(Motivated by , now falsely dupe-closed question.) Mods can not cast non-decisive votes. . Sometimes they would like to talk with users so that the diamond does not alter their communication context. Sometimes they might like to feel the site as an ordinary mortal do. Shog (CM at the time) says :  If the second account allows you to do something on the site that your normal account would be prevented from doing, it is abuse.  On this definition, doing these as a mod, likely qualifies as an abuse: because the normal account of the mod is prevented to act as an ordinary user account. However, it is very likely, that this definition is about the increase of the privileges of the normal users, and not when mods want to decrease their privileges on some reason. Mods I've talked about it* categorically denied that they would use any socks, although he did not make clear that they would be allowed it, if they would want to. So what is the case? Are they allowed to use secondary accounts or not? *These are in long-deleted comment chats, I have no way to find/cite them.
This question is prompted by:  and .  Basically, some diamond moderators don't always want to diamond-hammer close questions.  A workaround is to create a new account, , then cast regular close votes from that account.  Question: May a diamond moderator utilize a second, non-diamond account e.g. to cast regular close votes?     It is not a problem to have multiple accounts, as long as they aren't voting for each other and doing other sockpuppet-y things.      I worry this might be considered "sockpuppet-y".  The diamond close hammer is sometimes excessive, particularly  where moderators are .
"Elder brother" or "older brother"? I've read both forms in newspapers and online news: elder brother and older brother. What's the difference between them? When should I use which? Migrate from a virtual machine (VM) to a physical system I am running an application through gdb and I want to set a breakpoint for any time a specific variable is accessed / changed. Is there a good method for doing this? I would also be interested in other ways to monitor a variable in C/C++ to see if/when it changes. Duplicate auxiliary verbs in a sentence (may we / should we delete the second?) Find all polynomials $P(x)$ such that $P(x^2)=P(x)^2$ Find all polynomials $P:\mathbb{C}\rightarrow\mathbb{C}$ such that $$P(x^2)=P(x)^2 .$$   Here is what I tried:  First, it is easy to see the constant solutions, namely $P\equiv 0,P\equiv 1$.  Let $r$ be a root of $P$ (i.e. $P(r)=0$). It follows that all terms in the infinite sequence $r,r^2,r^4,\dots,r^{2n},\dots$ are roots of $P$. To avoid a polynomial with infinite roots, we have to have the sequence be periodic. So it turns out that either $r=0$, or the roots of $P$ are roots of unity of degree $2n$ for some $n\in\mathbb{N}$.  In the first case, we get $P(x)=xQ(x)$. Plugging in, we get $$x^2Q(x^2)=x^2Q(x)^2\implies Q(x^2)=Q(x)^2 ,$$ i.e. that $Q$ satisfies the same condition as $P$.  In the second case, we have $P(x)=(x^{2n}-1)Q(x)$. Plugging in, we get $(x^{2n}-1)Q(x^2)=(x^{2n}-2x^n+1)Q(x)^2$. I was not sure how to proceed from here. Is there a way to easily turn on/off showing the boot messages (loading the services) when Ubuntu starts? Is it something in Grub2?  I am running 10.04. How does IPv4 Subnetting Work? This is a  about IPv4 Subnets.      Related:               How does Subnetting Work, and How do you do it by hand or in your head?  Can someone explain both conceptually and with several examples? Server Fault gets lots of subnetting homework questions, so we could use an answer to point them to on Server Fault itself.   If I have a network, how do I figure out how to split it up? If I am given a netmask, how do I know what the network Range is for it? Sometimes there is a slash followed by a number, what is that number? Sometimes there is a subnet mask, but also a wildcard mask, they seem like the same thing but they are different? Someone mentioned something about knowing binary for this? I have the following code:  MemoryStream foo(){     MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream();     // write stuff to ms     return ms; }  void bar(){     MemoryStream ms2 = foo();     // do stuff with ms2     return; }   Is there any chance that the MemoryStream that I've allocated will somehow fail to be disposed of later?    I've got a peer review insisting that I manually close this, and I can't find the information to tell if he has a valid point or not. Find out BIOS Version from Windows Repeat String - Javascript Looking at the kids which - or that/who? We look at the kids which/that/who skillfully use tablets with the help of their small fingers and we understand that to surprise the younger generation will be more difficult each year.   Is the relative pronoun which acceptable here, or does it look totally out of place, because it befits a "non-restrictive relative clause" more?   It seems to me that the pronoun that looks best in the bolded position, with who an acceptable second choice. But it's hard to pin down why. Understand PAM and NSS In the last days I have set up some Linux system with LDAP authentication and everything works fine, but there's still something I can't really understand regarding NSS and PAM, also after a lot of research. Citing:  NSS allows administrators to specify a list of sources where authentication files, host names and other information will be stored and searched for  and  PAM is a set of libraries that provide a configurable authentication platform for applications and the underlying operating system  What I don't understand is how PAM and NSS work and interact together. In  the architecture is explained pretty well: I configure PAM to use pam_ldap for LDAP accounts and pam_unix for local accounts, then I configure nsswitch.conf to fetch information from local files and LDAP. If I have understood correctly LDAP is used twice: first by pam_ldap and then by NSS which is itself called from pam_unix. Is that right? Is LDAP really used twice? But why do I need to configure both NSS and PAM? My explanation is that PAM performs different tasks than NSS and it is used by other programs. But, then, it should be possible to use only NSS or only PAM, as I have read in . So I experimented a bit and I have first tried to delete LDAP from the nsswitch.conf (and the authentication stopped to work as if only pam_ldap is not enough to do the job). Then I re-enabled LDAP in NSS and I deleted it from the PAM configuration (this time everything worked fine, as if pam_ldap is useless and NSS is enough to authenticate a user). Is there anyone who can help me to clarify this? Many thanks in advance. UPDATE I've just tried something now. I removed again all the pam_ldap entries in all pam configuration fields and I have also removed shadow: ldap from nsswitch.conf. As now in all the system there are only the lines: passwd: ldap files and group: ldap files in nsswitch.conf. Well... the login with LDAP users works perfectly, those two lines (plus /etc/ldap.conf) are enough to configure LDAP auth. From my knowledge PAM in independent from NSS, but my tests showed it's not. So I ask myself is it possible to completely disable NSS and use only PAM? ... but still be required for applications that need admin privilegies?  In order to allow the following:  $ apache2ctl restart httpd not running, trying to start (13)Permission denied: make_sock: could not bind to address 0.0.0.0:80 no listening sockets available, shutting down Unable to open logs  $ sudo !! sudo apache2ctl restart             #no password asked $                                   #works!   For reference I've seen this setup on amazon's e3 instances  Any idea? I want to run a command line that opens a new chrome window with another profile. I tested the following commands: Preconditions:  I have two profiles: Profile 1 and Profile 2  Chrome is already running with Profile 1   open -a &quot;Google Chrome.app&quot; --args --profile-directory=&quot;Profile 2&quot; The above command does nothing other than bringing focus to the currently running chrome with Profile 1 I also tried: open -a &quot;Google Chrome.app&quot; --args --profile-directory=&quot;Profile 2&quot; --new-window The effect is the same. I want to run a command line that opens a new chrome window with Profile 2 while there is already a Chrome window running with Profile 1 I am working in Illustrator (15.0.2 (CS5) or 16.0.0 (CS6)) and when I try to move objects small distances, they snap to the nearest two pixels on some invisible grid. I can't find anything in the preferences. Here are some screen shots: How to install (old) packages for Ubuntu 9.04? Based on some excellent feedback by Mark here (), today I was able to use the vmware converter to clone my production server for a staging server.  However the nic won't come up no matter what I do. I attempted to inistall vmware tools, as I suspect that the fact that it is not installed might prevent the nic from working. (I have the nic set as a vmxnet3 card in the vm settings). The install failed because there were several dependencies missing as well as the Linux headers. Given that Ubuntu 9.04 has been EOL'd, the packages I need to install to get the vmware tools to install are no longer available. I doubt the ubuntu 9.04 install CD has the packages on it.   What are my options? I'd rather not upgrade the version of Ubuntu yet, as the point of the vm right now is to maintain parity with the production server. Might I have better luck resetting the driver to use vmxnet2 instead of the vmxnet3?  Thanks in advance!  Chris Multi armed bandit for general reward distribution I'm working on a multi-armed bandit problem where we do not have any information about the reward distribution.   I have found many papers which guarantee regret bounds for a distribution with known bound, and for general distributions with support in [0,1].   I would like to find out if there is a way to perform well in an environment where the reward distribution does not have any guarantees about its support.  I'm trying to compute a nonparametric tolerance limit and using that number to scale the reward distribution so I can use the algorithm 2 specified on this paper (). Does anyone think this approach will work?  If not, can anyone point me to the right spot?  Thanks a bunch! Does Gentle Repose work on a Circle of Spore Druid's Fungal Infestation Ability? The Circle of Spores Druid feature Fungal Infestation states:  If a beast or humanoid that is Small or Medium dies within 10 feet of you, you can use your reaction to animate it, causing it to stand up immediately with 1 hit point. The creature uses the zombie statistics. It remains animate for 1 hour, after which time it collapses and dies.  Circle of Spore druids also gain access to the  spell, which states:  You touch a corpse or other remains. For the duration, the target is protected from decay and can’t become undead. The spell also effectively extends the time limit on raising the target from the dead, since days spent under the influence of this spell don’t count against the time limit of spells such as raise dead.  There seem to be some good arguments that they cannot work together:  First, Gentle Repose states the target cannot become undead, which would seem to preclude Gentle Repose working on a fungally infested creature that appears to be in some sense raised from the dead. Second, gentle repose states you touch a corpse or other remains - one could argue that using the zombie statistics, the fungally infested entity is neither a corpse or remains, but an undead zombie.  However, there are also some reasonable arguments that they could work together:  First, the Fungal Infestation does not say that the creature is undead or a zombie, but that it uses the statistics of a zombie, which might leave room for a RAW interpretation that the features could work together (for example, it could be considered a fungally infested corpse or fungally raised remains). Second, Gentle Repose says that it extends the time limit of raising the target from the dead and makes reference to spells like Raise Dead, which in flavour are similar to what happens with Fungal Infestation.  RAW, can a player cast gentle repose on a zombie created by Fungal Infestation? Is it possible to Pivot data using LINQ? I am wondering if it is possible to use LINQ to pivot data from the following layout:  CustID | OrderDate | Qty 1      | 1/1/2008  | 100 2      | 1/2/2008  | 200 1      | 2/2/2008  | 350 2      | 2/28/2008 | 221 1      | 3/12/2008 | 250 2      | 3/15/2008 | 2150   into something like this:  CustID  | Jan- 2008 | Feb- 2008 | Mar - 2008 | 1       | 100       | 350       |  250 2       | 200       | 221       | 2150 Easy way to disable a UITextField? Is there an easy way to disable a UITextField in code?  My app has 12 UITextField that are all turned on by default, but when a change is detected in my Segment Control I want to disable some of the UITextField depending on what Segment the user picks.  Just need to know how to disable it or make it non-editable?  Thanks