On Stack Overflow, a new user forgot to add the language tag on . I asked him about it. After getting the reply, I edited the post to include language tag.  Then I forgot about it for three days and today I went to the post, deleted my own query comment and then moved on to flag the OP's reply as obsolete (since the tag was now added to the post and the brief comment saying "swift....." did not add any value to the post).  To my surprise, as soon as I hit the flag button, the comment was instantly removed and my flag was marked as helpful.  I have never seen obsolete flags getting reviewed so quickly (within 2 seconds, If I am being generous).  How did the comment got deleted so quickly? I can think of only two explanations off the top of my head:   Obsolete flags retain . After hitting a total of six flags, the target comment gets automatically deleted. It was just a coincidence and a moderator just happened to be around to review it within seconds.   Since this is about flagging mechanism which is shared across the network, I thought it would be better to ask this question here instead of Meta Stack Overflow. Do let me know if it is better suited to MSO instead.
I just flagged a comment as "obsolete" in . To my surprise, it was deleted immediately, just after pressing "Flag Comment".  Now I see it in my flag summary as helpful:        Does this mean that obsolete flags are somehow handled automatically? I went through  but could not find any description on this.
In $Sets$, the initial object is $0 = \emptyset$. We have $C \times \emptyset = \emptyset$ for any set $C$. As there are no maps to the empty set, we don't get much of the universal property of the product.  I am now wondering what is special about arbitrary categories $\mathscr{C}$ with $C \times 0 \cong 0$ for all objects $C$ of $\mathscr{C}$, where $0$ is the initial object of $\mathscr{C}$.   From Sheaves in Geometry and Logic by MacLane (p.194), in any topos $\mathscr{C}$, any arrow $k:C \to 0$ is an isomorphism. The universal property of the product would then also not yield very much.   Are there any categories of higher interest? Why are there two Address lines in Address forms? Experience and a quick Google Images search suggests that it's standard to provide two fields for Address/Street. A colleague argues that it's perceived as two alternative addresses, and that the fact that there's only one country, state, zip, phone just makes it more confusing. I tried to think of a good explanation for having two fields but couldn't. To the reason of "there are some very long addresses" he replies "then why don't they use a multiline input field which would make it clearer that it's the same address".  So, what's the reason? And is it only standard for the US or for Europe as well? Seven-sided dice from five-sided dice with finite rolls I have a 5-sided dice, and I want to use it to simulate a 7-sided dice. Is there a way to do this with a finite number of rolls? Determining $\lim_{n\to\infty}\left(n^{\tfrac{1}{n}}-1\right)^n$ with only elementary math I am trying to find this limit:  $$\lim_{n\to\infty}\left(n^{\tfrac{1}{n}}-1\right)^n,$$  I tried using exponential function, but I see no way at the moment. I am not allowed to use any kind of differentiation or other topics of advanced math, only induction and school math are possible. Thank you To find all $n$ such that $(n-1)!+1$ is a perfect power of $n$ How to find all positive integers $n$ such that $(n-1)!+1$ can be written as $n^k$ for some positive integer $k$? Minecraft Vanilla 1.9 crash with problematic frame ig8icd64.dll I go to the Minecraft menu and click on singleplayer to test out the 1.9 update. I made a new world (no mods), it said downloading terrain and then it crashes every time (I've tried about 20 times now).  Has anyone else experienced similar issues and know what the fix may be?  Here is the launcher log:  Completely ignored arguments: [--nativeLauncherVersion, 301] [00:35:12] [Client thread/INFO]: Setting user: Teddy_Cromwell [00:35:12] [Client thread/INFO]: (Session ID is &lt;censored&gt;) [00:35:14] [Client thread/INFO]: LWJGL Version: 2.9.4 [00:35:14] [Client thread/WARN]: Removed selected resource pack resources (no region and battle music).zip because it's no longer compatible [00:35:14] [Client thread/INFO]: Reloading ResourceManager: Default [00:35:15] [Sound Library Loader/INFO]: Starting up SoundSystem... [00:35:16] [Thread-5/INFO]: Initializing LWJGL OpenAL [00:35:16] [Thread-5/INFO]: (The LWJGL binding of OpenAL.  For more information, see http://www.lwjgl.org) [00:35:16] [Thread-5/INFO]: OpenAL initialized. [00:35:16] [Sound Library Loader/INFO]: Sound engine started [00:35:18] [Client thread/INFO]: Created: 1024x512 textures-atlas [00:35:26] [Server thread/INFO]: Starting integrated minecraft server version 1.9 [00:35:26] [Server thread/INFO]: Generating keypair [00:35:27] [Server thread/INFO]: Preparing start region for level 0 [00:35:28] [Server thread/INFO]: Preparing spawn area: 5% [00:35:29] [Server thread/INFO]: Preparing spawn area: 8% [00:35:30] [Server thread/INFO]: Preparing spawn area: 15% [00:35:31] [Server thread/INFO]: Preparing spawn area: 21% [00:35:32] [Server thread/INFO]: Preparing spawn area: 27% [00:35:33] [Server thread/INFO]: Preparing spawn area: 34% [00:35:34] [Server thread/INFO]: Preparing spawn area: 42% [00:35:35] [Server thread/INFO]: Preparing spawn area: 48% [00:35:36] [Server thread/INFO]: Preparing spawn area: 56% [00:35:37] [Server thread/INFO]: Preparing spawn area: 66% [00:35:38] [Server thread/INFO]: Preparing spawn area: 74% [00:35:39] [Server thread/INFO]: Preparing spawn area: 81% [00:35:40] [Server thread/INFO]: Preparing spawn area: 91% [00:35:41] [Server thread/INFO]: Preparing spawn area: 98% [00:35:42] [Server thread/INFO]: Teddy_Cromwell[local:E:6d7525a7] logged in with entity id 301 at (244.5, 69.0, 244.5) [00:35:42] [Server thread/INFO]: Teddy_Cromwell joined the game # # A fatal error has been detected by the Java Runtime Environment: # #  EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION (0xc0000005) at pc=0x00007fffcf6e6b37, pid=15456, tid=12424 # # JRE version: Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (8.0_25-b18) (build 1.8.0_25-b18) # Java VM: Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (25.25-b02 mixed mode windows-amd64 compressed oops) # Problematic frame: # C  [ig8icd64.dll+0x16b37] # # Failed to write core dump. Minidumps are not enabled by default on client versions of Windows # # An error report file with more information is saved as: # C:\Users\Connor\AppData\Roaming\.minecraft\hs_err_pid15456.log # # If you would like to submit a bug report, please visit: #   http://bugreport.sun.com/bugreport/crash.jsp # The crash happened outside the Java Virtual Machine in native code. # See problematic frame for where to report the bug. # AL lib: (EE) alc_cleanup: 1 device not closed Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM warning: Using incremental CMS is deprecated and will likely be removed in a future release Converting Polygon into single or all Points using QGIS? Read Post Data submitted to ASP.Net Form I have a working login form in an asp.net application.  Standard stuff with a username and password text box and a button to process the login.  Works fine.  I have a new requirement to allow the user to input the username and password from a separate plain html page that is not a part of my asp.net application.  I plan on achieving this using standard html - form, input, submit button etc.  The form action will be the URL of my asp.net login page and its method will be POST.    What I want to do in the C# code behind page of the asp.net login form, presumably in the Page_Load event, is to check if the request for the page contains a username and password value being passed in.  If it does then I need to read those values and process the login as if someone had clicked the login button on the asp.net page.  If not then I will display the login form as usual.    How do I check for the existence of, and read, the username and password values in the request for my page. Did Harry Potter lose Voldemort's powers when he lost his connection to Voldemort? Harry noted to Dumbledore that he had a number of things in common with Voldemort. And it was later revealed that some of Voldemort's power was transferred to Harry when Voldemort tried to kill him. So, what powers did Harry get from Voldemort (i.e. Parseltongue and others) and did they all leave him when he stopped being a horcrux?    Update In the Chamber of Secrets Dumbledore states that Harry has many qualities that Salazar Slytherin values in his hand picked students. Parseltongue - resourcefulness - determination - a certain disregard for rules.    So, does anyone know what specific powers Harry got from Voldemort and is there anyway to tell if he lost anything else besides Parseltongue? A fair coin is tossed repeatedly until 5 consecutive heads occurs.   What is the expected number of coin tosses? What's a good back-up strategy for 1 desktop PC? Why is the probability that a continuous random variable takes a specific value zero? My understanding is that a random variable is actually a function $X: \Omega \to T$, where $\Omega$ is the sample space of some random experiment and $T$ is the set from which the possible values of the random variable are taken.  Regarding the set of values that the random variable can actually take, it is the image of the function $X$. If the image is finite, then $X$ must be a discrete random variable. However, if it is an infinite set, then $X$ may or may not be a continuous random variable. Whether it is depends on whether the image is countable or not. If it is countable, then $X$ is a discrete random variable; whereas if it is not, then $X$ is  continuous.  Assuming that my understanding is correct, why does the fact that the image is uncountable imply that $Pr(X = x) = 0$.  I would have thought that the fact that the image is infinite, regardless of whether it is countable or not, would already imply that $Pr(X = x) = 0$ since if it is infinite, then the domain $\Omega$ must also be infinite, and therefore  $$Pr(X = x) = \frac{\text{# favorable outcomes}}{\text{# possible outcomes}} = \frac{\text{# outcomes of the experiment where X = x}}{|\Omega|} = \frac{\text{# outcomes of the experiment where X = x}}{\infty} = 0$$  What is wrong with my argument?  Why does the probability that a continuous random variable takes on a specific value actually equal zero? How do I run a Perl script from within a Perl script? I've got a Perl script that needs to execute another Perl script. This second script can be executed directly on the command line, but I need to execute it from within my first program. I'll need to pass it a few parameters that would normally be passed in when it's run standalone (the first script runs periodically, and executes the second script under a certain set of system conditions).  Preliminary Google searches suggest using backticks or a system() call. Are there any other ways to run it? (I'm guessing yes, since it's Perl we're talking about :P ) Which method is preferred if I need to capture output from the invoked program (and, if possible, pipe that output as it executes to stdout as though the second program were invoked directly)?  (Edit: oh, now SO suggests some related questions.  is close, but not exactly the same as what I'm asking. The second program will likely take an hour or more to run (lots of I/O), so I'm not sure a one-off invocation is the right fit for this.) Is time continuous or discrete? I was coding a physics simulation, and noticed that I was using discrete time. That is, there was an update mechanism advancing the simulation for a fixed amount of time repeatedly, emulating a changing system.  I though that was interesting, and now believe the real world must behave just like my program does. It is actually advancing forward in tiny but discrete time intervals? How to compare two columns and find differences in Excel? I have two columns in Excel that I want to compare and find the differences between them.  Suppose:   Col A has 50 numbers, i.e. 0511234567 Col B has 100 numbers in the same format I changed the /etc/environment to add more directories to the PATH variable. But looks like $PATH in double quotes were not expanded and I could find any command from the shell and /usr/bin/command-not-found is run.  $ cat /etc/environment  PATH="/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/games" PATH="$PATH:/home/user/technical/java/maven/bin" JAVA_HOME="/home/user/technical/java/jdk7"   so from the tty,  $ echo $PATH $PATH:/home/user/technical/java/maven/bin   why did not the expansion happen? Distribution of linear combination of OLS regression coefficients Solving an ODE in power series EntityFieldQuery display pager How do I display pager using EntityFieldQuery for fetch results? I can't find complete example.  I am doing simmilar to:   But I miss part to output simple pagination links (1,2,3... for every next page). Benefits of using QQ-plots over histograms In , Nick Cox wrote:     Binning into classes is an ancient method. While histograms can be useful, modern statistical software makes it easy as well as advisable to fit distributions to the raw data. Binning just throws away detail that is crucial in determining which distributions are plausible.   The context of this comment suggests using QQ-plots as an alternative means to evaluate the fit. The statement sounds very plausible, but I'd like to know about a reliable reference supporting this statement. Is there some paper which does a more thorough investigation of this fact, beyond a simple “well, this sounds obvious”? Any actual systematic comparisons of results or the likes?  I'd also like to see how far this benefit of QQ-plots over histograms can be stretched, to applications other than model fitting. Answers on  agree that “a QQ-plot […] just tells you that "something is wrong"”. I am thinking about using them as a tool to identify structure in observed data as compared to a null model and wonder whether there exist any established procedures to use QQ-plots (or their underlying data) to not only detect but also describe non-random structure in the observed data. References which include this direction would therefore be particularly useful.