I wonder if questions that ask about a best practice in a particular programming area might be a good fit for Stack Overflow? Answers to these questions are very often based on an experience instead of sheer linkable facts but still... they can be very interesting and useful.   For example, I originally wanted to post  on Stack Overflow. In the end, I could imagine the question being closed because I also propose two solutions and ask which is "better". That is why I posted on Programmers. Was it the right choice?
I've written a few questions on Stack Overflow before that have been closed due to being "not constructive" or "not a real question".  Now, after scanning the FAQ for the site a few times, I understand that my questions were indeed closed for good reason.  However, even after reading the FAQ, I still don't understand why a question of "what's the best practice here?" is a bad thing.  I feel as though if you properly explain your situation as thoroughly as possible, then it shouldn't be a bad question at all.  Questions like "what's the best language?" or "which framework should I use?" are indeed bad questions initially, but I feel if you specify in the post (or preferably in the title itself) what the context is, shouldn't that be deserving of some kind of an answer?  In  I asked what would be "best practice", and naturally my question was closed.  So I read the FAQ and learned how to make a more constructive question, of which I've now re-edited in an attempt to be less vague.  I understand the desire to avoid debate and lengthy discussion over a question, but I also feel as though sometimes there are certain questions which should be asked if proper context is given.  Why is a question over "best practice" always a bad question to ask?
Evaluation inside Button stops after some seconds Are shell scripts sensitive to encoding and line endings? How to float until on left (or right) page? I have two sideways tables that I want on two facing pages so the reader can turn the entire book and read them both in one turn. For the moment I keep moving them around to keep them on facing pages. Is there a way I can make the first one float until it's on a left page and then place the other one right after? Or perhaps some similar way to automatically get them on the same spread? How to avoid modifications during pg_dumpall How do I update the GUI from another thread? Which is the simplest way to update a Label from another Thread?   I have a Form running on thread1, and from that I'm starting another thread (thread2).  While thread2 is processing some files I would like to update a Label on the Form with the current status of thread2's work.   How could I do that? I am writing my CV using moderncv package, everythig is nice but I have a problem with \cventry command. I have something like this:   (it means 2010 - now)  I would want to have this in one line, rather than in two lines. I tried looking into the moderncv style files but with no success. What can I do to achieve the effect I want? Duplicity Backup Browse I just can't seem to figure this one out.  I want to use the command line to connect to a MySQL database residing on another server.  I went ahead and created the username and password for the user.  I have also granted all privileges on that user for that database.  When using the command: mysql -h &lt;hostname&gt; -u &lt;username&gt; -p, I get the following error:  ERROR 1045 (28000): Access denied for user '&lt;username&gt;'@'&lt;local_machine_hostname&gt;' (using password: YES)   The problem is that it keeps appending the current machine's hostname into the username.  Obviously, that user@&lt;local_machine_hostname&gt; is not correct.  It doesn't matter what I type.  For instance, if I type:  mysql -h &lt;hostname&gt; -u '&lt;username&gt;'@'&lt;hostname&gt;' -p   It does the same, only in the error output, it says:  Access denied for user '&lt;username&gt;@&lt;hostname&gt;'@'&lt;local_machine_hostname&gt;'   Is there a setting in a configuration file which is allowing this to happen?  It's really quite annoying.  I need to set up a tikiwiki server, and it cannot connect because during the step where you set up mysql, it keeps appending the local machine's hostname to the mysql login name. Concurrently interleaving execution of Lua and TeX in LuaTeX The usual way to interleave Lua and TeX in generating documents is by invoking Lua from Tex through the \directlua facility and generate Tex from Lua using tex.print().  For example, consider the Plain LuaTeX:  \directlua{     es=""; someluatex = function () tex.everypar="PAR!" end     tex.print("one", es, "two")     someluatex()     tex.print("three", es, "four") } five\bye   Looking at the document LuaTeX generates for that input, we see that someluatex() is run before the Tex backend does anything with the output: the PAR!s will be inserted before "one" and "two", as well as after "three".  Is there best practice for ensuring that TeX code issued by some Lua code is issued before some other LuaTeX code?  There are several ways to do this: with some code I am working with I am trying the following scheme:   Wrap the code executed by the \directlua in a coroutine, call it myco; At the point we want to ensure the Tex so far tex.print-ed is executed, use:  tex.print("\\directlua{coroutine.resume(myco)}") coroutine.yield()  If everything is in order, the Lua will resume after the Tex is processed.   This is not ideal, however: we must ensure that the TeX backend is in the right state to understand the \directlua command, which may not always be the case.  Is there a better way to achieve this? I created a new profile for gnome-terminal and I can switch between &quot;Implicit&quot; profile and the new created profile as you can see in the below image:  Now I wonder how can I switch between profiles using a command-line/script or maybe using a shortcut for this.  Note: Solutions like: gnome-terminal --tab-with-profile=Implicit &amp;&amp; exit   are excluded because I prefer not to close and open another terminal or get another terminal window in this process of changing the profile. modulo version of the quadratic formula and Euler's criterion Use the modulo version of the quadratic formula and Euler's criterion to decide if the following has a solution or not.  $2x^2+5x+8 \equiv 0\pmod{37}$  I'm not sure how I would use what was being asked of me to decide if this has a solution or not, but I have came to the conclusion that it does not, because I plugged in every possible answer $0-36$, and none of them were congruent to zero.  The way people have answered the question, isn't exactly the way I need.  I have made some progress, but I'm not exactly sure how to finish:  $2x^2+5x+8 \equiv 0\pmod{37}$  $x^2+21x+4\equiv0\pmod{37}$  $x^2+58x+841\equiv837\pmod{37}$  $(x+29)^2\equiv23\pmod{37}$  I know that if $p$ is an odd prime and $p$ doesn't divide $a$, then $x^2\equiv a\pmod{p}$ has a solution or no solution depending on whether $a^\frac{p-1}{2}\equiv 1  \space\space \text{or}\space -1\pmod{p}$.  This is where I get stuck.  Can someone help me from here?  I have a feeling this problem has no solutions, so could someone also explain to me what to do if a problem like this did have solutions. How can I install Visual Studio? How can I install Visual Studio?    I'd prefer to use it in Wine or PlayOnLinux if possible. Why do the measurements of this object seem erroneous? I just found out about the Mesh Display : Length feature in the "N" panel (thanks to ) that allows one to measure the length of a face or vertice.  But my first encounter with this tool gives me complex feelings of love and hate, see how, as I was trying to measure the aspect ratio of this TV screen, I am getting WIDTH = 20.33 and HEIGHT = 37.57.  These values seem awfully wrong, since my betrusted eyes tell me the height should be shorter than the width.    I have tried measuring the single vertices as well, to identical results. Close vote review audit flawed - fails without casting vote Is the Stack Exchange engine that powers Stack Overflow available to download or install internally for an enterprise or company?  I think Stack Exchange's engine is very great and could be very cool to use for internal enterprise patterns and practices, like the engine of Wikipedia. With the new permission model for Marketing Cloud Installed Packages, there is a problem with the "Read"-Scope for Data Extensions.  If an installed package is granted the permission/scope "Data Extensions - Read" the API-Call fails with HTTP 403 "Forbidden".  How to provide read access to Data Extensions?  Related documentation: Why isn't Higgs coupling considered a fifth fundamental force? When I first learned about the four fundamental forces of nature, I assumed that they were just the only four kind of interactions there were. But after learning a little field theory, there are many other kinds of couplings, even in the standard model. So why isn't the Yukawa Higgs coupling considered a fifth fundamental force? To be a fundamental force, does there need to be a gauge boson mediating it? Given this (very) tricky determinant, how can we calculate it easily?  $$\begin{pmatrix} \alpha + \beta &amp; \alpha \beta &amp; 0 &amp; ... &amp; ... &amp; 0 \\ 1 &amp; \alpha + \beta &amp;  \alpha \beta &amp; 0 &amp; ... &amp; 0 \\ 0 &amp; 1 &amp; \alpha + \beta &amp; \alpha \beta &amp; ... &amp; ... \\ ... &amp; ... &amp; ... &amp; ... &amp; ... &amp; 0 \\ ... &amp; ... &amp; .... &amp; ... &amp; ... &amp; \alpha \beta \\ 0 &amp; 0 &amp; 0 &amp; ... &amp; 1 &amp; \alpha + \beta   \\ \end{pmatrix} \in M_{n\times n}$$  EDIT:     I have to prove it is equal to $\frac{{\alpha}^{n+1} - {\beta}^{n+1}}{\alpha - \beta}$   Any help is appreciated, I just could not find a trick to ease it up! Some of you might insist that it was not a murder, as we know that a rebounding spell had hit Ariana, as shown in .  However, a death in such a well known family would not go uninvestigated, I presume. Were the Dumbledore brothers investigated? How did they get away with their sister suddenly dropping dead?  I'd think that Ministry of Magic has means to recognize a death caused by magical means. That's how we know that Tom Riddle Snr. was killed by Avada Kedavra. So Ariana's failing health might be a poor excuse. How can I start up an application with a pre-defined window size and position? I'm wondering is there any way to achieve the affect of the Ctrl-Alt-Keypad shortcuts in Unity using terminal commands instead? I want a command that sets a gui window to half the size of the screen, either left or right aligned.  By way of background, I'm writing a script that runs after log in. It uses Zenity to ask whether or not I want to open my development environment (GVim and IPython side-by-side). I have been trying to achieve two equal-sized windows for these programmes by using set lines= columns= in my .gvimrc and c.IPythonWidget.width = and c.IPythonWidget.height = in my ipython_qtconsole_config.py. However, there are problems associated with this approach.