Which is the best batch image watermarking software?

Question: I have lots of images to be watermarked. Is there a good batch image watermarking application that can do the job quickly and easily. I have found some, but none of these have a professional touch.
Answer: Lightroom does this very well, plus it will handle other exports steps simultaneously.
It is very easy to do. Just enable the watermark section in the Export dialog. You can use image or text and adjust transparency, position and scale. All the watermarks on Neopanoramic which you can see here are generated by Lightroom. You can contrast this with service-side watermarking, see for example my gallery here. The latter is done using a PNG image with transparency, blended via PHP before being cached.
While you can find other watermarking solutions, not all will optionally resize (using a variety of constraints), rename (using customizable patterns), sharpen, etc the images which you are preparing. It is usually uncommon to watermark images without going from other normalizing steps, at the very least resizing.
Answer: What's a "professional touch"? :).
In the end you really have two approaches to creating a watermark:
1) Create an image and overlay that in a specific size over your image, either covering a specific percentage area or located in a specific spot.
2) Create a text overlay that is automatically added to your photos.
Both can be done with various tools and unless you have a specific clear description of what you want to do, there is no way anybody can recommend something that you'll consider appropriate.
For my part, I can tell you that Lightroom has the ability to watermark images, including as a batch process.
Another option is to create a Photoshop routine that will automatically apply a watermark to your images, however I have found that I need to distinguish between landscape and portrait in Photoshop.
Having said that, I suspect the majority of watermarks you find on the web, will be a png image designed once and then overlayed over the image - sometimes with transparency sometimes without, most likely with Lightroom in many cases.


Is it possible to install pocket doors in the cavity of an external wall?

Question: Is it possible to install pocket doors in the cavity of an external wall, it will be an internal door as it's between a room and a conservatory. The cavity does have foam in it though.
Answer: One thing that comes to mind is that the pocket would not be very well insulated and so you might have heating/cooling issues with that wall (depending on how the conservatory is used).
Answer: I don't think it's likely to meet building code requirements in the US, if you care about that. In particular, I would be concerned about both its fire resistance when closed, and the ease (or lack thereof) of opening it during an emergency situation.
If you're concerned about clearance and hence don't want a door that will swing into either adjacent room, would it be possible to use a sliding glass door instead? Those are familiar to inspectors/installers and you ought to be able to find one that's well insulated and which will fit in the same size opening as your proposed pocket door, taking into account the dead space where the pocket door sits when open.
Answer: I've never seen a pocket door in an exterior wall, but there are the "barn door" style sliding doors that might be able to be used, if you don't mind the fact that you wall they slide against can't have things hung on it, and there's exposed hardware.  I have no idea how well they'd seal (and that may not be an issue, as yours sounds to be a former external wall), but with the way they're hung, you'd have the opportunity to use a much thicker and heavier door.
You could also go with @gbroiles' comment, and then frame in the stationary side of the sliding glass door to make it look more like a pocket door.  (and possibly paint the glass door, or put something onto it, so it looked less modern, if it's an architectural issue)


Do I have to map out villages or outside areas?

Question: Do I have to make a map of areas outside of my dungeons? For instance, a village or forest? Does the context of the Dungeon have to be mapped?
Comment: I happen to think this is a good question, especially for someone new to running an RPG.  "Do I have to map out villages?" could be answered with a simple yes or no.  A good answer might say "Yes, when X and Y, but it's not necessary when Z."  SevenSidedDie's answer seems good to me.
Answer: Maps are fun. Make maps when you want to. You don't have to map anything, ever. But you'll want to, because maps are fun.
Maps are just another tool that you have as DM to convey information to the players. When you want to convey something that is best done spatially, a map is useful.
Personally, I find I often sketch very rough maps all the time during play to give players an idea of the layout of complicated scenes, especially fights. (I only used a battle mat for AD&D once, and it turned out not to be a useful idea.) These maps generally look terrible, but they serve the purpose of the moment: to get everyone clear on what's happening and who's where.
I also found that village maps that I spent time to create outside of the game were the least interesting thing I could show my players, making the time invested have a particularly bad payoff. I don't bother with detailed village maps anymore, preferring to spend the time detailing the geography around the village (but only if it's interesting and not just "lots of forest with a road going through it").
I always draw a regional scale map (like this one) if I draw any maps at all. I find this has a good time-to-payoff ratio because it gives the players a good high-level understanding of the area where the game will take place in early sessions. Also, I just like maps.
Maps don't have to be fancy, just useful. Consider the simplicity of this map, or the sparseness of detail in this one. Each still manages to convey a significant amount of information even if they're not works of art and even if they're not packed with every possible detail. Even a small, simple map sketched in three minutes can help a lot in planning a game because it gives you insights you might not otherwise have had.
But no, you don't have to draw maps of outside areas or villages. Only if you want to. You can easily get by without them just by describing the pertinent information as your players need it during the game. But they're fun.
Answer: Map anywhere where a player needs to make a decision based on geographical layout. If the characters are going to get up to a lot of mischief there then draw a map. Doing mischief will often mean deciding which roads to use, where to put a safe house, whether the guards can see the taven from the castle etc.
Edit: If you're going to have a fight, you'll probably need a map to show where everyone is standing. If the geography matters to the fight, then draw that in too.
If it is a place they are passing through then a description of places to go there is enough.
You don't have to map everything in one go. Have a description and if the players keep returning to a place then map it. You don't have to map somewhere in great detail at first either, you can do a rough map and then fill it out in the future.
Answer: Yes and No. And it Depends.
You generally want a large overhead view of the village or forest to get a general sense of scale or extremely unique points of interest (like a waterfall, or mountain top.)
You will also want maps of "key battle points" or other points of interest. But by no means do you have to know who lives at 12 main street, or how many trees are within a 20 ft square area 70 feet into the forest from the north.
However,you do need enough information to be able to figure out that information on the fly.
Commonly in D&D players might be making their own maps, in which case you can give them vague descriptions and let them map as they please.
It all depends.
Answer: In the past I've used area maps, rather than concrete building-by-building maps.  In this way I create zones within the city, so if the group needs to go to see a shopkeeper, they'll find him in the shop zone, if they need to talk to a snooty rich guy, he'll be in the snooty rich guy zone.  This way, the settlement is abstract enough that if I suddenly need a candlestick maker then I know where he is, and I don't have to evict someone from a building I've already given to the butcher.  It also is handy for approximate walk times and the like.
Answer: There is never a requirement to map out anything. I've run entire campaigns without any maps, including no dungeon maps, other than the ones in my head. It's a lot more work past a certain point, but it can be done.
Make only what maps you need; most villages can be nothing more than a dot on the regional map and be quite happily used.
If you need to map out villages, keep in mind the basic nature of a medieval hamlet or village: A central commons, houses and businesses surrounding it. Two buildings dominate a village square: The church and the tavern. Anything else is either on the square or on it's own lane. So, typically, a village might have 2-3 businesses, and they'll usually be on the square. A clockwise listing is almost as good as a map most of the time.
Answer: No.  You may not need a map or you may be able to improvise a map.
I don't even map dungeons in advance.  I found that my dungeons were a series of fights, traps, and puzzles.  The maps connecting them were arbitrary when I set them up during prep, but at game time I was always stressing out about connecting the hallways correctly.  Instead I just make a list of the dungeon features and improvise the order and path between those features.  At most I'll have a layout for a single room.
But that doesn't mean that you shouldn't map.  Try it and see if it helps your game.  Learning to GM is all about learning what aspects you can improvise and what aspects need to be prepared.  While I can improvise a dungeon map I can't improvise a description.  Scenery has to be planned ahead of time when I take notes.  With time you'll learn what you need to prep.
Answer: It depends a lot on your gaming style.  If your games tend to be pretty linear, with a predictable course and plot, then mapping outside areas is probably not worthwhile.  OTOH, I run a very sandboxy-type game, where the characters may or may not even decide to go on the adventure I have planned, so I find that maximum prep and mapping are good for me.  In my current campaign, the party has uncovered clues to about 3 different plotlines, and could investigate any of them, or is seriously discussing skipping them all and going exploring in the outback.  So I prepped them all enough to move forward for next session, and will use whichever they choose now.  The others aren't wasted; they will probably come up again later.
In 1983, I spent a whole summer mapping a continent about the size of Australia for the characters to roam on, and it has served me well since.  Villages are not mapped in detail; I have a dot on the map for each, and a table that says what the size of the town is, the general racial mix and alignment, leader and type of government, and primary industry (farming, mining, etc.).  I usually keep a few generic town maps on hand, and pull one out to use if they decide to interact with the town significantly.


Planets capable of life: dead or still alive?

Question: There are some planets that scientists speculate may be capable of supporting life.  However, these planets are hundreds of light years away. How can we be sure they are still capable of supporting life, that they are still there, or even have life?
Comment: maybe I am being a snob from the Skeptics.stackexchange site, but this question is very unclear.  Please expand your question a bit more in terms of clarity.  This isn't Yahoo! answers, and the questions in general are meant to be answerable instead of esoteric philosophical questions.  Are you specifically asking about any earthlike planets we have found?  Because as of today, no one has made the assertion we have found any planets capable of supporting life.
Comment: Related question: http://physics.stackexchange.com/q/25135/
Answer: (I just performed a bit of an edit on your question to have it align more with what I think you are asking as opposed to the overly speculative sentences you had. I hope you don't mind. :) And I will build on Andrew's answer (I hope he doesn't mind).)
This is probably related to the question What are the prerequisites for considering any other planet to be habitable?.
Currently, no planet has been determined to be habitable with any certainty. There is a list of planets that are candidates as I highlighted in this answer. The definitive site though is http://exoplanet.eu/, which is touted as The Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia (The Interactive Catalog probably has the data you are looking for.). I would say that there are other sites as well, but this one is public and interactive. Many other sites require membership in the IAU for instance, and others don't seem to have been updated in a while. EDIT: I just found a nice table by The Planetary Society. Notice that in no case have we performed any sort of spectral analysis of the atmospheres of these planets, although we have done that for other exoplanets. (Actually, there are a lot of scholarly papers on this subject.)
As Andrew correctly states, life will leave a very recognizable spectral signature on a planet's atmosphere as its sun's light passes through its atmosphere.  Although there is always the danger of a false positive, so I would guess that any announcement would be done with caution by the scientific community (but wild abandon by the popular media).  Again, there are quite a few scholarly papers on this subject as well.
Now, you mention that these planets are far away (true to a degree).  We have (as a species) only explored for exoplanets in a relatively small neighborhood of the Milky Way.  In general, most planets we have been able to detect (due to our technological limitations) are within a few hundred light years.  This is only a very small fraction of the galaxy (which is over 100,000 light years across).  Also, a couple of hundred of years in geologic terms (or biological evolution terms) is absolutely no time at all. It is but an eye blink. Barring something catastrophic, should the day come when we detect something worth speculating about the data indicating exo-life, it is highly probable that it will survive for a few hundred years. After all, life has been on this planet for almost 3.5 BILLION years, even with several major extinction events.
Answer: That phrasing is a little optimistic, but the thrust of the question is still valid.
As for the timing issue: Special relativity implies that, if something is, say, 200 light-years away from us, we can not possibly get any information about that object that is any less than 200 years old, because the speed of light is as fast as information can travel. We would have to just hope that life wasn't wiped out by some disaster in the mean time.
As for determining life: This question is related to What are the prerequisites for considering any other planet to be habitable?, but since that question emphasizes the necessities of life and this one asks about observing life, I think there's enough room.
Life has a radical effect on the chemical composition of the surface of the planet it inhabits. Observing the atmosphere of a planet is therefore the best place to find a "smoking gun."
Particularly, with abundant life-processes going on all over a planet, you can have the simultaneous presence of two different highly reactive molecules that would annihilate each other if they were not being produced all the time. Oxygen and methane are examples of reactive molecules that must be produced continuously, although methane can be made by geology in addition to biology.
If your physics tells you that the planet is just warm enough for liquid water and you detect H20, oxygen, and some other telltale biochemical signatures, especially complex organic (carbon-containing) molecules, that would be a pretty airtight case for the ongoing presence of abundant life on that planet.


How can I replicate Windows End/Home key?

Question: How can I replicate Windows Home/End keys to use to jump to the end of a line or use Shift to highlight to the end or start of a line
Answer: I used the following a lot.
⌘CMD+ꜛ: Home
⌘CMD+↓: End
⌘CMD+←: Beginning of Line
⌘CMD+→: End of Line
These I learned the other day from here - very handy for coding and writing, these are emacs bindings which work on Macs.
CTRL+A: beginning of line.
CTRL+E: end of line.
CTRL+U: delete from cursor to beginning of line.
CTRL+K: delete from cursor to end of line.
CTRL+W: erase word to the left.
CTRL+T: transpose characters around cursor.
Answer: The shortcuts you're looking for are listed on this very handy article in the Apple KB. Hope it helps.
Comment: Extensive. This is handy.
Answer: With MacBook Air (the 2012 model at least) the best solution I found was the free KeyRemap4MacBook utility -- it lets you change the keyboard in many ways, and I settled with "fn + cursor left/right" for Home/End and "fn + up/down" for PgUp/PgDown.
(See also a related question with the same answer.)
Comment: Concise, clearly-written answer, with research on related answers, well done. Upvoted.
Comment: Thanks @gosmond, it it quite fun to learn the Mac after 20 years on PC keyboard :)
Answer: These can actually be mapped globally for most applications by creating entries in <code>~/Library/KeyBindings/DefaultKeyBinding.dict</code>
But this guy created a handy little packaged script called Keyfixer that sets up the bindings in the way you describe (with some additional Control and Shift modifiers.) I threw it in my Dropbox and run it on any Mac I have to use. Since the preferences are per-user you don't have to worry about screwing up someone else's keys.


Negative Mass and gravitation

Question: Since Newtonian gravity is analogous to electrostatics shouldn't there be something called negative mass? Also, a moving charge generates electric field, but why doesn't a moving mass generate some other field?
Comment: Coulomb's law of electrostatics and Newton's law of gravity might look pretty similar, but the Maxwell equations and Lorentz' force don't look much like Einstein's field equation and the geodesic equation
Comment: Analogies can be taken too far.
Comment: It could violate the equivalence principle according to which mass you consider to be negative: inertial, gravitational or both. It is first discussed in the literature in the 1950s but then it only shows up in some gauge theories of gravity where the equivalence principle is strongly violated and the gravitational energy can become negative due to high momentum. See for example: https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0207254
Comment: More on [gravitoelectromagnetism](https://physics.stackexchange.com/search?tab=votes&q=url%3a%22*.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fGravitoelectromagnetism%22).  Related: http://physics.stackexchange.com/q/944/2451 , http://physics.stackexchange.com/q/15990/2451 and links therein.
Answer: General Relativity is a mathematical model that relates the curvature of spacetime to an object called the stress-energy tensor. In many cases the stress-energy tensor is dominated by mass and you can simply consider the curvature as being related to the mass. However this isn't always true as I'll mention below.
Anyhow, we can put any numbers we want into the stress-energy tensor and then calculate the curvature. If we put in a positive mass we get (in the Newtonian limit) the usual law of gravitation, but we could put in a negative mass and we'd get a repulsion just as you do in electrostatics. Matter with a negative mass is usually referred to as exotic matter and is a favourite trick for building weird objects like the Alcubierre faster than light drive or wormholes.
However just because we an put exotic matter into Einstein's equation doesn't mean it's physically reasonable to do so. No-one has ever observed exotic matter, no-one has ever come up with a convincing theoretical reason for it to exist. So while we can't prove exotic matter doesn't exist few of us think it does - though we'd all love to be able to build a faster than light drive!
Even though we've never observed exotic matter, we have (we think) observed dark energy. This isn't matter, and doesn't have a negative mass, but it does cause a gravitational repulsion.
Comment: Doesn't Weinberg soft graviton theorem dictate that gravity has to be universally attractive?
Answer: Moving mass does generate gravitation different from stationary mass.  This is the ''gravitomagnetic'' effect predicted by Lens and Thirring in the 20's and measured by Gravity Probe B:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitoelectromagnetism
It is related to the ''frame dragging'' effect that you hear about with respect to spinning black holes.  There, there is a spin-dependent radius where an observer will be outside the horizon, and able to escape to infinity, but will not be able to be still relative to infinity, even with an infinitely strong rocket--they will be forced to co-rotate with the black hole.
Comment: I am reading the paper"the mass of the gravitational field" by Charles Sebens. On page 17 he says in gravito electromagnetism the fact that massive bodies are accompanied by clouds of negative Field Mass makes them easier to accelerate. Is this correct? And can you explain it a little further?
Answer: There are three different measures of an object's mass: its inertial mass $m_i$  (defined by Newton's second law), its passive gravitational mass $m_p$ (defined by how much force it feels in a gravitational field), and its active gravitational mass $m_a$ (defined by the strength of the gravitational fields it makes). You get qualitatively different predictions depending on which of these you take to be negative.
An object with negative $m_p$ but positive $m_i$ would fall up. Antimatter, for example, has been verified to high precision to have the same $m_i$ as matter, but historically there have been suggestions that it might have negative $m_p$. Nobody considers this very likely at this point, but experiments are under way to test it empirically, and preliminary results have been reported (Amole 2013).
If the sign of $m_a$ differed from the sign of $m_p$, conservation of momentum would be violated. This would cause serious problems for all fundamental theories of physics, and experiments have put strict limits on nonconservation of momentum (see, e.g., Bartlett 1986).
In relativity, mass and energy are equivalant, so we refer to mass-energy rather than just mass. In general relativity, matter's ability to produce gravitational fields is determined not just by its mass-energy but also by other variables such as pressure. Mathematically, this is encoded into an object called the stress-energy tensor. The measurement of mass-energy density, pressure, etc., also depends on the observer's frame of reference. For these reasons, the concept of positive or negative active gravitational mass is more complicated to describe in relativity than just specifying the sign of a single number. Relativists talk instead about energy conditions.
The weak energy condition (WEC) says that the energy (i.e., mass-energy) density is never negative in any frame. The dominant energy condition (DEC) is like the weak energy condition, but it also guarantees that no observer will see a flux of energy flowing at speeds greater than c. The strong energy condition (SEC) essentially states that gravity is never repulsive.
The SEC is observed to be violated by dark energy. In fact, all the energy conditions are expected to be violated by certain quantum-mechanical systems (Barcelo 2002). However, there is no known form of tangible matter that would violate these energy conditions.
Amole et al., Nature Communications 4, Article number 1785, doi:10.1038/ncomms2787, http://www.nature.com/ncomms/journal/v4/n4/full/ncomms2787.html
Barcelo and Visser, http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0205066
Bartlett and van Buren, Phys. Rev. Lett. 57 (1986) 21, summarized in Will, http://relativity.livingreviews.org/Articles/lrr-2006-3/
Comment: Of course, the second you predicted Hawking radiation, you knew that the dominant/null energy condition was out, because GR + NEC -> the area increase theorem

Negative Mass and gravitation


Installing Ghostscript and Convert-IM along with MacTex

Question: Do someone of you know if the installation of Ghostscript and Convert-IM packages which come along with MacTex is mandatory? Are these packages useful or I can proceed without install them?
Comment: If you don't plan ever using EPS files, then Ghostscript is not necessary; which means it's recommended. Also ImageMagick is handy at times. I'd install both.
Answer: Installing Ghostscript is not mandatory, but many auxiliary programs require it when managing EPS files. So, if you plan never using EPS files, then you can avoid installing Ghostscript; but, as EPS files are ubiquitous, I don't see any real reason for saving a tiny bit of space.
ImageMagick, on the other hand, is a collection of utilities for dealing with graphic formats. I surely would install it; it's used by the standalone class, that is so able to automatically convert the PDF output into other graphic formats.
Answer: Their installations are not mandatory, though both of them are very useful, as egreg explained.
There is a custom install option in the MacTeX installer package, and if you click on this option you may choose not to install Ghostscript nor Convert (which is only a subpart of ImageMagick by the way).


Automated testing of Oracle Forms

Question: What is the best test automation tool you'd recommend for testing Oracle Forms and why? Assuming a Windows desktop environment.
Answer: Testing Your Oracle ADF Faces Application with Selenium
How to use Selenium and JUnit together to build unit tests that test Oracle Application Development Framework Web UIs
By John Stegeman
Published March 2010
Downloads:
Oracle JDeveloper Studio Edition
Selenium
Sample app (HR Schema install required)
Oracle Database XE (if needed)
In addition to testing individual components and pieces of code, it is important to test that the user interface (UI) of a Web application functions as expected. Traditionally, this type of user interface testing is done by real people sitting in front of a computer manually running test scripts to verify that things work correctly. However, manually executing UI testing has some drawbacks:
Manual testing takes longer than UI testing because people are inherently slower than computers.
People can make mistakes running manual tests.
Manual testing can be expensive—it requires salaries.
You may not be able to run manual UI testing as often as you like due to the lack of enough testers.
For more details check here.
Comment: Welcome to SQA. The idea of this site is that users will provide knowledge and details from their own experience other that just copying content from other sites. Have a look at some questions that have been voted up to get an idea.
Answer: I have worked with both OracleExtendedSelenium and QTP Oracle Plugin for ADF based application. The basic pros and cons would be same as in general.
For ADF Faces specific purpose I could not find any reason why a QTP shop would choose Selenium or vice versa. I would go with the tool which my QA is experienced in.
Answer: Im using Sikuli for enterprise level Oracle forms deployments.  It can be a bit fiddly when validating small details and it can't really handle verifying quantity/price box values etc but when combined with jdbc etc to validate the value it is very useful

Automated testing of Oracle Forms


What are alternative "voicings" for Major/Minor/Dominant Chords if I can't play "Barre Chords"?

Question: I would like some alternative Chord Voicings if I don't want to play the standard barre chords for major/minor/dominant voicings: Thanks!!
Answer: Major 7th Voicings
These are some GM7 chords; move them around as needed.
Edit: Just in case it wasn't already clear, by "move them around as needed", I mean if you ever find yourself in a situation where you want to play a chord with a different root than G (I know, seems unlikely, but you never know), just move the chord shapes up and down the neck until you find the root you're looking for.  For each of the shapes below, the root is the lowest note, with two exceptions: for the second examples in the Minor 7th and Dominant 7th sections, the highest note is the root.
<code>$E.3.$D.4.$G.4.$B.3 | $A.10.$D.12.$G.11.$B.12 | $A.10.$D.9.$G.7.$B.7 | $D.5.$G.4.$B.3.$e.2 | $D.5.$G.7.$B.7.$e.7
</code>
Minor 7th Voicings
These are some Gm7 chords; move them around as needed.
<code>$E.3.$D.3.$G.3.$B.3 | $D.3.$G.3.$B.3.$e.3 | $A.10.$D.12.$G.10.$B.11 | $A.10.$D.8.$G.7.$B.6 | $D.5.$G.7.$B.6.$e.6
</code>
Dominant 7th Voicings
These are some G7 chords; move them around as needed.
<code>$E.3.$D.3.$G.4.$B.3 | $D.3.$G.4.$B.3.$e.3 | $A.10.$D.12.$G.10.$B.12 | $A.10.$D.9.$G.10.$B.8 | $A.10.$D.9.$G.7.$B.6 | $D.5.$G.7.$B.6.$e.7
</code>
There are many, many more.
Great Exercise For Learning Still More Variations
Here's an exercise that will help you to figure out more on your own:
Take, say, the first G7 chord I showed above.  It's voiced on the E-, D-, G-, and B-strings, with the chord tones 1-7-3-5, respectively.  So take that chord and, continuing to use the same four strings, move each chord tone up to the next chord tone.  In other words, move the 1 up to the 3 (so it becomes a B, but still on the E-string), 7 up to the 1 (a G on the D-string), the 3 up to the 5 (a D on the G-string), and the 5 up to the 7 (an F on the B-string).  The resulting chord has the same four notes, so it's still a G7, but the order of the tones is switched around (this is called an inversion), so it sounds very different.
Do it again, and do it a fourth time.  You get four chords, all of which are G7's, all of which use the same four strings, but each of which is a different inversion.  Here they are:
<code>$E.3.$D.3.$G.4.$B.3 | $E.7.$D.5.$G.7.$B.6 | $E.10.$D.9.$G.10.$B.8 | $E.13.$D.12.$G.12.$B.12 |
</code>
Now repeat this exercise with all of the chord shapes I showed above---some are easier than others, and there's some overlap.  That will keep you busy for years learning new and interesting variations on chords.
Answer: In jazz, guitarists often use shorthand chords when comping, which are four-note basic Barre chords that usually use the 7th or can be easily modified to add the 6th, major-7th, flatted/normal/sharp 9th, flatted/raised 5th, etc.
For instance:
G7 http://www.updike.org/harmony/frets.cgi?3,x,3,4,3,x
which is played with the middle finger performing the barre on the third fret, and the ring-finger pressing the G string. An A7 is simply a matter of sliding up two frets (a whole step).
Now, to learn some theory as it applies to the guitar.
The lowest note is a G. In music theory we have variations of chords known as inversions. This is the root form of a chord which starts on the note we're using as the basis of the chord; In other words it's a "G" chord so the root note of the chord is G. (We're ignoring the fact that it's a G chord with some incidental notes added right now.)
Gm7 http://www.updike.org/harmony/frets.cgi?3,x,3,3,3,x
is the same, only the ring-finger is NOT used to fret the G string. The middle finger is used to play the entire chord. (Note: The software being used to display the chord doesn't show a tie across the notes, but we play all four notes with the middle finger.)
Since the difference between the two chords is one fret press, and theory tells us the difference between a major and minor chord is the flatted third, we can easily figure out that the third string (the G-string) is where the third of the chord is coming from.
The third of the chord is important because establishes the modality (major, minor, suspension).
Fourthhttp://www.updike.org/harmony/frets.cgi?3,3,x,x,x,x
Fifthhttp://www.updike.org/harmony/frets.cgi?3,5,x,x,x,x
Note: In rock, when playing into a distortion box or heavily distorted amp, we tend to leave out the third, instead we emphasize the root and fifth or sometimes the fourth. The frequencies added by the third tend to result in undesirable overtones after the distortion. But this is a lesson about making "pretty" music where we want to hear the chords so I'll leave the distorted stuff to another time.
Standard octave form for Ghttp://www.updike.org/harmony/frets.cgi?3,x,5,x,x,x
On the guitar in normal tuning, an octave is two strings up plus two frets. In the above form it's a G and octave G. If we look back at the previous two chords, G7 and Gm7, we see that the low G is there, but the octave isn't. Instead, what would be the octave is now a whole step down, making it a flatted-7th.
So, we've got two parts of building the chords figured out, the 7th and the 3rd, leaving the note on the B string. We're three frets up from an open "B", so, B, C, D. Counting from the root of the key/chord, G, A, B, C, D puts us at the fifth of the key, so we have a chord built from the root/G, 7th/F, 3rd/B, 5th/D.
Second octave form for Dhttp://www.updike.org/harmony/frets.cgi?x,5,x,x,3,x
Second octave form for Ghttp://www.updike.org/harmony/frets.cgi?x,x,5,x,x,3
And that leads to one more discovery about octaves. Not only can they be two strings up plus two frets, then can be three strings up minus two frets when you're crossing the B string. If you're not crossing the B string then the shape changes a bit:
Second octave form for Ghttp://www.updike.org/harmony/frets.cgi?3,x,x,0,x,x
Second octave form for Ahttp://www.updike.org/harmony/frets.cgi?5,x,x,2,x,x
Now, if you've been paying attention you might notice that the second octave form for A could also be played more easily in a standard form:
Standard octave form for Ahttp://www.updike.org/harmony/frets.cgi?x,0,x,2,x,x
The guitar's neck, when tuned to standard tuning, is full of these symmetrical forms that reoccur all over the neck. By learning them we quickly learn the notes on the neck, and, from there can quickly learn how to build variations on the shorthand chords. Based on the above information the following chords should start to make sense. If they don't, study theory, especially as it applies to building chords in inversions. That's the key to understanding the guitar's chords, whether they are open, barred or hybrids.
A7http://www.updike.org/harmony/frets.cgi?5,x,5,6,5,x
Am7http://www.updike.org/harmony/frets.cgi?5,x,5,5,5,x
Am7b5http://www.updike.org/harmony/frets.cgi?5,x,5,5,4,x
A7#5http://www.updike.org/harmony/frets.cgi?5,x,5,6,6,x
The last two can't be played barred like the first two, so we revert to using multiple fingers. "Am7b5", as we move across the fingerboard, uses the 3,4,5,2 fingers so the index is on the high note and the 3rd is on the lowest. For "A7#5" the fingers are 2,3,4,5 with the index on the lowest and the little finger on the highest.
Back to chord inversions: A three note major or minor chord has three inversions: root, first and second. Root is the 1, 3 and 5 of the key, first is 3, 5, 1 (octave) and second is 5, 1 (octave), 3 (octave).
A four note chord continues the same way, ending with the third inversion with the added note acting as the lowest/root of the chord.
Each inversion has a power or strength to it, because of the notes occurring in the traditional order, or in decreasingly less standard forms. So, the root form is considered the most stable and powerful inversion. The first inversion is a bit less powerful because it starts on the 3rd but it's also a nice harmony chord to the root note, so if a bass-player is covering the root, the keyboard or rhythm guitar can play a first-inversion chord and get a nice over-all sound. Second inversion starts on the fifth of the chord, which is a bit less powerful sound because of the wider gap in tones from the fifth to the octave of the root. If we're using a 6th or 7th and use the third inversion, we're using a very tense voicing because the starting note of the chord wants to resolve - to pull to the root of the key - making the chord sound unstable. If you play fusion or jazz this is uber-powerful because the melody can really roam but for regular rock it'll be too much for most of your listeners.
The piano is called the "composer's instrument" because every note is laid out in front of us where it's easy to see the intervals. If you have a piano, sit down in front of it to learn intervals, then transfer the knowledge to the guitar. I started with the piano so all my guitar interval knowledge came via thinking in terms of the keyboard.
Wikipedia has what looks to be some really good information about building chords using theory as it applies to general composing or a piano/keyboard. That page has lots of jumping-off links so you can follow them to a good page about jazz chords. Again, the guitar has limitations when it comes to voicing chords, so the information on those pages doesn't directly apply to the guitar, but with a knowledge of where the notes occur on the neck, and what notes can be used to build a chord.
I hope this made sense.
Answer: If you take any barre form you can usually drop the barre and still play a usable chord. After all, a "chord" is really only 3 notes. You can play only on the inner strings (forget the 1st and 6th) and that's 4 notes - you have 4 fingers to use.
There are many chords that are difficult, but there are many more chords than barre chords. You can play a major chord using 3 strings in about 100 ways (guessing, probably more like 1000). These actually sometimes sound better depending on the context.
Also, many substitutions work and many forms look similar. For example, Bbmaj7 on the inner 4 strings without the Bb in the root(use open A if you want) is really a Dmin chord and can be used as such. It's very easy to play, and as long as someone is playing the Root of the chord you can ignore it.
My suggestion is to first learn the simple 3 string major, minor, dom forms (there are a lot). These allow you to play the chords and their inversions quickly and easily and have great use for improvising.
But don't stop working on those barre chords! You may think they are not needed but unless you aren't playing any country, pop or rock, you're going to wish you had learned them one day. It's not as hard as you think. What you can do is learn the barre forms without the barre, basically keep your index finger free and use the other 3 fingers to fret and gradually work your index finder into the picture. You have to build up strength with it and it will take time. Figure out the best way to use it to do the least amount of work(sometimes you can get away with certain angles or "arcs" of the finger that make it easier to do with some chords).
Also, if your action is high or it is an acoustic guitar it will be more difficult. My hand gets tired about 10 times faster on an acoustic(and I use 11's on my electrics).
The more you can do the better you'll be; barre chords are a staple of many styles of music and you'll be missing out of you can't do them.
Comment: Note that just playing the inner strings may not play all the unique notes of the chord (first, third, fifth, seventh) -- you may be playing a power chord (no third) and multiple roots and fifths, or with the seventh and with no third.


How can I export mudbox joints to .fbx?

Question: When I export my Mudbox mesh (level 1), with its skeleton selected, to a .fbx and import it into unity, I don't get the bones/joints/skeleton/whatever under my mesh in the hierarchy.
Am I missing something?
Answer: Sorry the bones joint things in Mudbox are not exportable, they aren't real bones like the bones are in Max or Maya, mudbox joints are more like the deformer modifier in 3ds Max. Sorry its not that u are missing anything its just how Mudbox works sorry, I also tryed a similar thing but it didn't work for me either. So don't worry.

How can I export mudbox joints to .fbx?


how do i make a command that executes a program when a custom hotkey is pressed?

Question: how do i make a command that executes a program when a custom hotkey is pressed? Are there any good tutorials on how the command / terminal system works in ubuntu? I want to know how (using the terminal) I can run libreoffice or any other program for that matter. Thank you very much for any info you can assist me with. lol sorry if these are such noob questions.
Answer: On the Keyboard settings windows (super+A, then "keyboard"), click the "Shortcuts" tab, and on the list on the left will be an option for "Custom Shortcuts".
Press the + button, then give your shortcut a name and the program you want run.
It will default to "Disabled", but click on that and then press your keyboard combination you want, and it will become associated with your program.
Answer: There are two ways you can accomplish this task:
The first way it GUI based, using:
Open Applications > System Tools > Configuration Editor
Then apps > metacity > global_keybindings in the tree view

This should enable you to modify your key values as long as you stay within the acceptable syntax.
The alternate way to edit your keybindings is by directly editing the gconf.xml files:

$HOME/.gconf/apps/metacity/gloabl-keybindings/%gconf.xml
  $HOME/.gconf/apps/metacity/keybinding_commands/%gconf.xml

You can find more information at http://gnome-hacks.jodrell.net/hacks.html?id=14
Answer: I admit it can get a bit thick to get through, but check out man xmodmap for a way to define any key binding.


Where can I find reusable white playing cards for prototyping?

Question: The question title says it all : Where can I find reusable white playing cards for prototyping?
I find services online to generate cards but not reusable white cards (that you can write on and erase later).
Answer: While it doesn't directly answer your question of where to get reusable playing cards, I have helped friends play-test card games before, and we have always just grabbed a handful of junk Magic common cards (because who doesn't have thousands of those lying around?), put them all into sleeves, and then slipped pieces of paper between the face of the card and the sleeve.  One of my favorites is taking a stack of note cards, cutting them in half, and using each half for a card face.
Now you can just change out the slips of paper when you want to update a card, and you can just recycle the old slips of paper afterwards.  When we've been short of paper, we've even cut up grocery bags, or written on the backs of receipts or used envelopes, its all the same.
Once a card is nice and stable, you can print off a nicer version and slip it into a sleeve and card if that's what you want.
Answer: That sounds very challenging, given that your erasable cards would need to NOT erase themselves during shuffling.
I'm designing a card-heavy game myself, and at the moment, my plan for prototyping is to print the cards on light cardstock (I have a laser printer) and then cut them out manually.  I don't expect them to last particularly long, but for the prototyping phase, I don't need them to.  The downside is it's a bit labor intensive (though I figure a small guillotine-style paper cutter will ameliorate that), but the cost in materials will be negligible.  Would something like that be an option for you?
Comment: It would but I was hoping I could find such a tool before getting to this obvious solution. I'd love to not have to spend tons of paper on trial and error...
Answer: Plastic Projector Sheets Cut to sizes you need. You would only be able to use dry markers, or maybe ink pen, but whichever surface you decide to use pen marks would probably be left behind.
Pro:

Basic erasable cards or portable flexible 'white boards'
(You can probably also use inkjets on them and erase them after as well, but that remains to be tested.)

Con:

It is transparent
If you are going to store the information on these sheets for a long time, or shuffling, consider buying card protectors, like those for trading cards.

I use this all the time for flowcharting.
(You can put a white sheet of paper behind each sheet.btw)
Comment: You can get around the transparency issue by pasting some kind of backing on one side.
Answer: One technique that works ok is to get an old pack or two of playing cards and a roll of sticky labels, and just stick labels over the faces.  You only get one use, but the labels are quite easy to peel off and replace.


What are the biases in daytime and nighttime landscape mode?

Question: What are the biases in day and nighttime landscape auto modes in terms of aperture, iso and shutter speeds?
Comment: Any particular type of camera? I suspect the night landscape modes may vary between DSLR, compact and camera phones.
Comment: Generally speaking, what are the bias in both?
Answer: In any landscape mode, ideally you want small aperture for depth of field, low ISO and you assume a static scene so shutter speed isn't important, and in fact a tripod may be assumed.
Daytime Landscape should give preference to smaller apertures for greater depth of field, e.g. f/8 or f/11.  ISO and shutter speed would be managed to get the lowest ISO possible without having too slow a shutter speed.  Some cameras might allow the shutter speed to get below the level at which you could hand hold (and assume you use a tripod). Others might raise the ISO if it keeps the shot in hand-held range.
Night Landscape will probably vary a lot between cameras.  The main thing is that by putting the camera in Night Landscape mode, the camera knows you are photographing a long-range scene, so popping up the flash is not going to work.  There are then two options, which again may vary:

Raise ISO, widen aperture in order to try to get a decent hand-held exposure
Assume camera is on a tripod or table top, and keep ISO low to keep noise down, keep aperture small for depth of field, and increase the shutter to several seconds if necessary to get the exposure.

Most cameras will disable the flash in Night Landscape mode.  They will often have a Night Portrait mode which will use slow-sync (rear-curtain) flash to illuminate a nearby subject.
On a compact like a Nikon Coolpix, Night Landscape itself has two sub-modes:

Hand-held - this fires off a number of shots, and then merges them in-camera to try to get one shake-free exposure.  I would imagine the shutter speed would be on the order of 1/15th, something like that.
Tripod - choosing this sub-mode lets the camera know it's on a tripod, so it does one long exposure, which may be several seconds.

On a DSLR like the D7000, Night Landscape will assume you have a tripod, or have the camera steadied against something.  It will keep the ISO low (Auto-ISO disabled) and allow a long exposure.
I would expect that since Night Scenes are dark, the Night Landscape mode ought to dial in some negative exposure compensation so that the image is somewhat dark, rather than trying to render a daytime scene.  I don't use scene modes, so I'm not sure if that's what they do.
Comment: Mostly correct answer except for the *tripod assumed*. 99% of cameras do not assume a tripod unless the mode is explicitly marked for tripod (As Nikon and Fuji does) or long exposures (starry sky, fireworks, slow-shutter, etc).


Should I kill my question?

Question: I have a question which is obviously of some interest to people (12 votes, 5 favourites) but so far no useful answers. Is it good form to put it out of it's misery?
Comment: @Can - Oops, indeed I did. Had a moat in my eye there.
Comment: I added a bounty (my first).  Hopefully you will get some more answers! (And I will get some badges!)
Comment: Your question is mute, you *can't* delete the question anymore.  Only vote to close it.
Comment: We *never* kill questions.  We either murder them, or euthanize them.
Comment: @Hans: You mean "moot".
Comment: @Adam: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/58176/i-killed-a-question-but-it-shot-first-no-really
Comment: @jjnguy - nice one!  To everyone - thanks, The question lives :)
Answer: No, leave it out there.  At some point there might be a solution and you and the people that favorite the question might be very interested.   Also, other people searching for the same question can favorite/vote up this question and at least know there might not be a solution.
Answer: If the information there is correct, let it live - other people will benefit from this information even if you personally won't gain anything,
However if the information itself is incorrect or misleading then deletion should be considered to prevent confusion.
Not personally familiar with the topics there so can't express technical opinion.
Answer: It may be worth putting a bounty on it if you have the privilege and if it hasn't already been done. It may attract attention from someone who can answer. Even if you don't get an answer I would recommend letting it live. The interest is obviously there and as @jzd said there may be a solution in the future.
Comment: Leaving a bounty isn't that useful if no one has the easy/simple answer to the question, though.
Answer: If you have a question that is of interest to a lot of people, why would you want to delete it? It's not like the question will be out of date any time soon and the people interested in it will probably still be interested in an answer if it is given much later.
Also there probably aren't that many people that could authoritatively answer the question, so it's not that surprising if none of them showed up after only a week.
And aside of that don't worry too much about it: due to upvotes/answers you couldn't delete the question anyway.
Answer: It may be worthwhile considering that it might be a better fit on programmers.se.
It's not a programming problem that needs to be or can be solved today, it's a question asking why something was done in a specific way.
I don't know that you'd get any better a response there though.
Also, if you are very interested, go find out the reason(s) and then answer it yourself.  Just because no one else has supplied it to you doesn't mean there isn't an answer, and I'd bet that the people who do know are easy enough to contact.  Surely there's a core haskell mailing list.
Stackoverflow is great for getting answers, but it's just as good - if not better - for publishing difficult to obtain information.  Do the legwork, and settle it for yourself and everyone else.
Answer: No, keep the question there; it will eventually generate answers that may be useful. Also, people who favorite your question will be informed of any answers to your question, which will also benefit them.

Should I kill my question?


Game Characters vs Characters in other medias

Question: How do a characters designed for a game differ from characters made for books or movies? When a book or a movie is converted into a game, what are the differences and similarities that have to be addressed? Are there pitfalls in character design when jumping between these different medias?
Answer: Characters in videogames are strongly defined by what they do, particularly player characters. Lara Croft jumps, grabs, swims, and shoots. Mario's original name is "Jumpman." Megaman bosses are defined by their attacks. In other media, other qualities may come to the fore, such as character history, personality, perspective on life, or inner conflict. For visual media (e.g. animation and film), appearance is paramount, and in audio storytelling formats (e.g. radio drama), just the voice can be a defining characteristic.
Games are about verbs, so when you adapt a character from other media into games, think about what kinds of actions are unique to that character and make him or her distinctive. Spider-Man slings webs. James Bond shoots, drives, quips, and seduces. Transformers... well, you know. One pitfall would be to faithfully reproduce a character's appearance, environment, voice, and even personality to a game, while giving him or her an action set that is irrelevant or even antithetical to his or her behavior from the source material. This may not necessarily result in a bad game per se, but it would probably be a poor adaptation.
This is a huge generalization, of course. Certain genres of film, e.g. Asian kung-fu cinema, are hugely based on verbs. Conversely, non-action qualities are still valuable for game character design. Still, "what does this character do?" is a very useful question to be asking in pre-production.
Answer: One of the major differences is that it is much more critical for a player to develop the attitude towards your character that you want them to. For example, if you are developing a character that will be accompanying the player for an entire level, or the entirety of the game, then it is important that the player like the character. If your character manages to get the player to dislike them, then the game will note be much fun.
This was discussed in the developer commentary for Half Life 2 Episode One. There is a character that accompanies the player for the entirety of the game, and it took several revisions before the player actually learned to like that character. In previous revisions the player would come to find the other character annoying, which made the game experience not very fun.
A second note is that characters in videogames (or movies) must be much more expressive. While in a book you often get a chance to go inside a character's head, this is not as much of an option in a game. Your characters must explicitly say what they are thinking or feeling or you risk the player not getting the information you want them to.
Answer: The chief difference between movies & books and games is interactivity. The player of a game has an active involvement in the world and is (usually) not just an observer of events. Other than this a game character is much like a movie character and should be created and thought about in much the same way. For instance, expressiveness like Sean James mentions. There's also creating realistic dialog, good acting (vocal, if present, as well as physical movements), etc.
With that being said, the main problem in such an interactive environment is keeping suspension of disbelief. It's extremely easy to be knocked out of the game world when a character repeats themselves countless times, walks into walls, generally acts stupid. Care should be given to ensuring that the character behaves properly when interacting with the game's world, environment, and characters.
Also, a lot of care should be taken into considering how the player will interact with this character and how the character should react when the player does whatever they do. If you foresee something the player might try to do to the character and the character reacts in a way consistent with their personality then you have a believable character and the player will be that much more sucked into the world you're creating. For instance, if a player whacks an NPC have them yell "Stop it!" and then "I'm warning you!" and then start fighting back.
Of course, if the game is presented in scripted events (like RPGs), it's even easier.


If acceleration causes relative time dilation does the eventual deceleration reverse it?

Question: If acceleration causes relative time dilation does the eventual deceleration reverse it?
For example:  traveling to Alpha Centauri
Based on me reading this site:  http://www.convertalot.com/relativistic_star_ship_calculator.html
-
Comment: It's velocity that causes time dilation, not acceleration.
Answer: You don't say how much you know about special relativity, and the calculations involved in handling acceleration are a bit involved unless you are already fairly familiar with the subject. The calculation is described in chapter 6 of Gravitation by Misner, Thorne and Wheeler, or if you just want the results see John Baez's article on the relativistic rocket. The simple answer is that no, the deceleration does not reverse the effects of acceleration.
You can see why this is because as dmckee and cb3 have said, it is the velocity that causes the time dilation not the acceleration. The acceleration is symmetric about zero because the positive is balanced out by the negative so you'd expect it's effects to cancel, and indeed they do because you start at rest and end at rest. However the velocity is not symmetric about zero because it starts at zero, rises to a maximum and falls back to zero. So there's no reason to expect the effects of the velocity to cancel. This means that the time dilation caused by the velocity wouldn't cancel either.
Comment: @Killercam - go on then, anything for an upvote :-)
Comment: John, I was voting this up and accedentally clicked on the wrong one. I now cannot change this. I apologise and will upvote if you make an edit...
Answer: As was pointed out it is relative velocity, not acceleration, which results in time dilation. Acceleration does, however, play a role in the perceived amount of time elapsed between events. So, special relativity can give insight into your question about "reversing" the effects of acceleration. Have a look at the Twin Paradox and you will see
${\Delta}{\tau}={\int}_{t_1}^{t_2}\sqrt{1-\frac{v^2(t)}{c^2}}dt$
where $t_2-t_1$ is the apparent elapsed time for the twin who stayed on Earth, ${\Delta}{\tau}$ is the apparent elapsed time for the twin on the rocket, and $v(t)$ is the velocity of the rocket relative to the earth which can change in time (acceleration). In general, $t_2-t_1>{\Delta}{\tau}$, so even though $v(t)$ may go from zero at $t_1$, to nonzero, then back to zero at $t_2$, the effect of the acceleration does not vanish. The twin who experienced acceleration will have aged less than his Earthbound sibling. A similar question was posed in terms of gravity wells.


How does the From Ashes DLC affect your war assets?

Question: If you purchase and complete the From Ashes DLC, how many new war assets will you acquire? Are there any decisions that will affect the amount you receive? Will any of your other war assets be affected?
Answer: For completing the main mission in the DLC "Priority: Eden Prime", you get the "Eden Prime Support" war asset worth 25 points.
There is a side quest (Eden Prime: Resistance Movement) in which you need to retrieve 3 pieces of intel, for each one you find you receive 25 points, doing a total of 100 points.
Reference.
No other war assets will be affected by DLC.
Answer: You get 25 war assets for completing Priority: Eden Prime and another 25 for each of the three pieces of intel on the Eden Prime: Resistance Movement mission. So that makes 100 in total. You can't lose any of your existing war assets.
Answer: The DLC have some impact on the war asset but only during the mission.
Indeed you'll find on the Cerberus camp, data that will help you support Eden Prime resistances forces against Cerberus. Each of them found will provide you 25 war assets up to 100 which will appear undear the name of "Eden Prime Support" in the Aliiance War Asset.
Except that any decision made will have an impact on war assets.
Source:
Personnal experience and IGN Wiki


Bestiary Toughness with second number in brackets

Question: I have noticed that some creatures in the bestiary have a second number along side their toughness, i.e. Toughness: 9 (2).
What is the second number from?  Armor?  Size Modifier?
Answer: The number before the brackets represents the total Toughness including any protection given by armour.  The number in brackets is the proportion of this given by the armour alone.
This often comes into play where damaging attacks include an AP or armour piercing value.  If an attack does, you subtract the AP from the armour part of the Toughness  before calculating whether the damage Shakes or Wounds the target.
For example...
A target lists its Toughness as 8(3).
A baseball bat does 7 damage.  As it has no AP, it is compared to a Toughness of 8 and has no effect on the target.
A low calibre  pistol (AP 1) also does 7 damage. This time you take the AP from the Toughness giving 7. As the damage equals this, the target is Shaken.
A high calibre rifle (AP 4) does the same damage. In this case though, you only subtract 3 and not 4 from the Toughness, as that is the total amount of AP the target has.
Answer: Yes, this indicates how much of the Toughness is due to armour, so that weapons and spells that do AP damage can be calculated correctly.
Answer: In the various Savage Worlds bestiaries, the convention is to show the overall toughness followed by the portion of the toughness that is granted by armor. This convention allows you to quickly determine how much of the toughness value can be overcome by armor piercing weapons. In cases where the creature or NPC has more than one type of armor, such as plate on the torso (+3) and chain on the arms (+2), the armor value listed in the stat block is the torso or default value (all hits are assumed to be torso unless the attacker is making a called shot).
All other modifiers such as those granted by Size or edges like Brawny are included in the overall Toughness value. Therefore, if you read a monster or NPC description you can usually assume that any special abilities that would affect Toughness are already included in the stated Toughness value in the stat block.
For a worked example, deconstruct the Orc Chieftain on page 139 of Savage Worlds Deluxe. Toughness is 2 + 1/2 Vigor therefore the Orc Chieftain starts with "7" [2 + (Vigor 10 / 2)]. We look at his Special Abilities and see that he is Size+1 which means his "natural" Toughness is now 8 [2 + (Vigor 10 / 2) + 1]. Now let's put some armor on him. The orc's torso armor is +3 (plate) giving us a total of 11 [2 + (Vigor 10 / 2) + 1 + 3].
We know that the overall toughness including armor is 11. We know that his armor is 3 so we express his toughness value as 11(3). Note that he wears chainmail (+2 armor) on his arms arms and legs which means if an attacker targets those locations with a called shot, the orc chieftain's Toughness would only be 10(2).


How to restrict web access to certain countries

Question: What are the better ways of filtering access to the web application based on Geographical location. Is it possible with a network layer firewall or we need an application layer?
Comment: I think this question can be merged with http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/1358/what-tools-are-available-to-identify-which-country-a-specific-ip-address-is-loca
Answer: Filtering in a network firewall will give you a better performance (benchmark to see how much faster it is). Filtering in the application will give you greater flexibility, including notifying people that you don't support access from their country. It's easy to do such a thing from the application, but to do this at a network layer, you need to redirect all new 80/TCP connections, coming from unwanted countries, to a different HTTP server, which will then serve a static webpage explaining the situation. You have to decide what is more important for your particular situation.
Answer: You can also use free reverse proxy solution that support IP/Geo filtering.
This will be both faster and more user friendly (will combine the advantages of higher level filtering with the ability to present error messages)


When should I add melted chocolate to reduced sugar meringue?

Question: I'd like to know when melted chocolate should be added to reduced sugar meringue, and what will the end result be. Will the meringue stiffen up like cooled chocolate, or will it be light and fluffy?
Answer: The only ingredients you add to a meringue before the stiff peak stage should be ingredients related to stabilizing the meringue itself - acid and maybe a little salt near the beginning, sugar during the transition from soft to stiff peaks, and starch or other stabilizer at the end of stiff peaks.  It's also OK to whip in small quantities of things like extracts or citrus zest near the end.
But if you're trying to actually incorporate something into the meringue, whether it's chocolate chips, melted chocolate, or anything else large, then you always, always want to fold it in after the meringue is stiff, just before you bake it.
Adding anything to the meringue too early or whipping it in too forcefully - especially fat (which chocolate contains a lot of) - stands a very good chance of permanently collapsing it.  You incorporate other ingredients at the point when it's most stable and incorporate them very very gently.
If you're only whipping up to the soft peak stage then I guess you'd add the chocolate then, but the result would be very unstable, and most meringue cookies are normally whippied to stiff peaks.
Note that if you're incorporating cocoa powder then you can and should whip it in, rather than folding it in, during the stiff peak stage. Many if not most "chocolate meringue" recipes involve a certain amount of both cocoa powder and chocolate.
As for how it will turn out - it won't be very stable or rise much, the chocolate weighs it down a lot, and expect it to crack significantly. It will still be more like a meringue cookie than a solid block of chocolate, unless you add far too much.
If you want some chocolate flavour but the stability of a pure meringue, just add cocoa powder by itself.
Comment: David Lebovitz has this chocolate cake recipe, where one after whipping the meringue folds melted chocolate and butter into it. The it is immediately baked in a water bath in the oven. http://www.davidlebovitz.com/2007/01/shf-27-chocolat-1/ The texture right after baking is *very* soft, but it becomes more cake like after cooling.


Grip for Shimano Nexus hub gear shifter

Question: Would you recommend for a good grip from Shimano Nexus shifter? I hardly find a good option. Ergon grips seem to be the best choice.
Answer: Choosing a grip is a matter of personal preference. If you're worried about the fact that the Nexus shifters require a smaller grip on one side than the other (due to the shifter taking up room), you can get grips that are made to mate with an internal hub shifter like the Nexus.
Alternately, since these can be difficult to locate, you can cut down the grip on one side with a hacksaw blade. That's what I did on one of my folding bikes, and it worked fine.
Just be sure to cut the grip in a straight line. You can mark the location of the cut with masking tape or painters tape before sawing to get an even edge. The edge will be slightly rougher, but since it'll be sitting up against the shifter it won't be very visible. If you want to cut down a non-locking grip, you can probably do something similar.

Grip for Shimano Nexus hub gear shifter


Careers in Math

Question: I am a highschool freshman, and I really like to have goals for my life, one of the big ones is my career of choice.  Previously, I have always wanted to be a programmer, and I have written a lot of code.  But it seems to me that programming can get slightly bland, whereas math never disappoints me.  So my question is asking whether or not it would be a economically-feasible idea to me a mathematician.  Note that I don't really care about being rich, I just want to do something I love, and keep learning for the rest of my life.  What careers exist today that make mathematics a money-making (however little) job?
Comment: Well, you almost certainly won't fail to not be rich.
Comment: As a rule, I like to suggest to young people not to jump at the notion of a career to early. Definitely plan to be employable, but otherwise try to pursue your passions. You might think you know what you want to do when you are 14, but your idea of what the actual job is at 14 is sometimes different from the day-to-day work of that job. So give yourself some flexibility. That said, being able to think precisely, which mathematics training gives, is invaluable for quite a few jobs.
Comment: I don't think you mean "never fails to disappoint." "Never disappoints," maybe?
Comment: Thanks ;)  totally missed that
Comment: But in my mind it seems that to be a mathematician, you spend your life at home, next to a whiteboard, doing math.  I am wondering if a job exists so that I could get paid (so I can eat) for working on math.
Comment: I agree with Thomas. Lots of people who "love maths" claim that "that is what they want to do for the rest of their lives". How can you make such a claim without experience in other areas to put "studing maths" in perspective with other career options? Looking at it more simply, if you have only ever done maths, then of course you will "love maths" and "want to do maths". But how do you *know* that you really love maths when you have nothing to compare it to? In other words, try other stuff before you commit to a long-term career in maths/academia.
Comment: Try searching how actuaries go about with their lives.
Comment: As long as you think math is fun you should totally go for it.  There are plenty of career options for mathematicians.  You'll be great.
Answer: To get a nice start in exploring potential careers in math, see the Mathematical Association of America's MAA careers-in-math webpage.
See also the American Mathematical Society's AMS-careers webpage., which a number links; if you scroll down the page a bit, you'll find a link Career information for High School Students which seems quite expansive.
Also of interest might be the following link: fastest-growing-careers-in-math.
Given your young age, I think you need only feel assured that you can make a living out of math.  Less important at this point in time is knowing a specific career path to follow.
Why don't you elaborate a bit more on what it is you like about math? You're very young, so given what you've encountered in your math classes thus far, can you clarify what it is that "never fails" to fascinate you?
You've got the opportunity, in your studies, to explore the vast domain that is mathematics, to learn better whether you are drawn to its usefulness and/or its beauty, among other things.
You've got many years in which to do so! What specific career you ultimately choose to pursue will "fall into play" and materialize along the way.
So for now, explore and follow your passions!
Comment: I too "love how it all flows together, how there are so many patterns that occur throughout".  You surely do seem to be a mathematician in the making. With the flexibility you have in your studies, as well as your interests apart from that, you are indeed blessed.
Comment: The thing about math is that you can use it in just about everything from finance to biology. You have a lot of options.
Comment: First off, I don't just do math in my classes and call it good.  I go to a school where self-studying is encouraged, and I take advantage of that.  I am taking myself through calculus.  This last  Sunday at church, I was able to find the derivative of the equation of a circle in my head ($div{-x,y})      Secondly, I just love how it all flows together, how there are so many patterns that occur throughout, and that there are so many in the world that are yet to be "solved"
Answer: I'm a recent college grad, so I was in a very similar situation not too long ago.  In high school, I realized that I liked math, I was good at math, and I was especially good at teaching/explaining/tutoring math, so I decided I was going to be a high school math teacher.  When I was applying to college, I became concerned that teaching math would become too redundant and boring, since teachers have to teach the same lessons every year.  So, with no previous experience in design or programming but an interest in both art and computers, I decided to go for dual majors in Graphic Design and Computer Science.  I now work as a web developer and love it, although I miss math so I tutor calculus when I can.
Fortunately, math and programming go very well together and there are many lucrative fields that you may be interested in.  Many mathematical careers actually require a lot of programming work, as most of the work is not done by hand anymore.  My mother has been an actuary for the past 40 years and now has to write a lot of code to pull important information from large amounts of data so she can properly analyze it.  Your strong experience with coding will make you a very desirable applicant for most mathematical positions.  My best advice would be continuing to persue both, and when you get to college, get a minor (or potentionally dual major) in the other.  Also keep in mind that if you exclusively choose one, you could always freelance in programming or tutor in math.
Some good options are teacher, professor, actuary, accountant, financial analyst, information analyst, broker, trader, etc.  The links that amWhy provided would be a great reference.  Unless you are interested in a specific mathematical career path now (such as teaching), I would recommend just continuing to explore as many options as you can during high school and college as you may find something you are more interested in.
Comment: I think near the top of your list of good options should be all the new and exciting machine learning jobs that combine interesting math with programming.
Answer: There's a lot of options and it depends on what specifically in math you want to be doing.  If you truly want to, as you said above, be sitting next to a whiteboard doing math all day it sounds like you would like to become a professor.  I believe professors tend to be content and fulfilled people, though their salaries are mediocre, so if you see yourself spending most of your time researching that's the way to go.  You need to keep in mind, however, that you will need to go through grad school along the way which can in some cases be expensive and life consuming (there are certainly lots of people who have started a family in grad school, but it usually takes even longer to complete in that case).  In many cases grad students aren't able to get a job and start a family until their late twenties.
Alternatively, if you don't want to go to grad school and would like a more fiscally sound job, lots of math majors can easily find work in finance.
Another fiscally sound career choice is to major in Computer Science instead of math.  You would still take a lot of math courses along the way (though a lot of it will probably be more focused on subjects like discrete mathematics than pure mathematics) and once you graduate you could make a good deal of money as a software engineer (or if you wanted to stay with math work on something like physics simulations).
Don't fret it now, anyhow, you won't be able to accurately answer these questions until you're a few years into college, at the very least.

Careers in Math


How to get SharePoint user's manager?

Question: I found some examples on the internet (this one I understand the most). I am confused on how to implement it. I do not know which assemblies I need to reference. Also, shouldn't I use classes from SharePoint's API? I am using SharePoint 2010. Thanks.
Answer: The example you posted uses the SharePoint Object Model, and that's a perfectly acceptable way to get the information you're looking for. Using the Client Side Object Model with UPS data 'can' be temperamental. While you can pull UPS information from the user information list, the accuracy of the information is based on a timer job that copies a users UPS profile data into the site collection's user information list on an interval, so the JS CSOM doesn't query UPS directly (I have a blog post that discusses some of it here). In my opinion, any interaction with UPS is best done in code vs. JavaScript for the simple fact that in code you can talk directly to the SSA, which you cannot do with the JS CSOM. There is also some web service capabilities, but all of the SOAP stuff is being deprecated, so I'm not sure I'd put a ton of effort into those right now. In a pinch you certainly could use SPServices and jQuery to send off a SOAP request to the UPS Web Service.
UPS by default will pull the user's manager into the profile as long as there's good manager data in Active Directory; so it's likely that UPS is already setup with that unless someone in your organization changed the UPS configuration. Unfortunately, in a lot of environments that data is either not present, or wrong, so you may want to confirm (before you start relying on it) that there is good, solid manager data in Active Directory before you go down this path. I can't tell you how many people I've talked to that can't figure out why their code doesn't work, only to then discover that AD has no manager data.
For what it's worth, if you were using the manager lookup capabilities of a SPD workflow, that works in the same way (at a high level) as the example you've posted. The workflow will grab the current user's profile data, lookup the manager, then resolve the manager's profile.
Answer: The example you provided by the link does use the Sharepoint API (using Microsoft.Office.Server; using Microsoft.SharePoint;using Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles;). In order to be able to use those namespaces, you need to reference Microsoft.Sharepoint.dll, Microsoft.Office.Server.dll and Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.dll.
I suggest you start with a console application (don't forget to set its platform target to Any CPU), add the above references and take portions of the code from your link and try out how it works. It's the fastest way to get familiar with something new.
If you can't find the dll's above on your server, it means you have Sharepoint Foundation. You need Sharepoint Server 2010 to use the UserProfiles.
I hope it helped.

How to get SharePoint user's manager?


How often should I bathe my newborn?

Question: He's starting to get pimples. We had thought that we only needed to bathe him once a week, though I can't remember where we read that.
Answer: Can this be baby acne?
If it is, it has nothing to do with the number of times you bathe your child.
The rule of thumb torbengb mentions, to wash it once a week, is ok, altough I would bathe it more than that, but that's probably more because of social pressure and not for health reasons. We washed our baby regularly with a washcloth with lukewarm water and no soap. The Childcare organisation in Belgium does not warn against bathing with water per se, but it recommends to stay away from using too much skin products and soaps. It's better to use too little than too much.
Answer: Don't bathe small children too often, especially not daily! There's a risk they develop a skin condition like dermatitis.
In Austria, the recommendation from the midwives' association is to bathe infants weekly *' and newborns and infants ordinarily don't get so dirty that you need to use soaps (and lotions afterward) -- just let the baby's skin do what it's built to do.
*' And of course as needed! :-)
In reality, we bathed our son weekly while he was newborn, using only warm water, and that was fine. Now that he's 20 months old, we put him in the tub with intervals of roughly 3-7 days (and as needed when he's played in the sandbox). We let him play in the tub for a while, then use a soft cloth with a baby soap.
Comment: Yep, we bathed our baby once a week (or as needed) as well. However, around 9 months, we started doing it daily - she LOVED splashing around in the water. She'd sit in a half-filled baby tub for 30-45 minutes, just playing. We only used soap once a week still, but she'd be in a tub, everyday, before her nap.
Answer: We ramped it up. As an infant with sensitive skin, we bathed her about every 4-6 days or on an 'as needed' basis for those unusual incidents which require a little extra soap! We found that this was sufficient for general cleanliness. As she got older and more active we very slowly increased the frequency of baths. At 2 years of age now, we bathe her about every 2-3 days.
Note that when I say "bathe" I am talking about a light all-natural soap, a dot of all-natural shampoo and some frolicking around in the warm water - not scouring, harsh cloths or brushes or any of that nonsense.
"Cradle cap", if any, will fade over time on its own time - don't sweat it, and don't pick at it. Infant acne can be a perfectly normal reaction to the introduction of Mom's milk so don't sweat that either - this too shall pass. If it doesn't pass though, might be worth checking with a specialist.
Answer: You only need to bath your baby 2-3 times a week. You can choose to bath your baby everyday if she enjoys bath time or if it helps as part of her bed time routine. You do however need to make sure your babies face, neck, hands and bottom are cleaned everyday. This is known as top and tailing.
Answer: Well, the answer is really, "often enough so he doesn't get pimples." Or smell, feel, or look dirty. That will vary for every child and environment. Once a week is more of a bare minimum rule of thumb.
Answer: Baby pimples actually have little to nothing to do with cleanliness.  It could be baby acne.  My baby had this for a few weeks, and we were told it was hormonal.  The problem with bathing a newborn is that their skin is very, very fragile.  This is even more true if you are dealing with a preemie.  I would suggest sticking to once-per-week bathing for a while, and talking to the pediatrician if the acne gets particularly bad or you want to know more about when to start bathing more often.
Answer: Matthias got a bath once a week (barring diaper explosions) as a newborn with just plain water.  "Baby Acne" could be his skin being a little oily, or it could be a result of the hormones from breastfeeding.  As long as his skin doesn't feel oily or otherwise 'dirty', once a week for the first few months should be all that is needed.
My son is 3 now and the baths are coming daily, as he tends to bring the sandbox, garden, etc with him daily.

How often should I bathe my newborn?


harmful mold growing in fermentation freezer?

Question: I have a freezer that I use for temp control.  However, it's been unplugged all summer and its growing mold.  Is this going to be harmful to my respiratory system for me to open and clean it?  What precautions should I take?
Comment: Seriously...just clean out your freezer. No need to over think this and get all analytical.
Answer: If you are allergic, you could have a pretty good reaction.  I also wouldn't want to spread spores all around my house.  Is it in a garage?
Mold spores are big enough to filter some with a dust mask.  One webpage I saw said 10 to 30 microns.  This site says 1 to 100: http://web.mnstate.edu/ehs/Health&Safety/moldspores.cfm
Dust masks are relatively effective: you should be able to find one that goes to less than a micron for the smallest size particle it filters.  I've seen 0.3 microns for the smallest effective size. Like here:
http://www.filtera.com/3mmod8662esh.html
Another factor to consider any time you are cleaning up a hazard (whether mouse poop or mold) is to wet the dust first.  I've read suggestions to use chlorox bleach spray to saturate mouse poop.  Why?  Wet particles aren't stirred up as easily, wet particles don't break into even smaller parts.  Presumably the chlorox bleach spray also helps kill bacteria or mold.  You don't want to stir this stuff up and end up having it in your house duct system where your kids etc will breathe it.  If you can roll it outside first, I would do that to limit how much you get in the house.
You can become seriously ill from mold so I wouldn't be too casual.  Here is an EPA page on one of the bad kinds of mold:
http://www.cdc.gov/Mold/stachy.htm
Why not just pick up a dust mask for ~$5 or $10 (useful for other household work too) to limit what you inhale?  And use some chlorox spray to wet down the mold before your disturb it.
This advice isn't based on expertise or training just personal experience and some limited web research.
In terms of personal experience, I cleaned the mold out of a garage fridge that had food in it that got disabled (breaker intentionally flipped by the electrician).  Mold city.  409, Chlorox bleach spray, rubber gloves, dust mask.  It worked for me.  However, your mileage may vary.
Answer: @Keith Hoffman has some great info. If you do want to take precautions, a dust mask would be one of the most beneficial items. Typical dust masks are rated as an "N95" mask. The number "95" corresponds with industrial filter ratings. An N95 is 95% efficient at removing 0.3 micron particles. 0.3 micron particles are considered the most difficult particle to filter out. Different manufacture's mask will have slightly different effective filtration ranges depending on the media (material) type. Typically mold spores are large enough to be filtered out by an N95 mask. If you want to be very sure, a P100 type filter is effectively a HEPA filter. P100 masks will be at least 99.9% efficient at removing 0.3 micron particles. I wouldn't waste your money on a P100, unless your using an actual respirator. A dust mask is only as effective as the seal it makes on your face. Most dust mask leave a GIANT hole where the mask goes over your chin. Companies spend thousands of dollars to have a dust masks "fit tested" to ensure they are working properly. Gloves would be a good idea, however mold spores will not enter your body through your skin, soap and water will wash the spores away. A spray of some kind should be used to wet the spores before cleaning. A bleach spray (mixed as directed on the jug) is great, however, even water in a spray bottle will effectively "encapsulate" the spore and keep it from floating around everywhere. Once you've cleaned the mold up, make sure to disinfect the area. After disinfection has occurred (ie: 20 min if using a properly mixed bleach solution) dry the area so that there is no moister left over. You will NOT be able to completely removed/ kill every last spore, so you want to make sure the environment in your freezer is not conducive to new growth via old spores.
Comment: Great additional detail on dust mask ratings...
Answer: Just pry 'er open and dive in. You may also want to enlist the help of a rag and some 409. But I would say that is all the reinforcements you will be needing.
The sooner you get it clean, the sooner you can make beer.


Setting DHCP lease time to very small time increases security?

Question: Yes or No? :O

And why?
Comment: Security is a very broad term.  What sorts of threats and attacks are you worried about?  Please read the FAQ for great tips on adding helpful context, and update the question.
Comment: @nealmcb, I would wager that this is a question from a university assignment.
Answer: Depends on the view point, if you're seeing this from the DHCP server impersonating and poisoning attack vector, you are actually decreasing security and the time it takes for the exploit to succeed. You are also increasing the chances of races to succeed on some race condition scenarios. In conclusion, this question is better asked in some specific explicit scenario or attack vector that you're worried about and not as a general rule.
Answer: In very general terms, no. Presumably the inference of potentially increased security you're making is that by switching IP frequently, there will be an increased barrier to sustaining prolonged attacks against a given host. In reality however, the real network identifier of base interest is the MAC address, which will stay constant under this model. Therefore re-identifying the host between DHCP intervals would be trivial.
The most you're likely to achieve is a slightly elevated level of annoyance (for the attacker) should an attacker be attempting to execute a task such as a slow port-scan as they may be required to break up the task into smaller sub-tasks which can complete within one IP refresh interval.
Answer: 1) DHCP lease times mean nothing if the computer is connected (RFC2131 is what's pertinent here). As long as a client is connected to the network, it can (and will/should) keep requesting (and being granted) the same address before the lease time expires, and the server will keep granting it. Essentially, the lease time just determines how long one IP is reserved for one MAC address. When the lease time expires, if the client hasn't renewed it, it's free to be given to another client. The only purpose of changing the lease time is either a) lowering it, if you're running out of addresses and need to reclaim unused IPs quicker, or b) letting one host keep the same address for an extended amount of time (say, if you power machines off at night and want them to have the same address when they start up in the morning).
2) Take this from the experience of someone who administers DHCP at a university, handing out well over 64,000 addresses - the only thing a shorter lease time will do for security is drastically increase your log volume, and make it more likely that data matching MAC addesses to IPs will get lost or not make it everywhere it needs to.
Answer: It's too subjective, in terms of making sure that there isn't the same IP on the same computer for too long, then yes, in a sense you could call that an 'increase' in security. On the other hand if something was opened on the machine and has a backdoor, it doesn't matter what the IP or lease looks like because the attacker could just open a shell and do a reverse tcp back to their machine, which would completely eliminate any security increase for that type of situation.
Other than that, i can't see why you'd need to renew the dhcp lease every xx minutes. If it's attached to DNS somehow, it would be a pain in the butt to update that each time the lease is renewed.
Comment: Agreed, adding dyndns to this does bring more tangible issues into play.
Answer: The short answer is: No.  Short DHCP lease times don't add security.  They do little or nothing to prevent the most likely forms of attack.  Don't bother messing around with that; it's not a good use of your time.  Life is too short.  It's a better use of your limited time to focus on standard security measures.


Multiplication of (0,1) matrices

Question: is there an obvious lattice path counting interpretation for multiplying n by n (0,1) matrices ?
Answer: Well, there is a path counting interpretation.  If the first matrix describes a collection of red edges of a graph and the second matrix describes a collection of blue edges of a graph, then their product describes the set of ways to traverse a red edge and then a blue edge.
Answer: Yes, you can imagine a three columns graph, each column has n points. The resultant matrix (AB)_ij= # of path from i-th point in the first column to j-th column in the last column.
Actually, if we assume the Word RAM computational model, the above interpretation leads to an O(n^3/log^2 n) time algorithm, which is better than O(n^3).
Answer: To add to other answers, you might want to play with a weighted path counting interpretation (rather than composition of linear maps interpretation) for multiplication of matrices with not necessarily integer entries. Strongly related is to view a n by m matrix as a bipartite graph (with weighted edges) with n vertices on one side and m vertices on the other side (instead of viewing a matrix as a linear map). This viewpoint is useful when you are learning Markov chains or shifts of finite types.

Multiplication of (0,1) matrices


Javascript. Listen for iPhone shake event?

Question: Is it possible to listen for an iPhone (or any mobile phone with accelerometer) shake event with JavaScript? You know like shaking the iPhone to shuffle the next song in iTunes I want to call a JS function on my website when the iPhone got shaken.
Answer: In the latest iOS update (4.2) the accelorometer is now accessible from Javascript.
See: http://www.mobilexweb.com/blog/safari-ios-accelerometer-websockets-html5
Answer: Here's an elegant implementation of shake detection using the accelerometer if anyone is looking for it:
https://github.com/alexgibson/shake.js
Answer: I just implemented the above in my web app which now has controls that appear on the page only after a device shake occurs. Very easy to implement and cleanly described.
https://github.com/alexgibson/shake.js
It is also worth noting that the iOS simulator's shake gesture doesn't trigger the event but a genuine device shake does.
Answer: Not as a straight web app, no. If you wrap your web app in PhoneGap, it exposes accelerometer and other app-only features to the site running within it, but the downside is that people have to actually download your app - they can't just browse to a site in Safari.


WP NAV MENU - Dropdown always showing

Question: I'm having some trouble getting the wp_nav_menu to work properly. This is the first time I have worked with this and for the most part it has all come together. My only issue that I am having is with the functionality of the dropdown menus. All of the pages are appearing correctly in the appropriate spot (the primary navigation), but the "fly outs" or drop down submenus are always appearing.
I have of course registered the menu and have placed the wp_nav_menu portion in the navigation. My guess is I have no added support for the dropdown menus to BE drop down menus?
I might also mention that this is a custom theme. I've built it from the bottom up. It's also in a development environment which will be hard to show you guys a live example. For this reason I have attached a screenshot.
<code>wp_nav_menu( array(
     'menu' => 'Primary Navigation',
     'container_class' => 'primaryNav',
     'depth'           => 2,
     'fallback_cb' => 'none',
     'theme_location' => 'Primary Navigation',
));

register_nav_menu( 'Primary Navigation', 'Primary Navigation' );

add_theme_support( 'menus' );
</code>
I've come across two possibilities. I've seen mention of "walker," to which I have little to no understanding of. OR maybe it's as simple as adding some jquery to make them work? I am just under the impression that the functionality should already be there?
Thanks in advance for any help.
Will
Comment: this is a function of your theme's css and isn't specific to WordPress. see the style.css file from the default twentytwelve theme, or search the web for css dropdown menu.
Answer: You have to modify style.css. What you should do is look at your source code and see the structure you generated for your menu, and then change your menu accordingly. There are lots of tutorials on the web, all you have to do is Google "css menu tutorial" or "css menu example" and you will find a solution to your problem.

WP NAV MENU - Dropdown always showing