On Stack Exchange there are some old questions—3-4 years old—that have something like 3500 votes. Now I understand that over time the questions will naturally accrue the odd vote, but this is ridiculous.  Did everyone go through a phase in the early days where they were just giving each other excessive vote, like a pat on the back?  And some of these 3000+ vote answers to questions aren't so great either. I often come across 200+ questions and answers that would go into negative territory if they were posted nowadays.
I have seen this a lot but i ran into this question today:    And the answer (while good) has 83 upvotes which seemed a little over the top.  I see dozens of answers of this caliber every week that only seem to get a few upvotes.    Was there some sort of SO policy that encouraged people to upvote more during this period?  Am I just imagining that answers from this period received more votes than comparable ones now?
I add video files to the video editor,  Both audio and video channels appear but only the audio plays.  The video is just a white box.  Anyone know what is wrong.  Added video in WMV.  Also tried MP4 same thing. Solving a implicit, recursive function Assuming $F(0,0)=0$, can I solve $F(F(x,y),y)=0$ for $y=f(x)$ near $(0,0).$ The editor should be able to convert multi-line blocks to lists Where can I ask a question about finding general software that meets certain requirements? I have a list of requirements for a program, but I don't know what program meets these criteria. That's about general-purpose software, for example, not a programming IDE or statistical workbench, questions about which would certainly go to respective sites.  Is this question appropriate on Stack Overflow? Where should I ask about it? On Super User or elsewhere? How is the skillset of an evolution being chosen? You may already know that if you catch two Pidgeys, they may have a different skillset.  I've also seen that evolving them from different skillsets will also create Pidgeottos with different skillsets.  Are those skills chosen randomly or do they follow a specific pattern? (Like Pidgey pattern 1 will always evolve into Pidgeotto pattern 1.)  If they are specific, is there a website to check for them? I am from Europe, and I did an internship in the US (California) in 2015. When filing my 2015 taxes, I ended up having to pay some small difference for the federal taxes, but got a refund on my state taxes, of roughly $1.6k. That was all the income I had in the US in 2016.  I did not enter the US in 2016 at all.  I managed to figure out that I don't need to file any California tax forms for 2016 (source: ) but I am not sure about federal taxes.  I tried researching the problem, and got some information on it, but the situation is still a bit unclear. It seems that since I listed my state tax as an itemized deduction in my 2015 tax report, which I filed in 2016, the state refund I got in 2016 is, in fact, taxable.  In this situation, would I have to file my taxes (and possibly pay owed tax) for 2016, even though I never set foot in the US in that year, and my total income is just $1.6k? Distribution of $-\log X$ if $X$ is uniform. How to specify the SMTP server in PHPMailer? Past tense and the phrase "who knows what" I have the following code that shows either a bug or a misunderstanding on my part.  I sent the same list, but modified over an ObjectOutputStream.  Once as [0] and other as [1].  But when I read it, I get [0] twice.  I think this is caused by the fact that I am sending over the same object and ObjectOutputStream must be caching them somehow.  Is this work as it should, or should I file a bug?   import java.io.*; import java.net.*; import java.util.*;  public class OOS {      public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {         Thread t1 = new Thread(new Runnable() {             public void run() {                 try {                     ServerSocket ss = new ServerSocket(12344);                     Socket s= ss.accept();                      ObjectOutputStream oos = new ObjectOutputStream(s.getOutputStream());                     List same = new ArrayList();                     same.add(0);                     oos.writeObject(same);                     same.clear();                     same.add(1);                     oos.writeObject(same);                  } catch(Exception e) {                     e.printStackTrace();                 }             }         });         t1.start();          Socket s = new Socket("localhost", 12344);         ObjectInputStream ois = new ObjectInputStream(s.getInputStream());          // outputs [0] as expected         System.out.println(ois.readObject());          // outputs [0], but expected [1]         System.out.println(ois.readObject());         System.exit(0);     } } MySQL strip non-numeric characters to compare I'm looking to find records in a table that match a specific number that the user enters.  So, the user may enter 12345, but this could be 123zz4-5 in the database. I imagine something like this would work, if PHP functions worked in MySQL. SELECT * FROM foo WHERE preg_replace(&quot;/[^0-9]/&quot;,&quot;&quot;,bar) = '12345'  What's the equivalent function or way to do this with just MySQL? Speed is not important. Modelling the "Moving Sofa" I believe that many of you know about the moving sofa problem; if not you can find the description of the problem .     In this question I am going to rotate the L shaped hall instead of moving a sofa around the corner. By rotating the hall $180^{\circ}$ what remains between the walls will give the shape of the sofa. Like this:    The points on the hall have the following properties:  \begin{eqnarray} A &amp; = &amp; \left( r\cos { \alpha  } ,t\sin { \alpha  }  \right)  \\ { A }' &amp; = &amp; \left( r\cos { \alpha  } +\sqrt { 2 } \cos { \left( \frac { \pi  }{ 4 } +\frac { \alpha  }{ 2 }  \right)  } ,t\sin { \alpha  } +\sqrt { 2 } \sin { \left( \frac { \pi  }{ 4 } +\frac { \alpha  }{ 2 }  \right)  }  \right)  \\ { B } &amp; = &amp; \left( r\cos { \alpha  } -\frac { t\sin { \alpha  }  }{ \tan { \left( \frac { \alpha  }{ 2 }  \right)  }  } ,0 \right)  \\ { B }' &amp; = &amp; \left( r\cos { \alpha  } -\frac { t\sin { \alpha  }  }{ \tan { \left( \frac { \alpha  }{ 2 }  \right)  }  } -\frac { 1 }{ \sin { \left( \frac { \alpha  }{ 2 }  \right)  }  } ,0 \right)  \\ C &amp; = &amp; \left( r\cos { \alpha  } +t\sin { \alpha  } \tan { \left( \frac { \alpha  }{ 2 }  \right)  } ,0 \right)  \\ { C }' &amp; = &amp; \left( r\cos { \alpha  } +t\sin { \alpha  } \tan { \left( \frac { \alpha  }{ 2 }  \right)  } +\frac { 1 }{ \cos { \left( \frac { \alpha  }{ 2 }  \right)  }  } ,0 \right)  \end{eqnarray}  Attention: $\alpha$ is not the angle of $AOC$, it is some angle $ADC$ where $D$ changes location on $x$ axis for $r\neq t$. I am saying this because images can create confusion. Anyways I will change them as soon as possible.  I could consider $r=f(\alpha)$ and $t=g(\alpha)$ but for this question I am going to take $r$ and $t$ as constants. If they were functions of $\alpha$ there would appear some interesting shapes. I experimented for different functions however the areas are more difficult to calculate, that's why I am not going to share. Maybe in the future.  We rotate the hall for $r=t$ in the example above: In this case:   point A moves on a semicircle  The envelope of lines between A' and C' is a circular arc. One has to prove this but I assume that it is true for $r=t$.   If my second assumption is correct the area of sofa is $A= 2r-\frac { \pi r^{ 2 } }{ 2 } +\frac { \pi  }{ 2 } $. The maximum area is reached when $r = 2/\pi$ and it's value is: $$A = 2/\pi+\pi/2 = 2,207416099$$  which matches with Hammersley's sofa. The shape is also similar or same:    Now I am going to increase $t$ with respect to $r$. For $r=2/\pi$ and $t=0.77$:    Well, this looks like .   I believe thearea can be maximized by finding the equations of envelopes above and below the sofa. Look at  where @Aretino has computed the area below $ABC$.   I don't know enough to find equations for envelopes. I am afraid that I will make mistakes. I considered to calculate area by counting number of pixels in it, but this is not a good idea because for optimizing the area I have to create many images.  I will give a bounty of 200 for whom calculates the maximum area. As I said the most difficult part of the problem is to find equations of envelopes. @Aretino did it.  PLUS: Could following be the longest sofa where $(r,t)=((\sqrt 5+1)/2,1)$ ?   If you want to investigate further or use animation for educational purposes here is the Geogebra file:      Ok, I had some free time and I count number of pixels in the sofa and I am sure that I have something bigger than Hammersley's constant.  First, I made a simulation for Hammersley's sofa where $r=t=2/\pi$ and exported the image to png in 300 dpi (6484x3342 pixels) and using Gimp counted number of pixels which have exactly same value. For Hammersley I got $3039086$ pixels.   For the second case $r=0.59$ and $t=0.66$ and I got $3052780$ pixels. To calculate area for this case:  $$\frac{3052780}{3039086}(2/\pi + \pi/2)=2.217362628$$  which is slightly less than Gerver's constant which is $2.2195$. Here is the sofa: My multimeter is rated to 600V.  How can I readily (and safely) use it to measure higher voltages? USB WiFi dongle device that can emulate a virtual mass storage device for a home video player Is there a USB WiFi dongle device that can:   Emulate a virtual mass storage device for a home video player But in fact shows the files from a network-shared folder? Algorithm for determining random events I'm struggling with coming up with an elegant solution to generating random events in the game that I'm working on.  Say there are 4 classes of events that can happen, with varying events in those classes that may occur.  So something along the lines of   main_events = {"common event", "not so common event", "somewhat rare event", "rare event"} sub_events[0] = {"common event 1", "common event 2",..} ...   I have a somewhat kludgey solution in place that first just has a random number generated between 0 and 100, and if the number falls within a given range then a main event will be triggered.  Then I'll do another random roll to see which sub event occurs.  Is there a better solution than something along these lines?  Like I mention, it doesn't feel very elegant, and I'd like to make it easily expandable for the addition of future events. Calculating projected area of polygons with field calculator in ArcMap? I have a list of hosts in the network providing shares via SAMBA. How can I determine either IP address or the host name of one particular host, e.g. the one with the name “SASAK02”.  The output of smbtree is as follows  WORKGROUP     \\SASAK02                    \\SAURA-PC1                  \\PC-VAN-DAMME Who is the Maker? C-3PO frequently speaks of “the Maker.” Is this a true droid religion, or is this a religious reverence by droids for their specific creators (in this case, Anakin, even though C-3PO has forgotten who he is)? Is this even a droid thing or is it just C-3PO? What else do we know about this “Maker”-worship? Is is true &lt;h1&gt; tag should not have more than 1 on every page for SEO?   Every pages on the header, it includes and &lt;h1&gt; tag. Website Name which show an image from logo class, like this:  &lt;div id="header"&gt;   &lt;h1 class="logo"&gt;      &lt;a href="#"&gt;Website Name&lt;/a&gt;   &lt;/h1&gt; &lt;/div&gt;   and I also include &lt;h1&gt; on the contact page, help, etc and article page for example:  &lt;h1&gt;Contact Us&lt;/h1&gt; &lt;h1&gt;Name of the Article Title here&lt;/h1&gt;   On the homepage, it just has one &lt;h1&gt; for the logo Site Name... other pages have 2 &lt;h1&gt; tags When is R squared negative? My understanding is that $R^2$ cannot be negative as it is the square of R. However I ran a simple linear regression in SPSS with a single independent variable and a dependent variable. My SPSS output give me a negative value for $R^2$. If I was to calculate this by hand from R then $R^2$ would be  positive. What has SPSS done to calculate this as negative?   R=-.395 R squared =-.156 B (un-standardized)=-1261.611   Code I've used:  DATASET ACTIVATE DataSet1.  REGRESSION /MISSING LISTWISE /STATISTICS COEFF OUTS R ANOVA             /CRITERIA=PIN(.05) POUT(.10) /NOORIGIN             /DEPENDENT valueP /METHOD=ENTER ageP   I get a negative value. Can anyone explain what this means?