Outs counting correction

Question: When we counts outs, we are making the assumption that the outs are not already dealt. This can be correct in the heads up, but I guess that in the full game this will not be correct (due to the biggest probability of one or more outs are already dealt). Does exists a corrected formula for counting outs in the full game and short game?
Comment: I was thinking of exactly the same thing today ! Small world :) ...
Comment: All cards that you do not know are unknowns.
Answer: You can't adjust the "outs" because you don't have enough information (that's what poker is, a game of incomplete information) but that's perfectly ok because the outs themselves do mean absolutely nothing.
If I tell you, you have 16 outs to win... are you ahead or are you most likely dead? You don't know, 16 outs means you're ahead in the flop but you're not in the river and you're definitevely drawing dead in the national lotery... with the same outs. We're so familiar with counting outs that we forget about the implicit information: the game and the street.
What's really important though it's the odds of winning and that DOES take into account the already dealt cards.
The theory, summarazing, is that the probability of an event doesn't get affected by unknown factors (let me clarify this, it doesn't get affected as long as you include those unknown factors into the total number of possible events). That way, if you have a flush draw in the flop you have 9 outs (to simplify we'll assume it's a nut flash draw as if you're in a 5 way flop and you're counting you're 2-5 as a winner you need to revise your strategy), there're 9 cards that will help you but to calculate the odds of you winning you multiply that by four and you get the magic number of 36%. But how did you came up with that number??
What you really did was (by means of a simple rule that gives approximate results) was the probability of getting one of those cards by taking 2 random cards out of a deck of 47 cards, 47!
That 47 magic number is the key, in a 6-max table the actual number of cards left in the deck is 37, as ten other cards have been dealt to the other players but to calculate the odds you're including that as if those cards were still in the deck and the effect is exactly the same. You could calculate it as:

The odds of taking two random cards over a 47 deck with 9 remaining hearts and one being a heart or
The odds of taking two random cards over a 37 deck with x remaining hearts and one being a heart minus the odds of dealing x hearts when picking 10 random cards when taking x cards from a deck of 47.

The second formula is equivalent to the first (produces the same results) but it's harder to calculate so we use the first.
The main point is those dealt hand are taken into account by the fact that when you calculate the odds you count the deck as having all the cards except the ones in the flop and in your hand, that's equivalent as including the dealt cards to the other players, those cards are unknown and so it's as if they were still on the deck.
Of course one thing that DO change the odds is the way the hand has been played.
Answer: I think you should look at it slightly different.
instead of counting the number of cards you need to win a hand,
you should look at the chances you'll hit one of them.
Let's say that after the flop and turn there are 10 cards that can help you.

In heads-up, your chances to hit one of the 10 are around 20%.
(I assume your opponent might have one of your cards, two of your cards or none of them).
In a game with 9 players (including you), there are 30 cards in the deck ( 52 - (2*9) - 4). now, the options are your opponents might hold all your cards, 9 of your cards, 8 of them and so on until non of them is help by the other players. your chances to draw one of your cards in the worst case is 0% (all your cards are dealt to the other players). your chances to draw one of your cards in the best case is 33.33% (all your cards are still in the deck).

if you'll make an average on your chances to get one of your cards with 9 players, you will see that it is the same as getting one of your cards playing heads-up.
Amigal
Answer: Unless you know something about your opponents range, it doesn't matter.  Consider this simplified version of the problem:
Shuffle a deck of cards.  What are the chances of an Ace being on top? Because there are 4 aces and 52 cards in the deck, this is clearly 4/52.  So lets say we remove two cards from the top of the deck and set them aside.  What is the chance of the next card being an Ace?  Note we are now choosing one of 50 cards, because two have been set aside.  However, the odds are still 4/52.  One way to visualize this is to imagine the two cards on top being removed, and then looking at the third card.  As long as you know nothing about the first two cards, the chance of the third one being an Ace remains 4/52.
This same situation can be extended to a poker game, where 18 cards are removed from the deck and placed in 9 player's hands.
Answer: Well, I guess you could find a way if you have a flush draw. It's the easiest.
Let's say you have A:diamonds: J:diamonds: and the board is 7:diamonds: 5:spades: Q:diamonds: 2:hearts: . You need to hit one of the 9 remaining diamonds to make a flush.
If you're playing 6max, then it means there were 10 cards dealt to the other 5 players + 2 burn cards. This is a total of 12 cards.
Now, on average there is always an even distribution of suits, no matter how many players there are. See here to learn why.
What this means is that, on average, out of those 12 cards, there will be 12 / 4 suits = 3 diamonds.
This implies that your 9 outs just turned into 9 - 3 = 6 outs. This is a significant difference (- 33 %) and, if you take it into consideration, then it can drastically affect the size of the hypothetical bet you're willing to call with your hand.
I sometimes take this into consideration when I deal with flush draws. You can do it too from time to time, but do it with caution. It's relatively safe, not unlike the scenario below:

Let's move away from flush draws and go to other draws.
Let's say you have 9:diamonds: T:diamonds: . This time, the board is A:spades: 7:hearts: J:clubs: Q:spades: . Now, this time you have an open-ended straight draw but you feel that your super tight and suddenly very aggresive opponent is way ahead (maybe Aces up or KT for a broadway or Pocket Jacks etc.). What you would need to win this is:

either bluff it by putting him all-in and throwing him off his hand or
hit a King or an Eight to make a straight.

Since we're talking about outs, we're going to focus on the second option.
Now, typically you have 8 outs: 4 Kings and 4 Eights. But if you want to make this correction, you have to take into consideration the chances that:

your opponent has a King or an Eight OR
one of the other opponents folded a King or an Eight.

Now let's apply the same logic as with the flush draw: Assume you're playing 6 handed, just like before. This means that there were 10 cards dealt to the other players + 2 burn cards = 12 cards.
If we consider the same even distribution, then 12 cards / (52 cards / 8 outs) = 12 / 6.5 = 1.84 outs. What this means is: in those 12 cards, on average, there will be 1.84 of your outs. This implies that your outs went from 8 to 8 - 1.84 = 6.16.  This can again be significant difference.

I strongly recommend that you never ever rely on the second correction (with the straight draw). It's just waaay too unreliable. It's extremely hard, next to impossible that this is even remotely close to the real value. Why ? Because that 6.16 is an average value with HUGE fluctuations from hand to hand.You'll only be guessing and most of the time you would be wrong.
If you want to apply such outs corrections to your game, do it only to the flush draws, their values are usually very close to average. Like a Bell curve, if you're familiar with the concept.
Comment: I rarely downvote but I had to here because I believe the conclusion of your answer is wrong- and misleading. You wrote: "if you take it into consideration, then it can drastically affect the size of the hypothetical bet you're willing to call with your hand." That is not true. If you calculate the remaining outs the way you described, the probability of hitting the flush or straight does not change at all. One thing I do agree with in your answer is maybe the possible assumption that your opponent has a King because of the way he is playing his hand.
Comment: In your example with the outs dropping from 9 to 6: When counting with the result 9, you say you need 1 of 9 cards out of 47. In your method where you get the result 6, you need 1 of 6 cards out of 35 (52 - 12 pocket cards - 3 community cards - 2 burn cards). So together with the number of outs, you have also **reduced the size of the card pool** where the cards are drawn, resulting in a similar probability. The only reason to do such a detailed computation is when you think there is a **non-average probability** of some of your outs being in some pocket cards (see the answer of Cory Kendall).
Comment: @TTT I won't be mad, I promise :) .
Answer: There is now way of calculating that as far as I am aware.
Unless you openly know your opponents cards.
The idea of counting the outs is just to give you a rough idea of what percentage of the time you are likely to get the cards you need. The more outs you have the better your chances of hitting.
I am not sure its really possible to calculate your chances of hitting your outs if you try and work out your opponents chances of having one of your cards.

Outs counting correction


What causes pig men to turn into Werepigs?

Question: I visited my local pig village during the day to find the last pig man being slaughtered by three werepigs. I have no idea where they came from. I ran for it but couldn't get away from all three. I've seen them transform when fed monster meat and during the full moon, but don't know of any way for three to appear in a pig village during the day, but obviously want to avoid similar confrontations in the future. What caused the Werepigs to appear?
Answer: It is a known bug, and they're working to fix it.
Basically, if the werepigs are busy (probably killing something) at the moment they're supposed to turn back to normal pigmen, they'll stay in their current condition, attacking on sight anything near them, be them spiders, tentacles, Wilson or even their own kin.
Answer: Well, sometimes, Werepigs will stay in that form until the next one to three days. They will be found sleeping outdoors (USUALLY!) when they transform into Pigmen again. If they are chasing you and transform again, they will usually fall asleep, then the next day, run to their village. Hope this is verified information!


Host a J2EE application on Tomcat externally

Question: I'm planning to deploy a Web application which I want to expose to all people on internet. I can buy a domain name, and redirect it to a public host which hosts my J2EE application.
Whom should I choose for hosting my web app? What are my hosting options? I want good performance for better user experience.  And price is definitely a concern.
Answer: You won't be able to find J2EE web hosting easily.  They're a function of (price*scalability*functionality) and usually just not worth it.
On the other hand, you could pick up a VPS like linode, slicehost, or prgmr and set up your own server.  That'd be the best choice for price in my opinion, a prmr instance will only run you a few bucks a month, but you have to know your way around a *nix box to set yourself up.
Answer: I also found that the availability of Tomcat hosting was limited last time I checked. I'm using Amazon AWS now as it's affordable and easy to scale up and out if needed. They're offing a basic micro instance with 1 processor, 640MB of RAM and 10GB disk space free for one year when you sign up as a new customer. This should be enough to get started then their pricing after that's very competitive and you can switch servers on and off as needed with only an hours notice.


Existence of cut-off functions in metric spaces

Question: Let $X_1,\ldots,X_m$ be Lipchitz continuous vector fields in an open set $\Omega \subset \Re^n$, Let $d(\cdot, \cdot)$ denote the control distance associated to $X$. With respect to this control distance we can define balls etc.
Let us also define the Sobolev spaces $W^{1,p} (\Omega) = [u \in L^p (\Omega) | Xu := (X_1 u, \ldots, X_m u) \in L^p(\Omega) ]$ (in a weak sense), let also $W_0^{1,p}$ be the closure of $C_0^\infty (\Omega)$ under the norm $||u||_{1,p}^p = ||u||_p + ||Xu||_p$.
Let us also assume that for every compact set $K \subset \Omega$ there exists positive constants $C_D = C_D(X,K), C_L = C_L(X,K), C_P = C_P (X,K), R = R(X,K)$ such that for every $x \in K$ and $0 < r < R$ one has
(D) $|B(x,r)| \geq C_D |B(x,2r)|$
(L) $d(\cdot, x)$ is differentiable a.e. in $\Omega$ and $||Xd(\cdot,x)||_{L^\infty (\Omega)} \leq C_L$ for every $x \in K$.
(P) $\int_{B(x,r)} |u - u_B|^2 dx \leq C_P \int_{B(x,2r)} |Xu|^2 dx$.
As such we have a doubling metric measure space $(K,d,dx)$, with Poincare' inequality.
I am currently reading a paper stating that in the above setting we obtain the existence of cutoff functions in metric balls satisfying the common $|X u| < C/r$, and $u = 1$ on $B(x,r)$ and $u = 0$ outside $B(x,2r)$, and $u \in W_0^{1,\infty}(\Omega)$.
I have never seen this result, and to me it seems strange. Why would one otherwise mess about with balls defined from level surfaces of the fundamental solution to the real part of the Kohn-Laplacian in Hörmander vector-fields?
Answer: Apparently one can compose a 1-d cutoff function with the metric to obtain this.


How to deal with problems with Xfce?

Question: I am using Xfce 4.8 on Ubuntu 12.04. Any choice of Desktop Environment starts Xfce. I don't get any Splash Screen nor Xfce session selector nor WiFi icon, neither the option to restart/shutdown.
Last night I closed the session normally and today I found many problems:

No matter whether I try to start session on Unity, GNOME, Gnome-Classic, MATE, etc, it
always start Xfce. It doesn't even show the Xfce session selector nor the splash screen.
It doesn't start the freemeteo screenlet.
Orage starts up automatically.
WiFi icon is missing (but I'm connected to the net).
On the user menu, "Suspend" and "Shut Down" are greyed out.
"Logout" is enabled, but when I click on it, it gives me the following error:

The name org.xfce.SessionManager was not provided by any .service files

EDIT: The last package I had installed before this started was xfce4-utils. I can't open Synaptic Package Manager to uninstall it or to find broken packages. Synaptic doesn't start.
I don't know what to do. I'm still new to Xfce. Any ideas?
Answer: It looks like you want to remove Xfce. Run the following command in terminal:
sudo apt-get remove --purge xfce4-utils

purge option causes apt to remove not only a package but also the saved settings.
Also try (but without purge):
sudo apt-get remove xfce

See this question Why removing the xfce4 package doesn't remove the XFCE desktop environment? for more details on how to do that.

How to deal with problems with Xfce?


What immunisations, if any, are required / recommended for Thailand?

Question: A member of my family is headed to Thailand shortly (and I'm considering it as well, haha) and wondering what immunisations are required / recommended for that area?
Comment: As far as I know, the only vaccination ever required to enter a country is the one against yellow fever. All other vaccinations are 'optional'.
Answer: According to the CDC, they recommend
MMR, DPT, polio, Hep A/B, Typhoid and Japanese encephalitis
Also Malaria meds are recommended.
That being said, I've lived in SE Asia and travelled around with only MMR, DPT, polio and the Heps. A lot of people swear by Malaria meds, but every time I take them, I feel horrible and can't really do anything so I generally skip them.
I would strongly recommend Japanese encephalitis though, it is currently rated at endemic and is seen even in Bangkok.
Hep A/B are rated at a low threat in Thailand, but they are generally good immunizations anyway.
MMR, DPT, polio are considered standard for international travel, and are highly recommended.
Typhoid is rated as a threat in rural areas. I'm not sure of the rates in cities.
Comment: The aftermath of floods with pockets of stagnant water make malaria meds more useful than usual (though I'm still not convinced they're worthwhile).
Comment: @dbkk In the current situation I agree with you.
Answer: According to the Thailand entry on the Finnish site rokote.fi,
These vaccines are recommended for everyone:

Hepatitis A
DPT / DTwP
MMR

These are recommended for some, based on a risk estimate (preferably conducted with a health professional):

Hepatitis B
Japanese encephalitis (but see also Ginamin's answer!)
Cholera
Typhoid

Preventive malaria medicine is also recommended for parts of the country (green in this not very detailed map). Seems like Bangkok and the coastal areas most frequented by tourists are not in the higher-risk zone though.
The site cites this source for their vaccine information:
Matkailijan terveysopas 2009, a publication by the National Institute for Health and Welfare
Answer: Nothing, really, unless you mean to stay in the jungles for a while. And yes of course you want mosquito repellent because skitos are never any fun.
Your biggest health concerns have to do with heat, hydration, food and traffic accidents. If you drink 2 liters at home, you need 3 liters in Thailand (assuming of course a temperate climate where you are from). You also need to drink electrolytes regularly.
Good sunscreen. Don't laugh, this is not your typical "hey, I got sunburned", mess around with that and you could spend the rest of the holidays in a really bad condition.
For the food, keep in mind that tap water is not drinkable. Actually it's not drinkable in most of southern Asia, so buy bottled water only. You don't want to drink anything with crushed ice but ice cubes are usually fine. Thai food tends to be very spicy and you are likely to get mild diarrhea (which brings you back to the hydration issue - Diarrhea causes a loss of water & electrolytes).
Other than that, of course you have all kinds of diseases, but not more than in other civilized countries. Hygiene standards are rather decent in most places.
And traffic accidents. It's not a disease, but it's still an epidemic and as a tourist you are far more likely to suffer significant health problems from the poor driving standards than you are to catch any major disease in Thailand. (By the way, people are supposed to drive on the left, here. Let's be fair, that's also a reason why tourists have a lot of accidents).
Answer: Found this from the World Health Organisation :
Yellow Fever
Country requirement: a yellow fever vaccination certificate is required from travellers over 9 months of age arriving from countries with risk of yellow fever transmission.
Yellow fever vaccine recommendation: no
Malaria
Malaria: Malaria risk exists throughout the year in rural, especially forested and hilly, areas of the whole country, mainly towards the international borders, including the southernmost provinces. There is no risk in cities (e.g. Bangkok, Chiang Mai city, Pattaya), Samui island and the main tourist resorts of Phuket island. However, there is a risk in some other areas and islands. P. falciparum resistant to chloroquine and sulfadoxine–pyrimethamine reported. Resistance to mefloquine and to quinine reported from areas near the borders with Cambodia and Myanmar. Human P. knowlesi infection reported.
Recommended prevention in risk areas: Mosquito bite prevention only; Recommended prevention in areas
near Cambodia and Myanmar borders: Mosquito bite prevention plus atovaquone–proguanil, doxycycline or mefloquine chemoprophylaxis (select according to reported resistance pattern)
Answer: If you come from:
Angola  Argentina   Benin   Bolivia Brazil
Burknan Faso    Burundi Cameron Central Africa  Chad
Columbia    Congo   Cote d'Ivoire   Ecuador Equatorial Guin
Ethiopia    French-Guiana   Gabon   Gambia  Ghana
Guinea  Guyana  Guinea Bissau   Kenya   Liberia
Mali    Mauritania  Niger   Negeria Panama
Peru    Paraguay    Rwanda  Senegal Sao Tome & Principe
Sierra Leone    Somalia Sudan   Suriname    Tanzania
Togo    Trinida & Tobago    Uganda  Venezuela Zaire, you need an evidence of vaccination for yellow fever (Thailand immigration) in order to be allower to enter the country.
Risk of malaria is really low and malaria pills has bad side effects.


How accurate are our calculations about distant stars keeping in mind their enormous distances?

Question: Since many stars are hundreds of light years away from the Earth and therefore, what we observe of them today is really their distant past, how can we say anything with certainty about their composition, size and nature? Betelguese, for example, is said to be in the last stage of stellar evolution, but taking into consideration its approximately 640 light years of distance from the Earth, aren't we actually making assertions about the star that are 640 years old? If that is the case, how can we claim to know the actual present status of the star?
Answer: Well, we don't claim to know the status of the star at the present time. If the star is close enough (within our galaxy, or local neighbourhood), we measure the distance in light years, or parsecs. If they're further away than that, it's easier to quantify their distance in terms of a redshift.
When we say that a star has some properties (size, temperature etc.) in that statement is the knowledge that the light received is delayed, so it won't reflect the state of the star right now.
Even though knowing the state of a star as it was several thousand years ago may not seem like it's a useful thing, it's the only tool we have to probe the evolution of stars, and the evolution of the universe. Since the further away something is, it will reflect conditions of the universe at earlier and earlier times. Which is where we can test cosmological theories of the evolution of the universe, or our theories of the evolution of galactic or stellar systems.
Answer: What we infer about stars from the light we see at the Earth is indeed "old news". However, for almost all practical purposes in stellar astrophysics this doesn't matter. The phases of a star's life last millions or billions of years and most of the individual stars that are studied are within say 30 thousand light years of the Earth -so the light travel time is a negligible fraction of the evolutionary timescales.
The example you picked is an interesting one. Betelegeuse is probably in the very last phase of its life before exploding as a supernova. This final phase is about the shortest in a stellar lifecycle and it is possible that Betelgeuse has already exploded, though more likely we will have to wait a few tens of thousands of years more.
Another interesting example is that when it comes to other galaxies, it is possible to study individual luminous (very massive) stars. So, if we study very massive stars in the Andromeda galaxy (2.5 million light years away) it is likely that most of these stars (the most massive stars have the shortest lifetimes) have already exploded as supernovae, since their lifetimes are less than a few million years.
If we want to say what a star is like now, then we have to rely on an extrapolation forward in time of our stellar evolution models. This is not of great concern because (a) the extrapolation is not that great for most stars (see above) and (b) even where the extrapolation is a large fraction of the stellar lifetime, the models are tested using different stars at all phases of their lives so we have reasonable confidence in them.


When is it realistic to take a non-flash picture of someone outside after sunset?

Question: This is a question from a non-photographer.  I'm writing a scene for a stage play.  In my scene, there's a celebrity in crisis in a park after sunset and a photographer who'd dearly like to get a picture of her going through her crisis.  Lots of flashes would alert her to the photographer's presence.  Is it possible to take pictures without flashes of light?  Would there be a particular place that the celebrity would need to stand in order for the picture to be possible--like under a streetlight?  Would the photographer have to be under a streetlight?  I don't need to know what equipment would do this really, just how I'd need to set up the scene in the stage directions, if indeed it is possible.
Answer: A streetlight in the park is sufficient for a photograph with modern cameras. However, the photographer doesn't need to be under the streetlight — the subject does. The photographer can (and, given the situation, sounds like should) stay completely in the dark.
Although it's slightly technical, take a look at this chart of exposure values at Wikipeda. In part:
<code>Night street scenes and window displays        7–8
Night vehicle traffic                            5
</code>
If your city park is well-lit by streetlights, it falls in this range. Let's assume the darker end of the range. This would mean that with an f/2.8 lens and ISO 3200, you would be able to take a photo with a shutter speed of ¹⁄₁₂₅th of a second — fast enough that subject motion blur won't be a big problem.
Any DSLR with a decent lens will be able to do that. The kit lens and cheap zooms won't have as fast an aperture, but if new enough the camera will have higher ISO to compensate. A really cheap point and shoot might struggle, but a decent one will be well within this.
If your character is a photographer with pro-level gear, this isn't even a problem. If you can give your photographer a really big telephoto lens, that should look impressive enough that you shouldn't need to explain that it would work for the pedants in the audience.
Answer: If the subject is standing in a streetlight and a car is going by to provide frontal illumination, that would work pretty well.  A streetlight could also work, but would have heavy shadows.  This could work well for a shot of someone in crisis though.
Honestly, the best bet is to try it out.  Get a friend and a camera, go out and take some photos. This is a recent test I did with my 5D Mark iii and a f2.8 lens to see what kind of low light shots I could get. 1,2,6,7,8 and 11 use a flash, but the rest are natural lighting.
Oh, you also would NOT want the photographer under a streetlight.  It wouldn't necessarily matter that much, but peripheral light bleed can cause issues for low light exposures.
Answer: A picture can be taken without a flash if the camera is set to a very high ISO or if possible a photographer can use a slow shutter speed & of course it would be best if the subject is under streetlight because then the camera wouldn't have to be set to such extremes
Answer: You might be able to get some inspirations for the stage setup from this review of Rokinon/Samyang 85mm 1.4 - a "fast prime" - where he takes a lot of shots of random people who mostly dont know he is taking them on black friday:
Street Photography
Note also when he says that it seems people who do notice him don't even realize it is taking a photo of them up close, because it looks small like a lens that takes the entire scenery.
Comment: +1, but that's probably exactly what you _don't_ want for a stage prop. :)
Comment: But still, it has a stalky kinda feeling to it, especially his favourite with the fancy woman in spot on focus with everyone else blurred :)


How can I speed up D&D 3.5e combat?

Question: I'm looking for ways to speed up the combat in my D&D 3.5 game. It seems that turns - both player and non-player - simply take too long. I have thought about giving everyone a 30 second timer, but I'm afraid that might inhibit their ability to come up with strategy and tactics.
Comment: Remember, limiting turns to 30 seconds doesn't mean your players only have 30 seconds for their turns. It means they have 30 seconds per player to decide what they'll do when their turn comes up - but requires them to pay attention to what's going on in combat. Which would be "mission accomplished," I guess.
Comment: This may also help as it's about making things easier [How do I run a game for a larger group](http://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/124/how-do-i-run-a-game-for-a-larger-group)
Answer: Some of these have been mentioned, but here's my list:
GM's assistant
Make someone else in charging of tracking the initiative order. Each turn, have them call out whose turn it is, but also who's "on deck" so that the next person can get ready. The GM's assistant can also help move monsters, as someone mentioned.
Make players roll ahead of time
This is key. Don't let the player fumble through looking up a bunch of bonuses on his sheet and adding them together, while everyone stares at him. Have him make all of his attack rolls, and damage rolls, at the same time and preferably have them figured out before his turn.
Time limit on turns
This goes with #2. The player should already have figured out what to do by the time their turn comes up, and started making rolls. At the start, announce that there'll be a time limit (say, 30 seconds) for players to start taking some action. Tell them it's combat time, they have seconds to decide. Be nice and pause to answer questions if they are unclear about something, but be firm if they are taking too long. Give them a countdown, and skip their turn if you have to. They'll speed up, next time.
Battle sheet and initiative order
Have the initiatives, HP, and AC of all characters and monsters written down in one clear, concise format. Order them by initiative. If you have an initiative board, that lets you shuffle tokens around when the players roll initiative to order them, that's ideal. A whiteboard also works. I love index cards, since they can keep all character and monster combat stats together, and are very easy to reorder.
Use a visual representation
Chessex makes great, printed, wet-erase battlemats, and I'm sure you can find others. At the very least, use a visual diagram of some kind, with markers that can easily be moved. This keeps everyone on the same page, and avoids arguments about which character or what terrain feature is where. Obviously, miniatures terrain works, too; decide on a scale, and have tape measures available (welcome to the wargaming room!)
Know the rules
Be familiar with the system. Use a GM screen with printed charts, if one is available, for reference, or make your own by printing out the charts and fixing them to something that stands up easily. If you don't know, or there's an argument, make an arbitrary ruling, to keep things moving, and look it up after game for future reference.
For spellcasters
I highly recommend creating a custom spell sheet which has columns for all of a spell's basic stats, a brief description (like the one-line listing at the beginning of the Spells chapter; be sure to include damage dice, etc.), how many preparations of that spell you have per day, and how many scrolls of it you're carrying.
Comment: +1 for player managed assist tables. My group writes it out on a white board for everyone to see, so players have no excuse as to not knowing how long until their turn.
Comment: +1 for index cards. Tracking player statblocks, monster statblocks, traps, items, etc via index cards has truly revolutionized my games.
Answer: A few general ideas, we've tried.
Structure some encounters such that the end condition of the encounter isn't the death of one side.  NPCs can flee or the objective could be something besides killing each other.
Rolling attack, damage, and miss chance (if any) can also help a little.
Make sure that those who use the special combat maneuvers know the rules for those maneuvers before they try them, so you don't have to stop the game to look them up.
Make sure that spellcasters know what the spell they are casting does before they cast it, so they don't have to spend time looking it up.
And maybe the encounter just needs to be that long; maybe the encounter just needs to be spiced up so that noone notices that the fight took the whole 4 hour session.
Comment: "Structure some encounters such that the end condition of the encounter isn't the death of one side."

I've found this to be a good idea when it's clear that the party is clearly dominating the encounter. I remember playing a campaign a couple years ago where we had to defeat a room of 20+ Ogres, but the party was cutting through them like a hot knife through butter. The DM forced us to go through the motions of killing every single one of them, but it wasn't satisfying; a simple "and you dispatch the rest of them as easily as the first 10" would've sufficed.
Answer: Here's a couple of tricks that have worked for me as a player.
1) Figure out what your modifiers for each attack and damage roll are ahead of time and write them down. That way, you know exactly what to have to add to each roll without having to calculate it every time. It seems like common sense, but I've played with a LOT of players who don't do this. Record this somewhere you aren't going to lose it, like your character sheet.
Be sure to include magical abilities, like Flaming or Holy. You might end up with something like "Flaming Longbow +2: +13/+8/+3 to-hit, Damage: 1d8+4 plus 1d6 fire."
1a) When you get buffed, re-figure your attack and damage rolls with the buffs on a separate sheet of paper. This is especially useful when you are getting multiple buffs at higher levels.
1b) If someone is using Power Attack, have them calculate their attacks AND damage when using common Power Attack amount. This is especially important if they are using  Power Attack with a Two-Handed weapon, because of the x1.5 modifier. Common amounts of power attack might be 2 points (useful for flanking), 5 points (when fighting something with low AC) or Maximum Power Attack.
2) Rolling attack and damage dice together works at lower levels, but at higher levels you can drop the damage dice and just roll all the attacks at once. Assign each modifier to a specific color/design of die so you can match up the roll and it's modifier more quickly. For example, if I have a full attack of +20/+15/+10/+5, I'd specify that the +20 is always my lucky blue die, the +15 is the green die, the +10 is the orange die and so on.
3) If you know you are just planning on full attacking, make your rolls during another player's turn. Record the to-hit and damage rolls on scratch paper. Then when it's your turn, you can easily run down the list. "Okay, my first roll was 25, does that hit? Okay, then I did 14 damage. Does an 18 hit?"
As a DM, I found that recopying the monsters stat blocks in a truncated format helped saved me time looking them up. While doing that, I'd make notes about any spell-like abilities that I thought they might use. Recording the duration, range, damage, save type and save DC helped me use their abilities more quickly.
Answer: One of the best ways to speed up combat and/or keep the game flowing is to limit the amount of time players waste during their turns.
Time spent rolling dice is fine. Time spent thinking, digging through spell lists or inventories, or looking up rules is not. Encourage players to think during other players' turns- unless a player goes immediately after the monsters and something unexpected happens, they should have their turns more or less planned out when their turn starts.
You could just encourage the time limit or, depending on your players, enforce a rule along the lines of "When your turn starts, you have 20 seconds to begin doing something or you delay your turn".
When dealing with multiple attacks, roll them all at once with different coloured dice, assigning one colour to each attack before the roll. Add up the attacks, then roll damage from all of them at once (unless there is a reason to roll damage for one attack separately such as DR or crits).
Answer: I've found that aides can help with that quite a bit. Prepare a cheat sheet or cue cards with some common combat rules written out. But the thing that helps the most is not to bother worrying about the rules exactly. If people want to swing on the chandelier and drop down on an enemy, make them perform a jump check and an attack roll. Sure, there may actually be rules for it, but it's better to keep the pace going.
Answer: Make sure your players know initiative order.  When I am running combat I tell them 2-3 ahead, and if there are two PCs next to each other in initiative order I will let them go at the same time, especially if they are working on separate targets.
When it's my turn to move all the baddies, I'll enroll a knowledgeable player to help me work through them as fast as I can.
Answer: I think 30 seconds is more than fair.  If people are paying attention during other folks' turns, it shouldn't take a lot of additional time to pull out an action.  And I don't allow a lot of "table talk" and strategizing during combat - you do what you do, and if you want to spend actions discussing at length with your allies that's fine.
Rolling to-hit and damage at the same time helps.  As does planning out NPC combat actions somewhat ahead of time, and printing out spell effects and whatnot so you're not book-flipping.
Also, you can just wing things.  It depends where the time is going.  Is it really going to people 'deciding what to do?'   Or conducting the mechanics of it?  Or is it spent looking up stuff?  If the latter, I just swag it.  Someone starts looking up "does dispel magic affect a supernatural creature ability on Tuesday.." and I just say "It works!"  If someone's relying on some complex rules combo then they'll have it ready and looked up ahead of time for me.
Comment: This last sentence (in particular) when adhered to, prevents disruption of combat while allowing for clever use of character options.
Answer: Is the problem that combat takes too long per player, or that they take too long organizing strategies. If the latter requires communication, give them a certain amount of time for communication before an action must take place. If it's that the player is trying to choose between ability x, y, and z, then give them a little more time. There's nothing more frustrating than wading through my abilities trying to figure out which one I was thinking of and having someone be pushy.
At the same time, this is one of the major problems with 3.5 in general.
Comment: I agree 4e suffers from it as well.
Answer: Don't be afraid to impose a time limit on the players' decisions. Be soft at first, but ramp up enforcement. Your players might chaffe at first, but they will get used to it. A player has plenty of time between turns to come up with an action. The trouble is that most players will get bogged down trying to find the absolute best tactic, which is unneccessary, especially because there usually isn't an absolute best. Remember the words of General Patton: "a good plan violently executed right now is far better than a perfect plan executed next week."
In my games, I expect a player to start talking the moment their turn comes up - either to declare an action or to ask a question and then declare an action. They get used to it and everyone appreciates the increased speed.
Answer: Increase the time to a minute or minute 30. I've had DM's do that to our group ... strategy and tactics are all well and good if you have the time, but if you want a realistic combat (or as close as it gets) you don't really have a lot of time to think and plan.
If the timer runs out you can always say "so-and-so is stunned into inaction by the rampaging battle around him." and move to the next player.
Comment: Actually that would be more like an automatic "hold action."
Answer: Roll initiative only once at the beginning of the encounter, and ask the players to throw both to-hit and to-damage die at the same time.
Answer: I have a similar idea to Scott Vercuski, the combat turn is supposed to be 6s long (in DD3.5) so the players shouldn't have too much time to think about what they are going to do as their character also wouldn't have much time.
This might end up with your battles getting a bit less planned, a bit more messy, and the players suffering a bit. However, maybe some easier enemies for a while, and when the players get used to some quick thinking in battle, the "heat of the moment" mistakes might add to  the realism.
Answer: You can use a dice app to do all calculations and rolls so theres less overhead in that sense.
Depending on your device there are a variety of useful ones, though it might cause some disconnect for the players.
My suggestion would be to consider looking at 13th age where battles typically last about 6 rounds max or Dungeon world in which the numbers are lower and even "fails" are useful. If not to swap to them system wise they may provide some alternative ideas for you to use in your campaign.
Answer: I like the 30 second timer per round idea to motivate players, or even 20 or 10 seconds to really get the game moving. As an extreme solution: keep the timer going! Once the time limit is up, the DM immediately resets it and continues game play.
How about ditching the initiative and turn order rules? Waiting to complete your turn is a huge time sink. Why not let everyone resolve their actions simultaneously? If all the players know how far their PCs can move per round, what spells they can cast, their foe's armor class and their weapon's range and/or damage rating, then why not let everyone + the DM go at it?
More complicated actions may require a game pause to resolve, in these cases the player should announce what they're attempting to do (ride the chandelier over to the window, climb the wall, etc.) before the time is up.
Answer: Player preparedness.
Pretty much all of the other answers to this question have great advice on ways to speed up various aspects of combat—most tend to be ways to speed up the actual facilitation of the game system itself.
These things will all help. But in my experience, the very most important one, the one thing that when lacking, takes up more time than any other, is player preparedness. When it's their turn, each player should be able to quickly say what it is their character is doing, and know what they need to do in order for their character to do so.
If a player needs to look up the rules of their attack, the effects of their spell, their various bonuses, or whether or not they've used up all their uses of a spell, ability, or item... all of these are huge time-sinks, and they are all avoidable with a little bit of pre-game prep.
I have often found in the past that players rarely do much work preparing for sessions, outside of perhaps leveling up their characters or picking up snacks. I can understand this, no one wants to feel like they have homework to do for a game they play. But if the DM is putting in the hard work to prep the session, plan traps, puzzles, dungeons, encounters, NPCs, etc, it seems rather unfair for players to use everyone's shared time during the session to do what I feel they ought to have done on their own time.
So, have a discussion with the players, and ask them to try and come up with a "cheat sheet" for their characters by next session: a shortlist of their most-used abilities, their bonuses for attacks or spells, a one-line description of the effects (something they can reference to easily recall the relevant details; something that makes sense to them, not necessarily the stock "flavor" one-liner).
If the players can't or won't put in the effort to do so, you can spend the beginning of the session having everyone do this. Though maybe disappointing they didn't care to try, this may actually be better—the information would surely be fresh in everyone's mind.
Answer: Go with your timer idea. The characters don't have lot's of time for tactics during a battle, you might increase the tension and excitement if you put the players under the same stress.
Answer: Putting a time limit on a turn seems harsh to me. I prefer to rule that if a player doesn't have an action in mind when it comes to their turn, they count as "holding", and we move on to the next player, then back to the first player. If they're still not ready, they hold again, until they act last in the round. If the player still can't decide, then they make a basic attack against the nearest enemy.
It's still an incentive to be ready, but doesn't necessarily rush a player into making a bad choice. If anything, it gives them more time to figure out what to do, at the risk of losing an action.
Some kind of initiative display really helps too. If everyone can see at a glance when they're due to move, then they tend to plan ahead. We use a wipe-clean initiative tracker, which I think is a D&D4 accessory, and some dry board markers, but we've also had success with simply writing the initiative order on the battlemat.
Answer: This can work with any system that mechanically supports it, but make sure everyone has the capacity to deal lots of damage, and to hit well. In 3.5 this would mean making sure the enemies have magic weapons, or other damage dealing magic items, but not much in the way of armour or protective items, and that naturally the player characters would get ahold of this. It doesn't require any changes in play style by the players, as all that happens is hit points get chopped down way faster than usual, so a monster that's supposed to last 5 rounds goes down in 2 or 3 instead. In AD&D, this could include save or die poisons that are readily available, particularly the type that take 1 minute to take effect (so you can bring in neutralise poison or slow poison on the PC side). The counterpart to this is make sure there aren't any stat draining effects. Level drain might be a big deal, but if you have an enemy with strength drain it actually drags combat out significantly. Enemies that frustrate the PCs but don't deal much damage also drag combat out significantly.
Answer: I played in a game where we tried something I hadn't heard of before:
Monsters did full damage when they hit BUT they only had half of their hit points. This sped combat up quite a bit.
Answer: This is absolutely a problem with 3.5 in general. I recommend replacing the combat mechanic with a very simple system like Swords & Wizardry or D&D 2e. That is: every attack is just a single d20 roll, add your opponent's armor class and any to-hit bonuses, and if you reach the target number (20) it's a hit; or use THAC0. Any "more fancy" combat maneuvers should be described by the player with you (the ref) improvising the results (e.g. "OK if you want to jump on the monster's back, that's -2 on your attack roll and double damage if you hit").
Another tip: roll initiative for the whole party, not for each player. Players attack in order of Dexterity.
Answer: Understand from the get-go that different players derive entertainment from different aspects of the game.  Some people like a very fast & loose game, others enjoy getting into the crunchiest of rules details.  I have seen groups where it takes quite literally the better part of an hour for a single round of combat because that's the way they like to game.  In our group, we can have several such combats within the span of a single hour.  So when you speed up combat, you have to keep the nature of the group's gaming style in mind.
First off, if you have players who aren't very good at math in their head or don't have their stats organized to make it easier for them to calculate their rolls, have them make a combat stats sheet and keep it up to date.  They should rarely ever have to add or subtract more than a single value from their roll if they do that.
The way I improved the speed of combats in 3.5 the most is to get rid of individual initiatives, and the concept of initiative in general for most combats.   When a combat ensues - unless it's a surprise situation or the players have been dallying - I just have the players go first.  And we go around the table, left to right.  Or right to left.  I switch it up.  This removes the entire overhead involved with keeping track of individual initiatives.  If someone wants to 'hold action', they simply get skipped, and then we go back to them at the end of the players' round.  The speed up isn't necessarily entirely on the players' side of things when doing this.  This also makes it easier to 'batch' roll for their opponents.  During surprise situations, I'll have the PC with the highest initiative bonus make the initiative roll for the group.   Doing this sounds drastic, and again won't be of much interest if the group likes crunchy, but I have not found it to impact the combats in any negative way.
Another area to master is what is called 'Rulings, not Rules'.  Rather than putting the combat on pause while someone looks up an obscure rule, the GM makes a ruling on the spot and things move on.  We can talk about making sure the players know the rules, and of course that's a good idea.  But most will not have every last detail memorized.  This smoothes things over and lets the game move on.  If there are still questions, after the combat you look things up so everyone knows it for the next time around.
Answer: The multiple attacks in D&D are a major time concern at higher levels. Instead, I considered increasing the dice of damage from the weapon at certain BaB intervals.
A longsword does 1d8 but then 2d8 later and I made weapon specialization add an extra die of damage as well.
Generally, this means the effects of strength and weapon enhancements on the overal damage are lessened, but the player only makes one attack role at their highest value.
Abillities such as cleave and whirlwind attack are much more useful as well.
The only problems are when you start dealing with natural weapons really and certainly two-weapon fighting benefits in an extreme manner by this too.
Answer: I've tried simplifying the initiative system by telling them: "Okay, the monsters just took their turn, so each of you gets one turn before they go again.  Whoever's ready can go in any order."  This didn't work: my players didn't like it, they thought it was too confusing. If you got it to work for your players it could speed up the player turns a lot, by letting them move as they're ready.  One option for simplifying might by to hand out index cards saying "YOU GET A TURN", and let them hand the cards back when they take their turn.
When a player is taking too long and I'm getting bored waiting, I sometimes tell them: "Okay, I'm going to put you on delay and let the next player move, then I'll come back to you."  That sometimes works, but more often results in a "nono, I'm ready, here's what I'm doing", which also accomplishes my goal.
Not many people have talked about improving monster turn speed.  I try to only run one or two types of monsters in any encounter.  I find that helps a lot.
Answer: A combination of having players know what they're going to do on their turn and what their spells and abilities do beforehand (so they don't waste time looking up whether Fly is rnd/lvl vs minute/lvl) as well as hand-waving away tedious parts of combat (there are 6 goblins and who have lost their shamans and their attacks can't pierce the fighter's DR so a "you handily slay the remaining foes") is a good way to speed up combat.
On that last point, with time and experience, eventually you'll learn when the players have already won the encounter but are just going through the motions. In such cases, it's nice as a DM to describe the players eviscerating their opponents and skipping to the aftermath, though some players enjoy the feeling of being untouchable gods on the battlefield despite the time it takes.
I've toyed around with the idea of a timer or chess clock, but I've found that it's not even 100% necessary; as a DM you can usually intuit when a player is taking too long on their turn and say "sorry, you lose your turn, please be better prepared for the next one". They will rarely do it again (though they might hate you a little).
Answer: This is my pet peeve with D&D - combat takes too long with too many fiddly modifiers.
While the above recommendations are good, in my opinion the root cause of the problem is that D&D combat is basically a tactical war game rule set grafted onto a role playing game. This is fine for a lot of players and works great in many situations.
However, if you want combat to be more of an adrenaline rush where players have to think on their feet vs. a tactical war game, I would recommend streamlining/deconstructing the combat rules themselves. One possibility is to completely simplify combat - no turns, no initiative rolls, attacks of opportunity, etc. Allow the DM and players to make all actions in real time once the encounter begins.
Of course, in practice this may be difficult - you'll have to find a clever way of regulating actions to avoid players, for example, moving their PCs a hundred feet and making 10 attacks on 10 Orcs in 5 seconds.
One option (inspired by the "Escape: The Curse of the Temple" board game) is make combat a "dice-based" system. Players and DM roll a die (or even a bucket of dice) to determine how far PCs and monsters move (if you're using a battle grid) or the success of an attack or spell. The action of rolling dice and examining the results works to keep everything happening at once while making combat more exciting.
Or make combat a card-based system - give players a deck of playing cards and ask them to write down combat actions plus maybe feats on each card (move, melee attack, ranged attack, cast spell, special actions, etc.). They can pick some of the cards for their initial hand of action cards, but have to draw the rest from their shuffled deck during gameplay. Players play a card to perform an action then draw a new card from their deck (not to exceed the hand limit). A powerful foe like a dragon or beholder would have quite a few action cards to juggle given their multiple attack abilities.
Something like that - well, the devil's in the details but you get the gist.

How can I speed up D&D 3.5e combat?


Linking Approval Tasks on List Items with SharePoint Designer Workflows

Question: I have a simple approval process that I built with SharePoint Designer 2010.  It starts by assigning a task to the user.  The user simply approves and rejects the task.  Based on the status an email is triggered back to the requestor.  Here is my problem, I do not understand how to link that approver task back to the right List Item. I am having trouble understanding the workflow lookup. The condition is not beign recognized of Approve or reject.  Does anyone have an article of how to accomplish an easy lookup as such?  Do I need to set a variable that is reused?
Answer: in the 'send email' action, in the content area of the message add a lookup to the current item.
so, in your workflow you will need to set it to fire on creation and on change. so, when the item is created it sends the email to the approver with the link to the item. once the approver changes the 'status' your workflow will fire again sending another email to the creator or whoever with a link to the item.
Answer: You need to edit the "change the behavior of a single task".
Then tap into the "When a task completes" section. Inside this, you have to explicitly set the "Content Approval Status" to Approved\Rejected\Denied (For SPO only)

Source article here


What are some examples of games that don't invent history or language?

Question: IE, games that don't make up words or names in languages belonging to the game-verse, but borrow as exactly as possible from history, folklore, etymology, and mythology.
(What is this type of game called anyway?)
Comment: D&D is a mythological mongrel, stealing and mixing bits in strange ways and making other things up whole-cloth. My understanding is that the OP is looking for a game that *uses* existing mythology without twisting it around.
Comment: I think "realistic" is an overloaded word when talking about RPGs.  I'm not sure what the asker is going for, though.  Do setting-less games count?
Comment: are you looking for like, civil-war reenactment rpgs?
Comment: Yeah, there's about a thousand RPGs set in "modern day as we generally know it"...  Or is the question specifically scoped to naming and language?  In which case those still apply...  Do you want "a game in a fictional world but all the names and words are unadulterated from real history?" The question is hazy and confusing I think.
Comment: I don't understand: a game that invents terminology is not ok, but one based on a myth (say, the Cthulhu mythos) that invents words (say, shoggoths) is?
Answer: Ars Magica is the pride of its fans for this very reason—its core and supplements are founded on the principles of science, magic, and mythology as were believed by the people of the middle ages. The basic premise of the game is that all the things those people believed about the world are true: demons, humours, goblins, fairy circles, aether, etc. As a side effect, the "historical authenticity" of the game is very high.
Another is arguably Call of Cthulhu (and the Gumshoe-based Trail of Cthulhu). The stuff in the game and adventures is all drawn from historical fact and from the established Lovecraftian Mythos. The faithfulness of the material to the period is one of the primary indicators of the quality of a supplement to fans.
I don't think this kind of genre has an established, recognised name, but in analogy to book genres I would call it "historical fantasy".
Answer: King Arthur Pendragon falls squarely and unashamedly in this area. Its all about replaying the literature around the legends. Everything has its source in the history of Britain and the legends of King Arthur.
Answer: GURPS has a world called Yrth that has cultures that were sucked in during an event known as the Banestorm (which is the title of the book). The languages and people are essentially "borrowed" from other cultures, and are placed into a fantasy context. It's an interesting concept, and I'd highly recommend it if you're looking for something a little more fantastic, but still grounded in reality. One of the features is that there are faiths from our own world (Christianity, Islam, Judaism), but transposed into another world. Of course there is still some history that's invented for the game world, but there is still the shared culture that preceded it.
Here's a link to the book:
http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/banestorm/
GURPS 3rd edition also has a lot of alternate history books, as well as several "Who's Who", detailing persons of interest from different cultures. And if you're looking for decently researched historical settings, there's plenty of those to be mined from, such as the Aztecs, Greece, Egypt, Russia, etc..
More info at:
http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/alternate.html
http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/historical.html
There's also Dark Millennium from BTRC for EABA. It's written from the perspective that Armageddon happened at 1033 AD, and the world continues to exist from that point. It's a pretty fascinating, and I'm looking to really read into this one.
One last one is Deryni Adventures for Fudge, based on the Deryni novels by Katherine Kurtz. The history maps very closely with Middle-ages Europe, and the predominant religion is essentially Catholicism. I'm not sure this is exactly what you're looking for, but it could prove to be an interesting take.
Hope this helps!
Comment: these answers were all great. that sounds like what i wanted to play when i asked this though, so i accepted it.
Answer: Montsegur 1244. You play Cathars in a city under siege by angry Catholics. When the game ends, everyone has chosen to flee like a coward, convert to Catholicism, or die in a fire as a heretic.
Grey Ranks. You play one of the young Boy Scouts or Girl Guides in 1944 Warsaw. You have to balance the needs of a teenager against the violent environment of war-torn Poland.
AGON. You play Greek heroes, vying for glory as they face the tests of the gods in the ancient world.
Testament (d20 System). You play heroes inspired by Biblical myths in the ancient world (lots of speculative magic).
Zenobia. Historical fantasy inspired by the late Roman Empire (ca. 260 AD). Free!
Answer: I suppose Fiasco could be an example, but it's not so much "borrowing as exactly as possible from..." as "set in this world and time".
Comment: -1. This is trivially true of games that don't have much setting.
Comment: @SevenSidedDie Well, one thing is "don't have much setting" and another is "inspired in heist-gone-wrong movies" which are almost all set in this day and age.
Comment: It goes against what the question is asking. It's trivially easy to not make up fantastical names or languages when a game doesn't contain fantastical things. The Q is asking for games that do, that borrow from real-world mythology, history, folklore, and language.
Answer: An excellent example of a modern day RPG that fits this description is Unknown Armies. Intended as a vehicle for contemporary urban occult games, it supports street level campaigns through to global and even cosmic level campaigns (and the seemless transition between them).
In the past few years, I've played in a couple of long running UA games. One, somewhat like a cross between Naked Lunch, The Matrix and Dark City, is outside the scope of this question, but the other, Election! is right at home here.
In Election! we all played people with an interest in getting the Prime Minister of the UK out of power and in the first session we were told that the PM was an Avatar of the True King, trying to supplant Churchill as the new controller of the archetype (just as Churchill, the British Statesman, supplanted King Arthur, the British King). This would have enormous consequences for the future of democracy in the UK (a new dark age of totalitarian Fortress Britain). We soon discovered that several of the PMs ministers had connections with the Occult underground and were helping him to ascend.
I played a videomancer (one of the standard adepts) and was the bedrock of the media side of our campaign. My favourite Formulae (spell, of sorts) was "Did you threaten to overrule him?" which allowed him to force an interviewee to answer a politically dangerous question truthfully (named from the famous exchange between Jeremy Paxman and Michael Howard on Newsnight). We also had other Avatars and Adepts created especially for the campaign (which is easy to do in UA).
We had lots of fun playing with politics, incorporating current affairs into our game, using our adept powers to alter the course of the election, working out things we could do to gain charges (the magical power Adepts need in order to activate Formulae), our Avatars acting in accordance with their archetypes so that they could gain power and forcing the PM into situations where he had to act against his archetype, so that he lost magical power.
All in all, it was a lot of fun, and it has been surprising in the few years since the game, just how many of the things we did in game have actually happened in real life, UK politics.
As a means to their personal ends, several of us managed to acquire a major charge from the campaign, and my character used his charge to grant himself immortality until all state brutality was ended. *8')


Quality difference between LME and DME

Question: Is there any quality difference between the two? Dry malt extract is way more convenient for me, but are there any downsides? Can I use just DME (and no liquid malt extract) with no problems in some recipe?
Answer: DME stays fresh far longer than LME.  Old, oxidized LME has been pointed to as the source of "cidery" off flavors in homebrew.
Answer: LME is 20% water, so if you're changing a recipe, make your conversions appropriately.
Provided they're both fresh, I can't speak to noticing any quality differences, but that's just me.
Answer: In my experience there's no effect on the quality of the beer, and I've also found DME to be the preferred ingredient if I have a choice, because of the convenience. You'll also probably find a bigger variety of DME (sometimes even specific to a single grain) at your brew shop because it's the more popular of the two, so developing your own recipes is very easy.
Answer: Other than the extra water in LME there's no quality difference in my experience. There is a very slight difference in handling.
LME is hard to use a partial quantity as it sticks to everything, making it difficult to measure out accurate weight or volume. For that reason I prefer DME, though pouring DME into a steaming wort does cause some of the crystals in the packaging to absorb the steam and turn sticky (but it's negligible)
Comment: To avoid steaming your pack, best to transfer to your measured DME to a bowl. Can then dunk into the water to dissolve off any stuck bits

Quality difference between LME and DME


Do you have offshore Development/QA team members (which work for a different corp.) as a part of onshore Scrum Team?

Question: Considering the offshore Developers/Testers work for a different company, would you recommend for/against having them in the onshore Scrum (first ever) effort? i.e., Just have the internal developer working with them on a daily bases to represent them onshore or to have all of them (7~9 total developers/QA) become part of the onshore Scrum effort by being treated as a distributed team.
Answer: All of the on and offshore team members should be treated as part of the team or you aren't doing scrum.  The standup can be a challenge as the phone times are always awkward somewhere.
It's really more important to have the offshore team involved anyways, they are usually the ones where communication is a challenge.
Answer: Read Scrum and XP from Trenches by Henrik Kniberg who propose 2 strategies - one common team accross different countries and the second, separated teams.
Answer: its been a year and I've setup a new team in the Ukraine, Denmark and Cyprus as well as one developer in China. We use Greenhopper and are on Sprint 5 iteration. Works well using skype and join.me to share Planning Board. Everyone votes on story points. We have a group Skype chat where all group communication happens. Many people are in this position of hybrid local/remote. Make sure they communicate with each other and use the group Contact to air out issues. Also, the Daily standup is posted on Basecamp and referred to by other management.
I setup a development team in China and just ran them through a sprint, but I'm the product owner and the only one not at the office. I have a separate squad in US for design and do not include them in the China team sprints. You could fully integrate both teams (video or conference call based daily scrums, duplicate physical artifacts or online tools, both teams at sprint planning, review and retrospective) or create two separate teams. I think separate teams would be easier and you can use the output of the onshore team be the product backlog of the offshore team.


Minimum distance between two data sets

Question: Suppose we have two sets of data, $X$ and $Y$, each of which contains
$10$ positive numbers. Now let us order the data sets $X=\left\{ x_{1},\cdots,x_{10}\right\}$,
$x_{1}\ge\cdots\ge x_{10}>0$ and $Y=\left\{ y_{1},\cdots,y_{10}\right\}$,
$y_{1}\ge\cdots\ge y_{10}>0$ and define $d:=\sum_{k=1}^{10}\left|x_{i_{k}}-y_{j_{k}}\right|$,
that is the sum of the distances of the numbers in pairs from the
two data sets. Does anyone know how to prove that $d$ achieves its minimum when $i_{k}=j_{k}=k$
for $1\le k\le10$, or is there any counter example if it is not true? Thanks.
Comment: same question was posted and was answered here: http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/95546/minimum-distance-between-two-data-sets
Answer: Here is a slightly more general proof.
Let $x$ be any vector in $R^n$. Let $x^\downarrow$ denote the vector obtained from $x$ by sorting its entries in decreasing order, so that $x_1^\downarrow \ge x_2^\downarrow \ge \cdots \ge x_n^\downarrow$. Now, let $x, z \in R^n$, and consider $x+z$. Clearly, if we apply the same permutation to $x$ and $z$ separately, the entire sum $x+z$ is also permuted the same way. Hence, we may assume wlog that $x=x^\downarrow$. Now, let $x$ be as in your question above, and let $z=-y$.
Recall now the concept of majorization. A quick calculation (also see Theorem II.4.2 of Matrix Analysis by R. Bhatia) shows that
$$x^\downarrow + z^\uparrow \prec x + z$$
(since we assumed wlog that $x=x^\downarrow$); also since $y=-z$ we obtain
$$x^\downarrow - y^\downarrow \prec x - y.$$
But this majorization implies that for any symmetric gauge function $G$, we have
$$G(x^\downarrow-y^\downarrow) \le G(x-y).$$
This then implies the original minimization claim if we choose $G=\|\cdot\|_1$.

Minimum distance between two data sets


How can I retrieve the deleted backup file from iTunes for iPhone?

Question: I just upgraded my iPhone to iOS 5 after I did a backup of the device, and during the upgrade another backup was done too. When trying to restore me backup I was asked for a password which I didn't know about and accidentally I deleted the backup file that I created and therefore, I have no contacts, photos, nothing only my apps but as if they were brand new. Please help I need to retrieve my deleted backup file from iTunes and retrieve my contact and photos.
Answer: Usually the backups are stored in this location:

~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/

Just hop into TimeMachine or whatever your backup solution is and restore the contents of that folder.

Digging into these files is hit or miss and based on the version of iTunes and encryption settings, they may only be understood by iTunes. There is no easy way to get specific info (like contacts or calendars) from these files. Besides the name of the files are random numbers and letters, so good luck making sense of that...
As to the initial dilemma, I don't really understand what happened. iTunes never deleted a backup, unless I did it manually in the Preferences. Do you see some backup files in iTunes Preferences > Devices, especially ones dating before the upgrade to iOS 5? I find it very odd that in the middle of the upgrade it would decide to destroy such important data.
Do you have a Time Machine backup? Were you subscribing to a sync service like MobileMe, or Google where your contacts and other stuff like that would still be?
And how did you delete the backup files actually? Did you do it manually or the OS asked your permission to do it?


What is the difference between "presentation" and "demonstration"?

Question: What is the difference between presentation and demonstration?
Answer: In the context of my work at a software company, a presentation would include powerpoint slides with lists or screen shots of software functionality. A demonstration would include using the software to show, or demonstrate the functionality or how to complete a task.
Comment: Absolutely agree (speaking also from a software/technical background). The interactivity involved in a demo has resulted in a fairly common turn of phrase "if the demo gods are with us" to indicate that a demo can (and often does!) go wrong.
Answer: For one thing, a demonstration could involve hundreds of thousands of people marching through the streets, some of them maybe throwing petrol bombs.
A presentation rarely involves more than a handful of 'presenters', and usually it's just one person standing up in front of an audience and talking.
Without more context it's hard to be more specific. In some cases the words are interchangeable.
Answer: Assuming that by "demonstration" you mean somebody showing something to others rather than angry mobs in the streets:
A demonstration is a type of presentation.  A presentation is any situation where you present some material to others.  The typical presentation is a lecture with visual aids like slides.  A demonstration is where you actually show something.
If the bulk of the time will be taken with showing the thing being demonstrated, you usually call it a demonstration (or "demo") even if there are also some accompanying slides.  If most of the time will be spent with slides and talking and a demonstration is only a small part of it, it's better to call it a presentation (or a presentation that includes a demo) to set people's expectations correctly.
Answer: Demonstration is when someone is showing something to someone on how it works.
Presentation is when someone is presenting something to a group of person either by charts diagram, slides etc.


Fast leveling and easy experience farming

Question: What is the sweet spot for experience gain? Is it more effective to fight the highest level enemies I can find, or am I penalized for being out of my depth? Are certain areas of the game better/best for experience gain/leveling? Are bosses better than areas with infinite minions? Would I get exp faster in a higher-level co-op game? What are the most time-effective techniques for rushing/boosting a character (either solo or co-op)?
Comment: Same answer to most questions as it was in the first. Co-op with a higher level grants a ridiculous amount of experience.
Comment: Wouldn't it make more sense for you to make another character and play at his level?
Comment: (Not if he's closer to my level than the beginning)
Comment: Well for us to be able to answer your question you should tell us what level are you and what level is your friend,then we could suggest some areas and enemies.
Comment: That's already changed since I posted. I edited the q to be more general.
Comment: @BenBrocka: Which now no longer works :(
Answer: Kill flesh stick again and again in the Tina special guest quest. best if your coop partner stays by her and keeps beginning the mission while you are where he spawns waiting for him with a shotgun or else. at lvl 14 its 1800exp every time. i leveled to 20 in 5 minutes.
Note: If you restart the quest too quickly fleshstick will stop spawning and you will have to reload the area. To avoid this, wait until Tiny Tina finishes her line ending with "my abode". If you mess up, first she won't speak her next line. If this happens, wait a minute or two (to let Tina finish the sentence, even though you can't hear it) and start the mission once more, Tina should talk again.
Comment: Note that as of a patch a while ago **this trick no longer works** and Fleshstick gives very low XP, the same as a normal weak enemy.
Answer: What I found interesting is if you kill one of the 3 Rakk flying around in vault of the warrior one will continuously spawn from a spot around the arena flying at you and attempting to attack you.
This becomes quite awesome because they do not stop coming at you, if you're prepared to stand on the spot (at the bottom of the stairs just before you fall into the arena is the best) for a while, it's good xp.
At level 50 playing TVHM they give you an average of 300 XP per kill. If you have adequate power in your shots or a good gun with a decent size mag they will drop like a rock. If you have the bee one hit or if not maybe from 2-3 or 5-7 depending on power of gun. This becomes around 3000 to 6000 xp if you can kill 10-20 rakks, in one magazine. So after only 4 mags you get the same xp as if you killed the warrior.
This is great for boosting another character, just throw him in your game and kill rakk with your lv 50 guy and xp is yours. It is a bit time consuming but not as much as other methods, and it's damn easy. About 20 minutes to get lv 47 commando to lv 48.
Hope this helps :)
Comment: I'll add that Mechromancers with the time-increase-on-Deathtrap-kill skill can have Deathtrap do the farming for you (with the ranged electric attack)
Answer: Caustic caverns is probably the best place to level your character, from what Ive seen the creatures there level up with you and are always your level or a few higher (caustic caverns is available after chapter nine in sanctuary hole).
Comment: I have found that farming the Infested Warehouse in Caustic Caverns is pretty good for XP. Kite the varkids around until the pod. Shoot the pods. 1K XP and very easy kills.
Answer: Due to patches on the warrior killing exploit, one of the best ways to speed level is repeating Bar Room Blitz in Pyro Pete's Bar (Mr. Torgue's Campaign of Carnage DLC) over and over. Every time a level 50 character completes the mission for you, you gain a level (up to level 25).
Answer: Recently posted from Reddit - /r/Borderlands, "Easy way to level up any character":

In the mission: Rock, Paper, Genocide, Marcus makes you shoot a stat, vulnerable enemy. If you decide to shoot the enemy with the wrong elemental type, you still get the xp for the kill, and Marcus just spawns another enemy for you to kil! If you happen to have an Infinity Pistol or any other gun that rapidly kills, you can rack up xp VERY quickly.

and

You get most experience from the Bot target.
Answer: I ended up fighting Dukino's Mom at level 32 for 7600 exp. per farm. The route leading to the Bosses Chamber has openable items for completing the open containers challenge. Lynchwood was a fun farm area for sure. There is a legendary rocket launcher drop from the Boss as well!
Answer: The fastest way to level is to level a seperate account on your xbox to 50 by whatever means you find fastest (I used warrior farming, or just playing through with second account on).
Once you have a level 50 on the seperate account, use that account to finish playthrough 1 and almost all of playthrough 2.  Stop on the last mission (Talon of God) right before you call the moonshot to kill the warrior.  Save the game and quit.
Now reload the game and a second account (most likely your normal account).  Run down there with your second account, moonshot the warrior (25k+exp), collect the lvl 50 legendary that drops pretty much everytime, shoot jack (79k+exp), Pause the game with the second player (account your leveling, not the one with the quest) exit the game with that character which saves for only that toon.
Now with your first player (one with the quest) signout of your profile, this will take you back to the title screen without saving, allowing you to repeat as many times as you want.
You can level any new toon to 50 in about 1 hour, this is the fastest I have found without actually cheating.
On a second note, while playing through the game with that level 50, have a second person logged in as well, that toon will not only complete all quests, but they will also be around level 45 when your toon finishes the game.
Good luck and happy leveling.
Comment: Also, I'd call it cheating to kill the game without giving it a chance to save. Duping is not "legitimate playing", and this is basically quest reward duping.
Comment: That still doesn't quite answer how you would get to 50 for the first time.
Comment: Why bring definition of cheating into this?
Answer: There's a tradeoff between fighting very high XP gain enemies, and fighting relatively low XP gain enemies but killing them much faster.  This break-even point tends to move as you level, so a general rule of thumb might be that if you find yourself getting knocked down often in an area, and/or kills are relatively far between, you're probably better off finding an easier area to farm in.
That said, I'll note a few areas I've farmed XP in, and some pros/cons to each.  I used these methods to level 3 secondary characters up to the 20's while co-oping with a post-TVHM level 53 Axton in order to get character-related achievements.
In the Vault of the Warrior area, there are infinite numbers of Rakk that you can fight constantly.  It's time consuming to get here, as you have to go all the way through Hero's Pass to reach the Vault.  There are some pretty rough fights, including a Badass Constructor.  You can run past these guys, but on TVHM with a level 53 Axton, I still found myself going down pretty frequently.
If you have the Torgue DLC, the Bar Room Blitz mission can be done over and over again for XP.  Of the several repeatable missions in the DLC, this one seems to be the easiest and most profitable.  The enemies here are always 50-52, even on Normal mode, so you'll want to be mid 50s in order to kill them fast enough to make it profitable.  If you can't just wreck face on these guys, you're not going to gain XP fast enough.
You can go pretty much anywhere on TVHM and find enemies that are in the high 40's and low 50's.  If you're getting kills consistently, you'll level quickly.  It then boils down to where there aren't many annoying enemies that slow you down and give you trouble.
I personally prefer Arid Nexus: Badlands.  There are JNK Loaders here, which are easy to cripple and kill.  There are also a lot of skags, which are also easy kills.  Second to this might be the Wildlife Exploitation Preserve, where there are many of the same enemies, plus some Stalkers.
Answer: Slappy the Thresher in the Highlands Outwash can be fought over and over again. When you're in the low 20s, it gives about 3k XP and lots of nice loot, almost always blue and purple drops and I've gotten loads of eiridium from it as well.
Answer: Head to the Dust after completing the mission "The Good, The Bad and the Mordecai", you can then farm Mobley, Gettle and McNally (plus the Black Queen if you want). At level 26, the first 3 all gave 3.5k experience and had a chance to drop a unique weapon.
There are youtube videos showing the shortcut to get up to the church where Mobley & Gettle respawn. There are also a few weapon chests in those areas.
Answer: The best experience farm I've found so far is the Vault of the Warrior. You can complete it relatively easily at level 35 and power level any character you want up to 40 in relatively good time. After you've finished the game the first time (that is there is no Handsome Jack to deal with), you can just spawn the warrior and hide out by the map exit.
Answer: I found it was easy to farm the bunker on the second playthrough; get a high level person (I use the assassin with the sniper tree decked out) and go to Thousand Cuts. Join with the player that you wish to level up and keep him/her at the spawn point.
I use the assassin with the bee shield and a high level sniper and an infinity pistol to rush through the bots until you get to the bunker, spray him in the eyes and you kill him very fast, I end up doing 100k+ damage per shot, so spray 1 or 2 rounds into him and the second player receives around 25000xp each time and I receive an about $100k and around 10 eridium.
Answer: The warrior on TVHM will rack up experience but to get even more there are infinite spawning rakks but after a while of farming them the change to a different location.if not to high of a level I would farm the bunker with a good sniper rifle like the lyuda.
Plus farming the bunker gives you a chance to get legendary loot and heads for your character.So good farming.
Answer: Go to fight the warrior and stick to the exit to Eridium Blight. There the warrior will not be able to attack you. Just break the weak spots with machine guns and hit it with a sniper.
Answer: If you want easy experience, run Sawtooth Cauldron over and over with a lower level second player in co-op.  There are about 130 enemies in this area.  If you run it with a level 50 character to level up a second character, each enemy is worth between 300 to 2000 XP.  This area is also great for farming badass points for your characters due to the high number of enemies that you can just run through.
Moonshot farming is the fastest way, though.  25000 XP every time you hit the button for your second character.  Make sure you do it right though, because if you mess it up you have to start all the way back at the beginning to get a character back to that spot.


What makes an amp sound heavy?

Question: What I want to know is what makes some amps sound the way they sound like the Sunn Model T/Sunn Scepter or the Ampeg VT22. What are the components inside the amps which give it a round, fat , heavy, ruough, "slidy" sound (Sorry it is hard to describe with words). Is this related to the "tubes"?  How do they affect the sound of an amp?
Answer: I think I know what you are referring to and there are several possible answers.
Tubes
As you pointed out tubes have a major effect on the sound of an amp. But the presence of tubes alone may not fully account for what you are hearing.
If you notice that initially increasing the volume of the amp correlates with the sound you are describing then what you are hearing is likely Tube Saturation. This is when the signal through a tube is high enough to begin producing new harmonic overtones that are not present at lower levels or in solid state amps. The result is a rounder timbre with more pronounced overtones.
If you notice that then continuing to increase the volume of the amp correlates with the sound you are describing then what you are likely hearing is Tube Distortion. This is when the signal through the tube is so high that it begins to be clip, producing new inharmonic overtones not present at lower levels or in solid state amps. The result is a rougher timbre with some inharmonic overtones
Though these two effects are not the same they are closely related and interdependent and there is often a sweet spot where the two balance out quite well. Additionally, high volume is not a requirement for producing either of these effects, only high signal. So using a tube preamp may be sufficient for reproducing the sound you are describing. If only a specific amp will do, a classic alternative is to disconnect any speakers and connect the amp's signal output to the input of another, preferably identical, amp for independent volume control.
Be careful not to ever connect the speaker output of an amp to the input of another since this can easily damage both.
Speakers
One additional consideration is the speaker and cabinet configuration.
As you connect more speakers to the amp you begin to hear the effects of harmonic reinforcement. Though the sound produced by multiple speakers may be very similar they are never exactly the same and also each occupy a unique position in space. As a result the multiple sources reinforce one another in their common harmonics and counteract each other in their differences. The result is fuller sound with a more consistant timbre, less subject to environmental variables.
The frequency response of your speakers also plays a key role in the timbre it produces. No matter how much attention is given to equalization there are often harmonics outside of the response capabilities of a given speaker. As a result the timbre may be dramatically effected by variations in speaker design, materials, and manufacturing.
Other
There are of course many other factors effecting in sound of an amp, some known and many unknown. These four are just those I am most familiar with.
Answer: Even harmonic distortion is a pleasing sounding distortion where a great tube amp can do very well.  Even harmonic distortion helps the sound become wide and strong, like in rock and roll music. As mentioned above, tubes help a great deal, biasing the amplifying circuit even more, and speakers also.

What makes an amp sound heavy?


Do I need the "X power" books

Question: We've just been using the Character Builder for all the builds and Powers an what have you. Is there enough guidance/play advice in the various Power Books (Divine, Martial, Arcane etc) to make them worthwhile? Why do you think that?
Answer: In general, the books don't have a ton of fluff. Primal Power and Psionic Power are the exceptions; they added a fair bit of background material, but possibly not enough to be worth the purchase price on their own.
Answer: I have all of the Power books, and I have never actually opened them outside of looking up some text that was not included in the power cards after we've printed them from the character builder.
I find my money is better spent on the campaign setting, DMGs, and Monster Manuals.
Answer: The Power Books are largely rules, which can be found on Character Builder.  There is some flavor text, background about the default game setting, but that's probably not worth the price of the book by itself.  Doubly so if you're playing in a different setting (Forgotten Realms, Eberron,etc).
I prefer books to the builder myself so I have a few for use of the rules.
Answer: I enjoy using the books. I usually have a character planned out before I use the character builder and having the books handy helps with that.
Answer: Having a subscription to Character Builder I have never had to use a power book at all. I've not bought a single one. I don't feel like I've missed out on anything and am getting on with playing perfectly fine.
I'm happy to never buy one, even if I am missing out I'm never gonna find out that way, and so don't really care.
[grins]
Comment: -1: I don't find "Don't know, don't care" to be a useful answer.

Do I need the "X power" books


Infant and noise from fireworks

Question: I live in China and have a 2-week-old baby daughter. Today is Chinese New Year and the noise from the fireworks tonight will be deafening. What is the best way to protect her from the noise?
Answer: When (if) she wakes up to the noise, be there, be calm (or joyful if you like), demonstrating her that there is nothing to be afraid of. Take her into your arms if she is frightened. Admire the fireworks together if she is interested (and if it is visible from your window).
Here in Hungary we also have fireworks at new year, although it is probably modest compared to the Chinese version. Our daughters so far had no trouble with it - sometimes they didn't even wake up, and when they did, they excitedly enjoyed the sight.
Don't know if there are any earplugs for infants, but she might get more irritated by such a thing than the noise itself. If your ears can take it, hers will too. Even if it's very loud, I believe experiencing it once a year won't make any long term damage. If Chinese infants have survived it for centuries, yours will too :-)
Comment: Last 4th of July in the US I had my son with me. He wanted to help me light the fireworks and had a GREAT time watching them.
Answer: My eldest was bothered by noise. I used to hold him with one ear against my chest and the other covered by my hand while he slept. It was nice for a few hours till things quietened down.
Answer: Some babies are more sensitive than others. I was lucky to have my kids sleep through the fire crackers. If your baby gets upset, I guess all you can do is hold the baby close to you and close the ears with your hand. Find a room, close the door and windows to block out some of the noise too.

Infant and noise from fireworks


How do I get past level 8?

Question: Does anyone have any idea on how to get past level 8 in QUBE Adventures? It's unbelievably hard, I must be missing something.
Answer: First, let me mention that this is a poorly designed game.  I'm mentioning that not as a matter of opinion but to make the point that this game is a bit difficult to work with and levels like this one can seem "impossible".  I'll cut short the list of gripes that I had playing this game, with the exception of mentioning that the screen tapping mechanism seemed to be rather buggy which likewise made controlling the qube quite difficult at times.
Regardless, I have managed to come up with a strategy that does solve Level-8.  This level is laid out with a series of five platforms.  Below, I've outlined a path that you can follow to get to the final door.  This is difficult, but it can be done.
The idea is to hop to the first platform following the yellow line, next the blue and finally the red path.  Sorry, the arcs that I have drawn do not follow the exact arcing path that your qube should follow in the air but they are a good generalized outline of how the qube should float from platform to platform.
You don't want to use a lot of power when you launching your qube.  You want them to just barely land on the next level, near the middle of the platform, almost sliding on the inner edge toward the middle.
Be cautious and follow the path below and you will make it to level 9... where a new obstacle will be added to make this game a bit more interesting. ;)

How do I get past level 8?


Mountain Lion upgrade for organizations

Question: How does an organization upgrade to Mountain Lion?  Is it possible to create a generic Apple ID and purchase multiple copies from the Mac App Store?  Are there any other available methods?  Once one Mac is upgraded, can a DVD be created and used to upgrade the rest?  How many license are needed?  Individual upgrades seem to be good for 5 installs, however I suspect that does not hold true for organizations.
Answer: The general advice is that Apple has sales channels (within the retail stores as well as without) to assist organizations understand the various programs and licensing terms. Additionally, organizations typically get tools to assist with license management, support and deployment.
If you don't have a sales contact yet, you could start with this somewhat dated, but very nice white paper on the issues for deploying OS X in a large scale setting:
http://www.apple.com/education/docs/Apple-SolutionsSystemMgmt.pdf
There are more up-to-date presentations for the App Store, but I haven't seen them published on the web.
Answer: My experience went something like this, not sure how typical it is:
Apple Rep, was contacted.  There is no volume discount for less than 20 licenses, but I think we did pay with a PO.  We got an encrypted PDF with some keys.  Everybody that needs to upgrade can create an individual Apple ID using their organization e-mail address (select the 'None' payment option), click on 'Redeem', enter one of the keys and download and install Mountain Lion.
I hope we never need to transfer a license between Apple IDs.

Mountain Lion upgrade for organizations


What mistake have I committed in doing these steps to find the limit: $\lim\limits_{x\to0}\frac{\cos x -1}{x^2}$?

Question: How should I attempt this question?
Find

$$\lim_{x\to0}\frac{\cos x -1}{x^2}$$

Here are my steps. Doesn't feels correct.

$$\lim_{x\to0}\frac{\cos x -1}{x^2}=\lim_{x\to0}\frac{\cos x -1}{x}*\lim_{x\to0}\frac{1}{x}=0*\lim_{x\to0}\frac{1}{x}=0$$
Comment: $\lim\limits_{x\rightarrow\infty}(1/x)$ doesn't exist. You might be tempted to say it's $\pm\infty$, but $0\cdot\infty$ is an indeterminate form. Hint: you could use L'Hopital.
Comment: Multiply and divide by $\cos x +1$ and use $\sin^2 x+ \cos^2 x=1$.
Comment: I can't use L'hopital. Haven't learnt that yet technically.
Answer: $$\lim_{x\to0}\frac{\cos x -1}{x^2}=\lim_{x\to0}\frac{(\cos x -1)(\cos x+1)}{x^2(\cos x+1)}$$ $$=\lim_{x\to0}\frac{\cos^2 x -1}{x^2(\cos x+1)}$$ $$=-\lim_{x\to0}\frac{\sin^2x}{x^2}\lim_{x\to0}\frac{1}{(\cos x+1)}$$ $$=-\lim_{x\to0}\left(\frac{\sin x}{x}\right)^2\lim_{x\to0}\frac{1}{(\cos x+1)}$$ $$=-\frac{1}{2}$$
Answer: $$\lim_{x\to0}\frac{\cos x -1}{x^2}=-\lim_{x\to0}\frac{2\sin^2\frac x 2}{x^2}=-\frac 12 \lim_{x\to0}\left(\frac{\sin\frac x 2}{\frac x 2}\right)^2$$
$$=-\frac 12 \left(\lim_{x\to0}\frac{\sin\frac x 2}{\frac x 2}\right)^2=-\frac 1 2$$
For clarity, we may put $x=2y, x\to0 \implies y=\frac x 2 \to0$
$$=-\frac 12 \left(\lim_{x\to0}\frac{\sin\frac x 2}{\frac x 2}\right)^2=-\frac 12 \left(\lim_{y\to0}\frac{\sin y}{y}\right)^2=-\frac 12 $$
Answer: There are several mistakes in your computation, but luckily this is a very instructive counter-example! In your first step, you apply the product formula for a limit. But you can only do this when both of the factors have a limit that exists. In your case,
$$
\lim_{x\to 0} \frac{1}{x}
$$
does not exist (it tends to $+ \infty$), and so you can't split the limit over the product.
The second mistake you make is in trying to evaluate something of the form $0 \times \infty$. There's no way to do this: what rule do you apply - zero times anything is zero, or infinity times anything is infinity? The answer is neither, and there are examples where you have expressions of the form $0 \times \infty$ that can take any real value, or $\pm \infty$.
Other answers will give you an indication of some ways to evaluate this correctly, but given your original question, I thought I would offer some commentary on your solution.
Comment: Thanks very much for your perspective! That helps. Gotta avoid those mistakes in my exams I guess.
Comment: @NKS It is better to use `\times` instead of `*` and I have edited it in your post.
Answer: $$\lim_{x \to a} (f(x) g(x)) = \lim_{x \to a} f(x) \lim_{x \to a} g(x)$$ only when $-\infty < \lim_{x \to a} f(x), \lim_{x \to a} g(x) < \infty$.
A better way is to write the Taylor series of $\cos(x)$ as $1 - \dfrac{x^2}2 + \mathcal{O}(x^4)$. This gives us that
$$\dfrac{\cos(x) - 1}{x^2} = -\dfrac12 + \mathcal{O}(x^2)$$
Hence, $$\lim_{x \to 0}\dfrac{\cos(x) - 1}{x^2} =\lim_{x \to 0}\left( -\dfrac12 + \mathcal{O}(x^2) \right) = -\dfrac12 + \lim_{x \to 0} \mathcal{O}(x^2) = -\dfrac12$$
Comment: Thanks! That's pretty deep because I haven't learnt T.S yet, but I sorta get it from the first sentence.


Can't add Motion Blur to layer imported from Photoshop

Question: I can't enable Motion Blur on this layer:

Any ideas what could be wrong?
Answer: Thats because you have the collapse transformations button ticked:

When collapse transformations is ticked After Effects takes the options of the layers inside the 'loader' composition. So you will need to open up the 'loader' composition (double click) and then you can enable motion blur on the layers inside.
When you import Photoshop documents into After Effects as compositions, any groups in the PSD become pre-comps within AE.
Answer: If you right click your "loader"-layer and choose Pre-Compose Layer and choose Move all atributes into the new composition, you should be able to put motion blur on it.
And just a tip: If you for some reason in some situations can't use blurs, often because of motion generated by effects, you can use CC Force Motion Blur to force motion blur to your footage.