Wouldn't requiring everyone to register weed out a lot of flaky people?  What is the "benefit" of allowing people to ask questions without registering first?
I know SO's policy is &quot;you don't have to register to ask questions,&quot; but there are so many new members and so many hit-and-runs... The majority of the questions I see now are coming from new users (i.e., it's their first question). Although unregistered users should still be able to ask questions, I think we should encourage users to create an account. Here is a couple of ways we could do that:  Explicitly encourage people to get an account: there's currently nothing telling people to do that. Maybe tell people something like &quot;Get an account, it's easy!&quot; and maybe show some of the perks of having an account (and having rep).  Maybe give a few bonus points for registering; and have that enable a basic privilege. It could be taken from one of the , for example.   Of course getting people to register is just half of the battle. I don't know what the stats are on this, but I think there's a number of users who create multiple accounts anyways. We could curb that by:  Having smart(er)? duplicate account detection systems, alerting someone who is about to create a new account and possibly has an account already. Give them a message like &quot;Hey, it looks like you already have  account, are you sure you want to create a new one?&quot;  Create a new privilege (10k? 20k?) that gives users tools to detect possible duplicate accounts, eg: &quot;List users with the same e-mail,&quot; &quot;List users with the same IP addresses,&quot;  etc. (without revealing said emails and IPs). Then the 10k/20k can look at other stuff (e.g.: posts) and refer the new user to a moderator for a possible merge.
What is the first reference to an internet of computers in science fiction? Seeking shapefile of city boundaries in US? How to monitor who is pinging me? Is there a way to know who is pinging my PC on my network? Is it possible to monitor all ICMP packets? How can I do that? I have seen many examples of how to render sprites from a spritesheet but I havent grasped why it is the most common way of dealing with sprites in 2d games.  I have started out with 2d sprite rendering in the few demo applications I've made by dealing with each animation frame for any given sprite type as its own texture - and this collection of textures is stored in a dictionary. This seems to work for me, and suits my workflow pretty well, as I tend to make my animations as gif/mng files and then extract the frames to individual pngs.  Is there a noticeable performance advantage to rendering from a single sheet rather than from individual textures? With modern hardware that is capable of drawing millions of polygons to the screen a hundred times a second, does it even matter for my 2d games which just deal with a few dozen 50x100px rectangles?  The implementation details of loading a texture into graphics memory and displaying it in XNA seems pretty abstracted. All I know is that textures are bound to the graphics device when they are loaded, then during the game loop, the textures get rendered in batches. So it's not clear to me whether my choice affects performance.  I suspect that there are some very good reasons most 2d game developers seem to be using them, I just don't understand why. How do I take a screenshot on my Mac? What's the easiest way to take a screenshot of my Mac?  I've used Grab.app, but it's a bit annoying just to get a quick screenshot. Is there a faster way? I need to (permanent) redirect all of the following:   www.example.com www.example.com/folder sub.example.com sub.example.com/folder   Basically, all URLs that are reachable without being intended to: www.new-example.com, I want to do this within Apache and using the mod_rewrite module via the .htaccess file. Let $R$ be a ring and let $J$ be an ideal of $R$. Assume $J$ contains   a unit of $R$. Prove $J=R$, rigorously.   Again I feel here as if the statement is intuitive so I am not able to make it rigorous. If you could show all steps in the proof that would be nice. Combining several static libraries into one using CMake Do WALLS matter if I'm building the 6-inch brick defense from Corruption/Crimson for my city? If moderators can view , can we see comments we've deleted? We can see our deleted answers, but why not our deleted comments? Prove that $ S=\{0\}\cup\left(\bigcup_{n=0}^{\infty} \{\frac{1}{n}\}\right)$ is a compact set in $\mathbb{R}$, but $\bigcup_{n=0}^{\infty} \{\frac{1}{n}\}$ is not a compact set.   (Can we use definition of compact set for this problem? ) Faithful representation of the Heisenberg group I have been trying to solve a problem concerning the Heisenberg Lie group $H$. Show that there does not exist a faithful representation $\rho:H\to\text{GL}(2,\mathbb{R})$.  Any ideas about how to solve it would be very appreciated. Beryllium Vacuum Sphere Boat/Aircraft Is it possible to make a solid rigid evacuated "balloon" out of Beryllium or other elements or alloys?  The critical buckling pressure at which an evacuated sphere is given as $$ P_1=\frac{2E\cdot\left(h/R\right)^2}{\sqrt{3\left(1-\nu^2\right)}} $$ where $E$ is , $h$ the shell's thickness, $R$ the radius to the midsurface shell, and $\nu$ is .  Of course this is theoretical and experimental and literature values for submersibles hover around 1/4 of the theoretical pressure.  Beryllium has the following properties:   Density=1.85 g/cm$^3$ Young's Modulus=287*10$^9$ Pa Poisson Ratio=0.032   Calculating the upward force, buoyancy at 101.3 kPa atmospheric pressure and Radius of 10m gives 4.24*10$^8$ N. The weight of this sphere with shell thickness 1mm has 2.32*10$^7$ N downward force of Beryllium material, so it will theoretically float at ground level.   Calculating the critical buckling stress of this beryllium sphere is 331.57 kPa, which is 3.27 times the atmospheric pressure of 101.3 kPa, so theoretically it won't buckle. But in experimentation done in earlier experiments as stated before, due to construction/material non-ideal situations, the critical buckling formula predicts about 4 times stronger than actual, so it would need about 400 kPa, not 331 kPa as Beryllium sphere with this specification would hold. Increasing the strength capability also increases weight and therefore lowers it's ability to float, but Beryllium is the closest element with this situation I have calculated that could work if ideal (I have only been using periodic table elements and household materials)  Is it possible with an alloy of elements? Using the equations for buckling and buoyancy, the following is needed. What alloys/materials come to your mind?  Material considerations:   Material with larger Poisson ratio Material with larger Young's Modulus Less dense material Construction (is it possible)   Material considerations affect on lift   Thickness can be larger, increases strength by the squared. But also increases weight. If a material with lower density with similar structural properties as Beryllium is used, it would help. Radius can be lower for same reason, but also lowers buoyancy (volume)   My other designs (don't worry about these just yet, just if you are curious is a vacuum sphere with a pressurized "outer tube" with spokes in tension (carbon fiber nanotubes maybe) to keep the 2 spheres in position. Another is a spherical truss out of carbon fiber nanotubes with a light membrane around. The truss prevents the outer membrane from collapsing due to the atmospheric pressure  The "point" of this if you ask, as to why not use a traditional balloon is it can be used as a boat by filling the sphere with air, and then used as a aircraft at will by evacuating the sphere. An alternative mode of transportation for sea vessels etc. Let $a,b,c&gt; 0$ be three real numbers such that $a+b+c=1$. I want to prove that   $$\frac{a}{a^2+b^3+c^3}+\frac{b}{b^2+a^3+c^3}+\frac{c}{c^2+a^3+b^3}\le\frac{1}{5abc}.$$  My attempt: Using AM-GM on each denominator gives (here, LHS denotes the left-hand side) $$LHS\le\frac{1}{3a^{\frac12}bc}+\frac{1}{3b^{\frac12}ac}+\frac{1}{3c^{\frac12}ab}.$$  However, I think that my attempt doesn't work because the last expression can get larger than $\frac{1}{5abc}$. In fact, if we multiply with $3abc$ then the original inequality is: $$\sqrt a+\sqrt b+\sqrt c\le\frac35$$  However, as $a,b,c&lt;1$, $$\sqrt a +\sqrt b + \sqrt c&gt; a+b+c=1&gt;\frac35.$$ So my upper bound is always larger than the given one. I built a desktop computer a couple years back with the following specs:  CPU: Intel  Yorkfield 2.5GHz 6 MB L2 Cache LGA 775 95W Quad-Core Processor BX80580Q9300 Motherboard:  LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard Video Card: Two  GeForce 8600GT SCC 256 MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 SLI Supported Video Card PSU: SeaSonic S12 Energy Plus  ATX12V V2.3 / EPS12V V2.91 SLI Certified CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Power Supply Memory: Two G.SKILL 4 GB (2 x 2 GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory   Since its inception, the machine has periodically locked up, the regularity having varied over the years from once a day to once a month. Typically, lockups happen once every few days. By &quot;lockup&quot; I mean my computer just freezes. The screen locks up, I can't move the mouse. Hitting keys on my keyboard that normally turn LEDs on or off on the keyboard (such as Caps Lock) no longer turn the LEDs on or off. If there was music playing at the time of the lockup, noise keeps coming out of the speakers, but it's just the current frequency/note that plays indefinitely. There is no BSOD. When such a lockup occurs I have to do a hard reboot by either turning off the computer or hitting the reset button. I have the most recent version of the NVIDIA hardware drivers, and update them semi-regularly, but that hasn't seemed to help. I am currently using Windows 7 x64, but was previously using Windows Server 2003 x64 and having the same lockup issues. My guess is that it's somehow video driver or motherboard related, but I don't know how to go about diagnosing this problem to narrow down which of the two is the culprit.  Additional information re: cooling Regarding cooling... I've not installed any after-market cooling systems aside from two regular fans I scavenged from an older computer. The fan atop the CPU is the one that shipped with it. One of the two scavenged fans I added it located at the bottom tower of the corner, in an attempt to create some airflow from front to back. The second fan is pointed directly at the two video cards.  SpeedFan installation and readings Per studiohack's suggestion, I installed , which provided the following temperature readings:  GPU: 63C GPU: 65C System: 76C CPU: 64C AUX: 36C Core 0: 78C Core 1: 76C Core 2: 79C Core 3: 79C   Update #3: Another Lockup :-( Well, I had another lockup last night. :-( SpeedFan reported the CPU temp at 38 C when it happened, and there was no spike in temperature leading up to the freeze. One thing I notice is that the freeze seems more likely to happen if I am watching a video. In fact, of the last 5 freezes over the past month, 4 of them have been while watching a video on Flickr. Not necessarily the same video, but a video nevertheless. I don't know if this is just coincidence or if it means anything. (As an aside, each night before bedtime my 2 year old daughter sits on my lap and watches some home videos on Flickr and, in the last month, has learned the phrase, &quot;Uh oh, computer broke.&quot;)  Update #4: MemTest86 and 3DMark06 Test Results: Per suggestions in the comments, I ran the MemTest86 overnight and it cycled through the 8 GB of memory 5 times without error. I also ran the 3DMark06 test without a problem (see my scores at ). So... what now? :-) Any further suggestions on what to check? Is there some way to get a stack trace or something when the computer locks like that? Resolution I have never did figure out the particular problems, but based on the suggestions here and elsewhere, I'm presuming it was a motherboard issue. In any event, I recently upgraded my system, buying a new motherbeard, PSU, CPU, and RAM, and that new rig has been working splendidly the past several weeks. I am using the same graphic cards as in the old setup, so I think it's safe to reason that they weren't the cause of the problem. I have several files that I ftp each hour.  The receiving system needs to have some sort of identifier that they came from the same batch, so I would like to append a timestamp to the filename.  That alone is fairly easy, but since I want each file to have the same timestamp (so it can serve as the batch identifier), I cannot figure out how to do this.  So, I have:  file1.txt file2.txt file3.txt   And I want to have:  file1_20141110184303.txt file2_20141110184303.txt file3_20141110184303.txt   Any use of the date +%Y%m%d%H%M%S after the first use will obviously result in a different values in seconds, so I would like to have the first timestamp appended to the remaining files. What is the difference between CentOS "DVD" vs "Everything" ISOs What's the action of banging two beers together called? When beers in cans or bottles are banged together in rejoice of the company you're with, what is the action called? I just noticed that I lost a bunch of points from my reputation score, and I used the "reputation" tab on my user profile page to try and track down the cause.  During my investigation, I noticed there was an unusual event of type "reversal". In the normal place of a question title, it says "voting corrected".     What does this mean, and what caused it?  Did I do something wrong? Why did I lose all of that reputation? Is the system punishing me for leaving too many good answers?  Is there any way to earn it back? I have watched the series of Two and a Half Men two times now till the latest episode, but can't understand why either Charlie or Walden just don't kick Alan out? I mean it is a bit cruel but they are shown to put up with him even though he gets up on their nerves (even got on my nerves).    Some examples off the top of my head:   He became the reason of his first engagement with Mia to be broken up.   He once set up his curtains on fire after ruining his day.   He invited his girlfriend/assistant to move in without his permission and started acting like he owned part of the house when he didn't even pay rent. He acted sickly and dying (Walden's time) and tricked him out of money for his care and comfort.   He deliberately tried to break his relations (Walden's) just so he can keep sponging off.   I know not the best examples, but if not in every episode then in every alternate episode he is shown to getting up on their nerves and they just keep on telling him to leave. Why don't they just kick him out? Why put up with such a leach?