Aluminium boil pots: Heresy or not?

Question: Are aluminium pots acceptable as boil vessels?  They're cheap, but I've heard they can produce off-flavors.  Any experiences with them?
Answer: My kettle is stainless, but the other kettle in our club is aluminum. We've brewed the same recipe in both kettles and not noticed any differences. You want to make sure that you keep a nice patina on the aluminum though, that's what keeps it non-reactive.
Answer: I have an aluminum pot that used to be my boil kettle; now it's my hot liquor tank.
The old thought was that it either caused off flavors or, even worse, contributed to Alzheimers. Neither is true. You can't use caustic cleaners on Aluminum, but otherwise it's safe.
BYO covered all sorts of metals over on their site.
(Here's a link to the Alzheimer's Society about aluminum)
Answer: I won my first 5 ribbons using an AL kettle, so it would seem to be a myth about AL having a negative impact on beer quality.
Answer: I've used an aluminum pot for years.  Admittedly, it is not as structurally strong as steel, but a decent gauge aluminum pot in the sizes we're talking about will NOT deform under the heat of brewing, even after a decade or more.  (Don't do this with an industrial-sized 30-bbl kettle.)  The thinnest ones that come with some turkey fryers are quite dentable -- but so are some stock pots.
You can't use caustic cleaners on aluminum, so beware of that.  But it's the boil pot, so it doesn't have to be spotless to be sanitary, and a white scrubby takes off any goop that won't come off with a hot water rinse.  Aluminum oxidizes so rapidly that you'd be hard pressed to scrub it and then brew soon enough to get any dissolved in before the oxide layer forms.  (Yeah, you could scour it under nitrogen or CO2... but who would?)
As for Alzheimers, not only does the relationship not seem to be causal after much research, but you can't get much if any aluminum on the beer from the pot.  Anyone worrying about that better be drinking RO water and avoiding Maalox and some other antacids like the plague!  Oh, and don't eat out, either, since aluminum pots are everywhere in restaurants, and for good reason, given the good heat conductance and lightness of that metal.
Answer: If using an aluminum turkey fryer, make sure it hasn't been used for, you know, frying a turkey in the past. I made that mistake once (trust me, I cleaned the heck out of this thing before starting) and I'll never do it again. You'll end up with the worst tasting beer you've ever tried. It was a tried and true recipe for me, so I knew it would have ended up great. It may have been the aluminum that gave it the off flavor, but I'm thinking it was leftover turkey-frying residue.
Anyways, I use all stainless steel, and you can't go wrong there.
Comment: Mmmmm ...  Greased Stout. Sounds delicious!
Answer: I'd say make the investment and go with stainless. Aluminum is weaker and less elastic than steel, so it will deform faster, especially on an electric stove (where the heat and pressure come from the same source, which has a small surface area). Good aluminum cookware (if it exists) probably wouldn't have this problem.
Answer: I've had good luck with an aluminium pot (a turkey fryer in my case).  The pot was big and since it was something that I already owned, it was a solid piece of brewing equipment.  We upgraded to a stainless steel pot only b/c we had a close friend that would not drink our homebrew b/c of Alzheimers fears with aluminium.  Since brewing is all about sharing with us, we upgraded.  I'm not sure what you have/need for brewing equipment, but I would not recommend upgrading your pot before getting some more important brewing pieces (i.e. secondary, temp control, yeast starter).

Aluminium boil pots: Heresy or not?


Kimchi / Mo-Chu Ka-roo?

Question: I have been looking for this ingredient called ko-chu Ka-roo to make kimchi. I checked in a local asian grocery and I didn't find something with that name. But I found Maesri Chilli Powder.
Is this the same thing? Can it be used?
thanks
Answer: You'd be better off trying to find the real thing.
Kochukaru is slightly sweeter and smokier than standard 'ground chilli' and simply substituting it will give you variable results to what your kimchi should traditionally taste like.
If you know what you're doing, and by that I mean you are able to know what Kimchi is meant to taste like and are able to tweak the amount of standard chilli powder you're using perhaps in addition to some sweet and/or smoked paprika you'd probably be able to replicate the flavour and taste of kochukaru in your kimchi.
If you're not at that level of ability (and I mean that with the greatest respect) then you're probably far better off trying to find kochukaru, perhaps at an alternative asian grocers or even online somewhere.
Answer: The pepper used in Kim chi is actually pretty variable. Not being able to find the genuine Korean powder locally, I've had good luck with 1.5 tablespoons Paprika, 0.5 teaspoon smoked Paprika, 0.5 teaspoon Arbol chili (a medium cayenne also works) per two quarts napa/bok choy etc. mix.
Answer: The Maesri brand will certainly work, as will many others.
There are hundreds of kimchi recipes, and no version is any more authentic than another.  Many contain whole or sliced fresh chiles (green and/or red) and may contain other ingredients, without any chile powder at all (sometimes called white kimchi).
The first time I made red kimchi, the only thing I could find in the Asian market was a bag of 2-inch reds marked "dried red chiles" from China.  I ground them up and they worked beautifully.
If you're looking for smokey notes, chipotle powder or smoked paprika should serve well.

Kimchi / Mo-Chu Ka-roo?


Threaded view in Gmail

Question: I want to view my Gmail messages in threaded view like Google Groups threaded view.
Is this possible?
Answer: You can either have "Conversation View on" which is the Gmail threaded conversation view (and the default) or you can have "Conservation View off" which is the more traditional e-mail representation of your messages.
Look under Gmail Settings on the "General" tab.
Answer: When you have "Conversation view" switched on (see Al Everett's answer) and are viewing an email thread, you can click "Expand all" on the right side of the page to see all the emails at once.

Threaded view in Gmail


Is there a Picasa download for Ubuntu?

Question: I love using Picasa and am totally dissapointed to find nothing of the sort in Ubuntu and not being about to download it...anyone know how to?
Answer: Try this: http://www.afterdawn.com/software/general/download_splash.cfm/google_picasa_for_linux
This is Picasa 3.0, I have not tried installing it. Have you tried running Picasa for Windows with Wine or CrossOver? That should work.
Okay, you are asking about downloading Picasa for Linux. So the following does not really answer your question, but you could still try the following pretty capable alternatives. You can expect to have new releases in the future for these applications.
Shotwell is not bad, you can use plugins to also publish photos to online websites.
Gwenview is a KDE application and another alternative, and is pretty good too. Only thing is that you will need to install quite a few KDE dependencies with it.
XnView is also pretty good, I have used the Windows version a bit but have never used the Linux version so can't comment much on it.
Answer: Google used to offer a Linux download for Picasa, although it was just the Windows version bundled with Wine. In april 2012 they discontinued it, but you can always download the Windows installer yourself and run it with Wine. There's info in WineHQ.
As Swarnendu Biswas said, there are very good alternatives. Shotwell (Gnome), Gwenview and digiKam (KDE) available in the repos, and XnView has a beta multiplatform version than can be downloaded here.
Comment: Installing Picasa under Wine is more compatible as the old Linux version of Picasa installed its own version of Wine.  I believe they had some patches which hadn't been incorporated in the mainstream Wine version.  Having two versions of Wine installed could case problems.
Comment: @BillThor PlayOnLInux comes with a Picasa installation script that sets up a customized wine bottle including the right picasa patches. So installing from PoL is pretty straightforward.

Is there a Picasa download for Ubuntu?


Ffmpeg options for Android?

Question: What ffmpeg options should I use to make video playable on Android Phone (specifically, LG Optimus)? I tried various bitrate and codecs and all combinations I came up with doesn't work (tried theora, mpeg4, h264).
Answer: No luck with avi mpg4/mp3 codec? Plays like a charm on my HTC Desire w/ Froyo 2.2
You could also try another encoder, "SUPER" [1] for example. IMHO "Rockplayer" [2] is the best player for the android platform at the moment.
Hope that helps.
[1] http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html
[2] http://rockplayer.freecoder.org/index_en.html
Comment: mpeg4 + libmp3lame was the first thing I tried (can't remember actual bitrate though).
Answer: The reviews I've read seem to indicate that the Optimus will happily play standard-definition Xvid and DivX video files in AVI format so try using the "-vcodec mpeg4" setting.
http://ffmpeg.org/faq.html#SEC20
Answer: I've been able to use any old AVI or MPEG files with the VPlayer app without having to convert them.  Another alternative is Rockplayer.  VLC for Android is supposed to be coming in the next few weeks.
Answer: I would highly recommend that you attempt the free MoboPlayer from the Android market.
It has highly optimised code for ARMV7, ARMV6 VFP, and ARMV6 -- as soon as it downloads it might recommend a different version from the Market version and will automatically start a download of the correct version.
In my personal experience video playback was exceptional on supposedly weaker phones -- although I don't expect it to handle HD content well.
Answer: These settings work very well on my ZTE Blade.  As they have similar hardware (CPU & Memory wise) they should work OK for the Optimus One.
Video codec: x264
Frame size: 512*288 (you may want to finesse that slightly for the Optimus screen size - 320*480?)
Bitrate: 768
Audio codec: aac
Bitrate: 128
I suspect that the frame size, codecs (audio and video) and bitrates should be fine regardless of which container (AVI/DIVX/MP4/MKV) that you pick to play it through.

Ffmpeg options for Android?


Is singing a matter of talent or practice?

Question: This is something I have always wondered.
Is singing a matter of talent, that is, only people born with the 'proper instrument' can sing properly, or is it a matter of practice?
I know that practice alone can only take you so far, but how far is that?
Answer: Both, but talent and practice tend to refer to very nearly the same thing (It's hard to separate innate musical ability from ability conditioned from dedicated practice).  Let's clarify your question as "Genetics or practice".
Practice will take you into the realm of professional singing.  It's not enough to get you big solos, but it is enough to get singers into professional choirs and the like. Of course some people will pick up singing easier than others, but I liken this effect to how some people pick up calculus easier than others; a dedicated student with real interest in either subject will be able to learn.
This leads into a point that Marian and luser have made before; a lack of interest is not a lack of potential; it's just that they don't want to learn.  On the flip side, it is entirely possible that some people did not develop a basic understanding of music when they were children, and so are unable to do basic exercises like matching pitch.  These people can still learn, although it takes a very long time to develop their musical ear.
It's also worth noting that in the sense I'm using it, vocal instruction is very comprehensive, from dictating how to breathe to where exactly in the mouth your tongue moves to make a consonant or vowel.  Things like voice placement (nasal versus almost swallowed) and color (bright versus dark) can take years to get alone, and they're skills required for choral singing. With this level of minutiae, it's no wonder that people give up and go home; practicing is not always fun.
Compare that to genetics.  Genetics will influence your tone (by the shape of your pharynx) and, possibly, your ability to learn.  It's almost not fair, because regardless of your technique, you need an astounding tone to be able to get the big high-profile roles. The converse is not always true, though; those singers gifted with a good voice are not putting any less effort into their craft than others with a lesser tone.
So, the answer: Let's consider a scene from an opera, with a prima donna and the chorus.  Practice alone will get you into the chorus.  Genetics and practice will get you into the prima donna role.  Genetics without practice will get you into the audience! :P
Comment: A thorough explanation, and even just the last paragraph would have been an answer to the question!
Comment: Thank you! The other answers were excellent as well, but your last paragraph sums it all up.
Comment: Wonderful summary in the end! :-)
Comment: I suspect practice would not get (almost) anyone into the chorus of a major opera house, but would be enough for an amateur production. Our local church choir sometimes gets its soloists from the choir of an opera house, and I suspect the considerable gap is not only due to practice!
Comment: Practice alone, you could be an excellent singer in 4 years. Genetics and practice, though, and you could reach the same level in 4 weeks. What's theoretically possible and what's realistic in a lifetime are two very different things.
Answer: Everyone can sing, but some people can sing better than others. This is true apart from the very tiny number of people who have a condition called amusia. People with amusia derive absolutely no pleasure from music, and can even find it very uncomfortable. They have no understanding of why people move to music, tap their feet, hum, etc, and can often feel socially isolated because of it. Fortunately, in a world with music in every shop, this is a very rare condition.
"But I'm tone deaf". This is a way of people saying that they can't carry a tune, or can't say if a pitch is high or low, and it's about lack of childhood training.
"I hate singing". This usually means, actually I like singing in the shower when I'm alone and no one can hear me, but I hate the idea of performing. This is completely understandable, especially because most people have considerable awareness of not being on the notes.
"I can't sing". Lots of people who say this have had really horrible experiences of being rejected from the school choir, told to "sing more quietly - you're out of tune", moved to the back of the choir for the same reason, and so on. I've met school teachers with lovely voices, frightened to use them, due to a combination of lack of training (how can you train someone if you don't let them in to the group?) and inadvertently hurtful treatment.
There are lots of things you can do to help children and adults find their singing voice, even those who start off droning on one note. Recently I helped a child move from being a "droner" to a singer in ten minutes in a group activity. That wasn't just down to my skills - he had it in him all the time, although his class teacher said it was a little miracle.
The other part of all this is there are natural limits to what each person can do, which depend on the vocal chords and lung capacity nature gave you. You can still improve your tone, range and expression enormously through practice, but there'll always be professional singers gifted with both exceptional musicianship and vocal apparatus.
Answer: I know I'm late and an answer has been chosen but I just wanted to say, that there is no limit. Trust me. The human body and human mind is incredible in how flexible it can be with some gentle and persistent practice. There is no limit. It sounds a bit new-agey or like old-time myth. But I'm telling you, from experience, that there is no limit, I am surprising myself all the time. You have to have to moxy to try, and fail, over and over. Eventually you will refine yourself. Trust yourself and just sing. Monkey see monkey do. This is how life becomes perfected, through practice. There are studies that suggest that ingrained habits affect your genes. That you can actually modify your genes. You could even make the suggestion that all genes are, in fact, extremely long-term habits encoded into your cells.
So to sum up: There is no limit, and even "Talents" Have to practice and suffer and fail. Many, Many Times.
You don't need to be "special" to sing. Just sing! That's the only way to get better, and no there is no limit, unless you put limits on your imagination. There is no limit, unless you put limits on your imagination.
I hope my message gets across.
Source: Long time personal experience listening to myself change and transform
Answer: Since it would be unethical to actually investigate this by direct experiment (since all "nature v. nurture" experiments would require raising a child in total isolation), we only ever apply these labels and judgements after the fact.
So the distinction between "talent" and "practice" seems to me to rest on the emotional component. One with "talent" derives such joy from the exercise of music that "it doesn't feel like practice." But to achieve mastery, even the talented have put in the time.
I have even less information on the distribution of crucial physical defects of the vocal apparatus in the human population, but I'd hazard a guess that most people could sing well if they "truly want to" (there's that emotional component again). But again, we can only apply this label after-the-fact. Anyone who can't sing well, but "have the chords" must not "truly want to", otherwise they would naturally have performed the requisite practice.
So, in sumary, i dunno.
Answer: The noted right answer is not fully correct. All genetics does is give a person a base starting point. This starting point in a voice is either one that tends to have mass appeal or one that has lesser appeal. You can by-pass genetics to end up with a voice that has mass appeal. To do this you need a lot of practice and an understanding of how you attain your goals. We prove what is being said here by noting that people can modifiy their voice to sound like someone else. However, doing so means you're a copy. This is where the trouble comes in. People born with great tone just have to do less work for listeners to say "wow I like the way his or her voice sounds". The true question is "where do you take your voice so that is original and has mass appeal. That's the magic. That's were higher powers have stepped in to give gifts by allowing the choosen to be born with the magic genetics - the so called default settings that people tend to love.
If you want to have a unique yet magic voice here is what you do: Once you have the base singing talent via practice or again good genetics - you record a record. Then by a process of repeated modifying of your voice/tone and recording that sample, you end up with an infinite amount of versions of the recording. Now, just get a large group of people together to rate all the version. Eventuall they will come up with an iteration that sounds the best and that most people tend to like. Simple ;-)
Answer: if you do sing-training an hour everyday from now on, 10 years later, you would be shocked how good you had improved.
this is a true story from me.
And how much to improve for you has no limit at all.
But everyone does have a different start point.
Does that answer your question?
Comment: But if you're born with the right genetics, you could train 1 hour a day for 10 weeks and reach the same level you attained in 10 years.
Answer: My wife once day-cared a little girl, less than two years old. She would sing spontaneously every once in a while, mostly children songs she'd heard before. She hit every note dead on. Completely effortlessly and supremely confident she nailed every single note every time although she was still too young to get the words out.
Talent does exist and it certainly helps.
Comment: This does very little to answer the question, as you do not say how the child acquired her ability, not do you say how far practice with little talent can take one.


What is the optimal training time for a combined weight training and cardio workout?

Question: What is the optimal training time for a combined weight training cardio workout and what is the optimal order it should be done in first weight or cardio?
Answer: The way you set up your programming is dependent on what is most important to you.  If you want to be strong and conditioned, typically you perform your weight training first.  If you want to be an endurance runner with some strength, you put your running first.
The periods of time that you apply to lifting vs. conditioning really depends on what you want to do.  Personally, my lifting program takes me between 60-90 minutes to complete.  On the shorter days I will tack on 20-30 minutes of conditioning.
You can draw your own conclusions, but I want to bring up some points that will contradict another answer to your question:

What's more dangerous: getting pinned to the floor with a barbell and heavy weights on your back, or falling with just your body weight?  (both of these are fatigue related)
What's easier to do: lift 200lb off your chest, or pick an unloaded leg off the floor?

Bottom line is that the heavier the weights, the more potential that you can have problems due to fatigue.  Now, if you learn how to fail properly you can lift in a fatigued state and when you fail you fail.  However, the cost of not failing correctly goes up with the weight.
When you do both conditioning and lifting in the same day, you really do need to manage your recovery.  Rest is important.  On days when I have 60 minutes of conditioning followed by heavy lifting, I separate those sessions by at least 1.5 hours and get a meal in between.  On those days where I tack 20-30 minutes of conditioning on to the end of the lifting, I keep the intensity up (heart rate) but allow enough rest between intervals so that my muscles don't become rubber.  I've found that with a sufficient base of strength, conditioning after lifting with no more than a 5 minute rest in between is perfectly fine.
Again, prioritize your training by what is most important that day.  If the conditioning is more important, do that first.  If strength is more important, do that first.  If you have a long session ahead of you for both, separate them by time and eat in between.  You'll need the extra energy.
Comment: I responded to your answer in my answer. There was not enough space in the comments to correctly respond.
Answer: Optimal length of a workout is totally dependent on your goals and what type of training you are doing. Your exercises will determine the length of your workout.
If you are combining weight training and cardio into the same workout, it doesn't matter which you do first. If you are doing one workout and then the other you should run before you lift. If you lift before you run you put yourself at a higher risk of injury due to fatigued muscles and the plyometric explosiveness of running.
Update in response to another answer:
A few objections to the response you gave to my answer:
A) you should not (I repeat never : I really cannot stress this enough) be lifting heavy weights on your back if there is even the slightest chance you won't be able to control how the weights fall. always do lifts like squats in a rack with arms that will catch the weight if you have to drop it. So I repeat: you should never be in a situation that will cause you to injure your back when squatting.
B) If you don't have a spotter(which would be the only situation where you would have to lift 200 pounds off your chest by yourself in an emergency situation.) you don't put pins on the side of your barbell. This way if the weight has to come down, you take the weights off by bringing one arm down first.
C) Consider for a moment the difference between correct lifting precautions and the instability that is present when you are running. Weakened tendons around the knee can make it more difficult to control which way your knee bends. This is a given no matter what. Now consider that if your knee starts to give when lifting, you can just drop the weight (given proper lifting precautions) resulting in no injury. In comparison imagine your knee decides to give way when running. The most likely position for your knee to give way is in the explosive motion (remember running is a plyometric activity) that occurs when landing, loading and pushing off again. If your knee gives way at any point in this process, your full body weight, plus the energy that you created from forward momentum, will come down on your knee. It may happen that your knee folds correctly and you fall with little injury other than some scrapes and bruises, but more likely is that the weakened tendons around your knee give way and it collapses backwards, hyperextending your knee or worse, snapping your leg at the knee.
and finally a side comment to B): When is your leg ever unloaded on the floor when running?
In contradiction to the bottom line of "Bottom line is that the heavier the weights, the more potential that you can have problems due to fatigue." Heavier weights don't cause more problems, they cause the same problems with higher consequences.
My experience is with division 1 volleyball at the collegiate level. I was squatting 525 pounds last year on my last set of 5 reps and to squat like that before a practice (3 hours of running and jumping) is a terrible idea.
I do however, agree wholeheartedly, that recovery time is important. It is perhaps even more important than the time that you spend lifting.


What factors led to the rise of political parties in the United States?

Question: I know that at the time the Constitution was drafted partisan political parties did not exist, not in the way that we conceive of them today, and George Washington did not have a political party. However, John Adams was a member of the Federalist Party, and the Federalists were the first political party in the US. What factors led to other political parties taking shape in the US?
Comment: Game theory. The best way to get someone you like as president is to have a huge group of like-minded people pool resources to get a person elected.
Comment: Are there any nonpartisan parties? It sounds like "powdered water" to me.
Comment: @quant_dev good point. Title changed.
Answer: Both the US and British legislative bodies underwent transformations in the last half of the 18th and first half of the 19th century, and it is useful to study them together.  At the beginning of the period, neither had "political parties" as we understand them.  They evolved political parties as a way of forcing a diversity of viewpoints into actionable legislation, of dealing with issues, and most importantly of securing and maintaining a hold on power long enough to carry out a legislative program.
Each of the other answers has supplied the core facts; I quibble with the emphasis given in various places, but I agree with the other respondents.  The fascinating aspect of the question is that both the US and British systems, operating independently, evolved similar structures despite the fact that both systems claimed to vehemently oppose those structures.
A couple of other notes. First, the founding fathers not only opposed parties, they opposed campaigns.  Candidates were supposed to be "disinterested"; their supporters could advocate on their behalf, but public service was an obligation suffered honorably,  not something to be sought.  That meant that political activity in the sense of modern political parties was shameful and effectively disqualified the candidate from office.  Obviously that ethical position was eroded and destroyed by the forces that create political parties.
I think the second fascinating trend was appointments/patronage/placement.  One of the primary reasons for the revolution was the British system of "placemen" that failed to either effectively include/coopt Americans or exclude/disenfranchise Americans (depending on your point of view).  The first couple of administrations tried strenuously to avoid creating this system. One of the Presidents (I believe it was John Quincy Adams, but I will welcome corrections from H:SE) inherited an administration full of his political opponents, but refused to dismiss them and appoint replacements who would work with him. He did not want the reputation of someone who would appoint his political friends.  Again, this ethical position was eroded away by the forces of political parties. (One of my revelations while watching the movie Lincoln was the direct line between British placemen and the "shady dealings" of Mr. Bilbo and his ilk.)
I haven't studied it in depth, but the dominant individual seems to have been Martin Van Buren, who created the first recognizeable political machine.  He was backed by a political party and allocated patronage jobs to members of the party.  Note that there was a key difference; the British placemen received their positions in return for loyalty to the crown; Van Buren's political machine offered patronage in exchange for loyalty to the party. That meant that anyone could elect to be a member of the party, work for the party's benefit, and receive patronage.  That's a big part of the power and the justification of the American political machine.
I've cited Gordon Wood's Radicalism of the American Revolution; the last third of that book has a fairly decent (albeit unfocused) history of the rise of the American political party. Reaching back into my memory I believe my other favorite source on this topic was "Adams vs Jefferson: the tumultous election of 1800".
Comment: Good stuff in here. I think Andrew Jackson (Van Buren's mentor) probably deserves some credit here too though. He was the first POTUS to unashamedly make extensive use of political appointments to supporters. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoils_system . Van Buren may have just been perfecting that system.
Comment: +1, I'll just point out that Van Buren created the first recognizable *national* political machine. Machines had long been common at the state, county, and city levels.
Answer: Jefferson and Adams' policy debates over Revolutionary War debts and relations with France and  Great Britain became very public and personal throughout Washington's presidency and into the Presidential election of 1796. Their surrogates circulated vicious personal attacks during Adams' Presidency, while Jefferson served as Vice President. Their followings became more and more divided as precedent was being established for America's stance on issues including naval, fiscal, and diplomatic policy. The conflict came to a head during the debates of the Alien and Sedition Acts. The the election of 1800 was decided by congress, which Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton manipulated, and sharply defined party lines, creating a victory for Vice President Jefferson over President Adams. The 12th Amendment regarding the election of Vice Presidents then precipitated the need for more organized national campaigns.
Answer: What led to the rise to political parties was the fact that Hamilton and Jefferson had conflicting views. Also the fact that Washington favored Hamilton's ideas which made Jefferson very mad because he wanted to have his ideas favored also. Last but not least the two parties fought over governmental issues also played a part in the rise of political parties.
Comment: The founding fathers did not emerge out of political vacuum. Britain had its tories, whigs, etc., and so it was natural that a similar landscape would also [emerge](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Party_System) in the new nation, IMO quite irrespective of individual actors such as Jefferson and Hamilton.
Comment: Washington spent much of his time and energy mediating between his two cabinet members who each devoted considerable effort to undermining the other.  I think it overstates the case that Washington favored Hamilton.
Comment: @Drux - A good point. In fact this exact point was made by Jefferson himself while he was making his party. See http://www.jstor.org/stable/1833690
Answer: The Federalists and Anti-Federalists started around the Constitutional Ratification, during the adoption fight but eventually grew under Hamilton to the political party that they became during the first few presidential administrations.  Afterwards you had like-minded groups grow because the only way to get elected, or names on the ballots because of the way the political system was structured was through parties.  Remember initially there was no direct vote, you elected your State Representatives and Senators were elected by State Legislatures so to get a sizable block you needed to get a sizable number of like-minded people into State government and the House of Representatives.
Since that time there have been the Democratic and Republican parties that we have come to know today, as well as others that rose out of the times.  Others rose and feel depending on feelings on political power, such as Andrew Jackson and what became the Democrats where he favored the Executive branch while Henry Clay and the Whigs favored the Legislative.  This was a time of political friction, and it is during times like these when partisan politics become intense (like the past few years in the US with the rise of the Tea Party) when new groups form.
A couple of short overviews can be found here:

Major American Political Parties
American Political Parties - An Ongoing Revoltution
Comment: The facts are mostly right, but I think the agency is misplaced.  Hamilton didn't pay people to slander his opponent. Despite his fervent and vocal opposition, Thomas Jefferson did far more to create political parties than Hamilton did.  Furthermore the term "Anti-Federalist" was never used by the anti-federalists (who weren't really a "party"). A full answer would also include Martin Van Buren's role in allocating party patronage.  Check Gordon Wood's "Radicalism of the American Revolution" for more details.
Answer: It boils down to simple mathematics. The US electoral system is mostly based on a winner-takes-all approach (BTW, that's mostly not written into the Constitution, but rather evolved ad-hoc, for similar mathematical reasons).
In a winner-takes-all system, only the two biggest vote-getters will ever have meaningful influence, so it is natural for a dualism to evolve.
The other factor is that in politics, nothing can be accomplished by yourself, only by teaming up into some form of coalition and alliances. For the most part, long term coalitions and alliances are far more valuable to all participants (because they allow calling in favors far in the future). Take that together with the natural dualism inherent in the electoral system, and you have the making for a very stable two-party system.
Interestingly, the same mechanism is also driving another aspect: diversity within each party. Many European democracies don't use a winner-takes-all system, and as a result have more parties participate in the democratic process. The price for it, though, is that parties are far more homogeneous internally than US parties, to the point that party leaders can enforce party-line votes by controlling who will even be on the ballots.
Answer: Political parties exist in every country that has elections. America has elections, and there is nothing special about America.
The question that you should ask is why does a representative system always lead to political parties? A few dictatorships don't have them, but there is no election-based country that has no parties, even if the country is not fully democratic.
Comment: The questioner asked why they exist, not why they're different. They may or may not have exceptional features, but they exist for the same reason they exist everywhere. I don't think they were all that different to the early British parties they were inspired by, but that's not strictly relevant.
Comment: But parties form differently in Parliamentary systems than in the USA.


Can I use the Ubuntu Nexus 7 Desktop Installer on other tablets?

Question: could I install Ubuntu on galaxy note using Nexus 7 Desktop Installer?
Answer: No, the installer only supports the 8GB and 16GB Nexus 7 devices.
The key aspect to running Ubuntu on tablet hardware is whether there exists an accelerated Xorg driver for that hardware available for Ubuntu. Many SoC vendors do not provide such a driver, since it is a significant amount of work, and they are already supporting the Android graphics stack (SurfaceFlinger).
Without this driver, it is unlikely for Ubuntu to run well (or at all) on the device.
I led the team that wrote this installer and created the image, so that's my source of information for you. :)
Thanks.
Comment: You are probably right, but do you have any sort of sources for your statement? Or perhaps some reason you know its not working? =)
Comment: The kernel being used is specific to the Nexus7 hardware so you'd at least need a new kernel to get it working and likely there might be some other issues that would need to be fixed if you did a port.
Comment: Noting that the installer now supports 32G Nexus 7 as well.
Answer: I am currently using a Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 (7.0) Android tablet 'alongside' Ubuntu (SSH, tethering, etc.), but I instead chose the Google (ASUS) Nexus 7 to actually test install of Ubuntu.  It being the 'reference platform'.
My understanding (still limited) is that the 'Nexus 7 Installer' replaces Android, while using the Nexus 7 'stock' ROM and any other additional elements to run.
You may need to investigate some of the other more generic approaches (dual OS, replacement ROM, etc.).

You should also checkout: LinuxonAndroid >> Working Devices
Comment: *Update: currently installing (and testing) on **Nexus 7**.*
Comment: **Update 2:** *This is clearly a work in progress, and any effort to improve will (likely) be solely focused on this 'reference' hardware.*


Algorithm for approximating sihlouette image as polygon

Question:
Possible Duplicate:
Is there any heuristic to polygonize a closed 2D raster shape with n triangles?

I want to be able to analyze a texture in real time and approximate a polygon to represent a silhouette.  Imagine a person standing in front of a green screen and I want to approximately trace around their outline and get a 2D polygon as the result.  Are there algorithms to do this and are they fast enough to work frame-to-frame in a game?
(I have found algorithms to triangulate polygons, but I am having trouble knowing what to search for that describes my goal.)
Answer: Checkout the DetectVertices function here. Its pretty good I've used it quite a bit myself.


Can I assign a gesture to Mission Control on an older MacBook?

Question: I have an older MacBook (2006) that I want to use the four finger swipe to enable mission control. It is not the glass trackpad, but it does have two finger scrolling. Is there any way to enable this?
Answer: You can assign a hot-corner in Mission Control. This replaces the previous Exposé hot-corner.
Answer: BetterTouchTool lets you assign arbitrary tap/swipe/click gestures to arbitrary commands.
I don't know if it supports your hardware, though.
Answer: I don't think multi touch gestures are supported in 2006 models.
I thought models < 2007 are not Lion compatible? Needs Core 2 Duo, right?
Comment: "Late 2006" models and onwards had Core 2 Duo chips and are able to run Lion.
Answer: One solution is the one I have chosen: Buy a Magic Trackpad.
Answer: You are limited in almost every way when it comes to using gestures in Snow Leopard on your 2006 MacBook.
Software
You cannot launch Mission control without OSX Lion, if you do indeed have a 2006 MacBook (which I also have) you cannot install OSX Lion, as it requires a Dual core 2 Duo as a minimum processor, the 2006 have the Dual Core Duo processor. This cannot be changed easily and will be almost as expensive as buying an older 2nd hand MacBook with a glass trackpad (see my question here) and therfore you cannot use gestures in the same way a MacBook running Lion would do.
Hardware
The older MacBook cannot perform gestures due to the hardware. The non glass trackpad, cannot detect finger positions in relativity to each other, whereas the glass ones released in 2008 can.
This means that when you are two finger scrolling it detects two fingers moving down the pad, what it cant do is detect 3 fingers swiping accross a screen, or pinching.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but that is one of the reasons (along with iCloud) I bought a new Mac.


What's the proper way to dispose of used fats & oils?

Question: Down the drain? Does it depend on the type? With bacon fat, I usually let it solidify in a cup lined with foil, and then throw it out. With used canola oil, I'm not quite sure what to do because it doesn't solidify.
Comment: I'm voting to close this question because this primarily depends on the location of the OP. In Belgium, we have collection points specifically for used fats.
Comment: @Mein It wouldn't make sense to give advice for each country, but an answer could be written suggesting people check to see if collection points are available in their country citing Belgium as an example.
Comment: Not just dependent on location, but on volume of waste oil and residential vs commercial status...
Answer: Never down the drain.  We've had a few incidents in my neighborhood where the sewer pipes were clogged with fat, and a few people's basements flooded with sewage as a result.
For fats that solidify, let them do so, then pitch them in your regular garbage. Chill grease in the fridge if you need to get it to harden up. For ones that don't solidify, pour them into a sealable (hopefully non-recyclable) bottle, and throw the whole container away with your regular garbage.
It's possible that your area might accept cooking fats & oils as part of a recycling effort. Ours does for motor oil (I live in Maryland).
For restaurants, some places (eg, the state of Maryland) require a system for catching grease that's been washed down the sink. It's my understanding that they're fairly expensive (a couple thousand dollars US), but the fines for not having one installed may be even more, and they won't let new restaurants open without one.
Comment: @Satanicpuppy: That guy with the fat-eating-enzime had better hold the movie rights, it'll be sure to be picked up by some bacteria and decimate the human race :)
Comment: The water and sewer guys refer to the resultant fat clogs as "Grease Logs" and, indeed, it's an accurate description. Better to just throw that junk off the back porch.
Comment: A fat-trap is not really expensive. It's just a place where water & fat slow down so the fat can float. The water escapes at a lower level.
Comment: @Adam Shiemke: Yea, it doesn't degrade. The guy who comes up with an enzime that eats fat will make a mint cleaning arteries and drains.
Comment: Wonder if oil can ever revert to the kind of grease that causes clogs if you mix it with plenty of detergent (eg pouring a cup of dish soap and a cup of water into a pot of oil and stirring before pouring it away)?
Comment: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/walls-of-fat-removed-from-londons-sewers-2025528.html pretty gross.
Comment: @rackandboneman : after the last grease plug I cleared in my basement, I wouldn't recommend risking it.
Answer: Composting used oil can be done. Since it is organic it makes great earthworm food. But as Joe mentions: be careful to make sure you're doing it right. Large quantities of oil used to cook meat can attract vermin to your compost, and lots of oil in your compost can form hydrophobic barriers, reducing water & airflow.
Perhaps a safer option: After allowing used oil to cool you should put it in a small sealed container and throw it out with the trash. You can save empty jars for this purpose. If you produce large amounts of oil you may need to take it directly to your landfill, oil recycling station, or ask a local restaurant if you can drop off your oil there.
I advise against pouring it down the drain. It will clog overtime.
Also, you can reuse most oil several times. Deep-frying oil can be filtered and reused 3-4 times (more depending on the quality and your comfort). Bacon fat can also be filtered and then stored in your refrigerator.
Comment: I had always been told to avoid oil in compost, but after you mentioned it, I looked into it, and it looks like it's possible, but might cause problems if you don't do it right : http://www.compostthis.co.uk/item/cooking-oil ; and cause problems if it is done right : http://cityorganicgardener.blogspot.com/2006/12/compost-turkey-oil.html
Comment: When I had a slow compost pile I never had a problem with throwing oil in it occasionally. I don't frequently deep fry so that might be why.
Comment: @Sruly: You can follow that advice if you like. If you eat deep fried food in a restaurant chances are it's been fried in reused oil. This specific topic was covered here: http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/3014/frying-oil-reuse
Comment: Here are [some good guidelines](http://goaskalice.columbia.edu/reusing-cooking-oil-safe) for reusing oil (or not) from Columbia University.
Comment: I was told not to reuse oil more than twice.
Comment: General composting advice is not to use cooked food or meat, since it attracts vermin. I would probably put used vegetable oil in my compost, but I would avoid lard or meat fat.
Answer: You can mix fats together that will harden and keep them. Once you have enough, mix them with some nuts and seeds and you have some home made fat balls for bird feeding.
Comment: This is a good idea.  Keep a tin can next to the sink, pour any oils and fats into it.  When its full, pop a load of nuts in, and put it in the garden.  If its solid you should be able to pop it open.
Comment: It's better to feed worms - that will feed birds and other animals I   believe
Answer: Unless you fry very often, you can store the twice/thrice/whatever used oil and use to saute or as an ingredient in cakes and breads that call for oil. You need to keep track a bit, since you don't want to put the oil used to fry shrimp into cookies, but it might work well to saute onions for shrimp tiki masala.
Bacon grease can likewise be reused. Its my personal favorite for frying onions used in heavy curries from northern India and hearty meat dishes like stews. Simply dump into an old can or a pyrex container, cover in cling film or foil, and store in the fridge for a week or two (it can pick up odors, so not too long), or freeze in cubes for future cooking (would probably keep a year or so).
Other fats can be put to good use: chicken fat is used as a condiment in Central European Jewish food, for instance.
If you do fry a lot, you can save the used oil and make biodiesel. The process if fairly simple if you have a few days to let the product sit.
Comment: Good point -- I save my bacon grease, but I've been cutting back on the bacon so I don't have it as often as I used to.  I use it to cook pancakes & french toast and other things I'd serve with bacon anyway.
Comment: Bacon grease makes a wonderful substitute for butter in savory corn bread as well.
Answer: You can always pour old oil back into the empty oil bottle (or any bottle or jar) and throw it in the regular trash.
Answer: When I have some spare in a pan after a bit of a fry up or whatever I get the end pieces of bread from the current loaf and pour the fat all over them, then I let it soak in and then dry up for a bit and I put that out for the birds.. They love it - There's a wood pigeon here that loves bread with bacon fat!
Answer: Bacon grease can be a real pain in the ass. Pour it while it's liquid and hot into an empty plastic bottle and you risk burning yourself or burning a hole in the container. Wait for the grease to dry in the pan and you've got a hell of a clean up job on your hands. No matter what, leaving bacon grease to sit in your home will cause a stink. Not sure about you, but I don't like to think about or smell bacon very long after I've eaten it. So what to do?
Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a silver bullet out there. Many recommend pouring grease into a non-warpable container like a Chinese takeout box or a milk carton, but not everyone has something like that laying around.
An option I've found useful: line a glass or mug with aluminum foil and pour hot grease in there. To speed up solidification, put the ensemble in your freezer for a few minutes, then pull it out, and trash the grease-foil -- preferably in a bin outside.
Comment: Bacon grease is a *highly* flavorsome thing to fry stuff up in. It's the one oil I reserve a special glass cup for, and use rather than toss.
Answer: Some utilities have or are starting residential cooking oil recycling programs. They will either have a drum to pour oil into, or a cabinet to drop off a bottle. If there is no program in your area, the trash can is the best option.
You should never dump oil down the drain, as it can cause odours and back-ups in your home and the sanitary sewer collection system.
You can learn about the program in Hillsborough County, Florida by visiting: www.hillsboroughcounty.org/core
Comment: Great answer, keep them coming.  FYI--The link or chain which is located just to the right of the italicize "I" at the top of the answer box is how you add a link to a website, I provided this for you.
Answer: Many restaurants have collection containers in back and will accept your fats while those using biodiesel may pull their vehicle up and fill up for free!
It depends on the area, but I have heard of people going across the country on restaurant freebies! Check it out some more, to see if this is viable in your area.
Comment: At least in the US, this fat is often sold for recycling, and is unlikely to be given away for free.
Answer: I don't deep-fry so I never have multiple quarts of used oils.  For a skillet full of used oil with too much crumb in it to reuse, I use a lot of Dawn and very hot water to fully emulsify the fat and then wash it down the drain with hottest water.  I'm on a septic tank in the country for nearly 20 years with no problems.
I save bacon fat that isn't overheated to fry tortillas and veggies headed for a stew or stir-fry.  I keep bacon-fat in the fridge, although many southern cooks just keep it in a pot by their stove.
Answer: fats and grease are not compostable, that much i know. not sure what else you can do with it. my grandmother used to just pour it into a can, freeze it, and toss it in the garbage on garbage day.
Comment: Anything that used to be alive is compostable. Different things take different lengths of time to compost, that's all -- and some things attract vermin.
Answer: Get a funnel and pour it into an old milk gallon or some other used container with a screw on cap. Then just toss it into the trash bin. No chilling, no clogged plumbing, no mess (if you're careful).
Answer: There are now (2018) plenty people using old chip oil for bio-fuel in their old diesel cars. Do a few web-searches for "waste vegetable oil recycling" "wvo recycling" "used chip oil collection" etc. and you might find someone local to your neighborhood who will arrange to collect it for free.
I do this in Grimsby U.K. along with many others.
Answer: In my area (Vancouver, Wa), the recyclers will take used engine oil, but NOT used cooking oils!  If I'm desperately trying to do the perfectly right thing, a couple of the local restaurants will let me dispose of my oil in their collection containers, but that's a pain in the A**    So for the past 20+ years, I've simply mixed a couple of tbsp of dish detergent (that's enough for 1/2 gal of oil) into the oil and then slowly drizzled it down the drain w/plenty of Hot water. There has Never been an incident with the sewers in my neighborhood!
Comment: Voted that one up because that technique might or might not be OK for small amounts - if somebody know it is not, it would be great if that person could comment on the reasons.


What are the advantages and disadvantages of using beta-galactosidase compared to luciferase as a reporter gene?

Question: In the University labs, we have used Beta-galactosidase as a reporter gene to quantify the expression initiated by the stress-response promoter in yeast. This was done by exposing one of the two groups to osmotic stress (high salt concentration) whilst the other was unstressed. Then the levels of beta-galactosidase were compared.
A question given to us afterwards asked to give advantages & disadvantages of using Beta-galactosidase compared to Luciferase as a reporter gene in this experiment. And which one would be, overall, more suitable?
Answer: Beta-galactosidase (B-gal for short) is an enzyme that will process the substrate lactose. In applications using B-gal as a reporter (lacZ gene), two lactose analogues are commonly used: X-gal or ONPG (as pointed out by @Alan Boyd). Both substrates are colourless, becoming coloured once hydrolyzed by B-gal. The formation of this colour allows B-gal to be assayed by means of either visual inspection, or more accurate means by using a spectrophotometer or camera.
When X-Gal is hydrolyzed, an insoluble blue dye is formed. Evolution of blue colour is intensified as more substrate is hyrolyzed, allowing for quick blue/white screening by visual inspection in common applications of cloning and gene expression. Using the X-gal substrate, B-gal assays are more sensitive to gene expression (the dye precipitates out and retains colour very well), however X-gal is not quantitative (Möckli & Auerbach. BioTechniques 36:872-876 (May 2004)). In contrast, ONPG hydrolysis evolves a soluble yellow dye. This colour developement is quantitative, however is less senstive than X-gal because the linear relationship betwen light absorption (at 420 nm) and substrate concentration is small. Using ONPG as a B-gal substrate allows for quantitative measurement of B-gal activity (and therefore promoter activity). (Note that ONPG itself is not capable of inducing the lac promotor, unlike X-gal.)
Luciferase reporters (there are actually a few different luc genes) operate in a similar fashion. The enzyme cleaves its substrate, however instead of yielding an insoluble blue dye, emits a characteristic photon. Luciferase activity must be measured using specialized camera hardware to detect and count photons emitted from your yeast clones. This assay will still answer yes/no reporter questions, but can also be quantified to look at how much the reporter was activated. Luciferase activity is a quantitative reporter while also yielding spatiotemporal information.
The choice of reporters depends largely on the question you wish to answer. If promoter induction is relevant (eg, the stress-response promoter was activated), then luciferase or B-gal with X-gal are best suited for their higher sensitivity. Given that luciferase requires a special camera and optical filter (such as a gel documentation system), X-gal is ideal because it may be screened by eye. If promoter activity is being assayed, then B-gal+ONPG or luciferase will yield quantitative measurements of reporter gene activity, and require at least a spectrophotometer.
Given these are university labs, I assume that materials costs are to be minimized and ease of experimental protocol to be maximized, B-gal is the ideal reporter. Luciferase requires: more costly substrate; specialized equipment; careful handling of materials, and more time (as screening necessarily takes longer, therefore lower throughput for a lab demo setting).
Comment: Here a list of [other luciferase assay shortcomings](http://www.reportergene.com/2010/01/5-common-luciferase-drawbacks.html).
Comment: I'm pretty sure that Xgal isn't an inducer of lac expression otherwise we wouldn't add lots of IPTG in blue-white screen plates. And in any case this really wouldn't matter if we are talking about using reporters for measuring the activity of other promoters, because a lac inducer would be irrelevant.
Comment: @AlanBoyd the induction of lac is irrelevant to the discussion, but I've included it for completeness. IPTG is only required if lacZ repressor is overexpressed. For example, blue/white screening is easily achieved with X-gal alone for DH10B (TOP10) strains, Mach-T1, DH5A-T1, but not others (see page viii: http://tools.invitrogen.com/content/sfs/manuals/topota_man.pdf ).
Answer: I think that @leonardo has this backwards. β-galactosidase can be assayed accurately and cheaply using ONPG as a colorimetric substrate with no solubility problems. All that is needed is a spectrophotometer: my guess is that this is the assay the OP used in their experiment. So my answer is - use β-galactosidase for inexpensive quantitative analysis - no need to add luciferin and ATP or to worry about oxygen availability. I'm struggling to think of a disadvantage for β-galacosidase - maybe there are higher background levels from other cellular glycosidases, whereas there will be no background luciferase activity?
Comment: I was unaware of ONPG as a substrate for B-gal. Indeed, the problem with X-gal is that after hydrolyzation, the blue dye formation is not sensitive enough for quantitation (eg, PMID: 17957822). Whereas with luciferin, evolution of photons gives sensitive spatial and temporal information with no background (relative to B-gal). There is still a big cost differential between the two, which can be a concern for university labs.
Comment: Edited my answer to reflect info in your post.
Answer: I realize this question is about yeast, but I'm afraid that people may try to expand the answer to all systems, and beta galactosidase is not good for all systems, particularly for animal studies. I've seen too many gene therapy papers try to get away with using it.
Beta galactosidase is not a good reporter gene for in vivo gene delivery studies. There is too much endogenous activity in most tissues to distinguish the exogenous activity. When doing non viral gene delivery, the amount of DNA expressed is often so low that you cannot overwhelm the endogenous activity and therefore cannot conclusively say the enzyme activity you detected is from your new DNA.
Luciferase is far superior for in vivo work. First, there is no endogenous luciferase activity in most animals ( you're out of luck if you're doing work on fireflies ) so you can be sure that any luciferase activity you detect is real. Luciferase activity can be determined noninvasively though bioluminescent imaging, allowing for repeated measurements on the same animal. Beta glucosidase can require killing the animal, dissecting the tissues, preparing microscope slides, and then analysis, so doing a time course study will require using many more animals.
The only advantage I can see beta glucosidase having over luciferase is if you want to see what percentage or precisely what type of cells are expressing the reporter gene. However, I think GFP or another fluorescent protein would be more appropriate because of the endogenous activity issue I described earlier.
Again, my answer applies for animal use. If you're just growing yeast on a plate, the beta galactosidase is probably the cheaper way to go. We did some 384 and 1536 well plate assays on primary hepatocytes with luciferase, and the luciferase reagent was about $250 for 10mL. You might also consider fluorescent proteins for screening. I've made bactieral colonies with RFP that were visibly red, so no need for UV, but even if you need UV light to see the fluorescence, a standard UV transluminator for viewing gels will be good enough, and no extra reagents to add.


Cursor on build error and temp build directory with TexStudio

Question: Cursor position on build error
I am using TexStudio with Beamer and TikZ graphic. In general it does a good job to sync TeX and PDF. Anyway, when there is a build error, it tries to move the cursor to the point, but it only seems to go to the end of the guilty slide.
For a general lecture build, going here seems enough.
BTW, say I am playing with a complex TikZ figure, I do many intermediate builds just to check if I am mistyping something. If this happens, the fact that the cursor slides away every time there is an error results in a loss of productivity.
So I'd like the cursor to remain where it is in case of build errors. How can I do this?
Temporary build directory
As many others, to reduce the clutter I set this temporary directory.
I set the PdfLaTex command as:
pdflatex -synctex=1 -interaction=nonstopmode -output-directory temp-dir %.tex

and, checking Additional search path in the build dialog, I set both Log File and PDF Viewer to temp-dir.
Everything is apparently fine, but by chance I noticed that, if, in the root of the TeX file I am going to compile, there is a PDF file with the same basename, then the internal viewer uses this one, despite temp-dir\%.pdf is properly built.
This is not a great annoyance, but I wonder if I set up properly the temporary build directory. Could it be that TeXStudio searches in the TeX root directory first and on a "second thought" in the temp-dir?  If this were the case, I suspect that this could slow down the compilation.
There is not much documentation concerning temporary build directories, so I am seeking for your help.
Answer:
The cursor currently always moves to the error location. But we may add an option to switch this off in the future.
It's true, that the file directory is always searched before the Additional search path. That's why it's additional. This does not have an influence on compilation speed.


Tiled game: how to correct load background image?

Question: i'm a newbie. I'm trying to develop a 2d game (top-down view).
I would like to load a standard background, a textured ground... My "world" is big, for example 3000px X 3000px.
I think it is not a good idea to load a 3000px x 3000px image and move it...
So, how is the best practice ?
To load a single small image (64x64) and repeat it for N times ?
If yes, ok, but how i can manage the "background" movement ?
Thanks
Bye!
Comment: More specifics on the nature of your game could be helpful. For example, depending on theme and style either a single, detailed image could be fitting or a tiled one would. Heck, if it's an abstract game like geometry wars, a procedural background might work best.
Answer: Use a Tiling Algorithm.  Unless each pixel of your 36MB map is unique, you can break your map up into tiles.  See the RPGMaker to get a feel for how it's done.
Then, you'll just need several small images, and a grid describing the map in 32x32 chunks.  During a frameDraw, just draw the portion of the grid relating to what the screen around the character shows.  It keeps memory down, and performance up.
Comment: Why do you say the tiles should to be 32x32?
Comment: @Hobo, You don't have to.  It's just what a majority of the art that I find has been done in.  It gives a 60x33 "tile" resolution on HD monitors, and a 40x32 resolution on a traditional monitor.
Answer: It depends on your target display size.
On one end of the scale there's the "have everything on a single 3000x3000 framebuffer" approach. This is probably the fastest method (one single render call) but a framebuffer that big can cause problems.
On the other end of the scale there's the "draw every single tile individually" approach. This is memory-conservative, but requires a lot of render calls.
To me, the sweet spot is bundling the tiles on chunks that take rougthly half the size of the screen. The number of render calls is at worse 9, and the hardware should cope well with a texture size that is half the screen.
This way, for a PC screen with 1024x768 pixels, you will probably be ok with 512x512 textures, while for a mobile device with a 300x256 pixels, 256x128 should be ok.
Answer: I'd try to render images at the same size as the source image, so if that is truely the max size (and also the size of your .png or whatever) I'd render it as-is and be done with it (unless I saw noticable framerate drop by doing that).
If you do see performance problems, or you anticipate much larger imagery, you'd need to come up with a tiling scheme, which will determine which tiles of your map need to be on the screen and render them. One way to do it (maybe not the best) is to use a Tile class, then have an array[x,y] of tiles. Each Tile knows its realitive position on the screen and can react to user-input in order to move on the correct axis.


Are there any lenses have smaller apertures than f/32?

Question: While most photographers prefer fast lenses that range down to f/1.2, are there any lenses that go smaller than f/32?  If there are, what is so special about those lenses that an aperture of f/32 cannot do?  Rarely do I set it to f/32, because it compromises the whole exposure settings.
Comment: Just in case you wern't aware, there are F-stops below f/1.2 which include f/0.7 and f/1.0  see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Zeiss_Planar_50mm_f/0.7 and http://fstoppers.com/ultimate-lens-bokeh-from-the-canon-50mm-f1-0 respectively
Comment: wow, I wasn't aware of it until you told it.  Thanks
Comment: The Noctilux lenses from Leica are f/0.95 :)
Comment: Voigtlander Noktons for Micro 4/3 are f/0.95 as well.
Comment: No worries, apparently the f/0.7 lenses were used by NASA and the canon 50mm F/1.0 is no longer produced.
Comment: f/64 can be very useful with macro photography. I hope there are some vintage f/64 lenses.
Comment: There's also a very recent F/0.95 Mitakon series for APS-C cameras. At least Sony and Fuji.
Answer: Yes. For example, my sigma 105mm can go up to f/45.
Basically, such small aperture can produce a very large DOF, but
In most cameras and lenses combination the quality of the image starts to decrease after f/16 because of the diffraction of light, and usually the DOF at f/16 is large enough.
I don't know what so special about the f/32 but i guess that in most cases the image quality with smaller aperture will decrease significantly and manufacturers don't see any advantage enabling smaller aperture.
If you're using such small aperture just to get a longer exposure, you should consider using an ND filter which reduce the amount of light. For example a 0.9ND (X3) will reduce 3 stops and that means X8 longer exposure with the same parameters, or same exposure with a bigger aperture.
You can get some pretty good ND filters that only transfer 1/1000 of the given light, thus, creating very long exposures even in the middle of the day.
For further information about diffraction and diffraction limit you may start here
Comment: Diffraction is less of a factor on larger formats - shooting at f/45, f/64 or even f/90 is not a crazy thing to do on 8x10" or even 4x5", but on 35mm or crop digital, the diffraction effects on sharpness would be terrible.
Answer: In terms of cameras that use 35mm sized or smaller film, or have a sensor no larger than 36mm x 24mm you rarely see a lens with an aperture narrower than f/32.
Medium and large format cameras, on the other hand, frequently use lenses with apertures of f/32 and narrower.
The thing to remember is that an f-number is a ratio, not a specific sized aperture. Also remember that the larger the recording medium, the wider the field of view for a lens of a specific focal length. A 50mm lens, for instance, is considered mildly telephoto on an APS-C camera since it yields a field of view (FoV) equivalent to an 80mm lens on a full frame sensor. That same 50mm lens is considered a standard lens on a 35mm film camera or a full frame digital camera. On a large view camera, a 50mm lens is considered wide angle because of the FoV it yields. As focal lengths must get longer to obtain the same FoV on larger film or sensor sizes compared to lenses for smaller formats, the f/ratio needed to yield the same depth of field (DoF) also goes up.
There was even a group of seven San Francisco based photographers in the 1930s, whose members included Ansel Adams and Edward Weston., named Group f/64 in reference to a common aperture setting used with large format cameras to get great depth of field for landscape photography.
Answer: There are, but not many for full frame cameras.
Problem with small apertures is that because of diffraction of light, image can get blurry. However, diffraction is related to absolute width of an opening, and aperture is relative measure, so mostly with medium frame and large frame cameras such apertures make sense.
Similarly, compact cameras which have even smaller sensors, usually max out at f8 or some such.
Answer: While I understand that you may want to reduce the amount of light or try to get a deeper depth of field, you should keep in mind that as you close you aperture, you're loosing resolution and sharpness, since the smallest detail your lens can "see" depends on open diameter (aperture).
As a rule of thumb: when you go from a diameter to half of it, the smaller detail your lens can "see" become bigger, actually doubling in size. This is something caused by diffraction.
For example, a 50 mm lens open at f/4, your lens is collecting light from a diameter of 50/4 = 12.5 mm. But when you close your aperture to f/32 you're collecting  light from a tiny ~1.56 mm diameter, and everything will blur. Do you really want such blurred image? Most of the time not.
Actually real lenses don't give their sharpest view when used at full aperture because of other optical aberrations that affect sharpness, so reducing aperture often helps sharpness. But usually when you reduce aperture more than f/8 you start to see details going away. So there's no point in building lenses with smaller maximum aperture, as explained also here:
http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/focus.htm


How can I prevent the Google+ app from showing the wrong thumbnail before I share a photo?

Question: When I go to the Google+ app to share a picture I've taken on my phone, it shows the wrong thumbnail.  I select the thumbnail anyway because experience has taught me that I can trust the date, and I when I share the picture the correct picture is shared.  This is incredibly frustrating, however, as I'm effectively "flying blind" when I share photos with the Google+ app.
I've developed various coping mechanisms for dealing with this problem.  I go into the Gallery app and delete all but pictures I want to share on Google+ and count the number of pictures I want to share.  Then I select the first few pictures (say, four) and share them on Google+.  Even though the thumbnails are wrong because I've already done the legwork to know which picture is which.
I've sent feedback to Google about this multiple times (it bothers me that there is no public record of this) and have been updating the Google+ app regularly, but the problem persists.  As of this writing I'm using version 22.214.171.124337 of the Google+ app on Android 2.2.
I don't think this has anything to do with how I manage pictures on my Android phone, but I'll describe that anyway.  Every so often I put my phone in USB mode and import my photos into iPhoto.  Then (after safely ejecting the device), from the phone I do a "select all" and "delete all" of all the pictures.
Answer: Ok, I think this might be helping, but it's an odd fix. . .
After reading the answer to another question on this site I tried the following:

Settings | Applications | Manage Applications | All | Media Storage | Clear Data
rebooted phone
opened Gallery app (nothing there, but I should have seen one picture)
took a picture (now pictures started appearing in the Gallery app)

And now the Google+ app shows the correct thumbnail. . . for now at least.  This is a pretty serious kludge and not at all user-friendly.  I hope it helps someone.


Can I move characters to a new account?

Question:
Possible Duplicate:
Move character between accounts

My husband and I bought one copy of Diablo 3 and, after creating some characters of my own on his account and playing around with them for a while, I discovered that I really enjoy the game. Now I'd like to download a second copy of Diablo 3 and create my own account, but I've grown quite attached to my characters and would love to be able to move them to my new account.
Is this in any way possible? How would I contact the admins to request something like this?
Comment: Nice question!!
Answer: Short and simple answer: no, you can't.

Can I move characters to a new account?


How do you hire a Hacker?

Question: I'm on my second playthrough of this gaming, choosing the Hire option at least twice per game year, and varying between "Word of Mouth", "Magazine Ad", and "Online Ad" - never seen a Hacker available for hire. Is there something special I have to do?
Answer: If you train a regular person into being a hacker, their salary will be 10 times (at least) what a "hired" hackers will be. Once you're in the big office, if you do a hollywood talent search, you usually get a hacker or two, and their salaries are much more reasonable. Doesn't really matter in the late game, but I wrecked myself trying to get hackers a few times before I could hire them.
Answer: You train your people into hackers. You need every profession (including Hardware Engineer to level 5) then you can use the career manual to change into a hacker. I don't remember if Walt Sidney was initially hired as a hacker, but him and Francoise Bloom have pretty awesome stats as Lvl 5 hackers ( 736,615,557,412 and 771,791,483,446 respectively in my game atm (Y32)).
(Always buy 3x Career change manuals until you've gotten everyone good (and then keep some spare to change people into Hardware to make new consoles ( you want 6 for the best console ))).
Comment: Walt Sidney and Francoise Bloom are both Hackers by default.  But as @Satanicpuppy says above, training into hackers will hugely balloon their salaries compared to hiring one.
Answer: I believe Hackers are only available when you get some of the most expensive options for recruiting potential hires, such as Open House.
Answer: Got 2 of them as a result of the most expensive hiring method: hollywood or something.
They have between 200 and 400 points for fun, creavity, graphics and music. Great.
Answer: Once I had unlocked the more expensive job advertising options, I could start hiring them.

How do you hire a Hacker?


What is a "ducker"?

Question: I saw another question on here that asked how to set up a ducker.  Can someone provide a detailed explanation of what a ducker is?  I couldn't glean a specific meaning from the context of the linked-to question.  In the context of a song, would it be reducing the volume of everything else when the vocals come in, to make the vocals stand out more?
Answer: See here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ducking
It is an effect that is created by using the sidechain input on a compressor.
Normally, a compressor will "turn down the volume" of its output based on increased volume at its input.  But you can change that by sending a different audio signal into the sidechain input of the compressor; the compressor will then react to the sidechain signal instead, changing the volume of the input signal based on the volume of the sidechain signal.
I've heard this most commonly used when the sidechain input is connected to the kick drum of a drum set, and the main audio input of the compressor is connected to the cymbals.  This causes a "swooping" effect on the cymbals.  Visually, you can think of the cymbals "ducking" under the kick drum sound.  This effect can be heard clearly on the song "Come Together" by the Beatles (near the end of the track), and on one of the tracks of Pink Floyd's "The Wall" (although I can't remember which one ATM).
You can also hear this effect a lot on trance albums.
Answer: To add to Robert's answer:
A dynamics processor/process that lowers (or "ducks") the level of one audio signal based upon the level of a second audio signal. A typical application is paging over background music: A ducker senses the presence of audio from a paging microphone and triggers a reduction in the output level of the music signal for the duration of the page signal. It restores the original level once the page message is over. Most dynamics processors (usually compressors  are used) that give the user access to the detector circuit can be used for ducking. It is simply a matter of routing a copy/split of the second audio signal (the page in the example above) to the detector input such that it will trigger the gain cell to lower the level of the main signal (the music).

What is a "ducker"?


How to understand the word cascade in CSS?

Question: Why it is called cascade, instead of inheritable, or derivable, or chained, or something else? Maybe I have misunderstood the word? And, when should I use the word cascade in my own software architectures?
Answer: Cascading is used in a manner specifically referring to the priority-based rule matching mechanism.  Inherit would tend to be avoided because CSS isn't a programming language, and the way cascading rules work illustrates that; CSS cascading is actually very nearly the opposite of OOP inheritance.  Chaining implies entities being joinable in sequence in a way that isn't the case with CSS.  Derivable tends to imply a bottom-up organization, like with inheritance, where CSS's is more top-down.
If you are making architecture that involves a broad set of entities with subsets being targeted for processing by arbitrary rule sets that can override each other based on their priority, then I would say sure, use cascading as part of its description.
Answer: CSS - Cascading Style Sheets
Cascade means "to flow or fall in or like a cascade (ie. a waterfall)" where one flow follows another, each building upon the previous.
Inheritable doesn't work here, that word is more usually applied to Object Oriented architectures, and elements don't "inherit" a greater set of attributes.
I don't know why the word cascading in particular was chosen, but if you read the cascading rules section of the CSS2 specification, you'll see that they speak of a cascading order and precedence, where declarations are declared one on top of another. This process wouldn't be quite as evocative with a word such as chaining which implies a sequential not a cumulative process.
Answer: Inheritable would be the closest synonym you suggested. The effect of a number of style sheets "cascade" in that their effects are incrementally combined as they are applied in sequence.
For an example of when to use the word "cascade" w.r.t. technology (albeit hardware) you might like to look at the operation of "adder" circuits that "cascade" bit operations to perform a full arithmetic operation.


What is the Maillard reaction, and why should I care what a duck thinks?

Question: What is the Maillard Reaction?   What does it do for my beer?   What can I do to encourage or discourage it?
Answer: To augment STW's answer, a Maillard reaction is a browning chemical reaction between an amino acid and a sugar.  Heat encourages these reactions.  Carmelization is an example of a Maillard reaction, although there are others.
These reactions are responsible for the flavor of the crust of bread, as well as most nutty, caramel, and toffee notes in beer.  These flavors are the result of compounds known as melanoidins, one of the byproducts of Maillard reactions.
In certain styles, such as bocks, dunkelweizens, and especially doppelbocks, these flavors are desirable.  They can also often be found in barley wines.  In other styles, however, they may be less desirable, or even a flaw.
One of the most effective methods of encouraging melanoidin production is a decoction mash.  This will not only produce melanoidins in the mash, but will encourage further production in the boil.  Other factors that increase melanoidin production are higher temperatures, a pH in the 5.0 - 5.4 range, and higher levels of amino acids.  There is also a Melanoidin malt on the market for bootsing melanoidin flavor.
Increasing the concentration of the wort will promote carmelization, but Maillard reactions will occur whether the liquid is concentrated or dilute.
Mallard reactions, on the other hard, are usually a result of late-boil fowl additions...
Comment: a very nice augmentation indeed
Answer: Without fully answering your question, the Maillard Reaction is a chemical process that foods undergo as they're cooked.  In general it's visibly seen as the browning of foods as they heat, and is responsible for generating rich and complex flavors.  In cooking, the product of the reaction is nicknamed "GBD" or "Golden brown delicious".
In terms of beer, the reaction is important when barley is malted (the browning which occurs is partly due to the reaction), as well as during the boiling of the wort.  During the boil the rim of the pan will develop a brownish sludge, which--if stirred into the wort--will impart it's flavor which can be significantly different than the raw wort flavor.
Again, as I'm not an expert, I won't try to advise whether you should or shouldn't encourage the reaction (I'm very curious for other input though)--but I can assure you the effect of the reaction plays a significant role in the flavor.
Answer: To add some further information, maillard reactions continue to happen even after the beer is bottled.  Beers that are cellared will continue to darken and change in complexity due to the maillard reactions.  They also can create properties that stale the beer.  So there is a fine line in cellaring between adding complexity and adding stale characteristics.  Since heat is a factor in the maillard reaction the temperature that you store your beer at affects how fast the beer will stale.  You can thus extend the drinkability life of a beer by storing it at refrigerator temps.


Who wrote the glosses that are found in the text of the Nefesh HaChaim?

Question: In the common printed editions of the book Nefesh HaChaim by Chaim of Volozhin there are glosses ("hagahhot") included in the text at several points in smaller letters. Could you tell me who wrote them? My impression is every available edition has them. Here is an example of one in the first chapter: hebrewbooks
Comment: @ba: The note on page 48 might indicate otherwise: http://www.hebrewbooks.org/pdfpager.aspx?req=14565&pgnum=48 . There the note is printed as a footnote, and says explicitly that it was done by his son (which would seem to indicate that other notes not attributed would not be from him)
Comment: I think I remember reading in the foreword to a fancy edition of the book that they're from his son
Answer: The notes in Nefesh HaChaim are from the author, R' Chaim of Volozhin. The one exception is the extremely long note that begins in the first chapter, which was written by his son, R' Yitzchak. (This note is conventionally referred to as the הגה"ה מהרי"ץ, and is practically a work in its right - with its own notes!)
In older editions, there is a note at the end of the first shaar stating that this note is from R' Yitzchak. In some newer editions, the entire note has been moved to the end of the shaar, with a note on the first page.
Answer: In the Tanya, the glosses (in a similar format) were written by the Baal HaTanya himself. They are a sidebar of sorts, which discuss connected but tangential subjects. Sometimes they resolve contradictions.
See for example, the note in Chapter 2: http://www.chabad.org/library/tanya/tanya_cdo/aid/7881/jewish/Chapter-2.htm
My guess is that the glosses in the Nefesh Hachayim are also from the author.


Can I make immigrant dwarves arrive without any labors turned on?

Question: I'd like my immigrant dwarves to arrive with either no labor preferences, or some specific useless labor turned on. The reason is that Dwarf Therapist's "wave number" sorting doesn't always work, but I still want to sort the new dwarves into my community without getting confused about who is new.
Answer: It is possible to get new migrants to arrive with no labors turned on (other than the hauling, cleaning and basic medical labors).
In the Init.txt file there is a setting called SET_LABOR_LISTS. Set this to NO will cause new dwarves to not have any labors enabled. They will still have random experience in some labors.
This way you can sort the dwarves by total assigned labors in Dwarf Therapist and all the new dwarves will have 11 labors turned on.
(Source: http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:D_init.txt You need to change the Init.txt but that one does not have a decent wiki page yet)
Answer: I did not believe this was possible (Though Kevin's answer now seems to imply it is), but i have a roundabout solution:
My suggestion is to set the game to pause when Migrants arrive (defaults to on, also settable in the Data/Init/Announcements.txt), and then, while the game is still paused, read your dwarves in Dwarf Therapist. If you don't have any sorting on, the migrants should show up at the bottom of the list, whereupon you have an easy way to set all of your newly arrived dwarves to the labors of your choice.
Comment: Thanks, I didn't know they were already sorted that way!
Comment: @Raven Dreamer, It is actually possible to get new dwarfs to arrive without (useful) labors enabled, added my own answer.


Are encrypted backups a good idea?

Question: I'm in charge of a small set of laptops and wanted to get some sort of automated remote (over WAN) backups going; the backups would be going to a RAID drive. Because we don't really have a secure vault to hold all our drives (if someone wanted, they could smash the windows and take our drives), I was considering on using encryption, maybe something like duplicity (http://duplicity.nongnu.org/). I've discussed this with a few of the developers, but they seem convinced that encryption is a bad idea because a single bad bit could ruin the whole block. However, I haven't actually heard of any horror stories where this happened. What's your opinion? Do the benefits outweight the risks with encryption?
Comment: @Joris - That's why memory should never be trusted. Document! I like to think (well, not really, but you'll get the point) about what would happen if I was hit by a bus (or promoted, or torn away for whatever reason you'd like).
Comment: As someone who just lost a bunch of data due to an encrypted backup where I was *sure* I would remember the password, I'm going to refrain from answering. Encryption keys are no joke, long term memory is a funny thing.
Comment: also, never underestimate the memory span of a physical safe :-)
Comment: Asking reasonable questions is a good idea.
Answer: I do this, and it works for me (as in, the backups run fine, and I have done several restores).  I use bacula, which supports it.  For my money, pointers to getting this right include:
1) The decryption key is kept (unencrypted) on a CD-R, not in my head.  There are several copies of the CD-R, and none of them is with me.  I only need to do restores once every few months, and frankly I'd probably forget a password that I used that infrequently.  This also means my security isn't limited by the length of a memorable passphrase.
2) The backup software needs to support this already; don't start hacking this into your favourite tool, because you may get it wrong, and you won't know until it's vital that it work (ie, restore time).
3) You've a point about bit-flips, but those can ruin any backup.  I clean my tape heads every time the drive requests it, rotate the tapes every few years, and above all keep lots of incrementals.  If a bit-flip really did ruin yesterday's incremental, I can always go back to the day before, which will save most of my bum.
4) Document the restore procedure.  Encryption always complicates things, more if it's done well, and you don't want to have to rediscover the wheel when you're under pressure to get the accounts database back.  I wrote a short README with lots of detail that's very specific to my setup (a real step-by-step guide, all pathnames explicitly listed, that sort of thing) and it's burned to the same CDs as the decryption keys.
5) Above all, test it a lot.  You should be testing your restores regularly anyway, but once you've done something clever like this it becomes absolutely critical that you have confidence that things are working as they should.
Pros arising from this practice include not having to care when offsite storage loses a tape or two, as - being only human - they do from time to time; securely destroying old tapes is easy (throw in bin); and having all my file systems encrypted on-disc is no longer undermined by having a stack of unencrypted backup tapes in the fire safe next door.
Comment: Big +1 on emphasizing documentation and testing restores.
Comment: +1 can't emphasis enough documenting and testing. Someone once told me, it doesn't work until you've tested it. That applies even more so with backups.
Comment: Also, in most CTR cipher mode, a bit flip will only affect that single block of data. The rest of your backup should be just fine.
Answer:
but they seem convinced that encryption is a bad idea because a single bad bit could ruin the whole block

That's not a very good reason for not using encryption. The same is true for most compressed backups. The best way to address the problem would be to use a use a fault tolerant filesystem (fault tolerant file formats are very thin on the ground - mostly because they don't deal with as many failure scenarios as fault tolerant filesystems).
As with any backup, you need to ensure that you can access the resources needed to restore the data, and periodically verify / run test restores.
However you're a lot more likely to lose a laptop than a backup server - so if your data is valuable, your first port of call should be working out how to secure the data on the laptop. That will probably have a lot of impact on your choice of how to secure the backup.
Answer: They have their benefits and drawbacks, like any other.  The problem with bit-flips ruining everything1 can be worked around by properly verifying backups, and having more than one copy (which is always a good idea anyway -- one on-site for quick restore, and one off-site for DR purposes).
As far as the benefits of encryption itself goes, it really comes down to how bad it would be if the backups got stolen.  Most companies these days have enough critically-sensitive data that it's worth at least doing a pilot project (to learn about the practical issues of managing the thing) and doing an ROI analysis on the whole thing.

Pactically speaking, blocks die in disks, not bits, and if you did have an undetectable bit-flip in a non-encrypted backup chances are you've probably silently corrupted something important anyway.
Answer: I use rsync over ssh to back up 100Gb of remote webserver data every night - it takes just a few minutes to transfer differences and keep a local mirror in sync. However, this relies on the destination not being encrypted.
Once the data has been received, it can be archived using tar, compressed with gzip, (optionally tested with gzip -t) and then optionally encrypted and renamed with the date and stored on a raid system. (I found it easier to store the whole thing than mess around with incrementals).
If the raid drive uses an encrypted file system then it should be unnecessary to further encrypt the backups. If the drives are stolen, then they should remain unreadable but if they take the whole system and the key is available anywhere then it is a moot point.
You could encrypt the files individually, but their security is only as safe as the location of the key.
You could serve the key over https from a remote webserver as a function of the source ip address, that way if the system and backups were stolen then you can still have some control over the key and can disable it in time.
Always keep multiple copies, locally and remotely.

Are encrypted backups a good idea?


Decomposition of an abelian von Neumann algebra

Question: Hi, I came across the statement below and I couldn't figure out why it is true. I was hoping someone could explain it or give me a good reference. Thank you in advance.
"Let $\pi$ be a non-degenerate representation of a separable C*-algebra $A$ on a separable Hilbert space $H$. Suppose $M$ is an abelian von Neumann algebra contained in the commutant of $\pi(A)$. Then there exists a unique sequence of mutually orthogonal projections $(e_{n})$ in $M$ such that $\sum e_{n}=I$ and $M'e_{n}$ is spatially isomorphic to $L^{\infty}(E_{n})\otimes M_{n}(C)$. Moreover, each $e_{n}$ is invariant under spatial automorphisms of $M$.
Answer: Apparently, the data of π and A is irrelevant here.  We might as well start with an arbitrary representation of an abelian von Neumann algebra M on a Hilbert space H.
Geometrically, commutative von Neumann algebras are just measurable spaces
(the opposite category of the category of commutative von Neumann algebras is equivalent to the category of (localizable) measurable spaces).
Likewise, representations of von Neumann algebras on Hilbert spaces can be thought of geometrically as bundles of Hilbert spaces over measurable spaces, i.e., there is a similar equivalence of categories here.
Spatial automorphisms of representations of von Neumann algebras are precisely automorphisms f
of the underlying measurable space together with an isomorphism f*V→V,
where V is the bundle of Hilbert spaces corresponding to the representation.
More generally, a morphism of von Neumann algebras M→N, where M is abelian,
can be thought of as a bundle of von Neumann algebras over the spectrum (i.e., the corresponding
measurable space) of M.  Again, this can be stated as an equivalence of categories.
In our case we have a morphism M→M' and M is abelian.
The corresponding bundle of von Neumann algebras is precisely the bundle of
(fiberwise) endomorphisms of the bundle V of Hilbert spaces corresponding
to the representation of M on H.
Denote by E_n the measurable subset of Spec M consisting of points with the dimension
of the fiber of V being equal to n.  Denote by e_n the corresponding projection in M.
Observe that E_n are disjoint and ⋃_n E_n=Spec M, i.e., e_n are mutually orthogonal and ∑_n e_n=1.
Moreover, M'e_n is the algebra of endomorphisms of the restriction of V to E_n.
The latter bundle is trivial and has dimension n, hence its algebra of endormophisms
is just L^∞(E_n)⊗M_n(C) as required.  From the geometric interpretation of spatial isomorphisms
it follows that every e_n is invariant under any spatial isomorphism.
Finally, the sequence e is unique because the property M'f_n=L^∞(E_n)⊗M_n(C)
forces every F_n to be a subset of E_n, and because ⋃_n F_n=Spec M we have F_n=E_n.
Answer: It's a standard result in von Neumann algebras, called the homogeneous decomposition of a type I von Neumann algebra.
To quote results from the literature, I will use Takesaki's book (volume I). Since your $M$ is an abelian von Neumann algebra, it is type I. Then it's commutant $M'$ is also type I (V.1.30). Then Theorem V.1.27 expresses exactly the result you are asking about.


Motorola Atrix Android 2.3.X Corporate Email Account Already Added or Exists

Question: I have a Motorola Atrix phone running Android 2.3.6.  I had just performed an update to my firmware and can no longer access my corporate email account via the "Email" app.  I tried to re-add the account but would receive errors stating that the email had already been added (or email already exists).  Everything on the Internet leads me to believe that I would have to perform a factory reset of the phone.  Where did the email account go and how can I add the email if the phone says that it already exists or it was already added?
Answer: I am answering my own question.
The original email configuration still exists on the phone, but it cannot be accessed via the "Email" app. Accessing the "Email" app will just prompt you to add the account again (along with other account types like facebook, twitter; then it denies you stating that it already exists). Instead click on the "Messaging" app and then you will see the "disappearing" email account in addition to "Universal Account" and "Text Messaging". Select the original account and edit the account properties. On the account properties page you can "Remove Account". By removing the account you can then go and add it again successfully.
I have heard that others are doing a hard reset which is not necessary.


Best way to clean an airlock

Question: I recently did two ale brews in two separate fermenters and in both cases my airlocks got sediment in them, which then dried in. I can't find a way to clean out these airlocks, as I can't get around the bend with a brush. I've tried soaking them in boiling water but it hasn't helped. Is there anyway to clean these out or should I just give up and buy new ones?
Answer: You want to get some brewery cleaner, like Oxiclean or PBW. Make up a solution with hot water, soak the airlock in that overnight and the gunk will detach itself from the sides and can be flushed out with clean water.
Answer: You can also use bleach, if you don't have access to either of the cleaners mdma suggested.
Use between 4 and 16ml of bleach in 1 liter of water and let it soak until the gunk disappears (usually doesn't take more than 24h).
You should buy the cheapest bleach you can find (supermarket brands are good), so they will have no additives for aroma.
Extra: At the 4ml per liter concentration, bleach is a non-rinse sanitizer (kills in 20 min) but most brewers still prefer to take no risks and rinse with boiled water anyway.

Best way to clean an airlock