If you want to map an equirectangular image texture to a sphere - like a map of the earth to a sphere - is there any necessity to use an UV map ? Or can I simply use the generated texture coordinates ? In general, when do you choose for UV unwrapping and when to use generated texture coordinates ?  I don't think this question is a duplicate with  question because these answers all start with the uv unwrapping method and I want to know if UV unwrapping or generated texture coordinates works best for my specific question. And I also would like to learn some general guidelines when choosing uv unwrapped vs generated texture coordinates
After reading  It seems that there is no perfect solution for getting rid of the stretch at the poles of UV spheres.  According to , icospheres can be used for stretch-less UV mapping:     All faces have the same area, which may be useful for certain types of UV mapping containing non-organic textures. An example that comes to mind is an isocahedral die or billiard balls where stretch must be minimized near the point where the number is printed onto the ball.   Incidentally, a lowish-poly billiard ball is exactly what I'm attempting to create.  However, my attempts at neatly unwrapping an icosphere have mostly failed (smart UV unwrap works perfectly for using baked textures, however I was hoping for something more like the example in the 6th post of , with a nice clean rectangular map).  How can an icosphere (I assumed the term "geosphere" in the thread was referring to a (geodesic) sphere made of triangles, like an icosphere) be cleanly unwrapped? Or if it's not possible, is there another way to do this which I'm missing?    I'm planning on using the resulting sphere in the BGE.
What is "preimage resistance", and how can the lack thereof be exploited? How is this different from collision resistance, and are there any known preimage attacks that would be considered feasible? Password Protect QGIS project On a shared computer, I have a QGIS project which links up to a PostGIS database that contains my data. If a user wants to access layers from the db, they have to enter the db credentials, so that's OK.   However, I have previously logged on and imported layers from my db into QGIS, and manipulated them in QGIS (styling options based on meta-data, etc.)... Anybody who opens my QGIS project can view these layers in QGIS, and can therefore see the data I wish to be protected in my db.  Is there a way to password protect my QGIS project? So i was reading about  on Wiki and I found a interesting thing written there .    It says that the S. radius of the universe is as big as the size of the universe?   How is this possible?  Since most the universe is empty space shouldn't the S. radius of our universe be significantly smaller then 13.7 light years? Optional Android notifications for reputation changes I would like to get a notification if my reputation count has changed. I think there is already some internal API for that. (I can see that changes in the menu bar in the top).  I'm sure that some people would not like that so that should be optional. Why intra-word ** highlighting is broken to protect programming_underscore_usage? As you can see, objects are falling down when I run the game. Ground is unable to stop those obstacles. Obstacles are rapidly traveling through y axis. I tried by freezing y axis. And, unchecked Use Gravity. I tried by checking Is Kinematic also. But, if I freeze y axis. Than, obstacles completely freeze through y. If there was no ground than the objects don't fall. Same thing happen when I unchecked Use Gravity. I want those obstacles to move if Player hit them. How to stop those obstacles from falling down?   Info : What's the legal way to stream music online? It's really hard getting a definite answer on this so I'm going to ask it here. Is there a legal way to stream new music on a website without getting artist consent first. There seems to be a lot of popular sites like hotnewhiphop.com doing this that are hosting from both the US and Canada so I'm guessing there is a grey area that allows it. For the record I don't allow downloads of the music and simply stream each song in a player. I have the following $n\times n$ matrix:  $$A=\begin{bmatrix} a &amp; b &amp; \ldots &amp; b\\ b &amp; a &amp; \ldots &amp; b\\ \vdots &amp; \vdots &amp; \ddots &amp; \vdots\\ b &amp; b &amp; \ldots &amp; a\end{bmatrix}$$  where $0 &lt; b &lt; a$.  I am interested in the expression for the determinant $\det[A]$ in terms of $a$, $b$ and $n$.  This seems like a trivial problem, as the matrix $A$ has such a nice structure, but my linear algebra skills are pretty rusty and I can't figure it out.  Any help would be appreciated. Chrome does not install on windows xp sp3 Predicting the number of decimal digits needed to express a rational number Ubuntu copy dialogue stops at the last moment for a long time Whenever I try and copy a file to an USB flash disk, the progress bar runs till the end very fast and stops for an indeterminable time before it is complete.  Is there an issue with ubuntu or my flash disk is what I am not able to figure out. All I want is a realistic copy dialogue A Jamaican committed marriage fraud about 30 years ago by marrying a US citizen in a marriage where the groom was paid a certain amount of money to marry her. The groom got in legal trouble for an unrelated matter, and the marriage fraud was discovered and the family friend was deported back to Jamaica. She no longer has any paperwork involved with the deportation and she can’t remember any of the details. I do not know if she simply agreed to return to Jamica when the fraud was discovered, or if she made any attempts to mount any type of legal defense in the case. I do know that she was cooperative with the immigration authorities and that they did not have to come looking for her. She would like to come the USA for a two-week visit. The main purpose of the visit is for her to visit a friend (US citizen) who is terminally ill.  I have been looking at 8 U.S.C. 1182 and from my reading of it, it would seem that she would not be admissible to the US because of the previous immigration fraud. My understanding is based on the section that says:     In general.-Any alien who, by fraud or willfully misrepresenting a material fact, seeks to procure (or has sought to procure or has procured) a visa, other documentation, or admission into the United States or other benefit provided under this Act is inadmissible.   What’s not clear to me is if this means that she would be inadmissible permanently or if this would be subject to the 10 year limit.  Can anyone help provide some clarity on this?  If the ban is not permanent are there any tips to being able to increase her chances of being able to get a visa.  She intends to honestly answer all questions during her application process for a visa. I always stumble when using abbreviations in a sentence, as they inherently contain a period in them. How do I use a comma or a semicolon after an abbreviation? How about a period?  E.g. (This is an example of my quandary) What does Morgoth look like? Is Morgoth, the original enemy in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth ever visually described? I envisage him as a bigger, meaner version of the physical Sauron, but I cannot find any reference in The Simarillion. Can a ultracentrifuge be used to test general relativity? With today's ultracentrifuge technology, they can spin so fast that the sample can be subjected to  accelerations of up to 2 millions Gs. That is equivalent to two solar masses. Has someone tried to measure the time dilation in a radioactive sample? How calculate that time dilation respect to the time outside the ultracentrifuge, for example one week. I think that that time dilation will be significant enough to be measured. Shiny locked Legendaries in ORAS Serebii says that (probably) the only  in ORAS are Kyogre, Groudon, Rayquaza and Deoxys. This means that Reshiram and Zekrom, that were shiny locked in BW/B2W2, now can be found shiny.    Can anyone prove this? I'd like to know if it's true before waste hours in softresetting. An analytic function $f$ on $\{z \in\mathbb{C} : |z|>1 \}$ What really is Spacetime? What is a good definition on Space,  and the most specific topic ""? Because someone told me that spacetime is the foundation of the entire universe?  And also, Is it possible to create spacetime? Why do some questions in question lists have a yellow background? On SO, when I'm scrolling through "questions" some have a yellow background.  Is this intuitive to everyone but me?  What is the yellow background trying to tell me about this particular question? Quotient group $SL(2,\mathbb{R})/SO(2,\mathbb{R})$ I am confused by expressions like $\mathbb{R}/\mathbb{Z}$, especially if I see something of the sort $SL(2,\mathbb{R})/SO(2,\mathbb{R})$. I don't know what to make of it. I understand what a quotient of a group for an equivalence looks like, but I can't get my head around expressions like above.   Is a quotient like this always a group and what do elements in the set $SL(2,\mathbb{R})/SO(2,\mathbb{R})$ look like?