points using the tool "Wifi Pineapple".
What are some specific security-related lessons I could demonstrate?  If applicable, what are the mitigations to those attacks?
Answer: First and foremost, the pineapple demonstrates the concept of a rogue AP, as that is essentially what it is.
Every wireless card that has been configured to automatically connect to a previously known network will get connected to the pineapple. This is a hardware implementation of the karma attack.
Once connected, the pineapple becomes a powerful tool for conducting MITM attacks, coming with a good range of tools built in.
The pineapple can also be extended using modules that provide functionality like sslstrip, tcpdump and nmap.
Mitigation techniques that apply to standard MITM attacks also applies to guarding against the pineapple. One very interesting technique that is pineapple specific is to set a network with a name like pineapple as the SSID as the priority trusted network. If your card connects to that network, it means you have fallen prey to the pineapple. I read about it in a blog post about the pineapple, but i can't find it now.
Comment: It's not exactly a hardware implementation, that would suggest the circuits are application-specific. It's a purpose-built device with a generic 802.11 card, the attack is still implemented in software.
Answer: Imagine the following scenario:
You set up your pineapple at a crowded swim meet.  Every parent in the place checks for wireless.  They see yours and it is named DHSPublicWifi and it has 5 bars.  They ignore the other choices and connect to yours.
One parent tries to go to Facebook.  Facebook is set to use HTTPS so "sidejacking" attacks are not an option, but their OS sends out a DNS request to find the proper IP address for Facebook. Your Pineapple intercepts DNS requests and gives them back a fake IP that will bring their browser to a malicious site that looks like an exact copy of Facebook, even has the proper URL for Facebook displayed in the browser.  They don't notice that they are not HTTPS in this session.  They attempt to log in and either your Pineapple or the malicious site now has their Facebook credentials.  The Pineapple can either forward them to the real Facebook, or disown the entire affair.
If you would like to demonstrate the need for DNSSEC to your colleagues, that is what you could show them.
Answer: A rogue AP can be placed outside, run on batteries or a non-standard constant power-source, and/or it can look like a Pineapple.
Comment: My question was leaning more towards "what are the implications of a rogue AP"


Viewing tweets you have sent

Question: How can I see the history of tweets I have sent?
Answer: Your 3200 most recent Tweets are visible on your profile page: https://twitter.com/{username}.
Downloading your Twitter archive to allows you to browse a snapshot of your Twitter information, starting with your first Tweet. To download and view your Twitter archive:

Go to your account settings by clicking on the profile icon at the top right of the page and selecting Settings from the dropdown menu.
Click Request your archive.
When your download is ready, we'll send an email with a download link to the confirmed email address associated with your Twitter account.
Once you receive the email, click the Go now button to log in to your Twitter account and download a .zip file of your Twitter archive.
Unzip the file and click index.html to view your archive in the web browser of your choice.

Viewing tweets you have sent


What could cause low water pressure in tub and no water coming out of shower head?

Question: Water pressure in tub has suddenly dropped and water will not come out of shower head at all. I can hear what sounds like water running up the pipe to the shower head when I have the tub faucets on, but when I pull up the diverter for the shower, no water comes out of the shower head.  Fixtures are about 20 years old. Will I have to tear out the tub surround to find the problem?
Answer: It sounds like one of your valves is not working correctly.  It could be that the handle is slipping or that the valve is clogged.  Does it feel like the handle is turning the valve, or is it slipping? If its slipping you can probably just tighten the screw.
As far as replacing it, you might get lucky and find a replacement valve, but in the event you don't, they make remodel plates which allow you to relatively easily replace a 3 handle setup with a 1 handle faucet.  The remodel plate covers up the area in the wall/tile you'd need to remove to swap it out; you don't have to tear out the entire wall.  If you can get in behind the shower you can probably do it without the remodel plate.
Answer: first, i assume you have pressure everywhere else in the house, both hot and cold. The tub is working normally? Second,the sound of water in a valve can be very deceptive. a small amount of water can sound like normal flow, also air flowing back into the system can make a similar sound.
If you have pressure in the lower tub faucet, then it has to be the valve or a major leak between the valve and the shower head. A bad valve would rarely require replacing the valve housing, and most repairs can be done by without going into the wall.
How old is the valve? single or hot and cold? brand? Most valve stem assemblies can be repaired or replaced by turning off the main water supply and unscrewing the valve handle or cover. This is not a big job, but often requires some finesse to do it properly on older systems. Newer designs are easier to remove, but harder to put back together properly. A lot of step by step instruction are available on the web once you know the brand and model.


Play-by-web tools for Universalis

Question: I've seen Wiki's being used as a technological base for playing Universalis, but I'm not aware of any wildly successful runs with that.
Are there any other good web tools for universalis?
Answer: I'd recommend mind-mapping collaboration tools like MindMeister (free) and Mindomo. Also, some of the virtual tabletop tools might work. Just create some kind of index card system on the VTT and record information that way. VTTs also roll dice, in case you need that, too.
Answer: What about mutli-user editors?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaborative_real-time_editor
One rather recent (and diabolical) example of this would be Google Wave or Docs. I actually thought about using one of these for a tabletop round of Universalis (with multiple laptops for the participants). That would have saved a lot of global looking-up of facts and handing around the computer to the next scribe.
Comment: Same here.  I started trying to teach myself how to write Python robots for Wave for the primary purpose of putting together a Universalis game.  As usual, I was side-tracked and never got back to it.
Answer: Ning used to be a great resource for this kind of stuff. You could start a network. Any particular game could be a group within that network, and each scene could be a thread in that group. It also had chat, man, I was sad when it went to a pay only model, but there are probably other social network platforms out there. I just haven't looked into it yet because I haven't been able to put together the people interested in doing it.
I would love to put together another place on-line for diceless games, maybe get some Mortal Coil going on.
Answer: a nice wiki based tool is the obsidian portal but for collaborative editing of basic files we use dropbox (of which there are many similar programs).
From what I know of Universalis (almost nothing) wouldn't play by forum work well? There is a specific timeline for each players input (avoiding the two people attempting to influenec the story at the same tiem that you will get in chat or IM style) and you can have as many topics (scenes) as needed.

Play-by-web tools for Universalis


Should I seal my granite countertop?

Question: I recently redid my kitchen and brought new granite countertops. The company that did the installation was crappy and I had to put in my own supports and other odds and ends that I thought was standard for installation. I asked if the granite was sealed, and they said they didn't know. I have two questions, how can I tell if the granite is sealed, and if I find it isn't, do you know of a product that I can use myself?
Answer: There are a lot of bad fabricators installing granite these days. I have seen everything from edges that are waxed instead of polished and tops that are dyed to make them look like a more expensive stone than the fabricator purchased. If they did a bad job there is no reason to believe any of it is done right.
Do the water test suggested above. It will tell you if it needs sealing. It likely does. I would also watch the edges. If they start to go dull in a few months then you really got taken. Polished edges will last a lifetime. Waxed edges a few months. Polishing takes about 15 minutes a foot with very expensive tools. Waxing takes seconds with cheap wax. This is only one example of many tricks to pass off bad granite countertops.
All granite countertops are not created equal. If you purchased from a guy with lawn sign working with only a cell phone as many today do you got what looks like a good price for a countertop but wait until you try and get warranty work. Good luck because if your installer did not know if it was sealed and you are already doing corrective work you are likely to be even more disappointed in the future as the top ages.
Answer: you can leave some water for an hour and see if the granite gets darker. If it does -then it's not sealed. It will dry in a day or so.
I personally prefer not to seal it, because the sealant changes the color of granite. If you clean up the liquids right away it will be fine. Especially oils, wine and tomato juice.
Many stores sell granite sealers, usually the companies that sell granite have high quality things. It's very easy to apply yourself, just wet the countertop and let it dry. The first time you may need to do it a few times. Usually you have to reseal the granite every year or so but i hear the new sealants last for years.
Answer: Yikes!!!!  OMG!!!!!  I cannot fathom a granite supplier not knowing if a permanent sealer was applied in the polishing process of their product. I would be talking to the owner of said company for answers. The granite comes to all fabricators from the miller and they know what finish is on them. Ask the right questions and you will get he right answers.  There is no test that can tell you if it is sealed or not. Unless you paid way less that common market value I have to believe it is sealed. Absolutely no suppliers that I do business with would dare to supply unsealed, polished granite.
Comment: Of course, the reason the installer said he didn't know if the top was sealed is that he **did** know.
Answer: To know whether your counter needs sealing, try to sprinkle some water on it and see if it beads up, if it doesn't, it time to seal your granite. Also if you already noticed some water spot on your granite it means the sealer is weak.  If you notice this happening it is time to reseal your granite.
Comment: Please don't post answers with spam links in them. Please review our FAQ and what it has to say on [self promotion](http://diy.stackexchange.com/faq#promotion).
Answer: I recently did research when we had new counters installed and the overall recommendation was to use 511 impregnator sealer-at Lowes or home depot. Afterwards I found out that our granite installer uses that. Spend but it soaks in and lasts a very long time.

Should I seal my granite countertop?


What is the advantage of buying elixirs?

Question: Usually i see people buying elixirs when they already have 6 itens and want to spend the remaining gold. But in some games, i see players buying elixirs early in the game, around level 11 or 12.
Is there a strategy of buying these elixirs early?
Answer: In regards to that particular elixer, It can be used like a heal.
Stolen from wiki

Elixer of Fortitude:

The health bonus can be used somewhat like  Heal, instantly granting you extra life that could save you from death. This is a common tactic to turn the tide in an early fight or to survive a gank.
Because the extra health is not gained by health regeneration or healing, it can be considered an effective counter to  Ignite.

Oracle's Elixer (This item no longer exists in game):

Used to help clear wards to prevent enemy vision
Used in case of champions that can stealth for detection

The other elixers are as you said mainly used late game to help boost stats when no inventory slots are available.
Comment: +1 for mentioning as a use of healing and ignores ignite. I didn't know that and I'm up on 1000+ games. Thats pretty cool.
Answer: Several points are to be considered for elixir use:

An elixir is a consumable item (like wards), if it hasn't been of any use during its three minutes, its lost money.
An elixir's buff depends on your level, the higher the level, the stronger the buff
An elixir gives a (much) stronger buff than an item for the same amount of money
You don't need any inventory slot to store them if you consume them directly.

For reason number 4, you find that when a player is fully stuffed, he'll then go and buy elixir's with his remaining money. But that only happens on low / medium level games (never seen a pro game last this long).
However, if you look a high elo games, you can see player's use elixirs early or mid game. I will try explain, but the correct use comes with experience, team play and experience (because you need twice as much experience compared to team play :) )
From what I have seen, elixir helps a team who is late on gold secure or come back into a game with a team fight. If team takes elixir, it will compensate (and maybe more) the lack of stuff / level it has and allow her to win a team fight. However, enemy team seeing the elixirs being used will just retreat to avoid team fight. So it helps secure secondary objectives (drake, nash, clearing jungle creeps and wards to take map control, pushing a tower, etc.) in case enemy team avoids direct confrontation. Whatever the situation, you have to make sure when buying the elixir that the return on investment will be higher than the cost of the elixir + what the other team will have won as gold in the same amount of time.
Another use seen in the current world championships is to allow a player whose lane was being totally denied to him to get a buff allowing him to get some last hits and resist to the jungler's ganks.
To sum up, it helps you (or your team) catch up in power if you feel you're not up to the match, but you have to make sure investment is worth it. And this judgment comes with experience.
Answer: In some case it can gives you a strong asset for the early game for example Ezreal jungle can use the Elixir of Fortitude for a fast jungle clear and nasty ganks by increasing his life pool and his damage (=> his Q) . With a good pull he easily kills blue without taking any hits.
As Fiddlesticks I sometimes take Elixir of Brilliance at level 5 just before the 2nd blue buff then I go drake at 7:30. With the CDR of the blue + elixir you can chain Drains and solo the drake without losing life and normally you will hit lvl 6 with the EXP; then you can ult bot for a double kill !!! :-D With the 20% CDR blue  + 15% CDR Elixir it's an ultimate which will come back very fast.
As Tryndamere you can jungle pretty well with the Elixir of Agility boosting your crit chances and you attack speed will allow you to get your 6 really fast.
Comment: These are some nice examples, of real situations, thank you.
Answer: Elixirs pack a big early-mid game advantage in most cases. By carrying one of these it could give you the edge you need in a fight to win. They are very popular when you are behind aswell.


Create contacts from attached vCard?

Question: Using GMail, is there a way to automatically add contacts from a vCard that has been emailed to me.  I know that I can download it to my local system and import it from there, but I'm looking for a quicker, one-step, method.
Answer: At this time, GMail does not support this feature.
There are several posts on help forums discussing this.  I also tried copying the link to the attachment and using the url in Contacts when it asked for a file.  It was a long shot, and it didn't work.
Comment: Any specific reason/reference to explain why?
Comment: Good point, I should have included this information in my answer.  I've edited.
Comment: Thanks for your answer and the link to the support forum.
Answer: There is an easyer way! if you go to http://memotoo.com and setup an account you can have your Outlook contacts synced using one of the provided applications to that service. They will then sync their server with Google and you get all of your contacts :)
So you can one-click to import the vCard into Outlook (or another app) and have them synced to MemoToo within a few minutes and into your Google contacts a few minutes after that.
This service also supports syncing your contacts from Facebook, LinkedIn and most other contact, calander online stores so you have a single point of truth that can sync with your phone, outlook and other services.
I like it as it supports pictures as well and you can check out how I set it up on my blog.

Create contacts from attached vCard?


What SD(HC) memory card should I be using for my DSLR camera?

Question: What is the optimal size? Are certain brands better? What speed rating is preferred? Any other things to keep in mind?
Specifically, I am using a Canon t2i.
Comment: Related to: http://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/325/how-can-i-know-what-speed-card-to-get-for-my-camera
Comment: Some answers were merged from: http://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/4902/best-card-for-canon-550d-hd-video
Answer: A class 6 card in theory should be more than enough bandwidth for HD (1080) video for the 550D (48 MBit).  Unfortunately some manufacturers do not not produce as high quality consistent memory as they should and thus most HDSLR folks prefer to use class 10 cards which should have enough headroom that you'll never see the buffer bars.
I recommend not skimping on brand too much and going with a SanDisk class 10 - I have had no issues with mine on my T2i/550D or my 60D when shooting video.
Answer: Class 6 is sufficient. That camera can almost write as fast as that, though. You might consider a Class 10, which could be more useful in the future.
The size is really up to you and your take on "putting all your eggs in one basket." I have a few 32GB CF cards because I don't like fumbling with cards all the time. Basically, the more I'm handling my baskets, the more opportunity there is to break my eggs. That's just me.
Stick with the reputable brands for memory. Kingston and SanDisk are good. I'm sure there are some others.
Answer: You generally get what you pay for, but to take some of the pain out of it, there are benchmarks for memory cards online (although they're yet to test using the 550D). Whilst I've only experience of Compact Flash, I've always found Sandisk to be quick and reliable, and the benchmarks appear to back that up.
Answer: According to dpreview SanDisk Extreme III will get you almost unlimited JPEG burst size, and almost 2 secs of full burst shooting with RAW. 8 GB version should be quite enough.
Comment: class 6 or class 10?
Answer: Some cards are too slow to accept an HD stream, so you need one that is fast enough.
Since that camera uses the H.264 codec, it produces video at 5.5 MB/s at its highest-resolution. Some cameras used different codecs, so some models will even faster cards, particularly if using M-JPEG.
Look for something that has a WRITE speed of 10 MB/s or more and you'll be safe. Sandisk specifies their write-speeds in MB/s as opposed to Xs (you would need at least 66X to get 10 MB/s) which makes it easier to choose the right one with them.
Lexar Professional (20 MB/s) or Sandisk Extreme (30 MB/s) SDHC cards are currently top-of-the-line models with high durability. I use both of these as well as Kingston cards. High-end cards such as these come with a life-time warranty (at least here in Canada). I would not trust my images to cards which their own makers show less trust in them.
Answer: I recently got this Transcend 16Gb Class 10. I haven't tested it thoroughly, but if it really is a class 10 (or close, as I know that not all class 10 are equal), it's quite cheap for it's size.
Answer: I just bought this 32GB Class 10 card for my Panasonic TM700.  I don't generally take 1080p60 video (only Class 10 cards are fast enough for that) but I may want to someday.
I didn't see much of a difference on Amazon, in terms of price, between Class 6 cards and Class 10 cards.   In fact some of the Class 6's are more expensive than the Class 10's from the same manufacturer.
I'd say get a Class 10 card - even if your camera doesn't come close to using all the available bandwidth, the card will probably last long enough that you could use it in your next one.


Is there an easy way to attach an email in Trello?

Question: Is there an easy way to add an email (from Outlook) into a card on Trello?
Answer: The short answer is no - because you used the word Outlook.
Superuser.se has a question How to save a mail into an .eml-file with Outlook? and although it looks like it might be possible I wouldn't classify any of the solutions as easy.
Thunderbird on the other hand lets you save an email as an .eml or .html file via the right mouse popup.
Then you'd simply add the .eml or .html as an attachment to your card in Trello. Then if it needs to be viewed, click on the attachment link on the card. If you used an eml file then your browser will probably download it as normal rather than launch it directly as it would for the html file, but once downloaded, double click the .eml file and your email client will pick it up and display it. Again - for me this is Thunderbird and it works beautifully.
Outlook, however - mmmnot so easy.
Two workarounds come to mind though:

Print the email to a PDF file using something like BullZip PDF and attach the PDF to the Trello card.
Snag a screenshot and attach the image of the email to the Trello card.
Comment: The pdf idea is an excellent one.
Answer: You can add email from Outlook or any other mail client (desktop or mobile) via Emello. You can assign custom dedicated email addresses to any of your boards and lists. This should fix your work flow issue.
Comment: The link looks broken. Emello seems dead
Answer: You can also open the email, save it as an htm file and then attach it to a card in Trello.
Answer: Yes. Download www.outlook2web.com and then you can drag an email from Outlook directly to Trello. It is saved as a .msg file.


Why does ETTL occasionally fail with my Canon Speedlite 580 EXII?

Question: I have the Canon Speedlite 580EXII for 3-4 years now, and I have used it with a 450D and more recently with a 60D.
With both bodies, there was a very weird behavior where ETTL or even TTL will suddenly fail, and the output of the flash will be totally uncontrolled, it can be heavily under/overexposed.
It appears to be random and I have tried restarting the flash, didn't work.
I tried refitting the flash unit after cleaning the contacts with rubbing alcohol, sometimes it work sometimes it doesn't.
In the end I found out that it was not the dirt/dust, it was the connector. When I hold my flash, I can nudge it very slightly to the left or right, this is very minor, the distance it can be rotated is less than 0.5mm.
Sometimes nudging it to the left/right will re-enable the ETTL. Sometimes it will fall out of ETTL and TTL altogether.
Another symptoms that I find puzzling is that my flash seem to be skipping quite a lot more than it used to. On a fresh pack of fully charged battery, I will get roughly 2 to 3 fps (for the flash) even at f/1.4 ISO 400.
I have used the flash before and I know it is capable of doing up to 10fps depending on the battery, aperture, distance and ISO. With my 60D doing around 5fps, 80% of the time I will get 1 or 2 "dark" shots where the flash did not fire.
The 580 EX being the most powerful flash Canon has to offer, I am wonder what is wrong with my flash unit?
I am not a pro, so I don't use my flash like a workhorse every single day. I use it only when I can carry the extra weight and it is suitable to use a flash. I honestly do not think that my flash is already "worn out", and I think there is something wrong with it, and hopefully can be repaired.
Does anyone has a similar experience with their 580 EX II? Any advice or insight to why this might be happening?
Answer: It sounds like your connector is loose and the contacts internally occasionally do not connect.  This is common occurrence in many, many consumer electronics surrounding connection points.  This is evidenced by when you nudge it one way or the other, it working / not working.
Either try to get it repaired or replace it.


Common Lisp on Mac OS X?

Question: Is there a comparison between the different versions of Common Lisp for Mac OS X? Is there a clear frontrunner?
Answer: For comparisons, see: http://common-lisp.net/~dlw/LispSurvey.html
Agreed with the others: yes, use SBCL or CCL.
CCL makes it easier to invoke ObjC libraries, such as for writing native Mac Apps.  That becomes the tie-breaker for some.  (Personally, I've enjoyed using both but tend to stay current on SBCL as my main compiler for server software.)
For completeness:
CCL is Clozure CL (not to be confused with one spelled using "j" in middle, which is another dialect than Common Lisp).  SBCL compiles to faster code, and CCL has shorter compile times.  Both are solid compilers.
For targeting iOS/iPhone/iPad, there's been some success with ECL.  See: http://funcall.posterous.com/tag/iphone  But I wouldn't consider this a front-runner and haven't actually used it myself yet beyond samples posted on that blog.
Although MacOSX thread support is considered experimental with SBCL and self tests will fail if you compile from sources (which is required to enable threads), threads work well enough for most cases.  I've deployed heavily threaded production code by developing on MacOSX then releasing to servers running FreeBSD (which also has similar issues with threads) and Debian/Ubuntu Linux (very stable).  This has served me well for the past 5-6 years, including at a few start-ups.
QuickLisp (for obtaining libraries) is very stable on SBCL/MacOSX.  Haven't tried it on CCL but should be rock solid there too!
Comment: Thank you. I'd installed LispWorks but I'll take a look at others as well.
Answer: A friend of mine who is an avid Lisper recommends SBCL. It's easy to install/maintain with Homebrew (my preference) or MacPorts.
Answer: Not sure about objective comparison sites but I've used clozure in the past a sort of  off spring of digitool's mcl (dead by now, but code is open sourced I think).
I think there a are other possibilities as well, emacs being the first to come in mind but that is not common lisp while giving it a second thought.

Common Lisp on Mac OS X?


expressing $x^3 /1000 - 100x^2 - 100x + 3$ in big theta

Question: Hello can somebody help me in expressing $x^3/1000 - 100x^2 - 100x + 3$ in big theta notation. It looks like of $x^3$ to me, but obviously at $x =0$ obviously this polynomial gives a value of $3$. And multiplying $x^3$ by any constant won't help at all. Is there a standard way to approach such kind of problem?
Answer: As a general rule, "$f(x)$ is $\Theta(g(x))$" means "$f(x)$ is $\Theta(g(x))$ as $x \to \infty$." So you're allowed to ignore any finite number of zeroes of $f$ and $g$ -- you just have to show that each one is bounded by a constant multiple of the other if $x$ is big enough.
Answer: More generally, given an arbitrary real polynomial $p(x)=a_nx^n+\cdots+a_1x+a_0$ with $a_n>0$, let us denote by $M$ a number greater than all of $p$'s real roots. We have
$$\lim_{x\to\infty}\frac{p(x)}{x^n}=a_n+a_{n-1}(0)+\cdots+a_1(0)+a_0(0)=a_n>0.$$
Now $p$ is continuous and has no roots beyond $M$ so it cannot change sign beyond $M$; at the same time the limit is positive so it must be the case that $p(x)>0$ for all $x>M$. Also, $x^{-n}p(x)-a_n$ tends to zero as $x\to\infty$ and has no singularities so it must be bounded, hence also given $0<L<a_n$ there is some $N$ such that it is $\le L$ in magnitude for all $x>N$ (by the definition of a limit at infinity).
Claim:
$$-L+a_n\le \frac{p(x)}{x^n}< a_n+\frac{|a_{n-1}|}{M}+\cdots+\frac{|a_1|}{M^{n-1}}+\frac{|a_0|}{M^n} \quad \text{for all }x>\max\{M,N\}.$$
Proof. The left inequality follows from hypothesis on $-L$ being a lower bound. Otherwise for $x>M$ we have that $a_k<|a_k|$ and $1/x^\ell<1/M^\ell$; the latter is because $x\mapsto 1/x^\ell$ is a decreasing function on $x>0$ for $\ell>0$, and since the latter involves positive quantities it may be multiplied by the former (see here and adapt as necessary), hence $a_k/x^\ell <|a_k|/M^\ell$. Apply this to each term in $p(x)/x^n$ and then add the inequalities together to get the right-hand inequality above.
This demonstrates that $p(x)/x^n$ is squeezed between two positive reals for sufficiently large $x$; multiply both sides by $x^n$ and we have shown $p(x)$ fulfills the definition of $\Theta(x^n)$.


What to do with questions that describe bugs?

Question: I always made the link to the bug report an answer, but I've also seen people adding that information as comment to the question. We probably should agree on one way to deal with such questions.
Answer: I know the answer has already been decided, but I would like to elaborate my comment, on Marco's answer, and explain it.
Instead of coldly dismissing questions related to bug reports, I want to suggest that instead of [closed] appearing on the question, it should be [bug] with relevant link to the bug report.
It will also be more informative to users with the same or similar issues.
Answer: So far the general method has been to comment on the question informing everyone this is a known bug then close the question as off-topic if you know the bug report that the person is asking about.
This site isn't designed to handle bugs - Launchpad, or the respective software's bug tracker is, and as such and workarounds or patches should end up on the tracker.
We can't answer a question if it's a bug, the built in reporting tools in Ubuntu do a much better job at collecting the information that developers will need to fix a bug and this is a Question and Answer site, not a bug tracker.
Comment: What I find challenging is that it isn't immediately obvious to a lay user when the problem is the system and when it is the user, and closing questions as "off topic" feels kind of hostile to someone who had a genuine question ("Why is this happening?") It'd be nice to find a kinder way to point to the bug.
Comment: Not the tags like the discussion tag used in this question, but instead of [closed] it should be [bug].
Comment: Sometimes the question can be presented as a bug, but can also be answered in a constructive way that can point out how the behaviour that motivated the question can be understood, modified, controlled or avoided. For example, http://askubuntu.com/q/133058/711 could be filed as a bug, but that bug would probably get very little attention from my team (because the system is doing what it's supposed to do, really, so unless we decide to invest time and effort on this aspect of usability before others, it'll just languish). Answering it in the way I did is probably best for the user.
Comment: Yeah this is what I've been doing, it's kind of sucky, I feel like people are using the site as a fancy search engine for launchpad. But the "bug report" ratio doesn't feel as bad as when we launched.
Comment: @Amanda It may seem harsh at first. However, I've begun linking to this topic, as well as making sure the bug is also linked in the comments explaining that it has been closed due to a bug.
Comment: How about explicitly tagging them as bug instead of off-topic when closing it?
Comment: @Oxwivi That doesn't get them out of the system. If it can't be answered then tagging or not, it needs to be closed so users and the system knows that the question isn't within the realm of this site
Comment: @JorgeCastro, maybe we can get <http://www.ubuntu.com/community/report-problem not to recommend people come here to report problems?  It could say, instead, they should come here with questions but not bugs...
Comment: @Marco - OK, that's what I'll do from here on in. Seems to make sense to me as it: a) provides info; and b) may reduce bug tracker quasi-spam.
Answer: My way would be to put in as much information as I can about the bug with at least 1 link to a bugreport. Then flag it for moderation.
Basically it is how I ended up on askubuntu: I found a solution to a problem and the way the answer was given made me register (concise and to the point with more than enough information I needed to fix it). If it was just a link I would have clicked and never even think twice about the site I ended up on.
Example
Answer: Known bug is a too vague category. The bug trackers handle multiple things, from segmentation fault over ugly layout, from feature requests to incompatibilities many things.
The bug-related questions can be about different things, from solving a singular problem, resulting from such a bug, solving the bug, searching for an alternative product without the bug, workarounds for the bug, recovering from bad state from a bug and maybe more.
Just closing as <code>[bug]</code> is the 'I got a hammer - where is the nail?' method.
Maybe the user has already reported the bug, but it's not enough, maybe he needs instant help. The bugtrackers are full of open bugs, which isn't helpfull for the users.
Don't close.
Closing every question which is related to a bug is undifferentiated and shouldn't be done. Helpful answers are circumvented that way.
Comment: If the person has reported a bug and it's not enough how can we even help?
Comment: Workarounds should be posted in bug reports. How to install older versions, or whether alternatives exist... well, make it a new question I'd say. Maybe this should be part of the canned comments we are leaving in such cases? Anything else will lead to long conversations in comments and that's what we are trying to avoid.
Comment: This is a spekulative question. There is no one-fits-all answer, but sometimes, there might be an alternative way to solve a problem, there might be a hint, how to install a previous, unbuggy version, there might be a workaround and so on. I have such a nearly one year old question which was closed yesterday: http://askubuntu.com/q/33194/10068 . I only got advices which didn't work, but I could at least document how to verify file permissions in an efficient way, and maybe some proposal works for others. But a closed question never looks inviting.
Comment: you're almost certainly going to get a better shot of having that problem fixed by filing a bug with Mozilla than we can having an open question for a year that no one knows the answer to.
Comment: I didn't get a better shot.
Comment: It still a question that virtually no way of getting an accepted answer, until it is fixed in a upgrade, then you answer your own question with "It fixed itself in the upgrade" a year later. It frustrates everyone trying to answer the question, no one gets credit for answering the question, and people get down-voted for even trying. A bug question is a loose-loose, and turns into an endless teaching session.
Answer: Answer with a link to the bug report, and a short explanation of how you found the bug report (if it was easy to find, teach the asker to fish) or how the bug explains the symptoms in the question (if it was not obvious at the asker's level that that bug would be relevant).
Ideally, explain how to work around the bug in the user's specific situation.
Comment: @userunknown Yes, I'm against closing the question. If you do, someone else will come along and ask it again. You also prevent answers explaining it's not a bug after all, or a different bug.
Comment: Maybe the user does not know how to work around a bug, but someone else does, who will come later, finding a closed question. So do you vote against closing the question.
Answer: Have another state for questions: that of "bug-reported", as a red circle (as opposed to orange - unanswered, grey --answered, and green -- accepted). This would mean that these question would not show up as an unanswered question searchbox, but would still be searchable.
If this were linked to the reported bug, then once it is fixed, the answer can be circled green.
Answer: I think you are over-looking something when you assume "the built in reporting tools in Ubuntu do a much better job at collecting the information that developers will need to fix a bug and this is a Question and Answer site, not a bug tracker."
Sometimes the answer to the question is to help a person figure out how to file a bug report. In other words, the standard reporting tools are not always a good fit to the problem.
As an example consider a question where a person's system is dead from an apparent ACPI problem. Are the standard built-in collection/reporting tools currently a good fit for that?
I realize you don't want to become a site that focuses on debugging. But I think there is middle ground where assistance can still be useful.
Comment: I disagree. Having a question that only addresses the precise circumstances of the OP is a net negative to the site. Questions like "I have a problem with foo" should be dupe-redirected to a canonical question addressing that specific type of problem.
Comment: Well, if you want to redirect to a "*canonical question*" for a type of problem fine. Where are they? (In particular, where is the standard redirect for ACPI?) My point was sort of to ask just where do these canonical questions come from? Sometimes you have nothing to redirect to and end up building what may eventually morph into canonical question. No?
Comment: Yes, but if you find yourself reanswering the same question -- as is happening a lot on this site (search apt-get install -f) -- something is wrong.
Answer: I agree that bugs do not belong on Ask Ubuntu, even if Launchpad is not friendly to non-technical users for reporting bugs. The Ubuntu Forums should be the backup option for diagnosing bugs not a Q&A site.
However while I think individual questions should be closed, I think that the best response to these questions as a whole should be trying to create more canonical answers on how do identify, diagnose and report possible bugs within specific areas of functionality/hardware/software/etc. Most users are able to identify that they are having a sound problem, or a video problem, or an input problem, or a problem with unity, but beyond that identifying the specific package to run apport on, and knowing where else to look for information that can assist in filing the bug can be a mystery (the ReportingBugs page is useful if you actually know the package name or have a window you can click on, but for bugs in background services related to hardware this is rarely the case).
For example "How to diagnose fan problems" is already on the list of desired canonical questions.  I would like to see more topics like this, both to help users who need to file bugs, and also for non-bug questions that would benefit from the the user knowing what information is relevant and what information isn't. I believe that this question from today exemplifies the types of questions we should be answering for (and encouraging be asked by) users potentially encountering bugs.
Even if new users' other bug-related questions are closed, they at least leave more knowledgeable, with a positive experience, and with the tools to properly report their bug (or contribute to an existing report).  And more importantly, Ask Ubuntu gets a widely re-usable, searchable how-to.
At first thought, such questions appear to violate the FAQ as being too broad, but I think that the scope could be kept concise by only aiming to answer what the first few steps should be in narrowing down where to look for diagnostic information and how to determine if something is a bug or not.
Comment: I just noticed this extra documentation page which is slightly more useful than the main one (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage) but I still think we should aim to have more answers describing where to look/how to get more diagnostic information. I think they would be useful both both those who are experiencing bugs and also those who aren't experiencing bugs but need to know how to diagnose a problem.
Answer: How is the noob supposed to know to follow the link to the bug report and elevate the status, as in click "this affects me to"? Or to use the tools available? Judging from the recent graphics and speed issues in Precise, there are bugs that (probably) affect many people but are still tagged as only affecting "1 user" in launchpad.
Answer: How about sending threads that describe bugs to Launchpad?
Comment: We do, you usually we leave a comment with instructions on how to post that stuff on launchpad.


Is it possible to take silhouette photos with Nikon CoolPix S70?

Question: Is it possible to take silhouette photos like this using my Nikon CoolPix S 70? if so please let me know how? I tried but getting blurry images :(
Comment: What did you do when you tried first time?
Answer: You should be able to, but the controls (or lack thereof) on the s70 will make it a little difficult.
The key to getting a good silhouette is to put your subject in front of a bright background, then expose for the background.
The easiest way with your camera might be to set up your shot without the subject, half press the shutter, and then have your subject come to the right spot, and take the picture.
Also, remember not to use flash.
Answer: You'll also want to be sure you're using a tripod for these shots.  You might not be able to get all of these with your camera (stopping action on a shot like this will be tough), but you should be able to get shots where the subject isn't moving quickly.
Answer: I was going to suggest the same thing as chills42, with you exposing correctly for the background and then moving the subject move in. Obviously this is less ideal if you're trying to shoot trees or a fence, for example, in silhouette, but maybe you could move the camera to get a clear view before you half-press the shutter?
The blurring you describe is probably down to the exposure not being fast enough, but as far as I'm aware you don't have control over this directly on your camera. I believe you can adjust the ISO when in Auto mode, though. Exposing for the bright background should reduce the exposure time a bit, but if this doesn't work you may have to use a tripod/rest the camera on something, or increase the ISO which will probably introduce more noise.


What's the difference between primary & secondary fermentation?

Question: Over here PJ asked "How do you differentiate primary to secondary if you keep it in the same bucket?"
Comment: Might I suggest editing the question to include references to racking?  I was wondering this exact thing, but never found this question.
Comment: Like "when do you rack?" or something else? The only time I rack is when I go from fermenter to package.
Answer:
Image from HowToBrew
Rather than thinking about stages of fermentation I like to look at the lifecycle of yeast. There is a great interview with David Logsdon from Wyeast on the April 5, 2007 episode of Basic Brewing radio.
Yeast cells bud in the presence of oxygen. Only yeast cells with a reserve of glycogen have the energy to bud and that glycogen supply is depleted after roughly four divisions.  The first thing that happens when you pitch healthy a vial of yeast into well-aerated wort is the consumption of available O2 with about a sixteen-fold (24) growth of the yeast population.  There is not much visible activity at this point. It is generally known as the Lag Phase (called the Adaptive phase above).
Once the oxygen is gone and the yeast is out of glycogen it starts consuming sugars to produce more energy. This phase is where it eats available sugar, pees alcohol and farts CO2. Most people call this part primary fermentation and the wort is visibly active with carbon dioxide production, rising temperature and swirling trub.
As the easy to eat sugars are removed from the wort and alcohol potentially rises to toxic levels the yeast switches from energy production to life preservation.  It stores glycogen for later budding (when O2 comes back), becomes inactive and drops out of solution.  Fermentation activity slows and appears to halt.
Even though most of the yeast has flocculated at this point, some cells are survive and consume the more complex sugars.  As they do the beer "conditions" and continues to develop flavors.
References:

How To Brew - Fermentation
Yeast Lifecycle in Brewing

I understand reason for transferring beer from primary to secondary, which is to separate the beer from dormant yeast and trub.  Under the right conditions, yeast cells will undergo autolysis where the cell's enzymes begin to consume itself.  Nasty flavors develop.
I do not transfer for a few reasons.

I've never experienced autolysis.
You run the risk of introducing infection
I often don't have enough vessels
It eliminates a step

My beers turn out tasty (damn tasty) and (mostly) clear.
Comment: I do transfer to to the secondary, but I agree with Dean that it is not always necessary.  I transfer mainly for beers that are very light in color and will show cloudiness, for beers that have a more delicate flavor and will pick up flavors off the trub, and for big beers that have a long fermenting and conditioning time.  But for many beers, this step isn't necessary, as Dean said.
Comment: Yep. I have a beer that needs to be lagered. Haven't got around to it yet....
Comment: @Dean So you're saying you're lazy... I thought so. Kidding. Thanks for this.
Answer: I think what most differentiates primary from secondary is the separation of beer from sediment, or at least the effort to do so.
There may be other markers of the move from primary to secondary; like a transfer (which is the only way I know to separate the good stuff from yeast/sediment), additives, bottling, etc.
Or, maybe more simply, the difference of secondary and even tertiary fermentation from primary could just be that a large majority of fermentation occurs in the first stage.
Comment: Or the point where final gravity stabilizes.
Answer: I think secondary fermentation is essential.  I've tried just using primary and it leaves the beer cloudy and more earthy/yeasty.  If I'm adding flavors or adjuncts in secondary, I will even transfer to a tertiary fermentation vessel.
-Bryan
Comment: I do not mean to skip the conditioning phase of fermentation.  My beers stay in the same fermenter for 4-6 weeks.  Even if I add post-fermentation flavors.
Comment: I primary for up to 4 weeks myself and that practically negates the need for a "traditional secondary".
Answer: As well as racking, so-called "secondary" or conditioning starts when you dump most of the yeast from your conical. I hope to get one some day.
Answer: I think one thing to keep in mind is the evolving state of the homebrewing art.  I get the feeling that the distinction between primary and secondary fermentation is an older concept, dating from the time when dried yeast was the norm, autolysis was a serious vector of off flavors, and a secondary transfer was practically always part of the fermentation schedule.
As others have noted, fermentation is really a continuous process with several overlapping phases, and not a rigid 2-step procedure that requires transfer to a secondary vessel.  Indeed it's beneficial for healthy yeast to be kept in contact with the wort well into their dormant phase, as this is the time that yeast will reabsorb metabolic byproducts that they previously dumped into the beer.  As far as I can tell the only good reason to remove the beer from the yeast partway through fermentation is autolysis, which shouldn't be a problem with well grown, healthy yeast.
Having said that, racking to a secondary vessel is a good idea for procedures like dryhopping or spicing, or for high alcohol or dark beers that benefit from some mellowing unrelated to yeast fermentation.
The rule I follow is no more than 4 weeks on the yeast cake, and if the beer needs more finishing beyond that before I keg, then that's the only time my secondary vessel gets used.
Answer: I realize most people here are talking about beer...but I've made both wine and beer, and have never used a secondary fermentation (apart from making apple wine into apple beer). If I've added flavors, such as cinnamon, to apple and/or pear wine, I boiled the sticks/other ingredients in the sterilization/flavor extract process, and that was that. Why add a potentially infectious vector to what you've sterilized prior? Many, many people have complimented my wines/beers, and only one (an amateur wine snob) had anything bad to say. Why add another step? If it's not clear, which it should be after bottling, rack it out of the bottle after a day of settling (most wont have to do this), then serve.


In Ear Monitors - Alternatives?

Question: In a live setting with 4 singers and 5 musicians we are really having trouble hearing ourselves with our current 2 floor monitor setup. One suggestion I have heard was to consider using in ear monitors. This definitely seems like it would help but seems like it would also be very expensive. What are some alternatives which can allow people to hear themselves and others well without increasing the on-stage sound too much.
Comment: Actually, I can answer this...we currently do IEM on a budget with one of my tribute acts.
Comment: This is the second comment I've seen on "augmentative".  Do you mean "argumentative"?  IMO, this question is neither, nor is it subjective.  Budget info would be nice
Comment: Augmentative and vaguely described. At least, add some budget information.
Comment: Still, there is a lot of sufficient answers to this question, and not one holy grail. A bit more information would be appropriate.
Comment: His third sentence denotes that he is looking for cheaper alternatives.
Comment: Ah, sorry, I am using this word incorrectly. (English is not my first language, so although I am almost never having issues with it, every now and then I get an issue like this.) What I mean is "It is liable to get a lot of answers that are piece by piece correct, though none of them is the best.". Example question: "What is a good pre-amp with 2 channels?"
Answer: We just went down this road with my tribute act. Doing up the entire band with wireless IEMs was going to be well beyond our meager means. So I've got a "budget IEM" setup that tries to capture the spirit of the idea without breaking the bank.
Let me go over my setup.
We're use our own Behringer console just for doing our monitor mix. It's a Eurodesk SX3282 -- not the greatest board but it has enough Aux sends to get the job done and we got it used, in a flight case, for CAD$500 -- deal. We run split a minimal drum mic mix, vocal mics, bass signal, my guitar (I run direct out of an AxeFx), the keyboard, our backing track unit, and a room mic for ambience in to this board. And then we do 6 sub-mixes, one for each guy in the band. The sub-mixing is a bit tricky because you can only use 6 auxes on a channel strip at any one time and two are always post-fader which is annoying, but so be it. Some day we'll graduate up to a proper monitor mix matrix mixer.
We run all the aux mixes in to a headphone amplifier. We're using an OSP HPA-400 to drive the cans for everyone but the singer. The singer's IEM mix we run straight to his wireless transmitter unit.
Only our singer has a wireless IEM and mix. We all play wired instruments so we figured that wired IEMs wouldn't actually be a big deal and that's turned out to be mostly true.
From the headphone amp we run long cords to our IEMs. We all bought our own. I picked up some Ultimate Ears 600s on sale for ~$70. I have the IEM cable and my guitar cable tied together over their lengths and I loop a bit of the IEM cable over the guitar strap button my guitar to keep myself from accidentally yanking on it too hard. From there it runs up the back of my shirt just it would from a belt pack.
It sounds awkward but once you work out keeping the guitar and IEM cables connected (I used some velcro bands along the length of my cable) it's really not noticeable. You're used to managing your guitar cable so this just piggybacks the IEM feed along for the ride.
And once you go IEM + personal mixes, it's so hard to go back to stage monitors and a shared mix.
All that was put together for about $300/member in our 5 piece. The singer did buy his own wireless unit and I'm not including that in the price. And the nice thing about it is, as we build gig money, we can all expand to wireless with our gig money when we want. The way I see it is there's no point in my going wireless IEM until I can also afford to go wireless guitar -- so I'm banking to buy both solutions at the same time.
Answer: IEMs need not cost very much if you are on a budget. I mix sound in a church and when we had a strings section in a large carol concert, they were struggling to hear the lead, but if we turned up their monitors we quickly had issues with isolation and even feedback. So I got the FM transmitter I use for listening to MP3s in my car, and asked if anyone in the band had an FM radio in their phone. Several people did, and the feedback from the players who tried them was very positive.
The other option is to not go wireless. I've heard of a hi-fi amp being used along with a load of splitters and extension cables. If you go that route, do put a compressor/limiter in the signal chain to avoid risking damaging peoples ears.
Answer: 2 monitors for 9 people doesn't sound like very many. Ideally get 1 monitor each and get them as close as possible unless they are standing very close together, e.g. 2 backing singers. Make sure they are pointing in the right direction. You don't need to give each monitor it's own separate mix if you don't have enough AUXes on the desk.

In Ear Monitors - Alternatives?


Ubuntu 10.10 forgets desktop theme

Question: I am running Ubuntu in VirtualBox (on a Windows 7 host). Several times now, the top-level menu bar, the task bar — and seemingly every system dialog — have forgotten the out-of-the-box "Ambiance" theme they conform to when I first installed the system. Window captions still preserve the theme, but pretty much nothing else does.
I have searched high and low on Google for assistance with this problem. Everything I've found suggests either running some gconf reset or deleting .gconf* .gnome* and other similar directories. I have followed all this advice and nothing works. I still get a boring Windows-95-style gray 3D look and feel. On previous occasions, after much messing around I've given up and rebooted the VM instance, and been pleasantly suprised to see the original "Ambience" theme restored throughout the UI, but invariably it disappears again some time later, usually after a reboot, so I can never figure out what I did that broke it.
Here's a sample from Ubuntu's site of what I want it to look like.

And here's a screenshot of my system as it currently looks.

Also note that my GNOME Terminals normally have a nice purple semi-translucent look, and as can be seen from the screenshot, they are now just a solid matt white.
This last time (just this morning), trying numerous combinations all the usual tricks and rebooting several times hasn't fixed it, so here I am on SU wondering: How do I recover the out-of-the-box theme for my Gnome/Ubuntu desktop, noting that blowing away all config files — as suggested in many places online — fails to achieve this?
EDIT: It might help to know that it seems to fail either after I resize the VM instance, forcing the Ubuntu desktop to resize itself, or after I play around with Compiz settings. I haven't been able to figure out which of these it is, and it could be neither. Given the amount of pain I have had to go through to get things back to normal (and given that I am at a loss as to how to do so), it has proven difficult to definitively isolate the cause.
Answer: I repeated this question on askubuntu.com, which led to this answer.

Ubuntu 10.10 forgets desktop theme


Can we convert DVI or PostScript into TeX?

Question: Basically that is the question - if we have a DVI file can we get on the base on it the original TeX file?
Comment: no, that is not possible.
Comment: It is comparable to the task of decomposing a once baked cake into its ingredients.
Answer: The simple answer is no. If you have a dvi and have lost the TeX there are tools such as dvi2tty which will extract the text and some of the paragraph structure, but in general you will have to add the markup back by hand.
Answer: Somewhat alike to disassembling a compiled executable: Yes, technically it can be done - but you will lose much of the information that was contained in the original TeX source.
For example, the DVI contains the text "see also chapter 11.2".
You might be able to turn this into text again, but the information that this was originally written as see also chapter \ref{sec:FooBar} is irrevocably lost.
Since this is the case, I don't think anyone has ever made the effort to write such a DVI-to-text converter, since the usability of such text would be severly limited.
Answer: No, technically it cannot be done. DVI, PDF and postscript contain text arranged on a page according to instructions in a (La)TeX document. You can extract the text, and you can try to guess at commands that would generate a similar page, and you might even guess well. But you'd be doing it by matching the result. If there is a number in the text, for example, you can never know for sure if it was typed literally or came from a TeX counter. Imagine eating a cake and trying to reconstruct the recipe: If you're good you can identify the ingredients and guess a lot about what was done, but the recipe itself is not in the cake.
Despite what some others said, it's not at all like disassembling: Executable code contains the algorithm, and disassembly just translates it to a human-readable language. Going from dvi to LaTeX is more like trying to reconstruct a C program from its output: Reverse engineering is a better term for it.
Answer: PS files would be tremendously difficult to convert back to TeX.
With DVI files I think it would at least be partially possible. Of course all high-level macros and stuff like that would be lost. Compare the task to recovering, e.g., C++ code from a compiled binary file.
Answer: Technically it is not impossible to get a Tex file that compiles to the given DVI or PS file.
For simple documents, one could devise a method that first performs OCR on the DVI or PS file, and then converts the result into a Tex file. By re-compiling the Tex document and comparing the results to the DVI or PS file, errors could be identified, which in turn could be corrected by iterating over several possible characters.
For complex documents, though, this procedure may not be sufficient.
Edit: Here is a proof of concept: http://www.inftyreader.org/


How do I verify that a patent pending claim is real?

Question: Someone created an application that does something resembling an application I'm working on. He claims that his application has a pending patent, but does not mention the patent application number. Searching his name on the USPTO website yields no results. How do I know whether or not he really has a pending patent?
Answer: There isn't a reliable way to find this out other than the person sending you a copy of their filing receipt. The default is that non-provisional patent applications  publish 18 months after the earliest filing/priority date. During that time the application is not publically visible. An applicant can request non-publication at the time of filing if they assert they have no plans to file out of the U.S. In that case, the first time it is visible is the day it issues as a granted patent, if ever.
They may have filed a provisional patent application. They do not publish at all and give the applicant 12 months to file a non-provisonal application.
EDIT
I believe there is a way to petition the USPTO to allow you to read an application that the applicant is specifically threatening you with. As I remember, you need to know the application number and filing date.