This is a Questions and Answers site, the actual persons asking and answering is a less important matter. There is hardly any difference between an answer provided by "user155098" and "chx". The profile pages still could serve to link the contributions together, the reputation points and badges would still show, the "top users" ladders would still function etc. Users, I guess, could still opt in to show their user names and profile pictures if they would want for old times' sake or something.  This would nuke the pronoun problem from orbit.  It would also fix a very long-standing bug where an older comment or answer is referenced by @username and the username changed since, making it very hard to understand the reference.  This is not a duplicate of the old question because I do not suggest anonymity, I suggest pseudonimity. Anonymity loses the link between answers of the same author. I also suggested keeping showing reputation and badges because that's important.
It has been discussed before, but in light of some of the , I can't help but wonder what is accomplished by displaying the author of a given question or answer.  There is a , but if anything, I don't think it goes far enough.  If questions and answers are supposed to stand on their own merit, why do we need to show the author at all?  I'm not proposing any change to the way rep works; rep should still be accrued and abilities gained.  The only difference is that questions and answers would appear anonymous.  Does this better reflect the goals of SO?  If so, how far do you think the anonymity should be taken?  If not, what shortcomings am I missing?
Positivity of a determinant I'm stuck to prove the following exercise : Given real numbers $x_1,\ldots,x_n$ and $y_1,\ldots,y_n$, show that  $$ \det(e^{\large{x_iy_j}})_{i,j=1}^n&gt;0 $$ provided that $x_1&lt;\cdots&lt;x_n$ and $y_1&lt;\cdots&lt;y_n$.   Any idea ? I'm going to university in October and thought I'd have a go at a few questions from one of their past papers. I have completed the majority of this question but I'm stuck on the very last part. In honesty I've been working on this paper a while now and I'm a bit tired so I'm probably giving up earlier than I usually would.  I won't write out the full question, only the last part:     Let $$S_r(n) = \sum_{m=0}^n\ (-1)^m m^r {n \choose m}$$ where r is a   non-negative integer . Show that $S_r(n)=0$ for $r&lt;n$. Evaluate   $S_n(n)$.   I have shown that $S_r(n)=0$ for $r&lt;n$ by taking $(1+z)^n= \sum_{m=0}^n\ z^m {n \choose m}$, letting $D_r(f(z))=z\frac d{dz}(z\frac d{dz}...(\frac d{dz}(f(z)))...)$ where $z\frac d{dz}$ is applied $r$ times and applied it to both sides.  The left hand side gives a polynomial, degree n which has factor $(1+z)$ for all $r&lt;n$ and the right hand side gives $\sum_{m=0}^n\ z^m (m)^r {n \choose m}$. Setting $z=-1$ yields the required result.   There is some build up to this, so I'm fairly certain that this was the intended method.  I'm stuck however on the very last part. I have tried finding a form for $D_r((1+z)^n)$, but I'm fairly sure that this isn't the correct approach, as the wording of the question implies that $S_n(n)$ needs to be considered separately.  I'm surprised that I didn't find that this question had already been asked, so apologies if it has been.  Thank you. Is there a way for non-root processes to bind to "privileged" ports on Linux? It's very annoying to have this limitation on my development box, when there won't ever be any users other than me.  I'm aware of , but none of them do exactly what I want:    (The version in Debian testing, 1.0, only supports IPv4)  (the "nat" table is not yet implemented for ip6tables, the IPv6 version of iptables) sudo (Running as root is what I'm trying to avoid) SELinux (or similar). (This is just my dev box, I don't want to introduce a lot of extra complexity.)   Is there some simple sysctl variable to allow non-root processes to bind to "privileged" ports (ports less than 1024) on Linux, or am I just out of luck?  EDIT: In some cases, you can  to do this. What order should Asimov's Foundation series be read in? If two limits don't exist, are we sure the limit of sum doesn't exist? This is a true/false question.     If the limits $$\lim_ {x\to a}\ f(x)\quad \text{ and }\quad  \lim_ {x\to a}\ g(x)$$ don't exist, limits $$\lim_ {x\to a}\ (f(x)+g(x))\quad \text{ and }\quad \lim_ {x\to a}\ (f(x)g(x))$$ don't exist also.   My idea is, that, because $$\lim_ {x\to a}\ (f(x)+g(x))=\lim_ {x\to a}\ f(x)+\lim_ {x\to a} g(x)$$ then the limits doesn't exist, correct? This question exists as it fills a specific criterion.  While you are encouraged to help maintain its answers, please understand that "big list" questions are not generally allowed on Ask Ubuntu and will likely be closed per the . More information on the .   What kind of desktop environments or shells are there for Ubuntu users to install?  Please list a desktop environment or shell for each:   a description on why you like or suggest it (features, performance, etc.). a good screenshot, preferably of it running on Ubuntu and showing off some of its features. the minimal requirement for it to be usable, If there's any setting to lower it's requirement (Like kde's low-fat profile); how to enable the said setting some instructions on how to set it up if in the repositories, please provide a software centre link Why on average does each bootstrap sample contain roughly two thirds of observations? C# 3.0 auto-properties — useful or not? Note: This was posted when I was starting out C#. With 2014 knowledge, I can truly say that auto-properties are among the best things that ever happened to the C# language.  I am used to create my properties in C# using a private and a public field:  private string title; public string Title {     get { return title;  }     set { title = value;  } }   Now, with  3.0, we got auto-properties:  public string Title { get; set; }   I know this is more a philosophical/subjective questions, but is there any reason to use these auto-properties except from saving five lines of code for each field? My personal gripe is that those properties are hiding stuff from me, and I am not a big fan of black magic.  In fact, the hidden private field does not even show up in the debugger, which is OK given the fact that the get/set functions do nothing. But when I want to actually implement some getter/setter logic, I have to use the private/public pair anyway.  I see the benefit that I save a lot of code (one vs six lines) without losing the ability to change the getter/setter logic later, but then again I can already do that by simply declaring a public field "Public string Title" without the need of the { get; set; } block, thus even saving more code.  So, what am I missing here? Why would anyone actually want to use auto-properties? $$ z = 1+2i \ (complex \ number) \\ z^n = a_n + b_ni \ \ \ (a_n, b_n \in \mathbb{Z}, n \in \mathbb{N}^*) $$ Prove that $ b_{n+2} - 2b_{n+1} + 5b_n = 0$  How can I solve this? Thank you!  EDIT: Or please tell me your ideas. I have 10 years of daily returns data for 28 different currencies. I wish to extract the first principal component, but rather than operate PCA on the whole 10 years, I want to rollapply a 2 year window, because the currencies' behaviours evolve and so I wish to reflect this. However I have a major problem, that is that both the princomp() and prcomp() functions will often jump from positive to negative loadings in adjacent PCA analyses (ie 1 day apart). Have a look at the loading chart for the EUR currency:    Clearly I can't use this because adjacent loadings will jump from positive to negative, so my series which uses them will be erroneous. Now take a look at the absolute value of the EUR currency loading:    The problem is of course that I still cannot use this because you can see from the top chart that the loading does go from negative to positive and back at times, a characteristic which I need to preserve.   Is there any way I can get around this problem? Can I force the eigenvector orientation to always be the same in adjacent PCAs?   By the way this problem also occurs with the FactoMineR PCA() function. The code for the rollapply is here:  rollapply(retmat, windowl, function(x) summary(princomp(x))$loadings[, 1], by.column = FALSE, align = "right") -&gt; princomproll Mint 18 will boot only to a black screen A inequality proposed at Zhautykov Olympiad 2008 An inequality proposed at Zhautykov Olympiad 2008.     Let be $a,b,c &gt;0$ with $abc=1$. Prove that:    $$\sum_{\mathrm{cyc}}{\frac{1}{(a+b)b}} \geq \frac{3}{2}.$$   Set $a=\frac{x}{y}$, $b=\frac{y}{z}$, $c=\frac{z}{x}$.   Our inequality becomes: $$\sum_{\mathrm{cyc}}{\frac{z^2}{zx+y^2}} \geq \frac{3}{2}.$$  Now we use that: $z^2+x^2 \geq 2zx.$ $$\sum_{\mathrm{cyc}}{\frac{z^2}{zx+y^2}} \geq \sum_{\mathrm{cyc}}{\frac{2z^2}{z^2+x^2+2y^2}} \geq \frac{3}{2}.$$  Now applying Cauchy-Schwarz we obtain the desired result.  What I wrote can be found on this link: . But now, I don't know how to apply Cauchy-Schwarz.   Thanks:) I want to show that if a function $f:[a,b]\rightarrow \mathbb R$ satisfies a Hölder condition of order $\alpha &gt; 1 $ then it is constant.  The way I think of it is as follows:  $$|f(x) - f(y)| &lt; K|x-y|^\alpha$$  $$\frac{|f(x) - f(y)|} {|x-y]}  &lt; K|x-y|^{\alpha -1}$$  $$\lim_{y\rightarrow x} \frac{|f(x) - f(y)|} {|x-y]} \le \lim_{y\rightarrow x}  K|x-y|^{\alpha -1} =0 $$ As the limit is $0$, we can remove the modulus, so we get:  $$\lim_{y\rightarrow x} \frac{f(x) - f(y)} {x-y} = 0$$ So $f$ is derivable and $f'(x) = 0$ for all $x$ in $[a,b]$. Note that the reason we can add the limit $y\rightarrow x$ is because $[a,b]$ is closed in $\mathbb R$.  However, the question gives as a hint using the mean value theorem. I am not sure why one should do that. You would first have to prove that $f$ is derivable in a similar manner to what I did, and then prove that $f$ is constant. Or is there a simpler way to do it and I am missing it?  Also please inform me of any mistakes I did in the proof (if any)/ Thank you! Question Staging SE Been a few blogs on , and I get the point. However, would a staging SE help solve some of these issues like community overlap. I understand , but how can someone not yet a part of a community know to do so. Some of the point of SO is that you often don't know what to ask exactly, and we help clear that up. So, I wonder, rather than &quot;playing hot potato&quot; would it be useful to have a site that's simply for temporarily holding questions and such.  It would be the alternative to migrating to another site where you dump all responsibility on that site. This area, all communities are responsible for. It would be a good place to ask a question if you don't know where to ask. The blog I linked talks about phrasing to a specific audience. For someone that doesn't know, the audience is better at selecting which questions are directed at them. As SE grows, the amount of communities will mean more overlap. Right now it may be reasonable to expect people to be able to predict the best community, but will it always be that way?  Some restrictions:  It would be accessible by all communities. The question could be edited, but not answered. The question could be exposed to more easily tracked/understood/etc. automated janitorial work.  Just a helpful thought. I want to output two different views (one as a string that will be sent as an email), and the other the page displayed to a user.  Is this possible in ASP.NET MVC beta?  I've tried multiple examples:  1.      If I use this example, I receive the "Cannot redirect after HTTP   headers have been sent.".   2.      If I use this, I seem to be unable to do a redirectToAction, as it   tries to render a view that may not exist. If I do return the view, it   is completely messed up and doesn't look right at all.   Does anyone have any ideas/solutions to these issues i have, or have any suggestions for better ones?  Many thanks!  Below is an example. What I'm trying to do is create the GetViewForEmail method:  public ActionResult OrderResult(string ref) {     //Get the order     Order order = OrderService.GetOrder(ref);      //The email helper would do the meat and veg by getting the view as a string     //Pass the control name (OrderResultEmail) and the model (order)     string emailView = GetViewForEmail("OrderResultEmail", order);      //Email the order out     EmailHelper(order, emailView);     return View("OrderResult", order); }   Accepted answer from Tim Scott (changed and formatted a little by me):  public virtual string RenderViewToString(     ControllerContext controllerContext,     string viewPath,     string masterPath,     ViewDataDictionary viewData,     TempDataDictionary tempData) {     Stream filter = null;     ViewPage viewPage = new ViewPage();      //Right, create our view     viewPage.ViewContext = new ViewContext(controllerContext, new WebFormView(viewPath, masterPath), viewData, tempData);      //Get the response context, flush it and get the response filter.     var response = viewPage.ViewContext.HttpContext.Response;     response.Flush();     var oldFilter = response.Filter;      try     {         //Put a new filter into the response         filter = new MemoryStream();         response.Filter = filter;          //Now render the view into the memorystream and flush the response         viewPage.ViewContext.View.Render(viewPage.ViewContext, viewPage.ViewContext.HttpContext.Response.Output);         response.Flush();          //Now read the rendered view.         filter.Position = 0;         var reader = new StreamReader(filter, response.ContentEncoding);         return reader.ReadToEnd();     }     finally     {         //Clean up.         if (filter != null)         {             filter.Dispose();         }          //Now replace the response filter         response.Filter = oldFilter;     } }   Example usage  Assuming a call from the controller to get the order confirmation email, passing the Site.Master location.  string myString = RenderViewToString(this.ControllerContext, "~/Views/Order/OrderResultEmail.aspx", "~/Views/Shared/Site.Master", this.ViewData, this.TempData); Sometimes we may ask questions on stack exchange or online forums wherein the response is helpful or even essential to a piece of work that gets published in an academic journal. If this occurs, how should credit be given to those involved in the exchange? Should they all be included as authors? Should a link to the forum be included as a reference in the paper?  Once something is in a stack exchange or forum, it's "published". Perhaps in the future, the current peer review model will transform into people writing blogs and posting in forums and databases. But for now, how might this issue be dealt with while forums, blogs, etc coexist with journals? Send mail without MFMailComposeViewController Probability of selecting an even natural number from the set $\Bbb N$. I confirmed on  thread that there are as many as even natural numbers as there are natural numbers.   Question : Suppose I have selected a number $n \in \mathbb N$; what is the probability that $n$ is even?  My Thought : $\text{Probability} = \dfrac{\text{n(E)}}{\text{n(S)}}$ Here $\text{n(S)}$ is the set of all natural numbers i.e. $\mathbb N$, and $\text{n(E)}$ is set of all even natural numbers. Since it is proved that number of elements is the set $\mathbb N$ is exactly the same as the number of elements in the set of natural numbers (it’s very easy to put the set of natural numbers, $\Bbb N=\{0,1,2,3,\dots\}$, into one-to-one correspondence with the set $\text{E}=\{0,2,4,6,\dots\}$ of even natural numbers; the map $\Bbb N\to \text{E}:n\mapsto 2n$ is clearly a bijection.) ; Thus, Probability $= \boxed 1$ I know this is definitely wrong.Probability must be $0.5$. But where am I wrong? Can anyone explain ? Thanks! Basically I have a setup like the following:  Array (  [0] =&gt; Array ( [0] =&gt; stdClass Object ( [nid] =&gt; 1 [title] =&gt; title1 [uid] =&gt; 1 [parent] =&gt; 0 [weight] =&gt; -15 [name] =&gt; name1 [value] =&gt; 0 )                [1] =&gt; stdClass Object ( [nid] =&gt; 2 [title] =&gt; title2 [uid] =&gt; 1 [parent] =&gt; 0 [weight] =&gt; -7 [name] =&gt; name2 [value] =&gt; 100 )                [2] =&gt; stdClass Object ( [nid] =&gt; 3 [title] =&gt; title3 [uid] =&gt; 2 [parent] =&gt; 0 [weight] =&gt; -1 [name] =&gt; name3 [value] =&gt; 0 )                [3] =&gt; stdClass Object ( [nid] =&gt; 4 [title] =&gt; title4 [uid] =&gt; 2 [parent] =&gt; 0 [weight] =&gt; 1 [name] =&gt; name4 [value] =&gt; 80 )               )   )   What I need is a way to sort all the arrays inside the parent array by the [value] key in the Object. I've been trying for about 2 days now with usort and different methods but I just can't seem to get my head around it. The [value] key will range anywhere from 0 to 100 and I need all of the arrays sorted in decreasing order (IE: 100 down to 0). Right at the beginning of the game, Meowth comes into your room and attempts to wake you up. At this point, I assume I have to press some button to get out of bed, but the D-Pad or A button doesn't do anything, nor any of the other buttons. How do I get out of bed to start the game?