On some long-standing unanswered questions there is often an answer that is probably the right answer, with more upvotes, comments including positive words &amp; chatter.  So could the system itself offer a 'soft' decision on long-standing unanswered questions by using an algorithm to determine which answer should be accepted based on various indicators.  This would be especially useful on answers to questions where the OP has left, is dormant or if nothing is accepted after a year.  Perhaps a 'soft' accept would be worth half the reputation improvement of a 'hard' accept.  So should an algorithm determine the probably right answer in certain situations where the OP hasn't, can't or won't make the call?
I think it would be cool if a question would eventually open up to moderators to accept answers on the user's behalf, once a time period has passed. The asking user would get the rep score for the accept.  I know I've seen questions successfully answered with lots of upvotes and no accepted answer that sit there for months unaccepted. This would give superusers a little more functionality and would tie up a lot of loose ends.  What do you think?
I'm having trouble editing this file on Windows 7:  C:\Program Files (x86)\CMake 2.8.7\share\cmake-2.8\Modules\FindJNI.cmake   If I edit it in Cygwin (vi) or TextPad, those two programs see the changes, so it's getting written to disk somewhere.  But if I "type" the file in a DOS cmd shell, it looks like the file hasn't been changed at all.  One thing I noticed is that in the cmd shell, the owner is Administrators, but in Cygwin's bash shell, the owner is Dan:  C:\Program Files (x86)\CMake 2.8.7\share\cmake-2.8\Modules&gt;dir /Q FindJ*  Volume in drive C is Windows7_OS  Volume Serial Number is 92CA-8707   Directory of C:\Program Files (x86)\CMake 2.8.7\share\cmake-2.8\Modules  12/30/2011  09:45 AM             1,480 BUILTIN\Administrators FindJasper.cmake 12/30/2011  09:45 AM             7,951 BUILTIN\Administrators FindJava.cmake 12/30/2011  09:45 AM            10,632 BUILTIN\Administrators FindJNI.cmake 12/30/2011  09:45 AM             1,669 BUILTIN\Administrators FindJPEG.cmake                4 File(s)         21,732 bytes                0 Dir(s)  132,524,654,592 bytes free   Dan@home /c/Program Files (x86)/CMake 2.8.7/share/cmake-2.8/Modules $ ls -al FindJ* -rwx------+ 1 Dan            None 10636 Jan 30 13:57 FindJNI.cmake -rwx------+ 1 Administrators None  1669 Dec 30 09:45 FindJPEG.cmake -rwx------+ 1 Administrators None  1480 Dec 30 09:45 FindJasper.cmake -rwx------+ 1 Administrators None  7951 Dec 30 09:45 FindJava.cmake   How can this be?  It's like there are two different files with the same name in the same directory. double r = 11.631; double theta = 21.4;   In the debugger, these are shown as 11.631000000000000 and 21.399999618530273.  How can I avoid this? I am learning basics of the category theory (CT).  I do understand that CT is a modern powerful framework to describe various branches of mathematics in a unified way.  I do admit that category's definition tells a lot about the whole thing and focuses on the most important properties, shadowing unnecessary details. However, the more I go forward, the more it feels like it should explicitly require a notion of morphisms equality (like it does with morphism composition). It feels so because equality or inequality of morphisms arises everywhere, since the very beginning: any commutative diagram eventually reduces to an equality of two different paths and many other things involve equality as well. Even composition is defined grounding upon an (implicit) equality!  I'll try to give an example of my concern. Consider $\mathbb{SET}$. Its objects are sets and morphisms are functions. Now, let's recall that functions are sets as well - to be more precise, a function $f : A \mapsto B$ is a subset of a $A \times B$ obeying certain properties, which I omit. Thus, one could argue that $f$ is both a morphism between objects $A, B \in Obj(\mathbb{SET})$ and an object defined as a set of pairs $\{ (a_1 \in A, b_1 \in B), ..., (a_n \in A, b_n \in B) \}$ and those are equal because both are essentially exactly the same thing.  I hope my concern is clear and I need some kind of "conceptual insight" from knowledgeable people to move forward. Please give me the right perspective. How do I invoke a private static method using reflection (Java)? There's another question on physics.SE whose , if I have understood it correctly, explains that the farther the points are in space the faster they are moving away from each other.     Actually, the apparent speed with which two of the points on the   circle in a distance $D$ of each other would move relative to each   other will be $v = H_0 D$ where $H_0$ is the speed the balloon itself   is expanding.   This means that even the ruler sitting on my desk is expanding, just that the expansion is very very slow owing to the ruler's small size relative to the cosmic scales. However, if everything is scaling then everything should apparently be of the same size to an observer in such an expanding space. The  quote from the show "The Big Bang Theory" comes to mind.   To be able to counter that, there're some phenomena that we can observe which are scale invariant. Red-shift would be one such phenomenon. But is red-shift the only way we can tell that the space is expanding? Is there a logical flaw in my thinking? I know that red-shift is a result of the Doppler effect - there's bound to be a decrease in the frequency of a signal, as perceived by an observer, emitted by a source which is moving away relative to the observer. Prove Quotient Group Isomorphism Let $G = (\mathbb{C} - \{0\}, \cdot)$, a subgroup $U = \{x+yi \mid x^2 + y^2 = 1\}$. Use the Fundamental Theorem to show that $G/(\mathbb{R}_{&gt; 0},\cdot)$ is isomorphic to $U$ where $\mathbb{R}_{&gt; 0}$ denotes the positive reals.  I am struggling to find the correct mapping from $G$ to $U$ that results in the the kernel being the nonnegative reals under multiplication. I'm hoping to get help with this mapping then I can show it is a homomorphism and onto and can use the Fundamental Theorem. How to check type of files without extensions in python? Limit of a function with powers (L'Hopital doesnt work) I have a little problem with limit of this function:  $\lim_{x \to \infty} x^2(2017^{\frac{1}{x}} - 2017^{\frac{1}{x+1}})$  I have tried de L'Hopital rule twice, but it doesn't work. Now I have no idea how to do it. Are there network-wide reputation leagues? I would love to see which people have the most network-wide reputation, how can I see that? Difference between 2>&-, 2>/dev/null, |&, &>/dev/null and >/dev/null 2>&1 How can I install a different version of Python using apt-get?  Obviously I realise I can install using the source tar ball, however I would prefer not to install from source and instead use the package manager, as that's what it's there for. Surely somewhere reputable builds .deb files for the latest Python releases (why python.org don't is beyond me) that I can reference.   What do I need to do to reference them and what issues might it create when upgrading to the next version?  If there is no way except for building from source, is there a (pseudo) package that I can can install that will provide all of the dependencies needed without having to find and install each individually? So that I don't get:  The necessary bits to build these optional modules were not found: _bz2                  _curses               _curses_panel       _dbm                  _gdbm                 _lzma               _sqlite3              _ssl                  _tkinter            readline              zlib django manytomanyfield .add() method How can I make a PATCH HTTP Callout from Apex? I need to make a PATCH http request.  I made the rather incredible discovery today that I can't set an HttpRequest to use the PATCH method, as when sending the request I get a callout exception:     System.CalloutException "Invalid HTTP method: PATCH"   The work around I've found on Stack Exchange and elsewhere is only applicable to a Salesforce Rest API request:    This is therefore not helpful to me as I'm calling out to a third party.  By what manner of magic can I send a PATCH request from Salesforce?  The only work around I can think of is to not do it from Apex - this is not an option. Accessing UI thread handler from a service I remember my professor in college challenging me with this question, which I failed to answer satisfactorily: I know there exists a bijection between the rational numbers and the natural numbers, but can anyone produce an explicit formula for such a bijection? Insert Login IP Ranges using apex in salesforce Is it possible to insert to Login IP ranges via apex? I'm on a Toshiba Satellite C660_EL trying to install .   lspci -v Network controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8188CE 802.11b/g/n WiFi Adapter (rev 01)   However, I can't get the driver from there to compile (I've installed build-essentials already). Running make (with or without sudo makes no difference) I get  make -C /lib/modules/3.8.0-19-generic/build M=/root/rtl_driver modules make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-3.8.0-19-generic'   CC [M]  /root/rtl_driver/base.o In file included from /root/rtl_driver/base.c:39:0: /root/rtl_driver/pci.h:247:15: error: expected ‘=’, ‘,’, ‘;’, ‘asm’ or ‘__attribute__’ before ‘rtl_pci_probe’ make[2]: *** [/root/rtl_driver/base.o] Error 1 make[1]: *** [_module_/root/rtl_driver] Error 2 make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-3.8.0-19-generic' make: *** [all] Error 2   There is a relevant PPA here:  but there's no 13.04 build.   Thanks in advance for any help! How do I scan for viruses with ClamAV? Is there an (easy) way to create or personalize .bst files? When you prepare an article for a journal (in my case, Quantum Information and Computation, Rinton Press), often they ask you to use some format for your references; in my case, the following:     [1] R. Calderbank and P. Shor (1996), Good quantum error          correcting codes exist,  Phys. Rev. A, 54, pp. 1098-1106.      [2] M.A. Nielsen and J. Kempe (2001), Separable states   are  more disordered globally than locally, quant-ph/0105090.      [3] A.W. Marshall and I. Olkin (1979), Inequalities:   theory of majorization and its applications, Academic Press (New   York).   The issue is, sometimes (and this is the case) they do not provide a .bst style file for bibtex users. I (and I guess many other people) prefer not to copy all the references of a bibtex file one by one into a tex document. So here is the question I am trying to answer:     What is the easiest way to create a .bst file? (for Rinton or any other publisher)   At first sight, I thought this would be very easy to do: after all, a .bst file is just a mere script to give format to a list. Strangely to me, after a long search I have been unable to find a simple clean solution to this problem. These are the the options I have been looking at:   I have tried to adapt a previous .bst file: concretely, apsrev4-1.bst, which has a similar format. Other people have tried this solution before , . However, it is an ugly option. First, it requires going through the script of the .bst and understanding it. Second, the script format used in different .bst files differs (quite annoyingly), so it is not easy to modify them unless you do understand what's written. The above solution is quite hideous and you really lose time on it, so I was wondering: isn't there any software tool (hopefully with a GUI) that does this job? It should, after all, pretty easy to program for a .bst script expert some sort of program to generate .bst files. There are some related questions in this site asking for something similar , ; there I have seen a couple of proposed apps, but going through their manuals they seem not so easy to use. Isn't there some software tool available to generate a .bst in less than 1 hour of work?   Remarks: ideally I would like to use/personalize/create .bst styles that support eprint fields (e.g. aps4-1.bst). Word for killing off or attempting to kill off an entire bloodline? I would like to know if there is a word or phrase for a systematic campaign to annihilate every descendant of a particular ancestor.   We have the word 'genocide' for killing off an entire race, and plenty of words for killing people based on how they are related to you (fratricide, filicide, et. al.), but looking over the  and the , I couldn't find a term for systematically killing an entire bloodline.   My question is prompted by a US news story about the horrific murder of 8 members of the same family, but those murders are not an example of what I'm thinking of because the children of the victims were left alive, so the motive for the killings was not to kill off the bloodline. The sense that some group had coordinated an attack against just one family is what made me wonder what the "not an entire race, just one bloodline" version of 'genocide' would be called.   Searching the Internet for "kill off" and bloodline sends me straight into the land of vampires, Illuminati, reptilian overlords, and, naturally, Priory of Sion nonsense so I haven't had much luck finding a thread to pull.   It may be that there is no word for it in the sense of murdering a human bloodline, because we just don't attempt kill off our royals down to the last heir often enough to coin a term for it. Maybe there is a scientific term for culling a line from a test population as part of biological research?