qid int64 1 74.7M | question stringlengths 12 33.8k | date stringlengths 10 10 | metadata list | response_j stringlengths 0 115k | response_k stringlengths 2 98.3k |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
4,394 | It occurred to me that, while I've pieced together some ideas over the years about the differences between statistics and biostatistics, I've never heard a formal explanation. What is the distinction between these two disciplines (currently)? And why did this distinction begin in the first place?
EDIT: I've not been specific enough in my original question. I understand that biostatistics is the application and development of statistics in the biomedical field. But what are some specific examples of the distinctions? For example, what distinguishes graduate education in the two fields? What is the purpose of having distinct academic departments for the two disciplines (a distinction I see in no other field)? | 2010/11/10 | [
"https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/4394",
"https://stats.stackexchange.com",
"https://stats.stackexchange.com/users/71/"
] | When I look at the Wikipedia entry for [biostatistics](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biostatistics), the relation to *biometrics* doesn't seem so obvious to me since, historically, biometrics was more concerned with characterizing individuals by some phenotypes of interest, with large applications in population genetics (as exemplified by the work of Fisher), whereas part of this discipline now focus on biometric systems (whose objectives are the "recognition or identification of individuals based on some physical or behavioral characteristics that are intrinsically unique for each individual", according to Boulgouris et al., *Biometrics*, 2010). Anyway, there still are reviews like [Biometrika](http://biomet.oxfordjournals.org/) and [Biometrics](http://www.biometrics.tibs.org/); although I read the latter on an irregular basis, most articles focus on "biostatistical" theoretical or applied work. The same applies for [Biostatistics](http://biostatistics.oxfordjournals.org/). By "biostatistical" applications, I mean that it has to do with applications or models related to the biomedical domain, in a wide sense (biology, health science, genetics, etc.).
According to the *Encyclopedia of Biostatistics* (2005, 2nd ed.),
>
> (...) As is clear from the above examples,
> biostatistics is problem oriented. It
> is specifically directed to questions
> that arise in biomedical science. The
> methods of biostatistics are the
> methods of statistics -- concepts
> directed at variation in observations
> and methods for extracting information
> from observations in the face of
> variation from various sources, but
> notably from variation in the
> responses of living organisms and
> particularly human beings under study.
> Biostatistical activity spans a broad
> range of scientific inquiry, from the
> basic structure and functions of human
> beings, through the interactions of
> human beings with their environment,
> including problems of environmental
> toxicities and sanitation, health
> enhancement and education, disease
> prevention and therapy, the
> organization of health care systems
> and health care financing.
>
>
>
In sum, I think that Biostatistics is part of a super-family--Statistics--, and share most of its methods, but has a more focused area of interest (hence, an historical background, specific designs, and a general theoretical framework) and dedicated modeling strategies. | I see the answers here just define the domain of work so I try to give a more comprehensive answer based on my experience of learning statistics as a medical practitioner. Most of my experience is on clinical trials, but this can be applied to any domain of biostatistics.
The purpose of biostatistics is biological and medical field, this gives it subtle differences according to this purpose.
**Statistics is all the same!** it is just math! However, here is the difference that comes to my head when I define biostatistics.
### 1- Ordinary statistician will not understand all the terminologies in biostatistics but he will understand the math!
Both of them are coming from mathematical and probability theories. So you will find most of the tests resonates will with both words like regression analysis, t-test ... etc
However, when it comes some other tests like relative risk, attributable risk reduction, kaplen mieir curves ... etc these few tests will sound strange for someone with no biostatistical knowledge. However, they can easily go through it when they read about these tests
### 2- Biostatistics field usually don't reinvent the wheel, they just enhance what is available
As I said biostatistics is built on statistics. But unlike the previous point, most of the current active research on biostatistics is mostly about enhancing few properties of existing test with different terminology to serve the purpose of biostatistics. For example, something like overall survival or time-to-death are all terminologies exclusive for biostatistics (that's for sure or who would study life and death) however they are built on time-to-event analysis that biostatistician has created these terminologies to make the test serve the purpose of biostatistics, more standardized and easy to interpret in among medical practitioners.
### 3- Biostatistics has its specific guidelines (just like any other field) however it is more strict.
Biostatistics has established many guidelines and conventions to analyze the data of different field. For example, statisticians working in biology and genomics are doing different tests and have different thinking than who are working in clinical trials(and of course who are working in business intelligence). But this way of working is considered fixed among the community of **biostatistician**, so a biostatistician don't usually think out of the box unless there is something urges that has not existed before, and this usually don't happen as study design of biostatistics fields is very definitive.
A clearer example of this is the baysian statistics application on biostatistics. Bayesian statistics are known to be flexible, so you will not find a lot of usage of this type of statistics. Also, this usage is tied to a certain repetitive application like sensitivity measurement. There is no need to think of probabilities when there are easier options that are easier to interpret and perform.
**Why This restriction?**
1. The community is trying to avoid p hacking and beautifying the results. Especially if you are working in clinical trials, you don't just use the tests the gives the best results. You even don't use one-sided tests usually! These conventions are there to protect the trials validity and anything else will make the community suspicious.
2. That's the most important part. All the work of biostatistics should be interpreted by a medical practitioner, so he should make some sense of results himself. So they try to stick to a few approaches.
3. This point is unfair because there is no comparison, but study design in biostatistics is very definitive. Usually, you don't have to think a lot on how to prove the efficacy of a drug or adverse effect or so. So it is very unlikely you will need to keep your head busy of learning different techniques and tests every while as it is very rare to see a pattern change.
That's all I have right now, I will update my answer if I remembered something else. |
4,394 | It occurred to me that, while I've pieced together some ideas over the years about the differences between statistics and biostatistics, I've never heard a formal explanation. What is the distinction between these two disciplines (currently)? And why did this distinction begin in the first place?
EDIT: I've not been specific enough in my original question. I understand that biostatistics is the application and development of statistics in the biomedical field. But what are some specific examples of the distinctions? For example, what distinguishes graduate education in the two fields? What is the purpose of having distinct academic departments for the two disciplines (a distinction I see in no other field)? | 2010/11/10 | [
"https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/4394",
"https://stats.stackexchange.com",
"https://stats.stackexchange.com/users/71/"
] | I see the answers here just define the domain of work so I try to give a more comprehensive answer based on my experience of learning statistics as a medical practitioner. Most of my experience is on clinical trials, but this can be applied to any domain of biostatistics.
The purpose of biostatistics is biological and medical field, this gives it subtle differences according to this purpose.
**Statistics is all the same!** it is just math! However, here is the difference that comes to my head when I define biostatistics.
### 1- Ordinary statistician will not understand all the terminologies in biostatistics but he will understand the math!
Both of them are coming from mathematical and probability theories. So you will find most of the tests resonates will with both words like regression analysis, t-test ... etc
However, when it comes some other tests like relative risk, attributable risk reduction, kaplen mieir curves ... etc these few tests will sound strange for someone with no biostatistical knowledge. However, they can easily go through it when they read about these tests
### 2- Biostatistics field usually don't reinvent the wheel, they just enhance what is available
As I said biostatistics is built on statistics. But unlike the previous point, most of the current active research on biostatistics is mostly about enhancing few properties of existing test with different terminology to serve the purpose of biostatistics. For example, something like overall survival or time-to-death are all terminologies exclusive for biostatistics (that's for sure or who would study life and death) however they are built on time-to-event analysis that biostatistician has created these terminologies to make the test serve the purpose of biostatistics, more standardized and easy to interpret in among medical practitioners.
### 3- Biostatistics has its specific guidelines (just like any other field) however it is more strict.
Biostatistics has established many guidelines and conventions to analyze the data of different field. For example, statisticians working in biology and genomics are doing different tests and have different thinking than who are working in clinical trials(and of course who are working in business intelligence). But this way of working is considered fixed among the community of **biostatistician**, so a biostatistician don't usually think out of the box unless there is something urges that has not existed before, and this usually don't happen as study design of biostatistics fields is very definitive.
A clearer example of this is the baysian statistics application on biostatistics. Bayesian statistics are known to be flexible, so you will not find a lot of usage of this type of statistics. Also, this usage is tied to a certain repetitive application like sensitivity measurement. There is no need to think of probabilities when there are easier options that are easier to interpret and perform.
**Why This restriction?**
1. The community is trying to avoid p hacking and beautifying the results. Especially if you are working in clinical trials, you don't just use the tests the gives the best results. You even don't use one-sided tests usually! These conventions are there to protect the trials validity and anything else will make the community suspicious.
2. That's the most important part. All the work of biostatistics should be interpreted by a medical practitioner, so he should make some sense of results himself. So they try to stick to a few approaches.
3. This point is unfair because there is no comparison, but study design in biostatistics is very definitive. Usually, you don't have to think a lot on how to prove the efficacy of a drug or adverse effect or so. So it is very unlikely you will need to keep your head busy of learning different techniques and tests every while as it is very rare to see a pattern change.
That's all I have right now, I will update my answer if I remembered something else. | As for what I see this seems to be just a matter of semantics. Statistics applied to research or testing in the social sciences is just called Statistics. A person working with this type of situations needs to have a through knowledge of his or her field before applying a statistical procedure. Anyway we just call it Statistics. I think that this discussion is just about a system of preferences. If in the biological fields it is preferred to call it biostatistics there is no problem. This is just a choice of words. |
4,394 | It occurred to me that, while I've pieced together some ideas over the years about the differences between statistics and biostatistics, I've never heard a formal explanation. What is the distinction between these two disciplines (currently)? And why did this distinction begin in the first place?
EDIT: I've not been specific enough in my original question. I understand that biostatistics is the application and development of statistics in the biomedical field. But what are some specific examples of the distinctions? For example, what distinguishes graduate education in the two fields? What is the purpose of having distinct academic departments for the two disciplines (a distinction I see in no other field)? | 2010/11/10 | [
"https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/4394",
"https://stats.stackexchange.com",
"https://stats.stackexchange.com/users/71/"
] | As for what I see this seems to be just a matter of semantics. Statistics applied to research or testing in the social sciences is just called Statistics. A person working with this type of situations needs to have a through knowledge of his or her field before applying a statistical procedure. Anyway we just call it Statistics. I think that this discussion is just about a system of preferences. If in the biological fields it is preferred to call it biostatistics there is no problem. This is just a choice of words. | There is not a significant difference between statistics and biostatistics. In my definition, biostatistics is the application of statistics to biology. So a Biostatistician has a relatively strong command in biology, well at least enough to understand how to apply his statistics to biology.
It would be the same concept as *Artstatistics*, or *Sociostatistics*; application of statistics to art or statistics to sociology, respectively.
Biostatistics is simply the statistics of BIOLOGY. So you need a command of biology and statistics to do well as a Biostatistician.'Tis all. |
4,394 | It occurred to me that, while I've pieced together some ideas over the years about the differences between statistics and biostatistics, I've never heard a formal explanation. What is the distinction between these two disciplines (currently)? And why did this distinction begin in the first place?
EDIT: I've not been specific enough in my original question. I understand that biostatistics is the application and development of statistics in the biomedical field. But what are some specific examples of the distinctions? For example, what distinguishes graduate education in the two fields? What is the purpose of having distinct academic departments for the two disciplines (a distinction I see in no other field)? | 2010/11/10 | [
"https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/4394",
"https://stats.stackexchange.com",
"https://stats.stackexchange.com/users/71/"
] | As someone who took courses from the Statistics department of a university which did not offer a Biostatistics major and worked in clinical trials with biostatisticians and read many papers written by biostatisticians, I can offer a particular perspective. I see biostatistics as a field that applies a subset of standard statistical techniques to clinical research. Biostatistics focuses on categorical variables and logistic regression to a greater degree than statistics applied to subjects studied in the physical sciences and engineering. Biostatistics tends to seek answers to binary questions, such as these: 1) Is this subject healthy or sick? or 2) does this drug cause more good than harm? It often uses discrete independent variables such as whether a subject was alive or dead at the end of the study. This isn't an ironclad distinction, though: biostatistics also uses survival analysis, which involves measuring a continuous variable, i.e., the length of time to an event of biological significance. | Biostatistics, biometrics and biometry are synonyms. Medical statistics (sometimes called 'clinical biostatistics' for no clear reason) is a subset of these. |
4,394 | It occurred to me that, while I've pieced together some ideas over the years about the differences between statistics and biostatistics, I've never heard a formal explanation. What is the distinction between these two disciplines (currently)? And why did this distinction begin in the first place?
EDIT: I've not been specific enough in my original question. I understand that biostatistics is the application and development of statistics in the biomedical field. But what are some specific examples of the distinctions? For example, what distinguishes graduate education in the two fields? What is the purpose of having distinct academic departments for the two disciplines (a distinction I see in no other field)? | 2010/11/10 | [
"https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/4394",
"https://stats.stackexchange.com",
"https://stats.stackexchange.com/users/71/"
] | As someone who took courses from the Statistics department of a university which did not offer a Biostatistics major and worked in clinical trials with biostatisticians and read many papers written by biostatisticians, I can offer a particular perspective. I see biostatistics as a field that applies a subset of standard statistical techniques to clinical research. Biostatistics focuses on categorical variables and logistic regression to a greater degree than statistics applied to subjects studied in the physical sciences and engineering. Biostatistics tends to seek answers to binary questions, such as these: 1) Is this subject healthy or sick? or 2) does this drug cause more good than harm? It often uses discrete independent variables such as whether a subject was alive or dead at the end of the study. This isn't an ironclad distinction, though: biostatistics also uses survival analysis, which involves measuring a continuous variable, i.e., the length of time to an event of biological significance. | There is not a significant difference between statistics and biostatistics. In my definition, biostatistics is the application of statistics to biology. So a Biostatistician has a relatively strong command in biology, well at least enough to understand how to apply his statistics to biology.
It would be the same concept as *Artstatistics*, or *Sociostatistics*; application of statistics to art or statistics to sociology, respectively.
Biostatistics is simply the statistics of BIOLOGY. So you need a command of biology and statistics to do well as a Biostatistician.'Tis all. |
4,394 | It occurred to me that, while I've pieced together some ideas over the years about the differences between statistics and biostatistics, I've never heard a formal explanation. What is the distinction between these two disciplines (currently)? And why did this distinction begin in the first place?
EDIT: I've not been specific enough in my original question. I understand that biostatistics is the application and development of statistics in the biomedical field. But what are some specific examples of the distinctions? For example, what distinguishes graduate education in the two fields? What is the purpose of having distinct academic departments for the two disciplines (a distinction I see in no other field)? | 2010/11/10 | [
"https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/4394",
"https://stats.stackexchange.com",
"https://stats.stackexchange.com/users/71/"
] | To quote the "Encyclopedic dictionary of mathematics" by Kiyosi Itô (ed.):
> In many applied fields there exist systems of statistical methods which have been developed specifically for the respective fields, and although all of them are based essentially on the same general principles of statistical inference, each has its own special techniques and procedures. Specific names have been invented, such as biometrics, econometrics, psychometrics, technometrics, sociometrics, etc. | Biostatistics, biometrics and biometry are synonyms. Medical statistics (sometimes called 'clinical biostatistics' for no clear reason) is a subset of these. |
4,394 | It occurred to me that, while I've pieced together some ideas over the years about the differences between statistics and biostatistics, I've never heard a formal explanation. What is the distinction between these two disciplines (currently)? And why did this distinction begin in the first place?
EDIT: I've not been specific enough in my original question. I understand that biostatistics is the application and development of statistics in the biomedical field. But what are some specific examples of the distinctions? For example, what distinguishes graduate education in the two fields? What is the purpose of having distinct academic departments for the two disciplines (a distinction I see in no other field)? | 2010/11/10 | [
"https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/4394",
"https://stats.stackexchange.com",
"https://stats.stackexchange.com/users/71/"
] | I will take a swing at answering this from the perspective of someone who is *neither* a statistician nor a biostatistician. Rather, I exist in the blurry grey area that is "epidemiological methods".
As other posters have mentioned, biostatistics is a discipline particularly focused on statistics as they apply to biological problems - including those that arise in medicine. While this seems somewhat semantic, it does result in some things that I think it make it a distinct entity on its own, though none of these are strictly exclusive:
* A reliance on subject-matter expertise. Be this through collaboration with subject matter experts, or simply working on the same problem for a long time, biostats involves the fusion of a statistical method with a particularly applied problem.
* A common and fairly restricted set of study designs. While exotic study designs are growing more acceptable, by and large the field is still dominated by cohort, case-control and clinical trial designs. The focus is often on estimating categorical exposures (given the drug, not given the drug...) and categorical outcomes (died, didn't die).
* A ubiquity of missing/misclassified/poor data.
* Less emphasis on classification and prediction. As @Alexis has mentioned, causal inference, and the desire to explore counterfactuals is hugely important for biostatistics. While not exclusively true, something that is a good predictor but has no etiologic explanation is of less interest. This has, for example, somewhat limited the penetration of machine learning methods. | There is not a significant difference between statistics and biostatistics. In my definition, biostatistics is the application of statistics to biology. So a Biostatistician has a relatively strong command in biology, well at least enough to understand how to apply his statistics to biology.
It would be the same concept as *Artstatistics*, or *Sociostatistics*; application of statistics to art or statistics to sociology, respectively.
Biostatistics is simply the statistics of BIOLOGY. So you need a command of biology and statistics to do well as a Biostatistician.'Tis all. |
4,394 | It occurred to me that, while I've pieced together some ideas over the years about the differences between statistics and biostatistics, I've never heard a formal explanation. What is the distinction between these two disciplines (currently)? And why did this distinction begin in the first place?
EDIT: I've not been specific enough in my original question. I understand that biostatistics is the application and development of statistics in the biomedical field. But what are some specific examples of the distinctions? For example, what distinguishes graduate education in the two fields? What is the purpose of having distinct academic departments for the two disciplines (a distinction I see in no other field)? | 2010/11/10 | [
"https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/4394",
"https://stats.stackexchange.com",
"https://stats.stackexchange.com/users/71/"
] | As someone who took courses from the Statistics department of a university which did not offer a Biostatistics major and worked in clinical trials with biostatisticians and read many papers written by biostatisticians, I can offer a particular perspective. I see biostatistics as a field that applies a subset of standard statistical techniques to clinical research. Biostatistics focuses on categorical variables and logistic regression to a greater degree than statistics applied to subjects studied in the physical sciences and engineering. Biostatistics tends to seek answers to binary questions, such as these: 1) Is this subject healthy or sick? or 2) does this drug cause more good than harm? It often uses discrete independent variables such as whether a subject was alive or dead at the end of the study. This isn't an ironclad distinction, though: biostatistics also uses survival analysis, which involves measuring a continuous variable, i.e., the length of time to an event of biological significance. | Statistics vs. Biostatistics does not make sense as a comparison; biostatistics is really a sub topic of statistics. This would be like asking "what's the difference between mathematics and probability?"; probability is a subfield of mathematics.
As others have noted, biostatistics applies to problems that are very common in both medical studies and biological research. This includes, but certainly is not limited to, survival analysis, sequential trial design, longitudinal analysis and genomic analyses, to name only a few topics.
As for the difference between programs in statistics and biostatistics, the obvious difference between two programs is that the biostatistics programs will be specializing in the topics above. Most statistics programs will still cover biostatistics (for example, I have my PhD in Statistics, and of all possible specializations of statistician, I am most qualified as a biostatistician, my current position), but it is definitely possible to get a PhD in statistics with only a mild introduction to biostatistic-specific topics.
It's my understanding that the high demand for statisticians by pharmaceutical companies lead to the demand for biostatistics programs. |
4,394 | It occurred to me that, while I've pieced together some ideas over the years about the differences between statistics and biostatistics, I've never heard a formal explanation. What is the distinction between these two disciplines (currently)? And why did this distinction begin in the first place?
EDIT: I've not been specific enough in my original question. I understand that biostatistics is the application and development of statistics in the biomedical field. But what are some specific examples of the distinctions? For example, what distinguishes graduate education in the two fields? What is the purpose of having distinct academic departments for the two disciplines (a distinction I see in no other field)? | 2010/11/10 | [
"https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/4394",
"https://stats.stackexchange.com",
"https://stats.stackexchange.com/users/71/"
] | When I look at the Wikipedia entry for [biostatistics](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biostatistics), the relation to *biometrics* doesn't seem so obvious to me since, historically, biometrics was more concerned with characterizing individuals by some phenotypes of interest, with large applications in population genetics (as exemplified by the work of Fisher), whereas part of this discipline now focus on biometric systems (whose objectives are the "recognition or identification of individuals based on some physical or behavioral characteristics that are intrinsically unique for each individual", according to Boulgouris et al., *Biometrics*, 2010). Anyway, there still are reviews like [Biometrika](http://biomet.oxfordjournals.org/) and [Biometrics](http://www.biometrics.tibs.org/); although I read the latter on an irregular basis, most articles focus on "biostatistical" theoretical or applied work. The same applies for [Biostatistics](http://biostatistics.oxfordjournals.org/). By "biostatistical" applications, I mean that it has to do with applications or models related to the biomedical domain, in a wide sense (biology, health science, genetics, etc.).
According to the *Encyclopedia of Biostatistics* (2005, 2nd ed.),
>
> (...) As is clear from the above examples,
> biostatistics is problem oriented. It
> is specifically directed to questions
> that arise in biomedical science. The
> methods of biostatistics are the
> methods of statistics -- concepts
> directed at variation in observations
> and methods for extracting information
> from observations in the face of
> variation from various sources, but
> notably from variation in the
> responses of living organisms and
> particularly human beings under study.
> Biostatistical activity spans a broad
> range of scientific inquiry, from the
> basic structure and functions of human
> beings, through the interactions of
> human beings with their environment,
> including problems of environmental
> toxicities and sanitation, health
> enhancement and education, disease
> prevention and therapy, the
> organization of health care systems
> and health care financing.
>
>
>
In sum, I think that Biostatistics is part of a super-family--Statistics--, and share most of its methods, but has a more focused area of interest (hence, an historical background, specific designs, and a general theoretical framework) and dedicated modeling strategies. | As someone who took courses from the Statistics department of a university which did not offer a Biostatistics major and worked in clinical trials with biostatisticians and read many papers written by biostatisticians, I can offer a particular perspective. I see biostatistics as a field that applies a subset of standard statistical techniques to clinical research. Biostatistics focuses on categorical variables and logistic regression to a greater degree than statistics applied to subjects studied in the physical sciences and engineering. Biostatistics tends to seek answers to binary questions, such as these: 1) Is this subject healthy or sick? or 2) does this drug cause more good than harm? It often uses discrete independent variables such as whether a subject was alive or dead at the end of the study. This isn't an ironclad distinction, though: biostatistics also uses survival analysis, which involves measuring a continuous variable, i.e., the length of time to an event of biological significance. |
225,050 | We have a project which needs to take advantage of some ZFS features (snapshots, streaming, etc) but we're a little concerned with the recent events with Oracle and OpenSolaris. Is it "safe" to use the current OpenSolaris images on EC2?
We're considering whether it would be "safe" to use OpenSolaris in production on EC2 until an alternative BSD or Linux distro with native ZFS support becomes available on EC2. I understand that there are a number of OSol clones in the works, and that FreeBSD may become available soon on EC2.
By "safe" I mean that the current OpenSolaris AMIs on Amazon are stable enough for production use and that there's little/no chance Amazon will pull those AMIs in the near future. | 2011/01/21 | [
"https://serverfault.com/questions/225050",
"https://serverfault.com",
"https://serverfault.com/users/8305/"
] | If you are only requiring ZFS and not other Solaris features, you could also migrate to Linux as OS. IBM developerWorks has a [pretty good article on using ZFS on Linux](http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-zfs/) even though setup seems to be rather technically intense.
If you are depending on the features, you might give Linux with [btrfs](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Btrfs) a try, it also supports snapshots, streaming and the likes. | OpenSolaris is dead, Oracle killed it :(
Although Solaris Express have not been discontinued, so you can use that if you want, although the license is pretty limiting. |
225,050 | We have a project which needs to take advantage of some ZFS features (snapshots, streaming, etc) but we're a little concerned with the recent events with Oracle and OpenSolaris. Is it "safe" to use the current OpenSolaris images on EC2?
We're considering whether it would be "safe" to use OpenSolaris in production on EC2 until an alternative BSD or Linux distro with native ZFS support becomes available on EC2. I understand that there are a number of OSol clones in the works, and that FreeBSD may become available soon on EC2.
By "safe" I mean that the current OpenSolaris AMIs on Amazon are stable enough for production use and that there's little/no chance Amazon will pull those AMIs in the near future. | 2011/01/21 | [
"https://serverfault.com/questions/225050",
"https://serverfault.com",
"https://serverfault.com/users/8305/"
] | Due to the open-source license it was released under, the existing OpenSolaris remains safe to use. However, you should not expect any patches or bugfixes, so it is not recommended to use OpenSolaris for production systems. Have a look at the Indiana Project and Illumos kernel as a potential upgrade path. (See Wikipedia)
I'm not sure if Amazon have AMIs for Solaris Express yet, but that may be the direction you want to go for a commercial product. There might be licensing costs involved though. | OpenSolaris is dead, Oracle killed it :(
Although Solaris Express have not been discontinued, so you can use that if you want, although the license is pretty limiting. |
225,050 | We have a project which needs to take advantage of some ZFS features (snapshots, streaming, etc) but we're a little concerned with the recent events with Oracle and OpenSolaris. Is it "safe" to use the current OpenSolaris images on EC2?
We're considering whether it would be "safe" to use OpenSolaris in production on EC2 until an alternative BSD or Linux distro with native ZFS support becomes available on EC2. I understand that there are a number of OSol clones in the works, and that FreeBSD may become available soon on EC2.
By "safe" I mean that the current OpenSolaris AMIs on Amazon are stable enough for production use and that there's little/no chance Amazon will pull those AMIs in the near future. | 2011/01/21 | [
"https://serverfault.com/questions/225050",
"https://serverfault.com",
"https://serverfault.com/users/8305/"
] | Due to the open-source license it was released under, the existing OpenSolaris remains safe to use. However, you should not expect any patches or bugfixes, so it is not recommended to use OpenSolaris for production systems. Have a look at the Indiana Project and Illumos kernel as a potential upgrade path. (See Wikipedia)
I'm not sure if Amazon have AMIs for Solaris Express yet, but that may be the direction you want to go for a commercial product. There might be licensing costs involved though. | If you are only requiring ZFS and not other Solaris features, you could also migrate to Linux as OS. IBM developerWorks has a [pretty good article on using ZFS on Linux](http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-zfs/) even though setup seems to be rather technically intense.
If you are depending on the features, you might give Linux with [btrfs](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Btrfs) a try, it also supports snapshots, streaming and the likes. |
225,050 | We have a project which needs to take advantage of some ZFS features (snapshots, streaming, etc) but we're a little concerned with the recent events with Oracle and OpenSolaris. Is it "safe" to use the current OpenSolaris images on EC2?
We're considering whether it would be "safe" to use OpenSolaris in production on EC2 until an alternative BSD or Linux distro with native ZFS support becomes available on EC2. I understand that there are a number of OSol clones in the works, and that FreeBSD may become available soon on EC2.
By "safe" I mean that the current OpenSolaris AMIs on Amazon are stable enough for production use and that there's little/no chance Amazon will pull those AMIs in the near future. | 2011/01/21 | [
"https://serverfault.com/questions/225050",
"https://serverfault.com",
"https://serverfault.com/users/8305/"
] | If you are only requiring ZFS and not other Solaris features, you could also migrate to Linux as OS. IBM developerWorks has a [pretty good article on using ZFS on Linux](http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-zfs/) even though setup seems to be rather technically intense.
If you are depending on the features, you might give Linux with [btrfs](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Btrfs) a try, it also supports snapshots, streaming and the likes. | Safe unless Amazon decides to cut you off like WikiLeaks without prenotice. This way you will lose all your data and possibly customers.
OpenSolaris should be as stable distro as any but alas no longer supported. For PC hardware there are so many choices, like Nexenta, or OpenFiler. |
225,050 | We have a project which needs to take advantage of some ZFS features (snapshots, streaming, etc) but we're a little concerned with the recent events with Oracle and OpenSolaris. Is it "safe" to use the current OpenSolaris images on EC2?
We're considering whether it would be "safe" to use OpenSolaris in production on EC2 until an alternative BSD or Linux distro with native ZFS support becomes available on EC2. I understand that there are a number of OSol clones in the works, and that FreeBSD may become available soon on EC2.
By "safe" I mean that the current OpenSolaris AMIs on Amazon are stable enough for production use and that there's little/no chance Amazon will pull those AMIs in the near future. | 2011/01/21 | [
"https://serverfault.com/questions/225050",
"https://serverfault.com",
"https://serverfault.com/users/8305/"
] | Due to the open-source license it was released under, the existing OpenSolaris remains safe to use. However, you should not expect any patches or bugfixes, so it is not recommended to use OpenSolaris for production systems. Have a look at the Indiana Project and Illumos kernel as a potential upgrade path. (See Wikipedia)
I'm not sure if Amazon have AMIs for Solaris Express yet, but that may be the direction you want to go for a commercial product. There might be licensing costs involved though. | Safe unless Amazon decides to cut you off like WikiLeaks without prenotice. This way you will lose all your data and possibly customers.
OpenSolaris should be as stable distro as any but alas no longer supported. For PC hardware there are so many choices, like Nexenta, or OpenFiler. |
1,557,131 | I mostly just want to use this for talks I cannot attend, but is there a way to record a zoom meeting without having to be present at the particular time. | 2020/06/02 | [
"https://superuser.com/questions/1557131",
"https://superuser.com",
"https://superuser.com/users/1183112/"
] | From a [recent Zoom blog post](https://blog.zoom.us/wordpress/2020/06/11/improving-our-policies-as-we-continue-to-enable-global-collaboration/):
>
> We do not have a backdoor that allows someone to enter a meeting without being visible.
>
>
>
So it is not possible to even view a Zoom meeting without being a participant, let alone record that meeting. | **No** only the current host of a zoom meeting can record it.
*And honestly I wouldn't like anybody not participating in my meeting to record it. The correct way is to notify the organizer you can't attend and ask for the recording.* |
38 | How does one set an inflation destination to receive inflation Lumens? | 2018/01/17 | [
"https://stellar.stackexchange.com/questions/38",
"https://stellar.stackexchange.com",
"https://stellar.stackexchange.com/users/169/"
] | Some wallets have the ability to input inflation destination (usually in the settings)
>
> If your app does not offer you an option to set the Inflation
> destination, you can do it manually by using the **official** Stellar
> Laboratory. This will work for all wallets, including paper wallet.
>
>
> Go to <https://www.stellar.org/laboratory/#?network=public>
>
>
> Click in the tab "Transaction Builder":
> <https://i.imgur.com/bEywBp6.png>
>
>
> Paste your Public Key in "Source Account":
> <https://i.imgur.com/1sVXIVp.png>
>
>
> Click the blue button "Fetch next sequence number for account starting
> with...": <https://i.imgur.com/TAysyf9.png>
>
>
> Scroll down the page to "Operation Type", click the dropdown menu and
> choose "Set Options": <https://i.imgur.com/TCyCxru.png>
>
>
> Paste the inflation address
> in the
> "Inflation Destination": <https://i.imgur.com/v622fKK.png>
>
>
> Scroll down the page and click the blue button "Sign in Transaction
> Signer": <https://i.imgur.com/qLFi668.png>
>
>
> You will be redirected to a new page, scroll down and paste your
> Secret Key in "Add Signer": <https://i.imgur.com/uYgicX5.png>
>
>
> Scroll down and click the blue button "Submit to Post Transaction
> endpoint": <https://i.imgur.com/K2mCN6z.png>
>
>
> You will be redirected to a new page, click the blue button "Submit":
> <https://i.imgur.com/NhTwQbt.png>
>
>
> Done!
>
>
> Read more about Inflation in official documentation:
> <https://www.stellar.org/developers/guides/concepts/inflation.html>
>
>
>
[Source](https://www.reddit.com/r/stellartutorials/comments/7mzf7e/how_to_manually_set_inflation_destination/)
Note: If you're using the Stellar Account Viewer and the Nano Ledger S to access and store your Lumens, the steps vary slightly. When you get to the point where you 're redirected to a new page after clicking the "Sign in Transaction Signer", rather than pasting your secret key, you'll use the other option and "Sign with Default BIP Path" before completing the rest of the steps. (thanks [Kißizer24](https://stellar.stackexchange.com/users/232/ki%C3%9Fizer24)) | As a complementary to @Rubber Ducky's and @jehna1's excellent answers, I'll add some existing external tutorials which I think are more user friendly.
1. [Set Up Your Lumen Inflation](https://www.lumenauts.com/tutorials/how-to-join-the-inflation-pool) by [Lumenaunts](https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellar/comments/7pu1yz/lumenaut_community_pool/). it's essentially the same as @Rubber Ducky's answer however with some screenshots. This site also provides [a couple of other nice tutorials](https://www.lumenauts.com/tutorials) for beginners.
2. [With Stellar Desktop Client](http://xlmpool.com/sdc-en.html). [Stellar Desktop Client](https://github.com/stellarchat/desktop-client) has been listed on <https://www.stellar.org/lumens/wallets/> for relatively a long time and is majorly developed by the [ripplefox.com](https://ripplefox.com/) anchor, it has built-in xlmpool/RippleFox pool support but you can surely customize with your preferred inflation address.
3. [With Ledger Nano S](http://www.xlmnews.com/?p=112). It still utilizes the [Stellar Laboratory](https://www.stellar.org/laboratory/) but specialized for Ledger Nano S.
4. [With Firefly mobile wallet](http://xlmpool.com/firefly-en.html). [Firefly](https://wallet.fchain.io/) is developed by a Chinese Stellar-based company [fchain.io](https://fchain.io/en/) and the repository is hosted on [GitHub/StellarCN](https://github.com/StellarCN/firefly).
EDIT: I know SE does not advocate linking to external pages without self-contained answers, however these tutorials are either specific to clients/wallets, or cannot be rendered well at SE sites. |
267,495 | I'm trying to learn about robust statistics, one of the books that I saw about this topic is [Robust Statistics](http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0470129905), but I have not found this book nowhere.
Does anyone know of any material that covers the same topics as the book, some alternative reference? College Material?
The contents of the book can be seen here [Table of Contents](http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470129905.html). | 2017/03/14 | [
"https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/267495",
"https://stats.stackexchange.com",
"https://stats.stackexchange.com/users/-1/"
] | I would not start with Huber's book, even with its 2009 revision, unless you possess strong mathematical background, i.e. measure theory and topology. The book by Maronna and Yohai entitled [Robust Statistics: Theory and Methods](http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0470010924) is much more accessible for beginners and covers both univariate and multivariate theory, along with the computational aspects of the estimators (Chapter 9). So it is more modern in that respect.
Alternatively, if you find their book too easy but Huber's book still difficult there exists an intermediate alternative called [Robust Statistics: The Approach Based on Influence Functions](http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0471735779) from Frank Hampel and co-authors (Hampel was the person who invented the influence function). The mathematical requirements are more modest and there is substantial motivation for the estimators.
All these books may be found in digital libraries but if you still have trouble obtaining pdf versions, you might want to try [these notes](http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~dtyler/ShortCourse.pdf), which are a fusion of all three books. You might also be pleased to know that all robust estimators exist in up-to-date R-packages, e.g. robustbase. | Maronna's book from 2006, titled "Robust Statistics: Theory and Methods" is a very good introduction to the topic that covers roughly the same as Huber's. Depending on what aspect you want to touch on, I would focus on articles written by both Huber and Maronna to better help you understand how the field was developed. |
18,399,944 | I am looking for the best solution to draw mapping diagram in EA. I find that composite structure diagram might suits my needs. I have even found good example of such diagram on the net:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/GiTh7.jpg)
(Original source: <http://www.dthomas.co.uk/dtalm/images/eshot/test/data_map.JPG>)
This diagram was fully created in EA (as author claims). However I am not able to attach 'represents' relation to the attribute. Does any one know how to do that (I am talking about those little open squares in class representations).
Thank you in advance for your answer. | 2013/08/23 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/18399944",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/790907/"
] | Good question!
I found your answer [in Google Groups](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/sparx-enterprise-architect-general/aAa6SgxQbws):
>
> draw a dependency from one class to the other.
>
>
> Then Right Click on the left side of the dependency and chose Link to Element Feature, chose Attribut and then select your attribute.
>
>
> On the right side the same procedure.
>
>
>
On my EA 10 (Corp.Ed.), I was able to reproduce the described steps. See attached image.
 | I just downloaded EA and created a simple example by creating :
* one class with a part
* one collaboration with also a part
* one 'represents' relation by using the command highlighted 
Hoping it helps,
EBR.
PS: it is out of the scope of your question but what is the goal of this mapping diagram? It is just curiosity.. |
2,682,519 | **Euclidean proposition 8 of Book I**
I'm reading about the Euclidean Elements. What does this proposition mean? | 2018/03/08 | [
"https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/2682519",
"https://math.stackexchange.com",
"https://math.stackexchange.com/users/503282/"
] | With a "modern compass" you can put the two ends down at two points in the plane, pick the compass up without having it fold, and put it down with one point somewhere else, to draw a circle there with the radius you want. That allows you to lay off a segment of given length on a given line.
With Euclid's compass, when you pick it up you lose the angle between the legs. Proposition 2 cleverly shows you that even with that restriction you can lay off a segment determined in one place on a line somewhere else. Once it's been proved you can proceed as if compasses didn't collapse when they left the plane.
(No one told me about this when I studied geometry in high school many years ago. I only discovered it when teaching the history of mathematics, read the start of Euclid, and wondered why we even needed Book I Proposition 2.) | In modern compasses with distance retained tightly after setting it or geometrical software like Geogebra where you get radial distance exactly what you wanted it is unthinkable that the compass distance can change after you first set it to the circle radius. |
11,769,587 | While designing a Web Application in ASP.Net, I usually split the project in 2 parts, the **back-end** (the admin part) and the **front-end** (the visitors/SEO part). Let's say that my visitors can login on the website and will do a lot of tasks, like fill profile, send messages, etc.
That part (authenticated user) looks for me a differente "layer" between Front-end and Back-end, and is somewhat hard define if is front-end (why visitors/users will handle it, but no admins) or if it is back-end (why the user will proactively make changes in database, like admins, but with less rights).
There is a term to define that "layer", like "mid-end" or I'm floating my mind to wrong places here and there is a clear definition to this (unknown to me)? | 2012/08/02 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/11769587",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/48729/"
] | I would call these:
* public area
* user area
* admin area
Collectively, I'd identify these as either 'areas' or 'zones'. To me, 'back-end' means code running on a server, and 'front-end' means the output from that code. I'd avoid using that terminology.
This is a very subjective answer, but that seems to be the nature of your question.
Funny how sometimes the biggest obstacle in development is: "what should I call it?!" | Front-end vs. Back-end seem very subjective, in that they depend on the context, circumstance, and sometimes on individual interpretations. I think [Wikipedia does a good job defining it](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Front_and_back_ends), but there' still not always a clear distinction.
For that middle layer, I prefer the term "[Mediator](http://zesty.ca/mediator.html)". |
14,058 | Aristotle says there are things and two types of properties that thing can have,one accidental property other essential property.
my question is if we remove all accidental and essential properties of a thing will that thing still be same thing???
and why Aristotle made a distinction between a thing and its properties?
because to invent categorical logic???
if i remove all accidental properties to a gold ring ,like polish or attached gems on gold ring then i will left essential properties of gold namely yellowish color and metal related stuff like chemical composition of metal gold.
i wounder if we remove essential properties of gold we are left with a metal that is not gold,so why Aristotle made a distinction between thing and essential properties and accidental properties of a thing???
i think it is wrong to say there is a "thing" and then we attach essential and accidental properties to that thing,i think when we talk about a thing we are talking about its essential properties,so making distinction between a thing and its properties is wrong,am i wrong or right? | 2014/06/13 | [
"https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/14058",
"https://philosophy.stackexchange.com",
"https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/users/8053/"
] | You can remove the accidental properties - that is why they are called that; but essential properties can't be removed - thats why they're called *essential*;
* If you remove the goldness of gold - does it remain gold?
* If you remove the ringness of a ring - is it still a ring?
It doesn't seem so; in fact it doesn't result in a bare 'object' but a contradiction; This is why they're called essential properties.
* You can remove the gold of a gold ring, and it remain a ring.
So gold on a ring is an accidental property.
* You turn a bar of gold into another shape - say a pyramid
So shape is accidental to what gold is | If it is possible to remove all properties from a thing you will have no thing. If you can remove one property which is an attribute of it, it will not be the same thing. But the question is: can you remove just one property of a thing, accidental or not? |
14,058 | Aristotle says there are things and two types of properties that thing can have,one accidental property other essential property.
my question is if we remove all accidental and essential properties of a thing will that thing still be same thing???
and why Aristotle made a distinction between a thing and its properties?
because to invent categorical logic???
if i remove all accidental properties to a gold ring ,like polish or attached gems on gold ring then i will left essential properties of gold namely yellowish color and metal related stuff like chemical composition of metal gold.
i wounder if we remove essential properties of gold we are left with a metal that is not gold,so why Aristotle made a distinction between thing and essential properties and accidental properties of a thing???
i think it is wrong to say there is a "thing" and then we attach essential and accidental properties to that thing,i think when we talk about a thing we are talking about its essential properties,so making distinction between a thing and its properties is wrong,am i wrong or right? | 2014/06/13 | [
"https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/14058",
"https://philosophy.stackexchange.com",
"https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/users/8053/"
] | First, I think Mozibur is on the right track here, but I'm a little hesitant to work with the example as supplied ("a gold ring"). Second, I'm going to use the word "substance" instead of thing to be consistent with Aristotle and the context where he speaks of essential and accidental properties.
Essential properties are those properties that follow necessarily for substances (formed matter) to be and have the form it is. Accidental properties are those things that are incidentally true. For example, long hair is an accidental property vis-a-vis the human essence. You can take it away and what remains is human. Being alive on the other hand is an essential property of the human essence. If you take it away, what remains is no longer human. So far, I think Mozibur and I are in full agreement.
Where I hesitate and this relates specifically to the example is that a gold ring is an artifact. And artifacts are difficult on the Aristotelian model. They don't necessarily have forms in the same way that (see the top of here: <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/artifact/>). Thus, at least for Aristotle, it's not clear that artifacts have essential properties. But if they do, then I think it's precisely those properties necessary for it to be what it is. So a gold ring would a gold ring insofar as it is gold and a ring. Specific ornamentation would be accidental.
I'm a little confused by your suggestion regarding taking away gold's yellowness and specific weight. Gold **is** a natural kind regardless of how it is shaped. If you take away the gold, you take away the thing and are left with nothing.... The yellowish color is what gold is or rather is an essential property of being gold (with two caveats: (1) modern inventions like "rose gold" and "white gold" are actually alloys -- the gold part is still yellowy and (2) Aristotle's theory is not ideally suited to molecular-level chemistry).
A gold ring on the other hand is an artifactual arrangement of gold. So you can change the shape without changing the gold essence.
---
Thus, moving to your last formulation of your question. Essential properties are no different than the thing insofar as you can only wipe out the properties by eliminating the thing. Accidental properties are different from the things to which they inhere, because they can be removed.
But essential properties can still be different than the substance itself. Silver, Platinum, and Palladium can all be said to be similar colors, and their precise colors are essential to them as are their softnesses, etc., but that doesn't make the color a softness or the softness a color. | If it is possible to remove all properties from a thing you will have no thing. If you can remove one property which is an attribute of it, it will not be the same thing. But the question is: can you remove just one property of a thing, accidental or not? |
249,471 | Genetic algorithms are one form of optimization method. Often stochastic gradient descent and its derivatives are the best choice for function optimization, but genetic algorithms are still sometimes used. For example, the antenna of [NASA's ST5 spacecraft](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Technology_5) was created with a genetic algorithm:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/vfP5b.jpg)
When are genetic optimization methods a better choice than more common gradient descent methods? | 2016/12/03 | [
"https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/249471",
"https://stats.stackexchange.com",
"https://stats.stackexchange.com/users/141025/"
] | Genetic algorithms (GA) are a family of heuristics which are empirically good at providing a *decent* answer in many cases, although they are rarely the best option for a given domain.
You mention derivative-based algorithms, but even in the absence of derivatives there are plenty of derivative-free optimization algorithms that perform way better than GAs. See [this](https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/193306/optimization-when-cost-function-slow-to-evaluate/193391#193391) and [this](https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/203542/most-suitable-optimizer-for-the-gaussain-process-likelihood-function/203555#203555) answer for some ideas.
What many standard optimization algorithms have in common (even derivative-free methods) is the assumption that the underlying space is a smooth manifold (perhaps with a few discrete dimensions), and the function to optimize is *somewhat* well-behaved.
However, not all functions are defined on a smooth manifold. Sometimes you want to optimize over a graph or other discrete structures (combinatorial optimization) -- here there are dedicated algorithms, but GAs would also work.
The more you go towards functions defined over complex, discrete structures, the more GAs can be useful, especially if you can find a representation in which the genetic operators work at their best (which requires a lot of hand-tuning and domain knowledge).
Of course, the future might lead to forget GAs altogether and develop methods to [map discrete spaces to continuous space](https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.02415), and use the optimization machinery we have on the continuous representation. | Genetic methods are well suited for multicriteria optimization when gradient descent is dedicated to monocriteria optimization. Gradient descent allow to find minimum of functions when derivatives exists and there is only one optimum solution (if we except local minimas). A genetics algorithm can be used in multicriteria problems and lead to a continuum of solutions, each one beeing individuals of a population, having evolved from a initial population.
The values to optimize are the phenotypes of the individuals and there can be several phenotypes.
Generaly, none of the individual has simultaneously the better value of each phenotype, so there is not only one solution. The individuals in the final population, that are all solutions of the optimization, are part of the "Pareto front" and marked as being "Pareto rank one" individuals. This mean that compared to every others individuals having the same performance for each phenotype, they are at least better for one phenotype than the others. |
249,471 | Genetic algorithms are one form of optimization method. Often stochastic gradient descent and its derivatives are the best choice for function optimization, but genetic algorithms are still sometimes used. For example, the antenna of [NASA's ST5 spacecraft](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Technology_5) was created with a genetic algorithm:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/vfP5b.jpg)
When are genetic optimization methods a better choice than more common gradient descent methods? | 2016/12/03 | [
"https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/249471",
"https://stats.stackexchange.com",
"https://stats.stackexchange.com/users/141025/"
] | Genetic methods are well suited for multicriteria optimization when gradient descent is dedicated to monocriteria optimization. Gradient descent allow to find minimum of functions when derivatives exists and there is only one optimum solution (if we except local minimas). A genetics algorithm can be used in multicriteria problems and lead to a continuum of solutions, each one beeing individuals of a population, having evolved from a initial population.
The values to optimize are the phenotypes of the individuals and there can be several phenotypes.
Generaly, none of the individual has simultaneously the better value of each phenotype, so there is not only one solution. The individuals in the final population, that are all solutions of the optimization, are part of the "Pareto front" and marked as being "Pareto rank one" individuals. This mean that compared to every others individuals having the same performance for each phenotype, they are at least better for one phenotype than the others. | Best in which sense ?
In my experience, GAs are one of the most pragmatic optimizers.
While many more precise algorithms require time and effort to formalize real problems in the mathematical world, GAs can handle any cost function with complex rules and constraints (GAs are related by an execution approach afterall and not by specific calculation). This process is straightforward and you can try many approaches for exploratory work.
I appreciate also the possibility to reinject past solutions to the algorithm for future runs which is good for repeated task.
Conceptually, a genetic algorithm can be represented by a hashmap of functions and suits so functionnal languages well like Clojure which is also a language where you can achieve big results very quickly.
Genetic Algorithms can also be nested : the cost function of one GA can be a GA ! These algorithms take advantage of modern hardware and infrastructure which allow them to compute a very large population so that - even with simple mutation/selection operations - you can still achieve good results.
Even for simple problems like finding the minimum of a wave function, GAs are not that bad and can achieve a decent precision in an acceptable time.
So yeah, analytical solutions may have quicker execution time and precision, but the time required to produce them overweights often expected benefits ! So when ? Almost everytime to me, at least for meta-optimization. |
249,471 | Genetic algorithms are one form of optimization method. Often stochastic gradient descent and its derivatives are the best choice for function optimization, but genetic algorithms are still sometimes used. For example, the antenna of [NASA's ST5 spacecraft](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Technology_5) was created with a genetic algorithm:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/vfP5b.jpg)
When are genetic optimization methods a better choice than more common gradient descent methods? | 2016/12/03 | [
"https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/249471",
"https://stats.stackexchange.com",
"https://stats.stackexchange.com/users/141025/"
] | Genetic methods are well suited for multicriteria optimization when gradient descent is dedicated to monocriteria optimization. Gradient descent allow to find minimum of functions when derivatives exists and there is only one optimum solution (if we except local minimas). A genetics algorithm can be used in multicriteria problems and lead to a continuum of solutions, each one beeing individuals of a population, having evolved from a initial population.
The values to optimize are the phenotypes of the individuals and there can be several phenotypes.
Generaly, none of the individual has simultaneously the better value of each phenotype, so there is not only one solution. The individuals in the final population, that are all solutions of the optimization, are part of the "Pareto front" and marked as being "Pareto rank one" individuals. This mean that compared to every others individuals having the same performance for each phenotype, they are at least better for one phenotype than the others. | Genetic algorithms are best when many processors can be used in parallel. and when the object function has a high modality (many local optima). Also, for multi-objective optimization, there are multi-objective genetic algorithms, MOGA.
However, I think Genetic algorithms are overrated. A lot of the popularity probably comes from the fact that they are inspired by biology. They do tend to find global optima more often than other direct search methods, but at a high cost, which means that another direct search method (e.g. Nelder-Mead, Complex or SQP) can be run several times to find a global optimum, and yield a better performance (i.e., in terms of convergence, and probability of finding global optimum) overall. This is true not only if a single processor is used, but also even when multi processors are available.
I think they stay popular because there are so many problems where very simple models are used, so performance is not an issue. |
249,471 | Genetic algorithms are one form of optimization method. Often stochastic gradient descent and its derivatives are the best choice for function optimization, but genetic algorithms are still sometimes used. For example, the antenna of [NASA's ST5 spacecraft](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Technology_5) was created with a genetic algorithm:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/vfP5b.jpg)
When are genetic optimization methods a better choice than more common gradient descent methods? | 2016/12/03 | [
"https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/249471",
"https://stats.stackexchange.com",
"https://stats.stackexchange.com/users/141025/"
] | Genetic algorithms (GA) are a family of heuristics which are empirically good at providing a *decent* answer in many cases, although they are rarely the best option for a given domain.
You mention derivative-based algorithms, but even in the absence of derivatives there are plenty of derivative-free optimization algorithms that perform way better than GAs. See [this](https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/193306/optimization-when-cost-function-slow-to-evaluate/193391#193391) and [this](https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/203542/most-suitable-optimizer-for-the-gaussain-process-likelihood-function/203555#203555) answer for some ideas.
What many standard optimization algorithms have in common (even derivative-free methods) is the assumption that the underlying space is a smooth manifold (perhaps with a few discrete dimensions), and the function to optimize is *somewhat* well-behaved.
However, not all functions are defined on a smooth manifold. Sometimes you want to optimize over a graph or other discrete structures (combinatorial optimization) -- here there are dedicated algorithms, but GAs would also work.
The more you go towards functions defined over complex, discrete structures, the more GAs can be useful, especially if you can find a representation in which the genetic operators work at their best (which requires a lot of hand-tuning and domain knowledge).
Of course, the future might lead to forget GAs altogether and develop methods to [map discrete spaces to continuous space](https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.02415), and use the optimization machinery we have on the continuous representation. | Best in which sense ?
In my experience, GAs are one of the most pragmatic optimizers.
While many more precise algorithms require time and effort to formalize real problems in the mathematical world, GAs can handle any cost function with complex rules and constraints (GAs are related by an execution approach afterall and not by specific calculation). This process is straightforward and you can try many approaches for exploratory work.
I appreciate also the possibility to reinject past solutions to the algorithm for future runs which is good for repeated task.
Conceptually, a genetic algorithm can be represented by a hashmap of functions and suits so functionnal languages well like Clojure which is also a language where you can achieve big results very quickly.
Genetic Algorithms can also be nested : the cost function of one GA can be a GA ! These algorithms take advantage of modern hardware and infrastructure which allow them to compute a very large population so that - even with simple mutation/selection operations - you can still achieve good results.
Even for simple problems like finding the minimum of a wave function, GAs are not that bad and can achieve a decent precision in an acceptable time.
So yeah, analytical solutions may have quicker execution time and precision, but the time required to produce them overweights often expected benefits ! So when ? Almost everytime to me, at least for meta-optimization. |
249,471 | Genetic algorithms are one form of optimization method. Often stochastic gradient descent and its derivatives are the best choice for function optimization, but genetic algorithms are still sometimes used. For example, the antenna of [NASA's ST5 spacecraft](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Technology_5) was created with a genetic algorithm:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/vfP5b.jpg)
When are genetic optimization methods a better choice than more common gradient descent methods? | 2016/12/03 | [
"https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/249471",
"https://stats.stackexchange.com",
"https://stats.stackexchange.com/users/141025/"
] | Genetic algorithms (GA) are a family of heuristics which are empirically good at providing a *decent* answer in many cases, although they are rarely the best option for a given domain.
You mention derivative-based algorithms, but even in the absence of derivatives there are plenty of derivative-free optimization algorithms that perform way better than GAs. See [this](https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/193306/optimization-when-cost-function-slow-to-evaluate/193391#193391) and [this](https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/203542/most-suitable-optimizer-for-the-gaussain-process-likelihood-function/203555#203555) answer for some ideas.
What many standard optimization algorithms have in common (even derivative-free methods) is the assumption that the underlying space is a smooth manifold (perhaps with a few discrete dimensions), and the function to optimize is *somewhat* well-behaved.
However, not all functions are defined on a smooth manifold. Sometimes you want to optimize over a graph or other discrete structures (combinatorial optimization) -- here there are dedicated algorithms, but GAs would also work.
The more you go towards functions defined over complex, discrete structures, the more GAs can be useful, especially if you can find a representation in which the genetic operators work at their best (which requires a lot of hand-tuning and domain knowledge).
Of course, the future might lead to forget GAs altogether and develop methods to [map discrete spaces to continuous space](https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.02415), and use the optimization machinery we have on the continuous representation. | Genetic algorithms are best when many processors can be used in parallel. and when the object function has a high modality (many local optima). Also, for multi-objective optimization, there are multi-objective genetic algorithms, MOGA.
However, I think Genetic algorithms are overrated. A lot of the popularity probably comes from the fact that they are inspired by biology. They do tend to find global optima more often than other direct search methods, but at a high cost, which means that another direct search method (e.g. Nelder-Mead, Complex or SQP) can be run several times to find a global optimum, and yield a better performance (i.e., in terms of convergence, and probability of finding global optimum) overall. This is true not only if a single processor is used, but also even when multi processors are available.
I think they stay popular because there are so many problems where very simple models are used, so performance is not an issue. |
416,294 | The brand new released Google drive allows to sync a folder which resides under My Documents (on Windows systems). However, I would like to sync a folder that resides on a network-mapped drive. Would it be possible please and if yes then how? | 2012/04/24 | [
"https://superuser.com/questions/416294",
"https://superuser.com",
"https://superuser.com/users/81817/"
] | You can choose any folder during the Google Drive install.
Firstly select "Advanced Setup" on the second page of the Getting Started screen.
Then click the "Change" button next to Folder Location
Select any folder you want, including network shares and mapped network drives.
Voila! You have Google Drive on any folder you want. | If this functionality is not explicitly included (you go into the preferences of Google Drive, add the folder on the networked computer and it does not allow that folder to sync)
You could mirror that folder on your local computer. (Or really simply just install google drive on that network computer, but I would guess that you would not be asking this question if that was an option).
To mirror it locally I would suggest using a version of rsync (do a quick google search to find a bunch of options).
Or use another technique to mirror the contents onto your local machine. |
416,294 | The brand new released Google drive allows to sync a folder which resides under My Documents (on Windows systems). However, I would like to sync a folder that resides on a network-mapped drive. Would it be possible please and if yes then how? | 2012/04/24 | [
"https://superuser.com/questions/416294",
"https://superuser.com",
"https://superuser.com/users/81817/"
] | If this functionality is not explicitly included (you go into the preferences of Google Drive, add the folder on the networked computer and it does not allow that folder to sync)
You could mirror that folder on your local computer. (Or really simply just install google drive on that network computer, but I would guess that you would not be asking this question if that was an option).
To mirror it locally I would suggest using a version of rsync (do a quick google search to find a bunch of options).
Or use another technique to mirror the contents onto your local machine. | I am pretty sure I have found a working solution. I'll also run down the things I have tried that didn't work so that people can be spared the time to try these things.
I have a Drobo and have some shares mapped as windows drive letters. Several months back, I set the share permissions to "Everyone" on the Drobo dashboard, and I was able to set that share's mapped drive as the Google Drive root folder in the past.
HOWEVER, something happened with an update somewhere and it stopped working. I kept getting the message that the folder is not writable. I was clearly able to write to the folder through explorer. I tried connecting to the share as Administrator and then running sync as an administrator. That didn't work either, so I concluded that it wasn't a permissions problem, but perhaps Google updated the sync program to flat out reject UNC paths. But I tried some permissions tweaks anyways...
I tried going into the folder properties through explorer and changing the ownership, and setting permissions to full control. Windows couldn't do it.
I tried changing the credentials that windows uses to map the drive. Nothing worked there. I tried using different ways to try and fool the sync program into thinking it was not a UNC path. Nothing worked there. (subst, mklink) It kept seeing the UNC path through the mask.
I also tried InSync, but for a terabyte of data in 100's of thousands of small files, downloading 2 files at a time would take WEEKS.
I also tried ExpanDrive, and although I was able to map a drive letter directly to Google Drive, it was a very slow connection and still left me with the need to set up some sort of sync between the mapped cloud and my NAS. When I tried using CrashPlan to back up from the mapped Cloud, it couldn't see the drive letter that ExpanDrive had mounted. So I gave up on that.
I tried creating a VHDX on the share, and then mapping it to a folder on my C drive. That seemed to work but Sync kept crashing. ( \drobo\share\GDrive.VHDX -> c:\GDrive\ )
Then I tried mapping the VHDX directly to a drive letter. That seemed to work, but sync was getting hung up on the System Volume Information and Recycle folders. ( \drobo\share\GDrive.VHDX -> G:\ )
SO... I created a folder, on the root of the VHDX that is mapped to a drive letter. I set that folder to the Sync folder. It has now synced 3249 files and 2GB without a hiccup. I have a TB of data to download, so (fingers crossed) I am feeling confident that this solution works. I will update the answer if I discover any issues with this. ( \drobo\share\GDrive.VHDX -> G:\ ) THEN created a GDrive folder on G:\ and then selected G:\GDrive\ in the Sync application.
HTH
As an added bonus, mapping the VHDX to a drive letter makes thumbnails work in explorer even though they are in a network location. Woohoo! |
416,294 | The brand new released Google drive allows to sync a folder which resides under My Documents (on Windows systems). However, I would like to sync a folder that resides on a network-mapped drive. Would it be possible please and if yes then how? | 2012/04/24 | [
"https://superuser.com/questions/416294",
"https://superuser.com",
"https://superuser.com/users/81817/"
] | You can choose any folder during the Google Drive install.
Firstly select "Advanced Setup" on the second page of the Getting Started screen.
Then click the "Change" button next to Folder Location
Select any folder you want, including network shares and mapped network drives.
Voila! You have Google Drive on any folder you want. | You can sync a network folder with DropBox. Maybe the same method will work for Google (I haven't tried yet).
1) Log in on the CONSOLE of the file server (that is hosting the network share/folder).
2) Install Google Drive (I installed DropBox).
3) Set the location of the Google Drive to be in a sub-folder of the network share (on the physical drive of the server that you've just installed it on).
4) Use the Google Drive account to share the Google Drive as appropriate.
5) Log off the Console of the server.
Now...
Go to any client that's connected to the network share, navigate to the new sub-folder you just created, and place files in it. You'll now see those files on Google Drive.
WHAT I USE THIS FOR:
I have all the sales and technical staff using Drop Box, and subscribed to the Network Shared folder. There are two sub-folders, one for Sales and the other for tech staff. I simply place files in their respective folders, and sales has all the sales/marketing brochures, videos, pdf, spreadsheets, etc. And Tech staff has all their stuff separate too.
It works for BOTH iPad, and laptop users! Love It! |
416,294 | The brand new released Google drive allows to sync a folder which resides under My Documents (on Windows systems). However, I would like to sync a folder that resides on a network-mapped drive. Would it be possible please and if yes then how? | 2012/04/24 | [
"https://superuser.com/questions/416294",
"https://superuser.com",
"https://superuser.com/users/81817/"
] | You can sync a network folder with DropBox. Maybe the same method will work for Google (I haven't tried yet).
1) Log in on the CONSOLE of the file server (that is hosting the network share/folder).
2) Install Google Drive (I installed DropBox).
3) Set the location of the Google Drive to be in a sub-folder of the network share (on the physical drive of the server that you've just installed it on).
4) Use the Google Drive account to share the Google Drive as appropriate.
5) Log off the Console of the server.
Now...
Go to any client that's connected to the network share, navigate to the new sub-folder you just created, and place files in it. You'll now see those files on Google Drive.
WHAT I USE THIS FOR:
I have all the sales and technical staff using Drop Box, and subscribed to the Network Shared folder. There are two sub-folders, one for Sales and the other for tech staff. I simply place files in their respective folders, and sales has all the sales/marketing brochures, videos, pdf, spreadsheets, etc. And Tech staff has all their stuff separate too.
It works for BOTH iPad, and laptop users! Love It! | I am pretty sure I have found a working solution. I'll also run down the things I have tried that didn't work so that people can be spared the time to try these things.
I have a Drobo and have some shares mapped as windows drive letters. Several months back, I set the share permissions to "Everyone" on the Drobo dashboard, and I was able to set that share's mapped drive as the Google Drive root folder in the past.
HOWEVER, something happened with an update somewhere and it stopped working. I kept getting the message that the folder is not writable. I was clearly able to write to the folder through explorer. I tried connecting to the share as Administrator and then running sync as an administrator. That didn't work either, so I concluded that it wasn't a permissions problem, but perhaps Google updated the sync program to flat out reject UNC paths. But I tried some permissions tweaks anyways...
I tried going into the folder properties through explorer and changing the ownership, and setting permissions to full control. Windows couldn't do it.
I tried changing the credentials that windows uses to map the drive. Nothing worked there. I tried using different ways to try and fool the sync program into thinking it was not a UNC path. Nothing worked there. (subst, mklink) It kept seeing the UNC path through the mask.
I also tried InSync, but for a terabyte of data in 100's of thousands of small files, downloading 2 files at a time would take WEEKS.
I also tried ExpanDrive, and although I was able to map a drive letter directly to Google Drive, it was a very slow connection and still left me with the need to set up some sort of sync between the mapped cloud and my NAS. When I tried using CrashPlan to back up from the mapped Cloud, it couldn't see the drive letter that ExpanDrive had mounted. So I gave up on that.
I tried creating a VHDX on the share, and then mapping it to a folder on my C drive. That seemed to work but Sync kept crashing. ( \drobo\share\GDrive.VHDX -> c:\GDrive\ )
Then I tried mapping the VHDX directly to a drive letter. That seemed to work, but sync was getting hung up on the System Volume Information and Recycle folders. ( \drobo\share\GDrive.VHDX -> G:\ )
SO... I created a folder, on the root of the VHDX that is mapped to a drive letter. I set that folder to the Sync folder. It has now synced 3249 files and 2GB without a hiccup. I have a TB of data to download, so (fingers crossed) I am feeling confident that this solution works. I will update the answer if I discover any issues with this. ( \drobo\share\GDrive.VHDX -> G:\ ) THEN created a GDrive folder on G:\ and then selected G:\GDrive\ in the Sync application.
HTH
As an added bonus, mapping the VHDX to a drive letter makes thumbnails work in explorer even though they are in a network location. Woohoo! |
416,294 | The brand new released Google drive allows to sync a folder which resides under My Documents (on Windows systems). However, I would like to sync a folder that resides on a network-mapped drive. Would it be possible please and if yes then how? | 2012/04/24 | [
"https://superuser.com/questions/416294",
"https://superuser.com",
"https://superuser.com/users/81817/"
] | You can choose any folder during the Google Drive install.
Firstly select "Advanced Setup" on the second page of the Getting Started screen.
Then click the "Change" button next to Folder Location
Select any folder you want, including network shares and mapped network drives.
Voila! You have Google Drive on any folder you want. | I am pretty sure I have found a working solution. I'll also run down the things I have tried that didn't work so that people can be spared the time to try these things.
I have a Drobo and have some shares mapped as windows drive letters. Several months back, I set the share permissions to "Everyone" on the Drobo dashboard, and I was able to set that share's mapped drive as the Google Drive root folder in the past.
HOWEVER, something happened with an update somewhere and it stopped working. I kept getting the message that the folder is not writable. I was clearly able to write to the folder through explorer. I tried connecting to the share as Administrator and then running sync as an administrator. That didn't work either, so I concluded that it wasn't a permissions problem, but perhaps Google updated the sync program to flat out reject UNC paths. But I tried some permissions tweaks anyways...
I tried going into the folder properties through explorer and changing the ownership, and setting permissions to full control. Windows couldn't do it.
I tried changing the credentials that windows uses to map the drive. Nothing worked there. I tried using different ways to try and fool the sync program into thinking it was not a UNC path. Nothing worked there. (subst, mklink) It kept seeing the UNC path through the mask.
I also tried InSync, but for a terabyte of data in 100's of thousands of small files, downloading 2 files at a time would take WEEKS.
I also tried ExpanDrive, and although I was able to map a drive letter directly to Google Drive, it was a very slow connection and still left me with the need to set up some sort of sync between the mapped cloud and my NAS. When I tried using CrashPlan to back up from the mapped Cloud, it couldn't see the drive letter that ExpanDrive had mounted. So I gave up on that.
I tried creating a VHDX on the share, and then mapping it to a folder on my C drive. That seemed to work but Sync kept crashing. ( \drobo\share\GDrive.VHDX -> c:\GDrive\ )
Then I tried mapping the VHDX directly to a drive letter. That seemed to work, but sync was getting hung up on the System Volume Information and Recycle folders. ( \drobo\share\GDrive.VHDX -> G:\ )
SO... I created a folder, on the root of the VHDX that is mapped to a drive letter. I set that folder to the Sync folder. It has now synced 3249 files and 2GB without a hiccup. I have a TB of data to download, so (fingers crossed) I am feeling confident that this solution works. I will update the answer if I discover any issues with this. ( \drobo\share\GDrive.VHDX -> G:\ ) THEN created a GDrive folder on G:\ and then selected G:\GDrive\ in the Sync application.
HTH
As an added bonus, mapping the VHDX to a drive letter makes thumbnails work in explorer even though they are in a network location. Woohoo! |
373,171 | **This question is about the application of the bootstrap rule [The population is to the sample as the sample is to the bootstrap samples.](https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/372589/explanation-of-confidence-interval-from-r-function-boot-ci)**
I have a small dataset about lung cancer.There are 160 patients with 60 events and the predictors are 700 radiomic features.
The goal of the analysis is to get a model which could accurately group new patients to a high-risk group or low-risk group. Since this is a small dataset, using bootstrap would be better than data splitting.
I use bootstrap to wrap all processes including the variable selection(Lasso), model fitting, and using some criterion to evaluate the model. During the bootstrap process(for example, 1000 replicates), resampling dataset have the same size as the original dataset. As the .632 rule suggests, 63.2% samples would be used as training data, and the out of bag samples would be used as test data for the evaluation step. For each round of bootstrap, the evaluating criterion I would like to collect is chi-square statistic produced by log-rank test between the predicted high-risk group and the predicted low-risk group. In my opinion, the evaluation score from the bootstrapping processes is doubly biased as it comes from resamples. And how could I infer the correct evaluation score of the population? | 2018/10/22 | [
"https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/373171",
"https://stats.stackexchange.com",
"https://stats.stackexchange.com/users/103475/"
] | For your situation, your choices to use bootstrapping to evaluate your modeling and to wrap all your modeling processes within the bootstrapping are wise. There are just a few tweaks to your approach that should accomplish your goals.
As you note in a comment to a different answer, the .632 bootstrap\* does not properly mimic the selection of your original sample from the population, as you "don't have out-of-bag samples for the original samples." With many choices of measures of model quality, however, you don't need to use the .632 bootstrap. Frank Harrell notes in [this answer](https://stats.stackexchange.com/a/71189/28500) that the ordinary optimism bootstrap\*\* works well except when you have a "discontinuous improper scoring rule" like the proportion correctly classified.
The ordinary optimism bootstrap nicely applies the bootstrap principle that you cite. The mean bias/optimism over multiple bootstrapped samples and corresponding models, each compared against the fits of those models on the entire original sample, represents the relationship of the bootstrapped samples to the original sample. That is also, by that bootstrapping principle, the expected value of the relationship of the original sample to the population. So you take whatever bias/optimism correction that you determine from the models on the bootstrapped samples versus the original sample, and apply it to your model based on the original sample to get the estimate for the population.
That said, a few warnings:
First, remember that this bootstrapping does not validate the model itself; rather it validates the process you used for model building. Those aren't necessarily the same thing.
Second, you should consider using a different criterion than the "chi-square statistic produced by log-rank test between the predicted high-risk group and the predicted low-risk group" for evaluating your original and bootstrapped models. Choosing "high-risk" and "low-risk" groups within each (bootstrapped) sample means that you are making a premature decision about classification when you have continuous information available about probabilities (logistic regression) or hazards (survival analysis). You will be much better served by evaluating a continuous probability or hazard model instead. For Cox models, for example, you can follow the [`glmnet` package](https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=glmnet) and optimize the partial likelihood deviance. To document the quality of the model, report the concordance, both original and optimism-adjusted, and the average slope optimism from your bootstrapping validation.
If you evaluate models based on a proper continuous criterion you only have to go through the bootstrapping validation once. If you evaluate based on some arbitrary choice of "high-risk" and "low-risk" cutoffs, then you would have to re-validate whenever you change your cutoff criterion. There is nothing to be gained by jumping straight ahead to the classification problem. If for some reason you are forced to dichotomize into high- and low-risk groups you would use the continuous probabilities/hazards to make informed choices that incorporate tradeoffs between different types of misclassification and information about other clinical variables.
Finally, think carefully about your use of LASSO for this problem. With 60 events, LASSO is presumably selecting (e.g., with choice of penalty based on optimizing partial likelihood deviance) only about 6 or so from among your 700 features. My suspicion is that the particular 6 or so features chosen vary dramatically among bootstrap samples. That might work for prediction, but it could leave you vulnerable to a particular feature that was extraordinarily related to outcome in your particular data sample versus its relation in the population as a whole. Consider other ways to pre-group predictors, without reference to outcome: for example, based on subject-matter knowledge, similarity clustering, or methods related to principal-components analysis. See chapter 4 of Harrell's [Regression Modeling Strategies](http://www.springer.com/us/book/9783319194240) for such approaches. Ridge regression, which is principal-components regression with graded rather than all-or-none inclusion of principal components into the model (see [ESL II](http://web.stanford.edu/~hastie/Papers/ESLII.pdf), page 79) might also be useful.
---
\*Evaluate models from bootstrap samples only on corresponding held-out cases.
\*\*For each bootstrap sample, develop a model, apply it also to the entire original sample, determine the bias/optimism for that model between that bootstrapped sample and the entire original sample, then average the bias/optimism over many bootstrap samples. | Why not compute an accuracy value (# correct/total) for each out-of-bag sample instead of the other statistic you're computing?
Using the bootstrap method would then allow you to get a confidence interval and estimate of the model accuracy for the population. |
842,144 | I recently had an interview at a small company that wants to greatly increase its web presence, including re-writing their Flash homepage and opening an e-commerce site. If given the position, I would be the sole developer on staff.
I've been working with Rails for a number of years, and haven't looked at PHP in quite some time. However, if I was to get the job, I would be in a position to recommend the framework, as there aren't any development-savvy people already on staff.
I think for many non-programmers PHP still has huge name recognition out there as THE language for building sites, so it acts as logical default for many companies.
If I was offered this job, how could I compare the pros and cons of Rails vs PHP (with an appropriate framework) without getting into technical terminology? A key consideration here is that there are probably a lot more LAMP developers in the area than Rails developers, and I don't want my own personal preferences to impact the long-term sustainability of the code base.
Or should I just accept that a PHP/Zend site is just as good as a Rails site, even if it's less fun to develop?
(Please no religious arguments!) | 2009/05/08 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/842144",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/4636/"
] | I wouldn't argue that Rails is better than PHP or anything like that, because to these people they don't really care. What they do care about is:
1. that they get a good site (hence, use Rails because you're better with it), and
2. that it's not going to be a burden to maintain (hence, use PHP because it's easier to find programmers)
Just let them know these facts, and argue your point along these lines to let them decide. Also worth mentioning is that Rails is a growing community (if I believe blogs...) and the availability of developers will get better over time. | Assuming a one-man-team is enough for the not-too-distant future, and you're not planning to leave the company in that time, then the argument is simple:
Rails gets you a stable site in less time (because you're experienced with it, if for no other reason), meaning more revenue for the company sooner. If they eventually do need to hire another developer, the increased cost (if there really is one) of finding/hiring someone with Rails experience will be justified.
However I do think that Rails leads to faster development, less bugs, easier extensibility, and a more maintainable code base. This means that the company will actually save time and money on development, now and in the long run.
>
>
> >
> > even if it's less fun to develop?
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
I'd be frank: you *enjoy* working with Rails. A happy employee is more productive. |
842,144 | I recently had an interview at a small company that wants to greatly increase its web presence, including re-writing their Flash homepage and opening an e-commerce site. If given the position, I would be the sole developer on staff.
I've been working with Rails for a number of years, and haven't looked at PHP in quite some time. However, if I was to get the job, I would be in a position to recommend the framework, as there aren't any development-savvy people already on staff.
I think for many non-programmers PHP still has huge name recognition out there as THE language for building sites, so it acts as logical default for many companies.
If I was offered this job, how could I compare the pros and cons of Rails vs PHP (with an appropriate framework) without getting into technical terminology? A key consideration here is that there are probably a lot more LAMP developers in the area than Rails developers, and I don't want my own personal preferences to impact the long-term sustainability of the code base.
Or should I just accept that a PHP/Zend site is just as good as a Rails site, even if it's less fun to develop?
(Please no religious arguments!) | 2009/05/08 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/842144",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/4636/"
] | I wouldn't argue that Rails is better than PHP or anything like that, because to these people they don't really care. What they do care about is:
1. that they get a good site (hence, use Rails because you're better with it), and
2. that it's not going to be a burden to maintain (hence, use PHP because it's easier to find programmers)
Just let them know these facts, and argue your point along these lines to let them decide. Also worth mentioning is that Rails is a growing community (if I believe blogs...) and the availability of developers will get better over time. | I don't think branding is important. If the site is something best done in PHP, then no argument in favour of rails will look good. If the site is best done in rails (or django) then that should be obvious.
If you're to be a one-man team I'd just build it in rails because you're the developer and that's what you know. Even a non-techie should see that hiring a rails developer to build a site in pure PHP is just silly. |
842,144 | I recently had an interview at a small company that wants to greatly increase its web presence, including re-writing their Flash homepage and opening an e-commerce site. If given the position, I would be the sole developer on staff.
I've been working with Rails for a number of years, and haven't looked at PHP in quite some time. However, if I was to get the job, I would be in a position to recommend the framework, as there aren't any development-savvy people already on staff.
I think for many non-programmers PHP still has huge name recognition out there as THE language for building sites, so it acts as logical default for many companies.
If I was offered this job, how could I compare the pros and cons of Rails vs PHP (with an appropriate framework) without getting into technical terminology? A key consideration here is that there are probably a lot more LAMP developers in the area than Rails developers, and I don't want my own personal preferences to impact the long-term sustainability of the code base.
Or should I just accept that a PHP/Zend site is just as good as a Rails site, even if it's less fun to develop?
(Please no religious arguments!) | 2009/05/08 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/842144",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/4636/"
] | I wouldn't argue that Rails is better than PHP or anything like that, because to these people they don't really care. What they do care about is:
1. that they get a good site (hence, use Rails because you're better with it), and
2. that it's not going to be a burden to maintain (hence, use PHP because it's easier to find programmers)
Just let them know these facts, and argue your point along these lines to let them decide. Also worth mentioning is that Rails is a growing community (if I believe blogs...) and the availability of developers will get better over time. | To make the case for rails I would just show them Zend's config pages. |
842,144 | I recently had an interview at a small company that wants to greatly increase its web presence, including re-writing their Flash homepage and opening an e-commerce site. If given the position, I would be the sole developer on staff.
I've been working with Rails for a number of years, and haven't looked at PHP in quite some time. However, if I was to get the job, I would be in a position to recommend the framework, as there aren't any development-savvy people already on staff.
I think for many non-programmers PHP still has huge name recognition out there as THE language for building sites, so it acts as logical default for many companies.
If I was offered this job, how could I compare the pros and cons of Rails vs PHP (with an appropriate framework) without getting into technical terminology? A key consideration here is that there are probably a lot more LAMP developers in the area than Rails developers, and I don't want my own personal preferences to impact the long-term sustainability of the code base.
Or should I just accept that a PHP/Zend site is just as good as a Rails site, even if it's less fun to develop?
(Please no religious arguments!) | 2009/05/08 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/842144",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/4636/"
] | I wouldn't argue that Rails is better than PHP or anything like that, because to these people they don't really care. What they do care about is:
1. that they get a good site (hence, use Rails because you're better with it), and
2. that it's not going to be a burden to maintain (hence, use PHP because it's easier to find programmers)
Just let them know these facts, and argue your point along these lines to let them decide. Also worth mentioning is that Rails is a growing community (if I believe blogs...) and the availability of developers will get better over time. | The first thing I have to say is that (imho) you're approach is wrong because you've started with a conclusion ("I want to do this in Rails") and you're now looking for a justification.
Worse, such an attitude borders on negligence as you have an ethical if not legal duty of care to your client and it's their needs you should be addressing first and foremost, not yours.
This same issue came up in [Continue a Classic ASP site or insist a language change?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/523346/continue-a-classic-asp-site-or-insist-a-language-change)
An important point to make here is that with Rails (typically meaning Ruby on Rails although it could be Groovy, etc) you're comparing a framework to a language (PHP). There are **many** PHP frameworks so a lot of the issues of speed of coding diminish if not disappear altogether if you compare Ruby on Rails to PHP + some framework or frameworks with which you're equally familiar.
From experience I can tell you that non-technical users will be concerned with some or all of the following:
1. Cost to develop;
2. Cost to host;
3. Look and feel;
4. Site functionality;
5. Ability to find developers;
6. Stability;
7. Existing functionality; and
8. Risk.
(1) is debatable. Ruby on Rails is probably very fast if you're doing things the Ruby way but can get really difficult if requirements force you to go off the reservation. Interestingly, Microsoft stacks tend to work the same way (although they usually have a bigger reservation to further extend that metaphor).
This came up in [7 reasons I switched back to PHP after 2 years on Rails](http://www.oreillynet.com/ruby/blog/2007/09/7_reasons_i_switched_back_to_p_1.html). Agree or disagree, that sort of post makes points you'll at least need to consider and/or address.
(2) I think is a win for PHP. PHP shared hosting is extraordinarily cheap but there's not a lot in it. If the site will get a moderate amount of traffic or there are significant security concerns you'll either end up hosting it at the site or using some form of VPS or dedicated hosting at which point the issue becomes a wash.
(3) isn't really that different. Ruby is slanted twoards Prototype (being integrated) and the like whereas PHP is more open to any Javascript framework (which has advantages and disadvantages) and both can do whatever in HTML and CSS.
Same applies to (4). There's nothing you can do in one that you can't do in the other.
(5) is a clear win for PHP. You may not be hiring hundreds of developers but the fat that if you move on or are replaced that it's easy to find other people with relevant experience **is important to non-technical people** (and should be important to technical people too).
(6) is either a perceived or real win for PHP. By that I mean Ruby on Rails--at least in my experience--has a reputation for being unstable and/or wasteful of resources. This is exemplified by such postings as Zed Shaw's notorious [Rails Is A Ghetto](http://www.zedshaw.com/rants/rails_is_a_ghetto.html) rant. It clearly is a rant but there are some valid points there too.
(7) is an interesting one. Rails mandates (or rather "is") an ORM framework and like many ORM frameworks they can have real issues in dealing with "legacy" data. I put that in inverted commas because ORMs have the nasty habit of declaring anything not done their way as "legacy" (eg composite keys).
If you have complete control over the data model on this site and there's no existing data model to support then this issue is probably a win for Rails but the more constraints you have the more this will be a win for PHP's lightweight (typically raw SQL) approach.
You may want to take a look at [Using an ORM or plain SQL?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/494816/using-an-orm-or-plain-sql)
(8) really sums up all of the above. The company will be greatly concerned with how preditable the end result is and a more predictable, less sexy end result will often win out.
The last thing I'll say is that if you have both Rails and PHP experience (as you seem to) and you need to ask what the (non-technical) merits of Rails are perhaps you need to re-examine what you're doing and why you're doing it. |
842,144 | I recently had an interview at a small company that wants to greatly increase its web presence, including re-writing their Flash homepage and opening an e-commerce site. If given the position, I would be the sole developer on staff.
I've been working with Rails for a number of years, and haven't looked at PHP in quite some time. However, if I was to get the job, I would be in a position to recommend the framework, as there aren't any development-savvy people already on staff.
I think for many non-programmers PHP still has huge name recognition out there as THE language for building sites, so it acts as logical default for many companies.
If I was offered this job, how could I compare the pros and cons of Rails vs PHP (with an appropriate framework) without getting into technical terminology? A key consideration here is that there are probably a lot more LAMP developers in the area than Rails developers, and I don't want my own personal preferences to impact the long-term sustainability of the code base.
Or should I just accept that a PHP/Zend site is just as good as a Rails site, even if it's less fun to develop?
(Please no religious arguments!) | 2009/05/08 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/842144",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/4636/"
] | Assuming a one-man-team is enough for the not-too-distant future, and you're not planning to leave the company in that time, then the argument is simple:
Rails gets you a stable site in less time (because you're experienced with it, if for no other reason), meaning more revenue for the company sooner. If they eventually do need to hire another developer, the increased cost (if there really is one) of finding/hiring someone with Rails experience will be justified.
However I do think that Rails leads to faster development, less bugs, easier extensibility, and a more maintainable code base. This means that the company will actually save time and money on development, now and in the long run.
>
>
> >
> > even if it's less fun to develop?
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
I'd be frank: you *enjoy* working with Rails. A happy employee is more productive. | I don't think branding is important. If the site is something best done in PHP, then no argument in favour of rails will look good. If the site is best done in rails (or django) then that should be obvious.
If you're to be a one-man team I'd just build it in rails because you're the developer and that's what you know. Even a non-techie should see that hiring a rails developer to build a site in pure PHP is just silly. |
842,144 | I recently had an interview at a small company that wants to greatly increase its web presence, including re-writing their Flash homepage and opening an e-commerce site. If given the position, I would be the sole developer on staff.
I've been working with Rails for a number of years, and haven't looked at PHP in quite some time. However, if I was to get the job, I would be in a position to recommend the framework, as there aren't any development-savvy people already on staff.
I think for many non-programmers PHP still has huge name recognition out there as THE language for building sites, so it acts as logical default for many companies.
If I was offered this job, how could I compare the pros and cons of Rails vs PHP (with an appropriate framework) without getting into technical terminology? A key consideration here is that there are probably a lot more LAMP developers in the area than Rails developers, and I don't want my own personal preferences to impact the long-term sustainability of the code base.
Or should I just accept that a PHP/Zend site is just as good as a Rails site, even if it's less fun to develop?
(Please no religious arguments!) | 2009/05/08 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/842144",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/4636/"
] | Assuming a one-man-team is enough for the not-too-distant future, and you're not planning to leave the company in that time, then the argument is simple:
Rails gets you a stable site in less time (because you're experienced with it, if for no other reason), meaning more revenue for the company sooner. If they eventually do need to hire another developer, the increased cost (if there really is one) of finding/hiring someone with Rails experience will be justified.
However I do think that Rails leads to faster development, less bugs, easier extensibility, and a more maintainable code base. This means that the company will actually save time and money on development, now and in the long run.
>
>
> >
> > even if it's less fun to develop?
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
I'd be frank: you *enjoy* working with Rails. A happy employee is more productive. | To make the case for rails I would just show them Zend's config pages. |
842,144 | I recently had an interview at a small company that wants to greatly increase its web presence, including re-writing their Flash homepage and opening an e-commerce site. If given the position, I would be the sole developer on staff.
I've been working with Rails for a number of years, and haven't looked at PHP in quite some time. However, if I was to get the job, I would be in a position to recommend the framework, as there aren't any development-savvy people already on staff.
I think for many non-programmers PHP still has huge name recognition out there as THE language for building sites, so it acts as logical default for many companies.
If I was offered this job, how could I compare the pros and cons of Rails vs PHP (with an appropriate framework) without getting into technical terminology? A key consideration here is that there are probably a lot more LAMP developers in the area than Rails developers, and I don't want my own personal preferences to impact the long-term sustainability of the code base.
Or should I just accept that a PHP/Zend site is just as good as a Rails site, even if it's less fun to develop?
(Please no religious arguments!) | 2009/05/08 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/842144",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/4636/"
] | The first thing I have to say is that (imho) you're approach is wrong because you've started with a conclusion ("I want to do this in Rails") and you're now looking for a justification.
Worse, such an attitude borders on negligence as you have an ethical if not legal duty of care to your client and it's their needs you should be addressing first and foremost, not yours.
This same issue came up in [Continue a Classic ASP site or insist a language change?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/523346/continue-a-classic-asp-site-or-insist-a-language-change)
An important point to make here is that with Rails (typically meaning Ruby on Rails although it could be Groovy, etc) you're comparing a framework to a language (PHP). There are **many** PHP frameworks so a lot of the issues of speed of coding diminish if not disappear altogether if you compare Ruby on Rails to PHP + some framework or frameworks with which you're equally familiar.
From experience I can tell you that non-technical users will be concerned with some or all of the following:
1. Cost to develop;
2. Cost to host;
3. Look and feel;
4. Site functionality;
5. Ability to find developers;
6. Stability;
7. Existing functionality; and
8. Risk.
(1) is debatable. Ruby on Rails is probably very fast if you're doing things the Ruby way but can get really difficult if requirements force you to go off the reservation. Interestingly, Microsoft stacks tend to work the same way (although they usually have a bigger reservation to further extend that metaphor).
This came up in [7 reasons I switched back to PHP after 2 years on Rails](http://www.oreillynet.com/ruby/blog/2007/09/7_reasons_i_switched_back_to_p_1.html). Agree or disagree, that sort of post makes points you'll at least need to consider and/or address.
(2) I think is a win for PHP. PHP shared hosting is extraordinarily cheap but there's not a lot in it. If the site will get a moderate amount of traffic or there are significant security concerns you'll either end up hosting it at the site or using some form of VPS or dedicated hosting at which point the issue becomes a wash.
(3) isn't really that different. Ruby is slanted twoards Prototype (being integrated) and the like whereas PHP is more open to any Javascript framework (which has advantages and disadvantages) and both can do whatever in HTML and CSS.
Same applies to (4). There's nothing you can do in one that you can't do in the other.
(5) is a clear win for PHP. You may not be hiring hundreds of developers but the fat that if you move on or are replaced that it's easy to find other people with relevant experience **is important to non-technical people** (and should be important to technical people too).
(6) is either a perceived or real win for PHP. By that I mean Ruby on Rails--at least in my experience--has a reputation for being unstable and/or wasteful of resources. This is exemplified by such postings as Zed Shaw's notorious [Rails Is A Ghetto](http://www.zedshaw.com/rants/rails_is_a_ghetto.html) rant. It clearly is a rant but there are some valid points there too.
(7) is an interesting one. Rails mandates (or rather "is") an ORM framework and like many ORM frameworks they can have real issues in dealing with "legacy" data. I put that in inverted commas because ORMs have the nasty habit of declaring anything not done their way as "legacy" (eg composite keys).
If you have complete control over the data model on this site and there's no existing data model to support then this issue is probably a win for Rails but the more constraints you have the more this will be a win for PHP's lightweight (typically raw SQL) approach.
You may want to take a look at [Using an ORM or plain SQL?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/494816/using-an-orm-or-plain-sql)
(8) really sums up all of the above. The company will be greatly concerned with how preditable the end result is and a more predictable, less sexy end result will often win out.
The last thing I'll say is that if you have both Rails and PHP experience (as you seem to) and you need to ask what the (non-technical) merits of Rails are perhaps you need to re-examine what you're doing and why you're doing it. | Assuming a one-man-team is enough for the not-too-distant future, and you're not planning to leave the company in that time, then the argument is simple:
Rails gets you a stable site in less time (because you're experienced with it, if for no other reason), meaning more revenue for the company sooner. If they eventually do need to hire another developer, the increased cost (if there really is one) of finding/hiring someone with Rails experience will be justified.
However I do think that Rails leads to faster development, less bugs, easier extensibility, and a more maintainable code base. This means that the company will actually save time and money on development, now and in the long run.
>
>
> >
> > even if it's less fun to develop?
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
I'd be frank: you *enjoy* working with Rails. A happy employee is more productive. |
842,144 | I recently had an interview at a small company that wants to greatly increase its web presence, including re-writing their Flash homepage and opening an e-commerce site. If given the position, I would be the sole developer on staff.
I've been working with Rails for a number of years, and haven't looked at PHP in quite some time. However, if I was to get the job, I would be in a position to recommend the framework, as there aren't any development-savvy people already on staff.
I think for many non-programmers PHP still has huge name recognition out there as THE language for building sites, so it acts as logical default for many companies.
If I was offered this job, how could I compare the pros and cons of Rails vs PHP (with an appropriate framework) without getting into technical terminology? A key consideration here is that there are probably a lot more LAMP developers in the area than Rails developers, and I don't want my own personal preferences to impact the long-term sustainability of the code base.
Or should I just accept that a PHP/Zend site is just as good as a Rails site, even if it's less fun to develop?
(Please no religious arguments!) | 2009/05/08 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/842144",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/4636/"
] | I don't think branding is important. If the site is something best done in PHP, then no argument in favour of rails will look good. If the site is best done in rails (or django) then that should be obvious.
If you're to be a one-man team I'd just build it in rails because you're the developer and that's what you know. Even a non-techie should see that hiring a rails developer to build a site in pure PHP is just silly. | To make the case for rails I would just show them Zend's config pages. |
842,144 | I recently had an interview at a small company that wants to greatly increase its web presence, including re-writing their Flash homepage and opening an e-commerce site. If given the position, I would be the sole developer on staff.
I've been working with Rails for a number of years, and haven't looked at PHP in quite some time. However, if I was to get the job, I would be in a position to recommend the framework, as there aren't any development-savvy people already on staff.
I think for many non-programmers PHP still has huge name recognition out there as THE language for building sites, so it acts as logical default for many companies.
If I was offered this job, how could I compare the pros and cons of Rails vs PHP (with an appropriate framework) without getting into technical terminology? A key consideration here is that there are probably a lot more LAMP developers in the area than Rails developers, and I don't want my own personal preferences to impact the long-term sustainability of the code base.
Or should I just accept that a PHP/Zend site is just as good as a Rails site, even if it's less fun to develop?
(Please no religious arguments!) | 2009/05/08 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/842144",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/4636/"
] | The first thing I have to say is that (imho) you're approach is wrong because you've started with a conclusion ("I want to do this in Rails") and you're now looking for a justification.
Worse, such an attitude borders on negligence as you have an ethical if not legal duty of care to your client and it's their needs you should be addressing first and foremost, not yours.
This same issue came up in [Continue a Classic ASP site or insist a language change?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/523346/continue-a-classic-asp-site-or-insist-a-language-change)
An important point to make here is that with Rails (typically meaning Ruby on Rails although it could be Groovy, etc) you're comparing a framework to a language (PHP). There are **many** PHP frameworks so a lot of the issues of speed of coding diminish if not disappear altogether if you compare Ruby on Rails to PHP + some framework or frameworks with which you're equally familiar.
From experience I can tell you that non-technical users will be concerned with some or all of the following:
1. Cost to develop;
2. Cost to host;
3. Look and feel;
4. Site functionality;
5. Ability to find developers;
6. Stability;
7. Existing functionality; and
8. Risk.
(1) is debatable. Ruby on Rails is probably very fast if you're doing things the Ruby way but can get really difficult if requirements force you to go off the reservation. Interestingly, Microsoft stacks tend to work the same way (although they usually have a bigger reservation to further extend that metaphor).
This came up in [7 reasons I switched back to PHP after 2 years on Rails](http://www.oreillynet.com/ruby/blog/2007/09/7_reasons_i_switched_back_to_p_1.html). Agree or disagree, that sort of post makes points you'll at least need to consider and/or address.
(2) I think is a win for PHP. PHP shared hosting is extraordinarily cheap but there's not a lot in it. If the site will get a moderate amount of traffic or there are significant security concerns you'll either end up hosting it at the site or using some form of VPS or dedicated hosting at which point the issue becomes a wash.
(3) isn't really that different. Ruby is slanted twoards Prototype (being integrated) and the like whereas PHP is more open to any Javascript framework (which has advantages and disadvantages) and both can do whatever in HTML and CSS.
Same applies to (4). There's nothing you can do in one that you can't do in the other.
(5) is a clear win for PHP. You may not be hiring hundreds of developers but the fat that if you move on or are replaced that it's easy to find other people with relevant experience **is important to non-technical people** (and should be important to technical people too).
(6) is either a perceived or real win for PHP. By that I mean Ruby on Rails--at least in my experience--has a reputation for being unstable and/or wasteful of resources. This is exemplified by such postings as Zed Shaw's notorious [Rails Is A Ghetto](http://www.zedshaw.com/rants/rails_is_a_ghetto.html) rant. It clearly is a rant but there are some valid points there too.
(7) is an interesting one. Rails mandates (or rather "is") an ORM framework and like many ORM frameworks they can have real issues in dealing with "legacy" data. I put that in inverted commas because ORMs have the nasty habit of declaring anything not done their way as "legacy" (eg composite keys).
If you have complete control over the data model on this site and there's no existing data model to support then this issue is probably a win for Rails but the more constraints you have the more this will be a win for PHP's lightweight (typically raw SQL) approach.
You may want to take a look at [Using an ORM or plain SQL?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/494816/using-an-orm-or-plain-sql)
(8) really sums up all of the above. The company will be greatly concerned with how preditable the end result is and a more predictable, less sexy end result will often win out.
The last thing I'll say is that if you have both Rails and PHP experience (as you seem to) and you need to ask what the (non-technical) merits of Rails are perhaps you need to re-examine what you're doing and why you're doing it. | I don't think branding is important. If the site is something best done in PHP, then no argument in favour of rails will look good. If the site is best done in rails (or django) then that should be obvious.
If you're to be a one-man team I'd just build it in rails because you're the developer and that's what you know. Even a non-techie should see that hiring a rails developer to build a site in pure PHP is just silly. |
842,144 | I recently had an interview at a small company that wants to greatly increase its web presence, including re-writing their Flash homepage and opening an e-commerce site. If given the position, I would be the sole developer on staff.
I've been working with Rails for a number of years, and haven't looked at PHP in quite some time. However, if I was to get the job, I would be in a position to recommend the framework, as there aren't any development-savvy people already on staff.
I think for many non-programmers PHP still has huge name recognition out there as THE language for building sites, so it acts as logical default for many companies.
If I was offered this job, how could I compare the pros and cons of Rails vs PHP (with an appropriate framework) without getting into technical terminology? A key consideration here is that there are probably a lot more LAMP developers in the area than Rails developers, and I don't want my own personal preferences to impact the long-term sustainability of the code base.
Or should I just accept that a PHP/Zend site is just as good as a Rails site, even if it's less fun to develop?
(Please no religious arguments!) | 2009/05/08 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/842144",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/4636/"
] | The first thing I have to say is that (imho) you're approach is wrong because you've started with a conclusion ("I want to do this in Rails") and you're now looking for a justification.
Worse, such an attitude borders on negligence as you have an ethical if not legal duty of care to your client and it's their needs you should be addressing first and foremost, not yours.
This same issue came up in [Continue a Classic ASP site or insist a language change?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/523346/continue-a-classic-asp-site-or-insist-a-language-change)
An important point to make here is that with Rails (typically meaning Ruby on Rails although it could be Groovy, etc) you're comparing a framework to a language (PHP). There are **many** PHP frameworks so a lot of the issues of speed of coding diminish if not disappear altogether if you compare Ruby on Rails to PHP + some framework or frameworks with which you're equally familiar.
From experience I can tell you that non-technical users will be concerned with some or all of the following:
1. Cost to develop;
2. Cost to host;
3. Look and feel;
4. Site functionality;
5. Ability to find developers;
6. Stability;
7. Existing functionality; and
8. Risk.
(1) is debatable. Ruby on Rails is probably very fast if you're doing things the Ruby way but can get really difficult if requirements force you to go off the reservation. Interestingly, Microsoft stacks tend to work the same way (although they usually have a bigger reservation to further extend that metaphor).
This came up in [7 reasons I switched back to PHP after 2 years on Rails](http://www.oreillynet.com/ruby/blog/2007/09/7_reasons_i_switched_back_to_p_1.html). Agree or disagree, that sort of post makes points you'll at least need to consider and/or address.
(2) I think is a win for PHP. PHP shared hosting is extraordinarily cheap but there's not a lot in it. If the site will get a moderate amount of traffic or there are significant security concerns you'll either end up hosting it at the site or using some form of VPS or dedicated hosting at which point the issue becomes a wash.
(3) isn't really that different. Ruby is slanted twoards Prototype (being integrated) and the like whereas PHP is more open to any Javascript framework (which has advantages and disadvantages) and both can do whatever in HTML and CSS.
Same applies to (4). There's nothing you can do in one that you can't do in the other.
(5) is a clear win for PHP. You may not be hiring hundreds of developers but the fat that if you move on or are replaced that it's easy to find other people with relevant experience **is important to non-technical people** (and should be important to technical people too).
(6) is either a perceived or real win for PHP. By that I mean Ruby on Rails--at least in my experience--has a reputation for being unstable and/or wasteful of resources. This is exemplified by such postings as Zed Shaw's notorious [Rails Is A Ghetto](http://www.zedshaw.com/rants/rails_is_a_ghetto.html) rant. It clearly is a rant but there are some valid points there too.
(7) is an interesting one. Rails mandates (or rather "is") an ORM framework and like many ORM frameworks they can have real issues in dealing with "legacy" data. I put that in inverted commas because ORMs have the nasty habit of declaring anything not done their way as "legacy" (eg composite keys).
If you have complete control over the data model on this site and there's no existing data model to support then this issue is probably a win for Rails but the more constraints you have the more this will be a win for PHP's lightweight (typically raw SQL) approach.
You may want to take a look at [Using an ORM or plain SQL?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/494816/using-an-orm-or-plain-sql)
(8) really sums up all of the above. The company will be greatly concerned with how preditable the end result is and a more predictable, less sexy end result will often win out.
The last thing I'll say is that if you have both Rails and PHP experience (as you seem to) and you need to ask what the (non-technical) merits of Rails are perhaps you need to re-examine what you're doing and why you're doing it. | To make the case for rails I would just show them Zend's config pages. |
8,914,109 | >
> **Possible Duplicate:**
>
> [What is the best open-source java charting library? (other than jfreechart)](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/265777/what-is-the-best-open-source-java-charting-library-other-than-jfreechart)
>
>
>
In my web application I need to present some charts. I create class where I used JFreeChart library, but this library is desktop library. I need some free web library. Can you help me? | 2012/01/18 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/8914109",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/705544/"
] | Try the [Google Chart Tools](http://code.google.com/apis/chart/); the simple web service interface is easily usable via JavaScript for live graphics and the [Google Chart API](http://code.google.com/apis/chart/image/) is great for Java (and other languages) for [static images](http://code.google.com/apis/chart/image/docs/making_charts.html). | [gRaphäel](http://g.raphaeljs.com/) provides charts with a JavaScript API. |
8,914,109 | >
> **Possible Duplicate:**
>
> [What is the best open-source java charting library? (other than jfreechart)](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/265777/what-is-the-best-open-source-java-charting-library-other-than-jfreechart)
>
>
>
In my web application I need to present some charts. I create class where I used JFreeChart library, but this library is desktop library. I need some free web library. Can you help me? | 2012/01/18 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/8914109",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/705544/"
] | Try the [Google Chart Tools](http://code.google.com/apis/chart/); the simple web service interface is easily usable via JavaScript for live graphics and the [Google Chart API](http://code.google.com/apis/chart/image/) is great for Java (and other languages) for [static images](http://code.google.com/apis/chart/image/docs/making_charts.html). | You can use kava charts in java. You can refer this link: <http://www.kavachart.com/documentation/index.html> |
8,914,109 | >
> **Possible Duplicate:**
>
> [What is the best open-source java charting library? (other than jfreechart)](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/265777/what-is-the-best-open-source-java-charting-library-other-than-jfreechart)
>
>
>
In my web application I need to present some charts. I create class where I used JFreeChart library, but this library is desktop library. I need some free web library. Can you help me? | 2012/01/18 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/8914109",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/705544/"
] | Try the [Google Chart Tools](http://code.google.com/apis/chart/); the simple web service interface is easily usable via JavaScript for live graphics and the [Google Chart API](http://code.google.com/apis/chart/image/) is great for Java (and other languages) for [static images](http://code.google.com/apis/chart/image/docs/making_charts.html). | Server side
===========
* [JFreeChart](http://www.jfree.org/jfreechart/) can be used in web applications as well. Simply create a servlet that returns a chart [rendered as PNG](http://javabeanz.wordpress.com/2007/07/10/displaying-dynamic-charts-in-a-jsp-page-jfreechart/)
Client side
===========
* [Google Chart Tools](http://code.google.com/apis/chart) - easy way to generate charts by crafting URLs
* [Various JavaScript charting libraries](http://www.splashnology.com/article/15-awesome-free-javascript-charts/325/), with [jqPlot](http://www.jqplot.com/) and [HighCharts](http://www.highcharts.com/) being my favourite |
8,914,109 | >
> **Possible Duplicate:**
>
> [What is the best open-source java charting library? (other than jfreechart)](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/265777/what-is-the-best-open-source-java-charting-library-other-than-jfreechart)
>
>
>
In my web application I need to present some charts. I create class where I used JFreeChart library, but this library is desktop library. I need some free web library. Can you help me? | 2012/01/18 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/8914109",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/705544/"
] | Try the [Google Chart Tools](http://code.google.com/apis/chart/); the simple web service interface is easily usable via JavaScript for live graphics and the [Google Chart API](http://code.google.com/apis/chart/image/) is great for Java (and other languages) for [static images](http://code.google.com/apis/chart/image/docs/making_charts.html). | You can create chart for your web application by using JFreeChart as well. For more details go to following link:
<http://himtech-spring.blogspot.com/2012/07/spring-mvc-with-jfreechart.html>
You can also create chart for web application using Google chart API. For this you need to construct an URL and send it to Google chart server for generating chart.
[Click here for Google chart integration with SpringMVC implementation](http://himtech-spring.blogspot.com/2012/07/spring-mvc-with-google-chart.html) |
8,914,109 | >
> **Possible Duplicate:**
>
> [What is the best open-source java charting library? (other than jfreechart)](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/265777/what-is-the-best-open-source-java-charting-library-other-than-jfreechart)
>
>
>
In my web application I need to present some charts. I create class where I used JFreeChart library, but this library is desktop library. I need some free web library. Can you help me? | 2012/01/18 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/8914109",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/705544/"
] | You can create chart for your web application by using JFreeChart as well. For more details go to following link:
<http://himtech-spring.blogspot.com/2012/07/spring-mvc-with-jfreechart.html>
You can also create chart for web application using Google chart API. For this you need to construct an URL and send it to Google chart server for generating chart.
[Click here for Google chart integration with SpringMVC implementation](http://himtech-spring.blogspot.com/2012/07/spring-mvc-with-google-chart.html) | [gRaphäel](http://g.raphaeljs.com/) provides charts with a JavaScript API. |
8,914,109 | >
> **Possible Duplicate:**
>
> [What is the best open-source java charting library? (other than jfreechart)](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/265777/what-is-the-best-open-source-java-charting-library-other-than-jfreechart)
>
>
>
In my web application I need to present some charts. I create class where I used JFreeChart library, but this library is desktop library. I need some free web library. Can you help me? | 2012/01/18 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/8914109",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/705544/"
] | You can create chart for your web application by using JFreeChart as well. For more details go to following link:
<http://himtech-spring.blogspot.com/2012/07/spring-mvc-with-jfreechart.html>
You can also create chart for web application using Google chart API. For this you need to construct an URL and send it to Google chart server for generating chart.
[Click here for Google chart integration with SpringMVC implementation](http://himtech-spring.blogspot.com/2012/07/spring-mvc-with-google-chart.html) | You can use kava charts in java. You can refer this link: <http://www.kavachart.com/documentation/index.html> |
8,914,109 | >
> **Possible Duplicate:**
>
> [What is the best open-source java charting library? (other than jfreechart)](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/265777/what-is-the-best-open-source-java-charting-library-other-than-jfreechart)
>
>
>
In my web application I need to present some charts. I create class where I used JFreeChart library, but this library is desktop library. I need some free web library. Can you help me? | 2012/01/18 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/8914109",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/705544/"
] | You can create chart for your web application by using JFreeChart as well. For more details go to following link:
<http://himtech-spring.blogspot.com/2012/07/spring-mvc-with-jfreechart.html>
You can also create chart for web application using Google chart API. For this you need to construct an URL and send it to Google chart server for generating chart.
[Click here for Google chart integration with SpringMVC implementation](http://himtech-spring.blogspot.com/2012/07/spring-mvc-with-google-chart.html) | Server side
===========
* [JFreeChart](http://www.jfree.org/jfreechart/) can be used in web applications as well. Simply create a servlet that returns a chart [rendered as PNG](http://javabeanz.wordpress.com/2007/07/10/displaying-dynamic-charts-in-a-jsp-page-jfreechart/)
Client side
===========
* [Google Chart Tools](http://code.google.com/apis/chart) - easy way to generate charts by crafting URLs
* [Various JavaScript charting libraries](http://www.splashnology.com/article/15-awesome-free-javascript-charts/325/), with [jqPlot](http://www.jqplot.com/) and [HighCharts](http://www.highcharts.com/) being my favourite |
138,658 | >
> My friend is gone on Annual vacation from feb17 to jun17.
>
>
>
or
>
> My friend is gone from feb17 to jun17 on Annual vacation.
>
>
>
Which is the correct sentence and placement? | 2017/08/10 | [
"https://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/138658",
"https://ell.stackexchange.com",
"https://ell.stackexchange.com/users/60241/"
] | I think both sentences are correct. In both sentences, it is clear what is being stated, regardless of the order of the phrases.
There is some confusion about whether you intend ***17*** to mean the year 2017 or the 17th of the month. I assume you mean the year 2017, but I'm not sure.
Also, in formal, written English, it would be better to capitalize month names and use periods after abbreviations, and it would be good to remove the initial capital from ***Annual vacation***:
>
> My friend is gone on annual vacation from Feb. 17th to Jun. 17th.
>
>
> My friend is gone from Feb. 17th to Jun. 17th on annual vacation.
>
>
>
Or if you intend ***17*** to be the year 2017, you could write it this way:
>
> My friend is gone on annual vacation from Feb. '17 to Jun. '17.
>
>
> My friend is gone from Feb. '17 to Jun. '17 on annual vacation.
>
>
> | The mentioned sentences are grammatically incorrect. You can say:
1. My friend is on an annual vacation from Feb'17 to June'17.
2. From Feb'17 to June'17, my friend is on an annual vacation. |
25,067,186 | First: I searched a lot and I can't find anyone to have this problem (it seems like it something basic, but I have been 2 hours dealing with this).
My problem is that long ago I had the javascript validator for eclipse. I don't know why I don't have it anymore, but I want it back.
I found this and tried to do the inverse:
[How do I remove javascript validation from my eclipse project?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3131878/how-do-i-remove-javascript-validation-from-my-eclipse-project)
But my problem is that when I click Properties under my project, I can't find the "Javascript" tab.. Why? I think the problem is here, I tried modifying anything else under validators, also under window->Preferences->Javascript or Validtors->Client-side Javascript..
Also I don't have the JavaScript Validator under Builders.
**EDIT:**
This is what I see on my project properties:
This is what I see under validation
This is what I see under Builders
 | 2014/07/31 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/25067186",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/3645944/"
] | You need to add the JavaScript "nature" to the project (basically, tell Eclipse to treat it as a JavaScript project). Right-click on the project and choose **Configure** > **Convert to JavaScript Project...**. After doing that you should see a Builder named "JavaScript Validator" and have the **JavaScript** section in the properties. | Regardless of what settings I enabled my Eclipse Javascript IDE (Neon) still didn't work.
I switched to an older Eclipse EE IDE (Kepler SP2) and that worked.
Maybe my old Mac OS X 10.7 has some issues with the newer version, or EE is better at compiling javascript than the simple Eclipse Javascript IDE. |
6,849 | I want to watch Evangelion but don't want to watch the old 90's series because I can't stand the animation.
Is there a remake or a newer movie with the same story ? | 2014/01/11 | [
"https://anime.stackexchange.com/questions/6849",
"https://anime.stackexchange.com",
"https://anime.stackexchange.com/users/3289/"
] | Actually the animation is superior in many cases for 90s shows. So your argument is not valid.
Evangelion should be watched in the order released (Series => EoE => Rebulids) as Rebulids are clearly not remakes.
On the other hand if you don't feel like watching the series why would you do so? Just because it's a classic? Worthless. | You could watch the evangellion rebuild movies, but some plot points change, some things are left out and the third movie is seemingly (I havent seen it yet) quite different altogether.
Again, I would recommend that you should watch the series first, but you could just watch the films, they don't nessicarily require any knowledge about the series to watch. |
47,158 | I'm looking to replace some copper pipe with PEX. The online debate seems heated, although local plumbers I've talked to seem indifferent about the particulars, just praising PEX in general vs. copper.
Some of the online debate around cinch clamps involves anecdotes about them failing a small percentage of the time. For example, it was mentioned in [this question](https://diy.stackexchange.com/questions/1709/what-is-the-advantage-of-pex-pinch-clamp-vs-crimp-rings/33441). Given the low cost of cinch clamps and ease of application, would it be a good idea to double up on clamps on each fitting? Any reason this wouldn't be cheap insurance? | 2014/08/06 | [
"https://diy.stackexchange.com/questions/47158",
"https://diy.stackexchange.com",
"https://diy.stackexchange.com/users/23267/"
] | I do not think it would be a good idea to double up on the clamps. When you are clamping PEX onto a fitting, you want to try to get the clamp near the middle of the fitting, ideally between two ribs. With two clamps, it wouldn't be possible to do this.
To ease your trepidation about the staying power of the clamps, do a test clamp on a fitting. Let it stay overnight, and then try to get it off. You should find that it's very strong. If you ask me, the PEX + clamps is tougher than copper and solder. | The idea of crimps are flawed and leakage around the two crimp bumps are likely.
In order to pull a crimp tight, you need to bunch up material at the crimper's closure point. This means there is a noncontact area around the two raised bumps. My joint failures show this clearly, there are no embossed ridges at the bump areas and water stains show leakage at the point where the crimps are raised away from the pipe at the crimp bumps
Secondly why is pipe compound not recommended?
Screwed-tight pipe clamps stretch out, why do we believe cinch clamps will not? |
47,158 | I'm looking to replace some copper pipe with PEX. The online debate seems heated, although local plumbers I've talked to seem indifferent about the particulars, just praising PEX in general vs. copper.
Some of the online debate around cinch clamps involves anecdotes about them failing a small percentage of the time. For example, it was mentioned in [this question](https://diy.stackexchange.com/questions/1709/what-is-the-advantage-of-pex-pinch-clamp-vs-crimp-rings/33441). Given the low cost of cinch clamps and ease of application, would it be a good idea to double up on clamps on each fitting? Any reason this wouldn't be cheap insurance? | 2014/08/06 | [
"https://diy.stackexchange.com/questions/47158",
"https://diy.stackexchange.com",
"https://diy.stackexchange.com/users/23267/"
] | I do not think it would be a good idea to double up on the clamps. When you are clamping PEX onto a fitting, you want to try to get the clamp near the middle of the fitting, ideally between two ribs. With two clamps, it wouldn't be possible to do this.
To ease your trepidation about the staying power of the clamps, do a test clamp on a fitting. Let it stay overnight, and then try to get it off. You should find that it's very strong. If you ask me, the PEX + clamps is tougher than copper and solder. | After having one or two leaks using single SSC clamps, I always use two clamps on each connection. Offset where the crimps are to make the best connection.
I've had no failures since! |
47,158 | I'm looking to replace some copper pipe with PEX. The online debate seems heated, although local plumbers I've talked to seem indifferent about the particulars, just praising PEX in general vs. copper.
Some of the online debate around cinch clamps involves anecdotes about them failing a small percentage of the time. For example, it was mentioned in [this question](https://diy.stackexchange.com/questions/1709/what-is-the-advantage-of-pex-pinch-clamp-vs-crimp-rings/33441). Given the low cost of cinch clamps and ease of application, would it be a good idea to double up on clamps on each fitting? Any reason this wouldn't be cheap insurance? | 2014/08/06 | [
"https://diy.stackexchange.com/questions/47158",
"https://diy.stackexchange.com",
"https://diy.stackexchange.com/users/23267/"
] | After having one or two leaks using single SSC clamps, I always use two clamps on each connection. Offset where the crimps are to make the best connection.
I've had no failures since! | The idea of crimps are flawed and leakage around the two crimp bumps are likely.
In order to pull a crimp tight, you need to bunch up material at the crimper's closure point. This means there is a noncontact area around the two raised bumps. My joint failures show this clearly, there are no embossed ridges at the bump areas and water stains show leakage at the point where the crimps are raised away from the pipe at the crimp bumps
Secondly why is pipe compound not recommended?
Screwed-tight pipe clamps stretch out, why do we believe cinch clamps will not? |
773 | Is there a way to prevent *a single object* from casting shadows?
If I shut down "Cast Shadows" on the light source then all shadows will be lost. That is not what I want. I want to be able to prevent a single object from casting shadows.
A use case may be a laser. If I were to use a cylinder to model my laser, and that laser was positioned between a wall and a light source it will cast a shadow on the wall, but it should not cast a shadow. | 2013/06/09 | [
"https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/773",
"https://blender.stackexchange.com",
"https://blender.stackexchange.com/users/459/"
] | Objects not casting shadows? easy, un-tick the `shadow` box.
*In Cycles 2.79+, **Ray Visibility** was renamed to **Cycles Settings**.*
As for the lighting, Cycles simulates the physical behaviour of light with some reasonable accuracy. All techniques used in real photography can be applied to lighting setups in cycles, The video also discusses the composite of various render passes, I think you'll find they are all possible in Blender. Be specific about what you want to know and you will get accurate answers. | Cycles, Blender 2.79
====================
Select the object, and in **Properties / Object / Cycles Settings**, disable **Shadow**.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/SqgHz.png) |
773 | Is there a way to prevent *a single object* from casting shadows?
If I shut down "Cast Shadows" on the light source then all shadows will be lost. That is not what I want. I want to be able to prevent a single object from casting shadows.
A use case may be a laser. If I were to use a cylinder to model my laser, and that laser was positioned between a wall and a light source it will cast a shadow on the wall, but it should not cast a shadow. | 2013/06/09 | [
"https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/773",
"https://blender.stackexchange.com",
"https://blender.stackexchange.com/users/459/"
] | Objects not casting shadows? easy, un-tick the `shadow` box.
*In Cycles 2.79+, **Ray Visibility** was renamed to **Cycles Settings**.*
As for the lighting, Cycles simulates the physical behaviour of light with some reasonable accuracy. All techniques used in real photography can be applied to lighting setups in cycles, The video also discusses the composite of various render passes, I think you'll find they are all possible in Blender. Be specific about what you want to know and you will get accurate answers. | In v2.83 I found the setting as follows:
Selecting the object and then, in the sidebar, going to Object Properties->Visibility->Ray Visibility->Shadow (check/uncheck).
Note: Changing the material properties did not remove the shadow cast by the object.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/YO7Bg.png) |
773 | Is there a way to prevent *a single object* from casting shadows?
If I shut down "Cast Shadows" on the light source then all shadows will be lost. That is not what I want. I want to be able to prevent a single object from casting shadows.
A use case may be a laser. If I were to use a cylinder to model my laser, and that laser was positioned between a wall and a light source it will cast a shadow on the wall, but it should not cast a shadow. | 2013/06/09 | [
"https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/773",
"https://blender.stackexchange.com",
"https://blender.stackexchange.com/users/459/"
] | For 2.8 and for rendering I found selecting the shadow mode to None to be working. It's under material settings.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/j8bws.png) | Cycles, Blender 2.79
====================
Select the object, and in **Properties / Object / Cycles Settings**, disable **Shadow**.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/SqgHz.png) |
773 | Is there a way to prevent *a single object* from casting shadows?
If I shut down "Cast Shadows" on the light source then all shadows will be lost. That is not what I want. I want to be able to prevent a single object from casting shadows.
A use case may be a laser. If I were to use a cylinder to model my laser, and that laser was positioned between a wall and a light source it will cast a shadow on the wall, but it should not cast a shadow. | 2013/06/09 | [
"https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/773",
"https://blender.stackexchange.com",
"https://blender.stackexchange.com/users/459/"
] | For 2.8 and for rendering I found selecting the shadow mode to None to be working. It's under material settings.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/j8bws.png) | In v2.83 I found the setting as follows:
Selecting the object and then, in the sidebar, going to Object Properties->Visibility->Ray Visibility->Shadow (check/uncheck).
Note: Changing the material properties did not remove the shadow cast by the object.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/YO7Bg.png) |
71,000 | When I scour SO, I saw that it's a bit complex to port scan a UDP port than a TCP port, why? | 2020/11/15 | [
"https://networkengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/71000",
"https://networkengineering.stackexchange.com",
"https://networkengineering.stackexchange.com/users/54999/"
] | Actually, you cannot *really* do a UDP port scan. While an open TCP port generally replies to a simple SYN probe, UDP has no concept for a socket connection. Simply put, there's no single probe message to see if a UDP port is listening.
Accordingly, you might not get any reply from an open UDP port unless you guess the right application protocol behind it and it chooses to reply (a DNS server replies to a DNS request, an SNTP server to an SNTP request, etc). Without a reply, you won't know whether a certain port is closed, whether the firewall has filtered the packet, or whether the application just chose to ignore your request.
Basically, you can only probe UDP ports that you know or guess the application-layer protocol of, and you can talk it into replying. That is *a lot* more complicated than sending a generic TCP SYN.
Of course, you could try to simply check for ICMP *destination port unreachable* messages for closed ports, but these are usually filtered (or not sent at all) on the open Internet and in many other scenarios. | With TCP there is a standardized connection setup process that is implemented by the operating system and applies regardless of what application protocol is being used. So you can send a "syn" packet as a probe and based on the response you can determine if the port is "open" (the server proceeds with the next step in the connection setup process, sending the "syn-ack"), "closed" (the connection is rejected with an ICMP error) or "filtered" (there is no response at all, which likely indicates the traffic is blocked by a firewall).
With UDP on the other hand "closed" ports will trigger a response from the operating system, but for open ports the operating system will simply pass the packet to the server application without generating any response of it's own. UDP server applications will normally not send a response to packets they do not understand.
So when you send a UDP probe packet and get no response you have no way of knowing whether your packet was filtered by a firewall or whether it was delivered successfully to an application that did not respond (either because it could not interpret the packet or because of it's own internal policies). |
71,000 | When I scour SO, I saw that it's a bit complex to port scan a UDP port than a TCP port, why? | 2020/11/15 | [
"https://networkengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/71000",
"https://networkengineering.stackexchange.com",
"https://networkengineering.stackexchange.com/users/54999/"
] | Actually, you cannot *really* do a UDP port scan. While an open TCP port generally replies to a simple SYN probe, UDP has no concept for a socket connection. Simply put, there's no single probe message to see if a UDP port is listening.
Accordingly, you might not get any reply from an open UDP port unless you guess the right application protocol behind it and it chooses to reply (a DNS server replies to a DNS request, an SNTP server to an SNTP request, etc). Without a reply, you won't know whether a certain port is closed, whether the firewall has filtered the packet, or whether the application just chose to ignore your request.
Basically, you can only probe UDP ports that you know or guess the application-layer protocol of, and you can talk it into replying. That is *a lot* more complicated than sending a generic TCP SYN.
Of course, you could try to simply check for ICMP *destination port unreachable* messages for closed ports, but these are usually filtered (or not sent at all) on the open Internet and in many other scenarios. | To further illustrate the challenge of scanning for UDP here are some details about how the functionality is implemented in nmap which is still probably the most popular port scanner nowadays:
>
> UDP scan works by sending a UDP packet to every targeted port. For
> some common ports such as 53 and 161, a protocol-specific payload is
> sent to increase response rate, but for most ports the packet is empty
> unless the --data, --data-string, or --data-length options are
> specified. If an ICMP port unreachable error (type 3, code 3) is
> returned, the port is closed. Other ICMP unreachable errors (type 3,
> codes 0, 1, 2, 9, 10, or 13) mark the port as filtered. Occasionally,
> a service will respond with a UDP packet, proving that it is open. If
> no response is received after retransmissions, the port is classified
> as open|filtered. This means that the port could be open, or perhaps
> packet filters are blocking the communication. Version detection (-sV)
> can be used to help differentiate the truly open ports from the
> filtered ones.
>
>
>
And:
>
> A big challenge with UDP scanning is doing it quickly. Open and
> filtered ports rarely send any response, leaving Nmap to time out and
> then conduct retransmissions just in case the probe or response were
> lost. Closed ports are often an even bigger problem. They usually send
> back an ICMP port unreachable error. But unlike the RST packets sent
> by closed TCP ports in response to a SYN or connect scan, many hosts
> rate limit ICMP port unreachable messages by default. Linux and
> Solaris are particularly strict about this. For example, the Linux
> 2.4.20 kernel limits destination unreachable messages to one per second (in net/ipv4/icmp.c).
>
>
>
The last paragraph must be outdated, not sure about current implementations.
>
> Nmap detects rate limiting and slows down accordingly to avoid
> flooding the network with useless packets that the target machine will
> drop. Unfortunately, a Linux-style limit of one packet per second
> makes a 65,536-port scan take more than 18 hours. Ideas for speeding
> your UDP scans up include scanning more hosts in parallel, doing a
> quick scan of just the popular ports first, scanning from behind the
> firewall, and using --host-timeout to skip slow hosts.
>
>
>
Source: [nmap - Port Scanning Techniques](https://nmap.org/book/man-port-scanning-techniques.html)
I seem to remember from a long time ago that the Unicorn scanner has its own way of scanning UDP but can't find the details right now. Since each port scanner has its own way of telling an open port from a closed port it can guess wrong, and results may vary. The best way would be to use a tool like [Scapy](https://scapy.net/) to craft your own packets and interprets the responses for yourself. |
71,000 | When I scour SO, I saw that it's a bit complex to port scan a UDP port than a TCP port, why? | 2020/11/15 | [
"https://networkengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/71000",
"https://networkengineering.stackexchange.com",
"https://networkengineering.stackexchange.com/users/54999/"
] | With TCP there is a standardized connection setup process that is implemented by the operating system and applies regardless of what application protocol is being used. So you can send a "syn" packet as a probe and based on the response you can determine if the port is "open" (the server proceeds with the next step in the connection setup process, sending the "syn-ack"), "closed" (the connection is rejected with an ICMP error) or "filtered" (there is no response at all, which likely indicates the traffic is blocked by a firewall).
With UDP on the other hand "closed" ports will trigger a response from the operating system, but for open ports the operating system will simply pass the packet to the server application without generating any response of it's own. UDP server applications will normally not send a response to packets they do not understand.
So when you send a UDP probe packet and get no response you have no way of knowing whether your packet was filtered by a firewall or whether it was delivered successfully to an application that did not respond (either because it could not interpret the packet or because of it's own internal policies). | To further illustrate the challenge of scanning for UDP here are some details about how the functionality is implemented in nmap which is still probably the most popular port scanner nowadays:
>
> UDP scan works by sending a UDP packet to every targeted port. For
> some common ports such as 53 and 161, a protocol-specific payload is
> sent to increase response rate, but for most ports the packet is empty
> unless the --data, --data-string, or --data-length options are
> specified. If an ICMP port unreachable error (type 3, code 3) is
> returned, the port is closed. Other ICMP unreachable errors (type 3,
> codes 0, 1, 2, 9, 10, or 13) mark the port as filtered. Occasionally,
> a service will respond with a UDP packet, proving that it is open. If
> no response is received after retransmissions, the port is classified
> as open|filtered. This means that the port could be open, or perhaps
> packet filters are blocking the communication. Version detection (-sV)
> can be used to help differentiate the truly open ports from the
> filtered ones.
>
>
>
And:
>
> A big challenge with UDP scanning is doing it quickly. Open and
> filtered ports rarely send any response, leaving Nmap to time out and
> then conduct retransmissions just in case the probe or response were
> lost. Closed ports are often an even bigger problem. They usually send
> back an ICMP port unreachable error. But unlike the RST packets sent
> by closed TCP ports in response to a SYN or connect scan, many hosts
> rate limit ICMP port unreachable messages by default. Linux and
> Solaris are particularly strict about this. For example, the Linux
> 2.4.20 kernel limits destination unreachable messages to one per second (in net/ipv4/icmp.c).
>
>
>
The last paragraph must be outdated, not sure about current implementations.
>
> Nmap detects rate limiting and slows down accordingly to avoid
> flooding the network with useless packets that the target machine will
> drop. Unfortunately, a Linux-style limit of one packet per second
> makes a 65,536-port scan take more than 18 hours. Ideas for speeding
> your UDP scans up include scanning more hosts in parallel, doing a
> quick scan of just the popular ports first, scanning from behind the
> firewall, and using --host-timeout to skip slow hosts.
>
>
>
Source: [nmap - Port Scanning Techniques](https://nmap.org/book/man-port-scanning-techniques.html)
I seem to remember from a long time ago that the Unicorn scanner has its own way of scanning UDP but can't find the details right now. Since each port scanner has its own way of telling an open port from a closed port it can guess wrong, and results may vary. The best way would be to use a tool like [Scapy](https://scapy.net/) to craft your own packets and interprets the responses for yourself. |
150,016 | My resume needs an expression to describe experience I've had working with computers that are not part of a larger hardware system.
I thought of using 'desktops' but this is a very restricted subset of non-embedded systems. | 2014/02/05 | [
"https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/150016",
"https://english.stackexchange.com",
"https://english.stackexchange.com/users/22748/"
] | Perhaps **stand-alone systems** or **self-contained systems**? | The term you are looking for is **Workstation**. |
150,016 | My resume needs an expression to describe experience I've had working with computers that are not part of a larger hardware system.
I thought of using 'desktops' but this is a very restricted subset of non-embedded systems. | 2014/02/05 | [
"https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/150016",
"https://english.stackexchange.com",
"https://english.stackexchange.com/users/22748/"
] | Strangely enough, I would consider experience with embedded systems something very specific to mention on a CV - experience with **non-embedded** systems being the default.
If somebody who does not mention experience with embedded systems, I will assume they do not have it, and all experience mentioned refers to non-embedded systems.
That said, if you feel you have to make the distinction, simply calling them non-embedded would do the trick.
It may be my interpretation, but it does feel a bit like looking for a word to describe experience with driving cars *outside* the Formula 1 - I would mention Formula 1 experience if I had it, but otherwise, any driving experience would be assumed not to be Formula 1 anyway. | Perhaps **stand-alone systems** or **self-contained systems**? |
150,016 | My resume needs an expression to describe experience I've had working with computers that are not part of a larger hardware system.
I thought of using 'desktops' but this is a very restricted subset of non-embedded systems. | 2014/02/05 | [
"https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/150016",
"https://english.stackexchange.com",
"https://english.stackexchange.com/users/22748/"
] | Strangely enough, I would consider experience with embedded systems something very specific to mention on a CV - experience with **non-embedded** systems being the default.
If somebody who does not mention experience with embedded systems, I will assume they do not have it, and all experience mentioned refers to non-embedded systems.
That said, if you feel you have to make the distinction, simply calling them non-embedded would do the trick.
It may be my interpretation, but it does feel a bit like looking for a word to describe experience with driving cars *outside* the Formula 1 - I would mention Formula 1 experience if I had it, but otherwise, any driving experience would be assumed not to be Formula 1 anyway. | The term you are looking for is **Workstation**. |
982,325 | Ours is a small office with 6 people, which is overkill for Windows Server. Instead, we use Windows Pro and utilise the public folder for sharing files. Shared files are from Windows specific apps such as accounting programs, etc...
Several times, after a Windows 10 Update, I've noticed windows has:
* turned OFF Public Folder sharing
* turned ON Password Protected Sharing
this results in the files not being shared. If I'm around it's trivial to mitigate these changes, but others aren't so IT literate
My question is, is there a better way to share files on Windows 10 Pro, which isn't affected by Updates?
For example, enable the guest account using the CMD prompt, set up the share manually and cross your fingers that the Windows update doesn't mess with it. This way presumably, it doesn't matter whether windows turns on/off public folders or password protected sharing. | 2019/09/07 | [
"https://serverfault.com/questions/982325",
"https://serverfault.com",
"https://serverfault.com/users/538835/"
] | Public forder share in not a good idea; it is for this reason that Windows Update regularly "reset" this settings.
At the **very** least, you should create a dedicated user account (with a decent password) for sharing, and use it on the various client as the credentials (user/pass) to access the share.
Note that I am **not** advocating this kind of user/credential sharing; anyway, it is way better that a public shared folder. | I would add a note. If the computer is used only for sharing I would maybe install a [FreeNAS](https://www.freenas.org/) OS to share the file in a workgroup's mode, and make sure you configure a software RAID in the minimum to ensure the data integrity.
The learning step to administer a Linux OS is not easy if you are used to the Microsoft's world, but the FreeNAS offer webportal to configure the samba, so the learning step is easier.
Another option is even if a small office, did you thougth to have your file in the cloud ? like onedrive, dropbox or such service offer business plan, and would be a good way to have your worker be able to work from anywhere if the need arise. |
8,183 | How many species did Carl Linnaeus (senior) classify? | 2013/05/03 | [
"https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/8183",
"https://biology.stackexchange.com",
"https://biology.stackexchange.com/users/320/"
] | **More than 13,000.**
**Plants: >9,000 names**.
In Systema Naturae 10th edition, commonly taken as the starting point of modern taxonomy, Linnaeus is reported to have published around 6,000 plant names (I haven't counted, but Müller-Wille gives 5,900 and Stearn says "almost 6,000". The Wikipedia figure of 7,700 may come from a different edition of Systema Naturae).
However, that's just SN10. Luckily, a wonderful source has compiled the names from all of Linnaeus's work:
The [Linnaean Plant Name Typification Project](http://www.nhm.ac.uk/research-curation/research/projects/linnaean-typification/index.html) of the Natural History Museum says that Linnaeus published more than 9,000 valid plant names in his life (names that are still valid under current nomenclatural conventions), and they have many of them in a [searchable database](http://www.nhm.ac.uk/research-curation/research/projects/linnaean-typification/database/) with references to where Linnaeus published them.
**Animals: >4,200 names**.
For SN10, different authors give 4,236 or 4,378 animal names. Stearn says "nearly 4,400", so perhaps he too was unsure. The total number Linnaues described in his life is probably higher, as he did write separate zoological publications like [Fauna Svevica](http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/100333#page/11/mode/1up), but I couldn't find a source like the project bringing together all of his animal names.
---
* [**Müller-Wille S**. 2006. Linnaeus' herbarium cabinet: a piece of furniture and its function. Endeavour 30: 60–64.](http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.endeavour.2006.03.001)
* [**Stearn WT**. 1959. The Background of Linnaeus's Contributions to the Nomenclature and Methods of Systematic Biology.)](http://www.jstor.org/stable/2411603) | Indeed this is a bit of interesting history. [Linnaeus was not a modest man, but he was also a prodigious contributor to biology](http://www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-online/science-of-natural-history/taxonomy-systematics/history-taxonomy/session1/). He made many editions of his two major works *Species Plantarum* (1753) and *Systema Naturae* published in 1759. [*Systema Naturae*](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systema_Naturae) covered both plants and animals and had 12 editions, eventually with 3 volumes in several parts.
Linnaeus' sampling of species was not broad - [he traveled to Lapland France, and England](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Linnaeus#Linnaean_collections). His main experience was in botany and was able to look at samples in gardens which were a popular pursuit amongst wealthy hobbyists of the day and visited botanists in England and had samples from other continents. He had heard about chimpanzees, but it doesn't seem as if he ever saw one.
*Wikipedia gives a final count of nearly 10,000 species including over 7000 plants, from the entries in his works.* Linnaeus felt that there would be very few more to be discovered; he estimated 10,000 species of plants which turned out to be completely wrong. The [Encyclopedia of Life](http://eol.org/) has 1,316,775 entries today. This was probably perpetuated by the influence of Aristotelian thought, which persisted through Darwin's life, [that species were only the result a higher reality creating animals](http://amazingdiscoveries.org/C-deception-evolution_Plato_Darwin) [attuned to a local climate](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_evolutionary_thought#Renaissance_and_Enlightenment) and geography and so the same species would in the mountains of Scandinavia would be the same as the alpine regions of India say. But even Aristotelianism, which stood for over a millenium the 19th Century and Darwin's work, was probably more the result of [confirmation bias](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias) than any real proof. |
27,946 | Those of us who care to look into history even the slightest can see that both devout Christian laymen and Christian leaders have been make scientific strides for almost two millennia. Some examples will be sited below. In spite of these facts, I often hear claims from secularists along the lines of "Christians may donate to [insert medical cause here], but an atheist is the one who finds the cure to [insert modern medical issue here]." And, similarly, but not the same: "Medieval Christians are responsible for a lack of scientific advancement in that era."
So, if people like Gregor Mendel (<https://www.google.com/#q=Gregor+Mendel>) and Georges Lemaitre (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lema%C3%AEtre>) were doing scientific work, why is there this huge misconception that Christianity was against and/or is currently against Scientific discovery? Specifically, my question is, which recent (last 300 years or so) writings can be attributed to creating and perpetuating this divide in spite of historical evidence which supports that devoted Christians did important scientific work in their day, and how have they been so convincing for the general public (on both sides) in spite of all of this readily-available historical evidence?
Note: Perhaps the second part of my question is more opinion-based, but I am interested in some speculation as to why these writings would have such a powerful effect, whether from S.E. users or from another source. | 2014/05/06 | [
"https://christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/27946",
"https://christianity.stackexchange.com",
"https://christianity.stackexchange.com/users/11095/"
] | The essence of any answer to your question must emphasize that the misconception about Christianity and science is very *modern*. It is modern secularists that desire to rewrite history by making claims that Christianity's job, as it were, is to hinder scientific advancement. For every example they cite, like the church vs. Galileo ([his observations proved the earth was not the center of the universe](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei)), there are thousands more that prove otherwise. Many of these can be found in secular shows on the History channel. In a recent example about the Dark Ages (sorry can't remember the shows name) they concluded that, without the church keeping reading and writing alive, the Dark Ages could easily have lasted much longer. So any arguments that assert some general obstruction by Christians of scientific advances pre-Darwin are weak. I could go on: the USA exists because of good Christian men; [the country's oldest university, Harvard, was founded to train clergy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_University)...
After Darwin, it became much easier to inflate the conflict between the Christian and secular worldviews since the secularists could "explain" away life without relying on God. Christians in those times felt just as threatened as those who convicted Galileo of heresay. Look at any modern astronomy text to see this taken to its ultimate absurdity - that the Big Bang started itself. They have to overlook a big contradiction born of the laws of physics (an external force is required to change a system in equilibrium). Fortunately, the archaeological evidence of the past hundred years and the biological evidence since DNA was discovered has disproved macro-evolution (that one species can evolve into another). This has finally begun to turn the tide against evolution but it is still taught in classrooms and promoted by secularists as fact. After the Garden of Eden fiasco, truly evolution has to be Satan's biggest win.
Which brings me to the bottom line answer to the question of "Why?". The problem is not that the secularists are stupid or are ignoring the compatibility of the Bible, Christianity, and science. The problem is that they are blind. The Bible points this out many, many times. Man's soul was corrupted by sin because he wanted to do things his way and not God's way. Until that is fixed, there will always be misconceptions about Christianity by those who oppose it.
Your question is not simple and so my answer is not short. I hope it added something positive to the discussion. | I think a lot of it has to do directly with Darwinian evolutionary commitments around the creation of life on earth and the contrasting commitments of the "young earth" creationist view, and the way the conflict between those two positions became a key way of framing identity for some of the most vocal and visible Christians (and some of the most vocal and visible scientists) over the course of the last century.
In particular, I would look at the books of Richard Dawkins as some of the most influential recent writings that promote the notion that Christianity and science are incompatible.
Personally, however, I think the current estrangement between Christian and scientific belief is a historical anomaly. Even now, I would say the polarization is much less than even twenty years ago, and continuing to lessen. |
27,946 | Those of us who care to look into history even the slightest can see that both devout Christian laymen and Christian leaders have been make scientific strides for almost two millennia. Some examples will be sited below. In spite of these facts, I often hear claims from secularists along the lines of "Christians may donate to [insert medical cause here], but an atheist is the one who finds the cure to [insert modern medical issue here]." And, similarly, but not the same: "Medieval Christians are responsible for a lack of scientific advancement in that era."
So, if people like Gregor Mendel (<https://www.google.com/#q=Gregor+Mendel>) and Georges Lemaitre (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lema%C3%AEtre>) were doing scientific work, why is there this huge misconception that Christianity was against and/or is currently against Scientific discovery? Specifically, my question is, which recent (last 300 years or so) writings can be attributed to creating and perpetuating this divide in spite of historical evidence which supports that devoted Christians did important scientific work in their day, and how have they been so convincing for the general public (on both sides) in spite of all of this readily-available historical evidence?
Note: Perhaps the second part of my question is more opinion-based, but I am interested in some speculation as to why these writings would have such a powerful effect, whether from S.E. users or from another source. | 2014/05/06 | [
"https://christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/27946",
"https://christianity.stackexchange.com",
"https://christianity.stackexchange.com/users/11095/"
] | The essence of any answer to your question must emphasize that the misconception about Christianity and science is very *modern*. It is modern secularists that desire to rewrite history by making claims that Christianity's job, as it were, is to hinder scientific advancement. For every example they cite, like the church vs. Galileo ([his observations proved the earth was not the center of the universe](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei)), there are thousands more that prove otherwise. Many of these can be found in secular shows on the History channel. In a recent example about the Dark Ages (sorry can't remember the shows name) they concluded that, without the church keeping reading and writing alive, the Dark Ages could easily have lasted much longer. So any arguments that assert some general obstruction by Christians of scientific advances pre-Darwin are weak. I could go on: the USA exists because of good Christian men; [the country's oldest university, Harvard, was founded to train clergy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_University)...
After Darwin, it became much easier to inflate the conflict between the Christian and secular worldviews since the secularists could "explain" away life without relying on God. Christians in those times felt just as threatened as those who convicted Galileo of heresay. Look at any modern astronomy text to see this taken to its ultimate absurdity - that the Big Bang started itself. They have to overlook a big contradiction born of the laws of physics (an external force is required to change a system in equilibrium). Fortunately, the archaeological evidence of the past hundred years and the biological evidence since DNA was discovered has disproved macro-evolution (that one species can evolve into another). This has finally begun to turn the tide against evolution but it is still taught in classrooms and promoted by secularists as fact. After the Garden of Eden fiasco, truly evolution has to be Satan's biggest win.
Which brings me to the bottom line answer to the question of "Why?". The problem is not that the secularists are stupid or are ignoring the compatibility of the Bible, Christianity, and science. The problem is that they are blind. The Bible points this out many, many times. Man's soul was corrupted by sin because he wanted to do things his way and not God's way. Until that is fixed, there will always be misconceptions about Christianity by those who oppose it.
Your question is not simple and so my answer is not short. I hope it added something positive to the discussion. | All truth is compatible with itself.
No religion on this earth has all the answers, neither does science. Otherwise we would be as God, having all knowledge. But as you come closer to pure truth you will realize that it has no distinctions such as science or religion. They are just the means of discovering truth. (They are very good too).
Truth is truth and is not divisible unto itself.
I hope this helps and makes sense, because it is true. |
27,946 | Those of us who care to look into history even the slightest can see that both devout Christian laymen and Christian leaders have been make scientific strides for almost two millennia. Some examples will be sited below. In spite of these facts, I often hear claims from secularists along the lines of "Christians may donate to [insert medical cause here], but an atheist is the one who finds the cure to [insert modern medical issue here]." And, similarly, but not the same: "Medieval Christians are responsible for a lack of scientific advancement in that era."
So, if people like Gregor Mendel (<https://www.google.com/#q=Gregor+Mendel>) and Georges Lemaitre (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lema%C3%AEtre>) were doing scientific work, why is there this huge misconception that Christianity was against and/or is currently against Scientific discovery? Specifically, my question is, which recent (last 300 years or so) writings can be attributed to creating and perpetuating this divide in spite of historical evidence which supports that devoted Christians did important scientific work in their day, and how have they been so convincing for the general public (on both sides) in spite of all of this readily-available historical evidence?
Note: Perhaps the second part of my question is more opinion-based, but I am interested in some speculation as to why these writings would have such a powerful effect, whether from S.E. users or from another source. | 2014/05/06 | [
"https://christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/27946",
"https://christianity.stackexchange.com",
"https://christianity.stackexchange.com/users/11095/"
] | The essence of any answer to your question must emphasize that the misconception about Christianity and science is very *modern*. It is modern secularists that desire to rewrite history by making claims that Christianity's job, as it were, is to hinder scientific advancement. For every example they cite, like the church vs. Galileo ([his observations proved the earth was not the center of the universe](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei)), there are thousands more that prove otherwise. Many of these can be found in secular shows on the History channel. In a recent example about the Dark Ages (sorry can't remember the shows name) they concluded that, without the church keeping reading and writing alive, the Dark Ages could easily have lasted much longer. So any arguments that assert some general obstruction by Christians of scientific advances pre-Darwin are weak. I could go on: the USA exists because of good Christian men; [the country's oldest university, Harvard, was founded to train clergy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_University)...
After Darwin, it became much easier to inflate the conflict between the Christian and secular worldviews since the secularists could "explain" away life without relying on God. Christians in those times felt just as threatened as those who convicted Galileo of heresay. Look at any modern astronomy text to see this taken to its ultimate absurdity - that the Big Bang started itself. They have to overlook a big contradiction born of the laws of physics (an external force is required to change a system in equilibrium). Fortunately, the archaeological evidence of the past hundred years and the biological evidence since DNA was discovered has disproved macro-evolution (that one species can evolve into another). This has finally begun to turn the tide against evolution but it is still taught in classrooms and promoted by secularists as fact. After the Garden of Eden fiasco, truly evolution has to be Satan's biggest win.
Which brings me to the bottom line answer to the question of "Why?". The problem is not that the secularists are stupid or are ignoring the compatibility of the Bible, Christianity, and science. The problem is that they are blind. The Bible points this out many, many times. Man's soul was corrupted by sin because he wanted to do things his way and not God's way. Until that is fixed, there will always be misconceptions about Christianity by those who oppose it.
Your question is not simple and so my answer is not short. I hope it added something positive to the discussion. | If you want a book about this topic, check out the Dallas Willard book: Knowing Christ Today, especially Chapter 3: How Moral Knowledge Disappeared.
A very short answer is that when science started revealing mistaken assumptions in Christian theology, the Christians of the time ended up ceding the realm of knowledge and drawing a false distinction between knowledge and faith.
For a video answer, I LOVE [Ask the Smart Man](http://mppc.org/toughquestions) Q&A between Dallas Willard and John Ortberg. There are bookmarks to topics w/in the two sessions of the Q&A session. Of particular interest are the questions labeled **Knowledge** and **Science and Faith**.
For an article by Dallas Willard about Christianity and logic see [Jesus The Logician](http://www.dwillard.org/articles/artview.asp?artID=39). One quote from it is:
>
> There is in our culture an uneasy relation between Jesus and intelligence, and I have actually heard Christians respond to my statement that Jesus is the most intelligent man who ever lived by saying that it is an oxymoron. Today we automatically position him away from (or even in opposition to) the intellect and intellectual life. Almost no one would consider him to be a thinker, addressing the same issues as, say, Aristotle, Kant, Heidegger or Wittgenstein, and with the same logical method.
>
>
>
His concluding paragraph is:
>
> Paying careful attention to how Jesus made use of logical thinking can strengthen our confidence in Jesus as master of the centers of intellect and creativity, and can encourage us to accept him as master in all of the areas of intellectual life in which we may participate. In those areas we can, then, be his disciples, not disciples of the current movements and glittering personalities who happen to dominate our field in human terms. Proper regard for him can also encourage us to follow his example as teachers in Christian contexts. We can learn from him to use logical reasoning at its best, as he works with us. When we teach what he taught in the manner he taught it, we will see his kind of result in the lives of those to whom we minister.
>
>
> |
171,198 | The [changeling's Shapechanger trait](https://www.dndbeyond.com/races/changeling#ChangelingTraits) says (E:RftLW, p. 18; WGtE, p. 61):
>
> As an action, you can change your appearance and your voice. You determine the specifics of the changes, including your coloration, hair length, sex, height and weight. You can make yourself appear as a member of another race, though none of your game statistics change. You can’t duplicate the appearance of a creature you’ve never seen, and you must adopt a form that has the same basic arrangement of limbs that you have. Your clothing and equipment aren’t changed by this trait.
>
>
>
So basically, as long as the person you are changing into is/was a real person, you are always passing yourself off as a different person.
The second benefit of the [Actor](https://www.dndbeyond.com/feats/actor) feat says (PHB, p. 165):
>
> * You have advantage on Charisma (Deception) and Charisma (Performance) checks when trying to pass yourself off as a different person.
>
>
>
The way I read it, a changeling would always have advantage on Deception and Performance checks, because they are always trying to pass themselves as a different person. Is my interpretation correct? Or is the meaning of the Actor feat that they only have advantage when they are trying to prove that they are a different person, not in other situations?
I'm really curious whether this is kinda broken, because a bard or rogue with Expertise and advantage on all Deception checks could be a crazy good liar. | 2020/06/29 | [
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/171198",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/52105/"
] | No, only when the Deception or Performance check concerns identity
------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> you have advantage on Deception and Performance checks when trying to pass yourself off as a different person
>
>
>
This part of the Actor feat gives you advantage on Deception or Performance checks when that check relates to you trying to convince someone you are truly the person you are pretending to be. It does not give you advantage on all Deception/Performance checks as long as you have a disguise on; being a good actor does not make you better at lying generically so long as you're in character.
Thus a Changeling with the Actor feat would always be pretending to be someone else, but while they will have advantage when their identity is in question and they are making Deception/Performance checks to convince others of it, they will not have advantage on generic Deception/Performance checks. | Your last paragraph contains the correct conclusion:
>
> the meaning of the Actor feat [is] that they only have advantage when they are trying to prove that they are a different person not in other situations.
>
>
>
The actor feat defines precisely which checks you have advantage on:
>
> Deception and Performance checks when trying to pass yourself off as a different person
>
>
>
Checks concerning any other information besides your true identity would not gain advantage from the actor feat. |
171,198 | The [changeling's Shapechanger trait](https://www.dndbeyond.com/races/changeling#ChangelingTraits) says (E:RftLW, p. 18; WGtE, p. 61):
>
> As an action, you can change your appearance and your voice. You determine the specifics of the changes, including your coloration, hair length, sex, height and weight. You can make yourself appear as a member of another race, though none of your game statistics change. You can’t duplicate the appearance of a creature you’ve never seen, and you must adopt a form that has the same basic arrangement of limbs that you have. Your clothing and equipment aren’t changed by this trait.
>
>
>
So basically, as long as the person you are changing into is/was a real person, you are always passing yourself off as a different person.
The second benefit of the [Actor](https://www.dndbeyond.com/feats/actor) feat says (PHB, p. 165):
>
> * You have advantage on Charisma (Deception) and Charisma (Performance) checks when trying to pass yourself off as a different person.
>
>
>
The way I read it, a changeling would always have advantage on Deception and Performance checks, because they are always trying to pass themselves as a different person. Is my interpretation correct? Or is the meaning of the Actor feat that they only have advantage when they are trying to prove that they are a different person, not in other situations?
I'm really curious whether this is kinda broken, because a bard or rogue with Expertise and advantage on all Deception checks could be a crazy good liar. | 2020/06/29 | [
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/171198",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/52105/"
] | No, only on checks related to the identity they've assumed
----------------------------------------------------------
You already got to that in your question:
>
> Or is the meaning of the Actor feat that they only have advantage when they are trying to prove that they are a different person, not in other situations?
>
>
>
That’s exactly it. *Actor* gives you advantage on deception and performance checks that you incur from trying to pretend that you’re a different person. It doesn’t apply to other things you happen to be doing while passing yourself off as another person.
This paragraph from the question also isn’t quite correct:
>
> So basically, as long as the person you are changing into is/was a real person, you are always passing yourself off as a different person.
>
>
>
Not necessarily. You’re just changing your appearance to look like that person. But you might not necessarily actually pretend to *be* that person. Maybe you’re just showing off your shapeshifting ability as a party trick. Also, *Actor* doesn’t require that you pass yourself off as a different *real* person at all; It’s perfectly within the bounds of it to try to pretend to be some made up person like a traveling noble or what not, although of course with shapeshifting and incredible acting skills it’ll be quite beneficial to you if you can find a real person to imitate.
>
> I'm really curious whether this is kinda broken, because a bard or rogue with Expertise and advantage on all Deception checks could be a crazy good liar.
>
>
>
I’d also like to address this point: Advantage or not, a Bard or Rogue – *especially* the Rogue, because of Reliable Talent – with Expertise in Deception *are* crazy good liars. So good in fact that they’ll rarely ever fail a deception check for anything that isn’t a completely outlandish claim, advantage or not. This isn’t a problem. They built their characters to be good at something, so they get to be good at that thing. | Your last paragraph contains the correct conclusion:
>
> the meaning of the Actor feat [is] that they only have advantage when they are trying to prove that they are a different person not in other situations.
>
>
>
The actor feat defines precisely which checks you have advantage on:
>
> Deception and Performance checks when trying to pass yourself off as a different person
>
>
>
Checks concerning any other information besides your true identity would not gain advantage from the actor feat. |
3,552 | Why is no-one approving my edit. which was requested?
It takes a few people, I guess, but I imagine it can be done in about 12 concerted clicks, which alone anyway I can do in a few seconds. It's frustrating, it's important to me, and I can't see why it would be important to anyone not to ***make those clicks happen***.
[Can a point divide two lines?](https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/45768/can-a-point-divide-two-lines)
Cheers. | 2017/09/02 | [
"https://philosophy.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3552",
"https://philosophy.meta.stackexchange.com",
"https://philosophy.meta.stackexchange.com/users/-1/"
] | Are you the original author of the question? It was posted by a different account. You can always instantly edit your own posts, of course.
If that's the case you should ask to have the accounts merged through the "contact us" link at the bottom of the page. | it doesn't matter at all, becasue, due to no-one approving the edit, I can just repost the question.
Great! |
106,421 | The largest self-powered vehicle in the world is the [NASA crawler-transporter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crawler-transporter), a 2700 ton machine designed to transport the Space Shuttle a short distance and in a straight line.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/2Ajto.gif)
During WW2, German engineers designed the [P1000 Ratte](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landkreuzer_P._1000_Ratte), a ridiculously huge thousand-ton supertank. It was never built, and likely would have been a complete waste of resources. It would have been extremely vulnerable to bombing, and would have severe difficulty traversing the landscape of continental Europe.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/CFHMw.jpg)
Fictionally, the larger vehicles of Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak appear based on the aesthetic of the crawler-transporter, but scaled up to ludicrous size. Note that the dune buggy-like vehicle in the lower right is large enough to have a multi-person crew, for reference.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/b0XZf.png)
In the real-world, megavehicles like these are militarily non-viable. They would be vulnerable to airpower and tactical nuclear strike, incapable of traversing bridges or following roads, and offer no apparent benefit over a convoy of more specialized vehicles.
Deserts of Kharak appears to attempt to address these issues through its worldbuilding- the setting is a massive desert without bridges or roads, airpower is minimal because of sandstorms, and the extreme heat of the desert requires that vehicles be reasonably self-sufficient (ie crews cannot make camp outside their vehicles, and must live onboard 24/7). The technological base is science-fictional, but not dramatically more advanced than the present day in most respects, with the exception that nuclear weapons are not available.
My naive intuition is that if armor is viable as protection, the square-cube law favors larger vehicles as they gain greater protection for an equivalent armor mass fraction. However, by the same token, ground pressure increases at the same rate, and in sandy terrain that becomes a problem. I'm assuming that any realistic take on this concept will at least need much more track surface than the crawler-transporter or Deserts of Kharak vehicles, for the sake of ground pressure.
**Do these conditions actually favor very large land vehicles for military use? If not, what are the minimum changes necessary to the environment or technological base to make such megavehicles practical?** | 2018/03/07 | [
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/106421",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/16883/"
] | Many of the answers here address the issue of why they aren't practical, and can be summed up as: it's big, slow and hard to defend.
So what would change this?
**Option 1: Add more power**
Add super-advanced engines (and super advanced shock absorbers) that allow you vehicle to reach 100kph. It'll still be vunerable to bombing (so you'll need AA), but should be less vulnerable to ICBM's and other artillery now.
The only option I can think of here are fusion reactors.
**Option 2: Add more armour**
Obviously this has it's own issues (such as weight), so let's run science-fiction and introduce .... shielding. If you can shield from incoming attacks, then your super-huge vehicle can now be used. *Maybe shield generators need a lot of power, or are physically huge, so only large land vehicle can support them.*
**Option 3: Hide it**
Add really powerful ECM to make it hard for long range targets to target it, or cloaking, or some method to hide it. Yes, I am talking about cloaking a massive vehicle. If sci-fi has cloaking devices on spaceships, why not on massive land vehicles? (Uh, sir, the giant tank tracks just, uh, stop in the middle of the desert)
Ok, so now that it's now blown out of the water as soon as it rolls out of your production facilities, what can we use it for?
* Destroying towns by driving over them
* Mobile air-base/fueling depo/resupply unit. No long supply lines.
* Manufacturing vehicles/arms on-demand
* Standing force for enforcing control over a captured area
* Presumably it has lots of guns, so perhaps area denial
* A safe place for the president
* Psychological warfare
And how do we get it places? Well, I guess you either drive it or teleport it. | The main issue with huge vehicles is that they lack protection against air attack.
Proposed solution: Configure your world so that air based attacks are impractical (strong unpredictable storms? Only heavy energy sources available eg nuclear reactors?) |
106,421 | The largest self-powered vehicle in the world is the [NASA crawler-transporter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crawler-transporter), a 2700 ton machine designed to transport the Space Shuttle a short distance and in a straight line.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/2Ajto.gif)
During WW2, German engineers designed the [P1000 Ratte](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landkreuzer_P._1000_Ratte), a ridiculously huge thousand-ton supertank. It was never built, and likely would have been a complete waste of resources. It would have been extremely vulnerable to bombing, and would have severe difficulty traversing the landscape of continental Europe.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/CFHMw.jpg)
Fictionally, the larger vehicles of Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak appear based on the aesthetic of the crawler-transporter, but scaled up to ludicrous size. Note that the dune buggy-like vehicle in the lower right is large enough to have a multi-person crew, for reference.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/b0XZf.png)
In the real-world, megavehicles like these are militarily non-viable. They would be vulnerable to airpower and tactical nuclear strike, incapable of traversing bridges or following roads, and offer no apparent benefit over a convoy of more specialized vehicles.
Deserts of Kharak appears to attempt to address these issues through its worldbuilding- the setting is a massive desert without bridges or roads, airpower is minimal because of sandstorms, and the extreme heat of the desert requires that vehicles be reasonably self-sufficient (ie crews cannot make camp outside their vehicles, and must live onboard 24/7). The technological base is science-fictional, but not dramatically more advanced than the present day in most respects, with the exception that nuclear weapons are not available.
My naive intuition is that if armor is viable as protection, the square-cube law favors larger vehicles as they gain greater protection for an equivalent armor mass fraction. However, by the same token, ground pressure increases at the same rate, and in sandy terrain that becomes a problem. I'm assuming that any realistic take on this concept will at least need much more track surface than the crawler-transporter or Deserts of Kharak vehicles, for the sake of ground pressure.
**Do these conditions actually favor very large land vehicles for military use? If not, what are the minimum changes necessary to the environment or technological base to make such megavehicles practical?** | 2018/03/07 | [
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/106421",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/16883/"
] | >
> My naive intuition is that if armor is viable as protection, the square-cube law favors larger vehicles as they gain greater protection for an equivalent armor mass fraction.
>
>
>
Your intuition is not naive, but it is also not completely correct either.
The biggest problem a supergiant tank would face would be power. If you follow the square-cube law, as the vehicle design grows, the armor and other heavy parts will become heavier at too fast a rate for the engines to pick up.
For example, the [M1 Abrams tank](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1_Abrams) weights around 60-70 tons. The [Honeywell AGT 1500](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeywell_AGT1500), its engine and main power plant, [weights 1.134 tons](https://www.forecastinternational.com/archive/disp_pdf.cfm?DACH_RECNO=180). So we can say that the power plant to vehicle weight ratio is around 1:60.
That tank is about 10 meters long. If we scale it to be 100 meters long, the whole thing could weight as much as 216,000 tons. The engine, on the other hand, would weight 1.459 tons. The powerplant to vehicle weight ratio then becomes 0.00000675. Not only the tank would be stuck in place, it would probably be unable to move its turret and other parts.
The immediate way to solve this problem is by making the engine bigger in relation to the rest of the vehicle, but that takes space and mass from other things such as guns and armor, reducing the advantage of large sizes. At some scale the advantages of a large size are negated, and over that scale everything becomes dead weight. This is not efficient.
If you got the materials to build a huge vehicle that would be unnefective, you would make better use of your resources by building smaller vehicles, or a ground base (i.e.: a bunker or a missiles silo) rather than a giant tank.
---
Of course, if a leap in power generation technology happens, larger vehicles become more viable. In the 1920's cars were generally bigger and most engines back then were in the 25-30 HP range. Motorcycles nowadays can easily reach 150 or more HP with much less size and weight. If the trend goes on, giant tanks may be possible within this century or the next.
---
For the record, the space shuttle transport in the question is far from being the largest self-powered vehicle in existence. Bucket wheel excavators easily reach 14,000 tons, and the Seawise Giant is over 640,000 tons heavy. | As military vehicles never, as extraction equipment the military needs to defend sure, mining is already pushing for bigger and bigger machines as they are more cost effective. maybe the vehicles are really mobile refineries and just carry armaments becasue the are targets. Would help explain why they are on such a planet in the first place. |
106,421 | The largest self-powered vehicle in the world is the [NASA crawler-transporter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crawler-transporter), a 2700 ton machine designed to transport the Space Shuttle a short distance and in a straight line.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/2Ajto.gif)
During WW2, German engineers designed the [P1000 Ratte](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landkreuzer_P._1000_Ratte), a ridiculously huge thousand-ton supertank. It was never built, and likely would have been a complete waste of resources. It would have been extremely vulnerable to bombing, and would have severe difficulty traversing the landscape of continental Europe.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/CFHMw.jpg)
Fictionally, the larger vehicles of Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak appear based on the aesthetic of the crawler-transporter, but scaled up to ludicrous size. Note that the dune buggy-like vehicle in the lower right is large enough to have a multi-person crew, for reference.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/b0XZf.png)
In the real-world, megavehicles like these are militarily non-viable. They would be vulnerable to airpower and tactical nuclear strike, incapable of traversing bridges or following roads, and offer no apparent benefit over a convoy of more specialized vehicles.
Deserts of Kharak appears to attempt to address these issues through its worldbuilding- the setting is a massive desert without bridges or roads, airpower is minimal because of sandstorms, and the extreme heat of the desert requires that vehicles be reasonably self-sufficient (ie crews cannot make camp outside their vehicles, and must live onboard 24/7). The technological base is science-fictional, but not dramatically more advanced than the present day in most respects, with the exception that nuclear weapons are not available.
My naive intuition is that if armor is viable as protection, the square-cube law favors larger vehicles as they gain greater protection for an equivalent armor mass fraction. However, by the same token, ground pressure increases at the same rate, and in sandy terrain that becomes a problem. I'm assuming that any realistic take on this concept will at least need much more track surface than the crawler-transporter or Deserts of Kharak vehicles, for the sake of ground pressure.
**Do these conditions actually favor very large land vehicles for military use? If not, what are the minimum changes necessary to the environment or technological base to make such megavehicles practical?** | 2018/03/07 | [
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/106421",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/16883/"
] | Ground effect craft.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/pkIWa.jpg)
I know this is over water but it may be possible to use ground effect over smooth ground such as deserts.
This is not an air plane it is the Caspian sea monster
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caspian_Sea_Monster>
General characteristics
* Length: 92.00 m (301 ft 10 in)
* Wingspan: 37.60 m (123 ft 4 in)
* Tail stabilizer span: 37 m (121 ft 5 in)
* Height: 21.80 m (71 ft 6 in)
* Wing area: 662.50 m2 (7,131.1 sq ft)
* Empty weight: 240,000 kg (529,109 lb)
* Max takeoff weight: 544,000 kg (1,199,315 lb)
* Powerplant: 10 × Dobrynin VD-7 turbojet, 127.53 kN (28,670 lbf) thrust each
Performance
* Maximum speed: 500 km/h (311 mph; 270 kn)
* Cruise speed: 430 km/h (267 mph; 232 kn)
* Range: 1,500 km (932 mi; 810 nmi)
* Ground effect altitude: 4–14 m (13 ft 1 in–45 ft 11 in)
* Maximum sea state: 1.2 m (3 ft 11 in)
hopefully I don't get down voted to badly, but I just love this thing. | As everyone else has said, your tank's biggest enemy would be concentrated artillery/airstrikes.
Your best defense against this would be the specifics of the planet. You've already got dust storms, good!
Add some high, gusty winds to disrupt ballistic artillery, add in some particulate to the storms that can disrupt/scatter radio/IR, that way guided missiles are ineffective. Essentially, make it such a hostile environment for anything in the air and sensors that air support is impossible.
The hostile conditions could include high levels of radiation in certain atmospheric layers, nasty particulate, corrosive gas layers, etc. Make it so the only viable fighting terrain is on the ground.
Once the war is fought on the ground, add some serious point defense, use it as a mobile base, and protect it with scouting parties.
Unfortunately, due to the atmospheric conditions, targeting/visibility would also be severely reduced, so combat is kept within 5 miles, say. No longer a massive artillery platform, but more like a moving bunker/trench system.
It'd have to be one nasty planet, but it should be doable! |
106,421 | The largest self-powered vehicle in the world is the [NASA crawler-transporter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crawler-transporter), a 2700 ton machine designed to transport the Space Shuttle a short distance and in a straight line.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/2Ajto.gif)
During WW2, German engineers designed the [P1000 Ratte](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landkreuzer_P._1000_Ratte), a ridiculously huge thousand-ton supertank. It was never built, and likely would have been a complete waste of resources. It would have been extremely vulnerable to bombing, and would have severe difficulty traversing the landscape of continental Europe.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/CFHMw.jpg)
Fictionally, the larger vehicles of Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak appear based on the aesthetic of the crawler-transporter, but scaled up to ludicrous size. Note that the dune buggy-like vehicle in the lower right is large enough to have a multi-person crew, for reference.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/b0XZf.png)
In the real-world, megavehicles like these are militarily non-viable. They would be vulnerable to airpower and tactical nuclear strike, incapable of traversing bridges or following roads, and offer no apparent benefit over a convoy of more specialized vehicles.
Deserts of Kharak appears to attempt to address these issues through its worldbuilding- the setting is a massive desert without bridges or roads, airpower is minimal because of sandstorms, and the extreme heat of the desert requires that vehicles be reasonably self-sufficient (ie crews cannot make camp outside their vehicles, and must live onboard 24/7). The technological base is science-fictional, but not dramatically more advanced than the present day in most respects, with the exception that nuclear weapons are not available.
My naive intuition is that if armor is viable as protection, the square-cube law favors larger vehicles as they gain greater protection for an equivalent armor mass fraction. However, by the same token, ground pressure increases at the same rate, and in sandy terrain that becomes a problem. I'm assuming that any realistic take on this concept will at least need much more track surface than the crawler-transporter or Deserts of Kharak vehicles, for the sake of ground pressure.
**Do these conditions actually favor very large land vehicles for military use? If not, what are the minimum changes necessary to the environment or technological base to make such megavehicles practical?** | 2018/03/07 | [
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/106421",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/16883/"
] | **Its going to be a lot bigger than you think in a lot of ways you haven't thought about**
I'm a former Marine Infantryman (anti tank gunner), I don't know much mechanics, but I know tactics. There is a very good reason military vehicles have been trending towards being smaller and more mobile rather than large and "indestructible." Primarily, that nothing is indestructible. The larger a heat signature and the less ability the vehicle has to move out of the way of incoming fire the less likely such a vehicle is to survive. Its better to decrease detection signature and increase mobility than it is to increase size and armor. Anything as big as what you are talking about is going to be a massive target for artillery and air-strikes. Also, there is not real way to transport the vehicle to the combat theater. The only way such a vehicle would be feasible is if it were being deployed well behind the front echelon as a defensive measure or command and control asset. It would need to be heavily screened with air cover and be far enough into the rear echelon that artillery could not reach it. This becomes a long, loooong distance when you factor in the fact that modern artillery rockets such as the HIMAR system in use by the USA can accurately strike targets hundreds of miles away. Additionally it would need air to air defenses the likes of which we could only dream of in Reagan's Star Wars program to prevent waves of cruise missiles being deployed against it from other continents.
So, in summary, for such a super-heavy "Land-Ship" type vehicle to make sense tactically it would need to be far, far away from the action, have massive amounts of resources dedicated to defending it, and posses a nearly impenetrable air defense system. I'm talking at least an entire battalion of infantry, a battalion of armor, an artillery battery or two, a squadron of aircraft, a battalion of engineers and mechanics, a logistics and supply battalion. You're basically going to be dedicating and entire force big enough to invade most small nations just to supply, maintain, and defend the thing. You are going to need efficient enough logistics to supply not only the land-ship as it moves, but also the regimental sized security and logistics detachment you have following it around. This thing would basically be a land based Marine Air Ground Taskforce (MAGTF.) To give you an idea of how big a MAGTF is, the last time I saw an actual MAGTF summoned together we all ended up invading Iraq and controlling a province the size of Massachusetts.
Its not physically impossible, or even tactically impossible enough not to be used in fiction. Its just going to be a way, WAY bigger undertaking than you think if depicted realistically. | >
> My naive intuition is that if armor is viable as protection, the square-cube law favors larger vehicles as they gain greater protection for an equivalent armor mass fraction.
>
>
>
Your intuition is not naive, but it is also not completely correct either.
The biggest problem a supergiant tank would face would be power. If you follow the square-cube law, as the vehicle design grows, the armor and other heavy parts will become heavier at too fast a rate for the engines to pick up.
For example, the [M1 Abrams tank](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1_Abrams) weights around 60-70 tons. The [Honeywell AGT 1500](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeywell_AGT1500), its engine and main power plant, [weights 1.134 tons](https://www.forecastinternational.com/archive/disp_pdf.cfm?DACH_RECNO=180). So we can say that the power plant to vehicle weight ratio is around 1:60.
That tank is about 10 meters long. If we scale it to be 100 meters long, the whole thing could weight as much as 216,000 tons. The engine, on the other hand, would weight 1.459 tons. The powerplant to vehicle weight ratio then becomes 0.00000675. Not only the tank would be stuck in place, it would probably be unable to move its turret and other parts.
The immediate way to solve this problem is by making the engine bigger in relation to the rest of the vehicle, but that takes space and mass from other things such as guns and armor, reducing the advantage of large sizes. At some scale the advantages of a large size are negated, and over that scale everything becomes dead weight. This is not efficient.
If you got the materials to build a huge vehicle that would be unnefective, you would make better use of your resources by building smaller vehicles, or a ground base (i.e.: a bunker or a missiles silo) rather than a giant tank.
---
Of course, if a leap in power generation technology happens, larger vehicles become more viable. In the 1920's cars were generally bigger and most engines back then were in the 25-30 HP range. Motorcycles nowadays can easily reach 150 or more HP with much less size and weight. If the trend goes on, giant tanks may be possible within this century or the next.
---
For the record, the space shuttle transport in the question is far from being the largest self-powered vehicle in existence. Bucket wheel excavators easily reach 14,000 tons, and the Seawise Giant is over 640,000 tons heavy. |
106,421 | The largest self-powered vehicle in the world is the [NASA crawler-transporter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crawler-transporter), a 2700 ton machine designed to transport the Space Shuttle a short distance and in a straight line.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/2Ajto.gif)
During WW2, German engineers designed the [P1000 Ratte](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landkreuzer_P._1000_Ratte), a ridiculously huge thousand-ton supertank. It was never built, and likely would have been a complete waste of resources. It would have been extremely vulnerable to bombing, and would have severe difficulty traversing the landscape of continental Europe.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/CFHMw.jpg)
Fictionally, the larger vehicles of Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak appear based on the aesthetic of the crawler-transporter, but scaled up to ludicrous size. Note that the dune buggy-like vehicle in the lower right is large enough to have a multi-person crew, for reference.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/b0XZf.png)
In the real-world, megavehicles like these are militarily non-viable. They would be vulnerable to airpower and tactical nuclear strike, incapable of traversing bridges or following roads, and offer no apparent benefit over a convoy of more specialized vehicles.
Deserts of Kharak appears to attempt to address these issues through its worldbuilding- the setting is a massive desert without bridges or roads, airpower is minimal because of sandstorms, and the extreme heat of the desert requires that vehicles be reasonably self-sufficient (ie crews cannot make camp outside their vehicles, and must live onboard 24/7). The technological base is science-fictional, but not dramatically more advanced than the present day in most respects, with the exception that nuclear weapons are not available.
My naive intuition is that if armor is viable as protection, the square-cube law favors larger vehicles as they gain greater protection for an equivalent armor mass fraction. However, by the same token, ground pressure increases at the same rate, and in sandy terrain that becomes a problem. I'm assuming that any realistic take on this concept will at least need much more track surface than the crawler-transporter or Deserts of Kharak vehicles, for the sake of ground pressure.
**Do these conditions actually favor very large land vehicles for military use? If not, what are the minimum changes necessary to the environment or technological base to make such megavehicles practical?** | 2018/03/07 | [
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/106421",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/16883/"
] | A good place to start with this would be to look at the history of naval battle, where this issue has already been addressed.
From the 1700s through to the 1940s, battleships got larger and larger, and carried heavier and heavier armour. To be sure, there were some forays into more agile, lightly armoured battleships (called battlecruisers) but for the most part, battleships were bigger and bigger, more heavily armoured, and carried larger guns.
This last point is the most important. Their size meant that they could carry guns that were more powerful, had longer range and could do far more destructive damage. This culminated in ships like the USS Missouri that could hit targets well over the horizon with shells weighing more than some vehicles.
The problem with such ships was that they needed aerial spotters for their targets, and carried SO MUCH firepower that its use was controlled, even in a battle situation. It was also vulnerable to short range attacks from much smaller boats (like torpedo boats) and of course submarines. This is why we have a concept of battle groups; small fleets of smaller boats that protect the primary offensive weapon, in this case the battleship.
That said, we don't make these ships anymore. Why not? Aircraft carriers.
Aircraft are effectively longer range weapons without recoil effects on your battle platform. A normal modern aircraft carrier can now carry between 50 and 100 planes, meaning that you can strike multiple targets, at any range, and create a far more effective defensive screen for your weapons platform than a conventional battleship. Again, it's about range and size of destructive potential.
So; if you want to build large land based weapons platforms, those platforms *have* to bring some military advantage that cannot be achieved by assigning the same amount of resources (engineers, metal, etc.) to a fleet of smaller vehicles. What I'm guessing is that would have to be ranged attacks of larger destructive power.
The thing is, in a modern world with cruise missiles and other long range guided missiles, this just isn't viable. You can hold a massive ranged destructive potential on an articulated truck these days, that can act as a missile launch platform. Have a couple of tanks and 50-cal jeeps protecting your ranged missile launcher and you have the same configuration as a naval battle group, only cheaper, smaller and faster. Additionally, I don't think you'll get the larger land vehicles through mountain passes and the like.
One potential option is a large land based mobile platform for landing and refuelling (and rearming) VTOL aircraft. Ironically enough, introducing aircraft in an environment with little to no permanent buildings or fixed infrastructure may be the reason for large mobile bases as such. | As everyone else has said, your tank's biggest enemy would be concentrated artillery/airstrikes.
Your best defense against this would be the specifics of the planet. You've already got dust storms, good!
Add some high, gusty winds to disrupt ballistic artillery, add in some particulate to the storms that can disrupt/scatter radio/IR, that way guided missiles are ineffective. Essentially, make it such a hostile environment for anything in the air and sensors that air support is impossible.
The hostile conditions could include high levels of radiation in certain atmospheric layers, nasty particulate, corrosive gas layers, etc. Make it so the only viable fighting terrain is on the ground.
Once the war is fought on the ground, add some serious point defense, use it as a mobile base, and protect it with scouting parties.
Unfortunately, due to the atmospheric conditions, targeting/visibility would also be severely reduced, so combat is kept within 5 miles, say. No longer a massive artillery platform, but more like a moving bunker/trench system.
It'd have to be one nasty planet, but it should be doable! |
106,421 | The largest self-powered vehicle in the world is the [NASA crawler-transporter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crawler-transporter), a 2700 ton machine designed to transport the Space Shuttle a short distance and in a straight line.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/2Ajto.gif)
During WW2, German engineers designed the [P1000 Ratte](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landkreuzer_P._1000_Ratte), a ridiculously huge thousand-ton supertank. It was never built, and likely would have been a complete waste of resources. It would have been extremely vulnerable to bombing, and would have severe difficulty traversing the landscape of continental Europe.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/CFHMw.jpg)
Fictionally, the larger vehicles of Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak appear based on the aesthetic of the crawler-transporter, but scaled up to ludicrous size. Note that the dune buggy-like vehicle in the lower right is large enough to have a multi-person crew, for reference.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/b0XZf.png)
In the real-world, megavehicles like these are militarily non-viable. They would be vulnerable to airpower and tactical nuclear strike, incapable of traversing bridges or following roads, and offer no apparent benefit over a convoy of more specialized vehicles.
Deserts of Kharak appears to attempt to address these issues through its worldbuilding- the setting is a massive desert without bridges or roads, airpower is minimal because of sandstorms, and the extreme heat of the desert requires that vehicles be reasonably self-sufficient (ie crews cannot make camp outside their vehicles, and must live onboard 24/7). The technological base is science-fictional, but not dramatically more advanced than the present day in most respects, with the exception that nuclear weapons are not available.
My naive intuition is that if armor is viable as protection, the square-cube law favors larger vehicles as they gain greater protection for an equivalent armor mass fraction. However, by the same token, ground pressure increases at the same rate, and in sandy terrain that becomes a problem. I'm assuming that any realistic take on this concept will at least need much more track surface than the crawler-transporter or Deserts of Kharak vehicles, for the sake of ground pressure.
**Do these conditions actually favor very large land vehicles for military use? If not, what are the minimum changes necessary to the environment or technological base to make such megavehicles practical?** | 2018/03/07 | [
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/106421",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/16883/"
] | * Ships need hulls to displace water, aircraft need wings to generate lift, tanks need tracks or wheels to carry the weight. Of these, wings and tracks depend on area while ship dispacement is proportional to volume. So air and ground suffer from the square-cube relationship, water does not.
* Ground vehicles **can** easily stop where they are, load ammo from a supply vehicle to a firing vehicle, or take supplies from a supply dump. Underway replenishment for water and air vehicles is more difficult. *Even in the desert, if suited crew cannot step outside for loading, how can any vehicle operate there?*
* Ground vehicle crews could also sleep in camping vans or the like instead of their combat vehicles, because volume behind the thick armor will be at a premium. Volume in a merely climate-controlled shell is cheaper.
So water vehicles can and need to get relatively large, air vehicles might need to get large but cannot, ground vehicles don't need to get all that large. That being said, tanks **have** grown over the years, just not as much as you suggest.
* Once upon a time, 30 or 40 tons was a *medium* tank, 50 or 60 tons was a *heavy* tank.
* Then they dumped the heavy and designated the medium *main battle tank*.
* By today, MBTs have grown to 60 to 70 tons, heavier than a [M103](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M103_(heavy_tank)). | The main issue with huge vehicles is that they lack protection against air attack.
Proposed solution: Configure your world so that air based attacks are impractical (strong unpredictable storms? Only heavy energy sources available eg nuclear reactors?) |
106,421 | The largest self-powered vehicle in the world is the [NASA crawler-transporter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crawler-transporter), a 2700 ton machine designed to transport the Space Shuttle a short distance and in a straight line.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/2Ajto.gif)
During WW2, German engineers designed the [P1000 Ratte](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landkreuzer_P._1000_Ratte), a ridiculously huge thousand-ton supertank. It was never built, and likely would have been a complete waste of resources. It would have been extremely vulnerable to bombing, and would have severe difficulty traversing the landscape of continental Europe.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/CFHMw.jpg)
Fictionally, the larger vehicles of Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak appear based on the aesthetic of the crawler-transporter, but scaled up to ludicrous size. Note that the dune buggy-like vehicle in the lower right is large enough to have a multi-person crew, for reference.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/b0XZf.png)
In the real-world, megavehicles like these are militarily non-viable. They would be vulnerable to airpower and tactical nuclear strike, incapable of traversing bridges or following roads, and offer no apparent benefit over a convoy of more specialized vehicles.
Deserts of Kharak appears to attempt to address these issues through its worldbuilding- the setting is a massive desert without bridges or roads, airpower is minimal because of sandstorms, and the extreme heat of the desert requires that vehicles be reasonably self-sufficient (ie crews cannot make camp outside their vehicles, and must live onboard 24/7). The technological base is science-fictional, but not dramatically more advanced than the present day in most respects, with the exception that nuclear weapons are not available.
My naive intuition is that if armor is viable as protection, the square-cube law favors larger vehicles as they gain greater protection for an equivalent armor mass fraction. However, by the same token, ground pressure increases at the same rate, and in sandy terrain that becomes a problem. I'm assuming that any realistic take on this concept will at least need much more track surface than the crawler-transporter or Deserts of Kharak vehicles, for the sake of ground pressure.
**Do these conditions actually favor very large land vehicles for military use? If not, what are the minimum changes necessary to the environment or technological base to make such megavehicles practical?** | 2018/03/07 | [
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/106421",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/16883/"
] | Rather than think 'earth-based' military tactics, one needs to look at the tactics of this particular planet, and of the purpose of the vehicle. Would there be a situation where such a vehicle would be advantageous?
As described, I understand the planet to be a huge barren, flat land mass, perhaps as big as Pangaea, with no particular geological features. No colliding tectonic plates to create mountains, for instance. Populated zones are at the poles, widely separated by this huge land mass. Covering it would take a week of travel, perhaps, with no permanent pit stops except on well-established but limited transportation corridors.
Limiting air travel is not difficult, once it is recognized that aircraft engines require a specific composition of the atmosphere. Limit the oxygen, limit the air travel, for instance. A high concentration of nitrogen in the atmosphere, perhaps. Thus, along with fuel, the aircraft would also have to carry the oxidizer. They would have very limited range, or they would be extremely inefficient payload wise.
In such a case, I would see this vehicle as a 'land-based air craft carrier'. A vehicle that would carry auxiliary vehicles from temporary base to temporary base. Vertical take-off and landing craft. Given the vagarities of the weather patterns on your planet, and the limitations on air cover, such a tactic would be very useful for close support. Move the airfield to where it was needed.
Maintenance bases for ground based troops, days away from any supply depot, would be easy targets. Supply routes would be extremely vulnerable, as they would be limited and very long. Instead of having military bases spread out over the entire land mass, make them portable. Move the base to where it was needed.
On your planet, long-distance sensors and detection would pretty much span the entire land mass, so the 'enemy' could clearly be spotted before any potential engagement. Air-born weapons would have to traverse a great distance before hitting their target. Sufficient intercept time to destroy them. Under such conditions, engagements would be localized. Hit and run. Attrition.
As an aside, it is not hard to imagine a species that was adapted enough to survive in a low-oxygen, high nitrogen atmosphere. Their metabolism would not mimic ours, but earth once had such an atmosphere, and life developed. Think slow-moving creatures, low metabolic rate. | **Energy Shields**
As other posters have said, with current technology, big vehicle = big target.
If you have to supply power to a heavy, expensive energy shield, You would want to get as much stuff inside the shield as possible. |
106,421 | The largest self-powered vehicle in the world is the [NASA crawler-transporter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crawler-transporter), a 2700 ton machine designed to transport the Space Shuttle a short distance and in a straight line.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/2Ajto.gif)
During WW2, German engineers designed the [P1000 Ratte](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landkreuzer_P._1000_Ratte), a ridiculously huge thousand-ton supertank. It was never built, and likely would have been a complete waste of resources. It would have been extremely vulnerable to bombing, and would have severe difficulty traversing the landscape of continental Europe.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/CFHMw.jpg)
Fictionally, the larger vehicles of Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak appear based on the aesthetic of the crawler-transporter, but scaled up to ludicrous size. Note that the dune buggy-like vehicle in the lower right is large enough to have a multi-person crew, for reference.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/b0XZf.png)
In the real-world, megavehicles like these are militarily non-viable. They would be vulnerable to airpower and tactical nuclear strike, incapable of traversing bridges or following roads, and offer no apparent benefit over a convoy of more specialized vehicles.
Deserts of Kharak appears to attempt to address these issues through its worldbuilding- the setting is a massive desert without bridges or roads, airpower is minimal because of sandstorms, and the extreme heat of the desert requires that vehicles be reasonably self-sufficient (ie crews cannot make camp outside their vehicles, and must live onboard 24/7). The technological base is science-fictional, but not dramatically more advanced than the present day in most respects, with the exception that nuclear weapons are not available.
My naive intuition is that if armor is viable as protection, the square-cube law favors larger vehicles as they gain greater protection for an equivalent armor mass fraction. However, by the same token, ground pressure increases at the same rate, and in sandy terrain that becomes a problem. I'm assuming that any realistic take on this concept will at least need much more track surface than the crawler-transporter or Deserts of Kharak vehicles, for the sake of ground pressure.
**Do these conditions actually favor very large land vehicles for military use? If not, what are the minimum changes necessary to the environment or technological base to make such megavehicles practical?** | 2018/03/07 | [
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/106421",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/16883/"
] | A good place to start with this would be to look at the history of naval battle, where this issue has already been addressed.
From the 1700s through to the 1940s, battleships got larger and larger, and carried heavier and heavier armour. To be sure, there were some forays into more agile, lightly armoured battleships (called battlecruisers) but for the most part, battleships were bigger and bigger, more heavily armoured, and carried larger guns.
This last point is the most important. Their size meant that they could carry guns that were more powerful, had longer range and could do far more destructive damage. This culminated in ships like the USS Missouri that could hit targets well over the horizon with shells weighing more than some vehicles.
The problem with such ships was that they needed aerial spotters for their targets, and carried SO MUCH firepower that its use was controlled, even in a battle situation. It was also vulnerable to short range attacks from much smaller boats (like torpedo boats) and of course submarines. This is why we have a concept of battle groups; small fleets of smaller boats that protect the primary offensive weapon, in this case the battleship.
That said, we don't make these ships anymore. Why not? Aircraft carriers.
Aircraft are effectively longer range weapons without recoil effects on your battle platform. A normal modern aircraft carrier can now carry between 50 and 100 planes, meaning that you can strike multiple targets, at any range, and create a far more effective defensive screen for your weapons platform than a conventional battleship. Again, it's about range and size of destructive potential.
So; if you want to build large land based weapons platforms, those platforms *have* to bring some military advantage that cannot be achieved by assigning the same amount of resources (engineers, metal, etc.) to a fleet of smaller vehicles. What I'm guessing is that would have to be ranged attacks of larger destructive power.
The thing is, in a modern world with cruise missiles and other long range guided missiles, this just isn't viable. You can hold a massive ranged destructive potential on an articulated truck these days, that can act as a missile launch platform. Have a couple of tanks and 50-cal jeeps protecting your ranged missile launcher and you have the same configuration as a naval battle group, only cheaper, smaller and faster. Additionally, I don't think you'll get the larger land vehicles through mountain passes and the like.
One potential option is a large land based mobile platform for landing and refuelling (and rearming) VTOL aircraft. Ironically enough, introducing aircraft in an environment with little to no permanent buildings or fixed infrastructure may be the reason for large mobile bases as such. | Ground effect craft.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/pkIWa.jpg)
I know this is over water but it may be possible to use ground effect over smooth ground such as deserts.
This is not an air plane it is the Caspian sea monster
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caspian_Sea_Monster>
General characteristics
* Length: 92.00 m (301 ft 10 in)
* Wingspan: 37.60 m (123 ft 4 in)
* Tail stabilizer span: 37 m (121 ft 5 in)
* Height: 21.80 m (71 ft 6 in)
* Wing area: 662.50 m2 (7,131.1 sq ft)
* Empty weight: 240,000 kg (529,109 lb)
* Max takeoff weight: 544,000 kg (1,199,315 lb)
* Powerplant: 10 × Dobrynin VD-7 turbojet, 127.53 kN (28,670 lbf) thrust each
Performance
* Maximum speed: 500 km/h (311 mph; 270 kn)
* Cruise speed: 430 km/h (267 mph; 232 kn)
* Range: 1,500 km (932 mi; 810 nmi)
* Ground effect altitude: 4–14 m (13 ft 1 in–45 ft 11 in)
* Maximum sea state: 1.2 m (3 ft 11 in)
hopefully I don't get down voted to badly, but I just love this thing. |
106,421 | The largest self-powered vehicle in the world is the [NASA crawler-transporter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crawler-transporter), a 2700 ton machine designed to transport the Space Shuttle a short distance and in a straight line.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/2Ajto.gif)
During WW2, German engineers designed the [P1000 Ratte](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landkreuzer_P._1000_Ratte), a ridiculously huge thousand-ton supertank. It was never built, and likely would have been a complete waste of resources. It would have been extremely vulnerable to bombing, and would have severe difficulty traversing the landscape of continental Europe.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/CFHMw.jpg)
Fictionally, the larger vehicles of Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak appear based on the aesthetic of the crawler-transporter, but scaled up to ludicrous size. Note that the dune buggy-like vehicle in the lower right is large enough to have a multi-person crew, for reference.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/b0XZf.png)
In the real-world, megavehicles like these are militarily non-viable. They would be vulnerable to airpower and tactical nuclear strike, incapable of traversing bridges or following roads, and offer no apparent benefit over a convoy of more specialized vehicles.
Deserts of Kharak appears to attempt to address these issues through its worldbuilding- the setting is a massive desert without bridges or roads, airpower is minimal because of sandstorms, and the extreme heat of the desert requires that vehicles be reasonably self-sufficient (ie crews cannot make camp outside their vehicles, and must live onboard 24/7). The technological base is science-fictional, but not dramatically more advanced than the present day in most respects, with the exception that nuclear weapons are not available.
My naive intuition is that if armor is viable as protection, the square-cube law favors larger vehicles as they gain greater protection for an equivalent armor mass fraction. However, by the same token, ground pressure increases at the same rate, and in sandy terrain that becomes a problem. I'm assuming that any realistic take on this concept will at least need much more track surface than the crawler-transporter or Deserts of Kharak vehicles, for the sake of ground pressure.
**Do these conditions actually favor very large land vehicles for military use? If not, what are the minimum changes necessary to the environment or technological base to make such megavehicles practical?** | 2018/03/07 | [
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/106421",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/16883/"
] | A good place to start with this would be to look at the history of naval battle, where this issue has already been addressed.
From the 1700s through to the 1940s, battleships got larger and larger, and carried heavier and heavier armour. To be sure, there were some forays into more agile, lightly armoured battleships (called battlecruisers) but for the most part, battleships were bigger and bigger, more heavily armoured, and carried larger guns.
This last point is the most important. Their size meant that they could carry guns that were more powerful, had longer range and could do far more destructive damage. This culminated in ships like the USS Missouri that could hit targets well over the horizon with shells weighing more than some vehicles.
The problem with such ships was that they needed aerial spotters for their targets, and carried SO MUCH firepower that its use was controlled, even in a battle situation. It was also vulnerable to short range attacks from much smaller boats (like torpedo boats) and of course submarines. This is why we have a concept of battle groups; small fleets of smaller boats that protect the primary offensive weapon, in this case the battleship.
That said, we don't make these ships anymore. Why not? Aircraft carriers.
Aircraft are effectively longer range weapons without recoil effects on your battle platform. A normal modern aircraft carrier can now carry between 50 and 100 planes, meaning that you can strike multiple targets, at any range, and create a far more effective defensive screen for your weapons platform than a conventional battleship. Again, it's about range and size of destructive potential.
So; if you want to build large land based weapons platforms, those platforms *have* to bring some military advantage that cannot be achieved by assigning the same amount of resources (engineers, metal, etc.) to a fleet of smaller vehicles. What I'm guessing is that would have to be ranged attacks of larger destructive power.
The thing is, in a modern world with cruise missiles and other long range guided missiles, this just isn't viable. You can hold a massive ranged destructive potential on an articulated truck these days, that can act as a missile launch platform. Have a couple of tanks and 50-cal jeeps protecting your ranged missile launcher and you have the same configuration as a naval battle group, only cheaper, smaller and faster. Additionally, I don't think you'll get the larger land vehicles through mountain passes and the like.
One potential option is a large land based mobile platform for landing and refuelling (and rearming) VTOL aircraft. Ironically enough, introducing aircraft in an environment with little to no permanent buildings or fixed infrastructure may be the reason for large mobile bases as such. | Many of the answers here address the issue of why they aren't practical, and can be summed up as: it's big, slow and hard to defend.
So what would change this?
**Option 1: Add more power**
Add super-advanced engines (and super advanced shock absorbers) that allow you vehicle to reach 100kph. It'll still be vunerable to bombing (so you'll need AA), but should be less vulnerable to ICBM's and other artillery now.
The only option I can think of here are fusion reactors.
**Option 2: Add more armour**
Obviously this has it's own issues (such as weight), so let's run science-fiction and introduce .... shielding. If you can shield from incoming attacks, then your super-huge vehicle can now be used. *Maybe shield generators need a lot of power, or are physically huge, so only large land vehicle can support them.*
**Option 3: Hide it**
Add really powerful ECM to make it hard for long range targets to target it, or cloaking, or some method to hide it. Yes, I am talking about cloaking a massive vehicle. If sci-fi has cloaking devices on spaceships, why not on massive land vehicles? (Uh, sir, the giant tank tracks just, uh, stop in the middle of the desert)
Ok, so now that it's now blown out of the water as soon as it rolls out of your production facilities, what can we use it for?
* Destroying towns by driving over them
* Mobile air-base/fueling depo/resupply unit. No long supply lines.
* Manufacturing vehicles/arms on-demand
* Standing force for enforcing control over a captured area
* Presumably it has lots of guns, so perhaps area denial
* A safe place for the president
* Psychological warfare
And how do we get it places? Well, I guess you either drive it or teleport it. |
106,421 | The largest self-powered vehicle in the world is the [NASA crawler-transporter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crawler-transporter), a 2700 ton machine designed to transport the Space Shuttle a short distance and in a straight line.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/2Ajto.gif)
During WW2, German engineers designed the [P1000 Ratte](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landkreuzer_P._1000_Ratte), a ridiculously huge thousand-ton supertank. It was never built, and likely would have been a complete waste of resources. It would have been extremely vulnerable to bombing, and would have severe difficulty traversing the landscape of continental Europe.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/CFHMw.jpg)
Fictionally, the larger vehicles of Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak appear based on the aesthetic of the crawler-transporter, but scaled up to ludicrous size. Note that the dune buggy-like vehicle in the lower right is large enough to have a multi-person crew, for reference.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/b0XZf.png)
In the real-world, megavehicles like these are militarily non-viable. They would be vulnerable to airpower and tactical nuclear strike, incapable of traversing bridges or following roads, and offer no apparent benefit over a convoy of more specialized vehicles.
Deserts of Kharak appears to attempt to address these issues through its worldbuilding- the setting is a massive desert without bridges or roads, airpower is minimal because of sandstorms, and the extreme heat of the desert requires that vehicles be reasonably self-sufficient (ie crews cannot make camp outside their vehicles, and must live onboard 24/7). The technological base is science-fictional, but not dramatically more advanced than the present day in most respects, with the exception that nuclear weapons are not available.
My naive intuition is that if armor is viable as protection, the square-cube law favors larger vehicles as they gain greater protection for an equivalent armor mass fraction. However, by the same token, ground pressure increases at the same rate, and in sandy terrain that becomes a problem. I'm assuming that any realistic take on this concept will at least need much more track surface than the crawler-transporter or Deserts of Kharak vehicles, for the sake of ground pressure.
**Do these conditions actually favor very large land vehicles for military use? If not, what are the minimum changes necessary to the environment or technological base to make such megavehicles practical?** | 2018/03/07 | [
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/106421",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/16883/"
] | A good place to start with this would be to look at the history of naval battle, where this issue has already been addressed.
From the 1700s through to the 1940s, battleships got larger and larger, and carried heavier and heavier armour. To be sure, there were some forays into more agile, lightly armoured battleships (called battlecruisers) but for the most part, battleships were bigger and bigger, more heavily armoured, and carried larger guns.
This last point is the most important. Their size meant that they could carry guns that were more powerful, had longer range and could do far more destructive damage. This culminated in ships like the USS Missouri that could hit targets well over the horizon with shells weighing more than some vehicles.
The problem with such ships was that they needed aerial spotters for their targets, and carried SO MUCH firepower that its use was controlled, even in a battle situation. It was also vulnerable to short range attacks from much smaller boats (like torpedo boats) and of course submarines. This is why we have a concept of battle groups; small fleets of smaller boats that protect the primary offensive weapon, in this case the battleship.
That said, we don't make these ships anymore. Why not? Aircraft carriers.
Aircraft are effectively longer range weapons without recoil effects on your battle platform. A normal modern aircraft carrier can now carry between 50 and 100 planes, meaning that you can strike multiple targets, at any range, and create a far more effective defensive screen for your weapons platform than a conventional battleship. Again, it's about range and size of destructive potential.
So; if you want to build large land based weapons platforms, those platforms *have* to bring some military advantage that cannot be achieved by assigning the same amount of resources (engineers, metal, etc.) to a fleet of smaller vehicles. What I'm guessing is that would have to be ranged attacks of larger destructive power.
The thing is, in a modern world with cruise missiles and other long range guided missiles, this just isn't viable. You can hold a massive ranged destructive potential on an articulated truck these days, that can act as a missile launch platform. Have a couple of tanks and 50-cal jeeps protecting your ranged missile launcher and you have the same configuration as a naval battle group, only cheaper, smaller and faster. Additionally, I don't think you'll get the larger land vehicles through mountain passes and the like.
One potential option is a large land based mobile platform for landing and refuelling (and rearming) VTOL aircraft. Ironically enough, introducing aircraft in an environment with little to no permanent buildings or fixed infrastructure may be the reason for large mobile bases as such. | The main issue with huge vehicles is that they lack protection against air attack.
Proposed solution: Configure your world so that air based attacks are impractical (strong unpredictable storms? Only heavy energy sources available eg nuclear reactors?) |
36,541,385 | I'm working on a simple mobile application in order to learn more about app development in general. I'm using Xamarin and C# to make a cross-platform app.
The end goal is to make a listing of users that are willing to be contacted to play golf. I want users to be able to enter their name and email address on one page, save the entries in a table using Azure SQL Database, and then display them in a list on another page in the app.
I've done some pretty extensive research on my own, but now I think it's time to get some real-life interaction to help guide me along. So here's my actual question...
It looks like the "Getting Started" tutorial [here](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/storage-dotnet-how-to-use-blobs/) is close to what I want to do. But it seems like the database the app in the example uses is stored locally, whereas I want to create a table that all users will be able to access. Is following this walkthrough the right move for me? If not, what should I do instead?
Bear in mind that I'm committed to using Azure Mobile Services, so please refrain from answers suggesting I use a different platform.
Thanks guys! | 2016/04/11 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/36541385",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/5752507/"
] | If you use Azure Storage directly from the client app, then make sure you are **not** using Shared Key authentication. Otherwise, anyone could simply steal the credentials from the app and get full access to your blob account. To learn more, see [Shared Access Signatures](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/storage-dotnet-shared-access-signature-part-1/) and the SO question [Azure blob storage and security best practices](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/26765026/azure-blob-storage-and-security-best-practices).
From the [official documentation](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/storage-dotnet-shared-access-signature-part-1/):
>
> Exposing either of your account keys opens your account to the possibility of malicious or negligent use. Shared access signatures provide a safe alternative that allows other clients to read, write, and delete data in your storage account according to the permissions you've granted, and without need for the account key.
>
>
>
For new projects, you should use [**Azure Mobile Apps** instead of Azure Mobile Services](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/app-service-mobile-value-prop-migration-from-mobile-services/). The new service offers a number of features, and it is where all future investments will be.
For instance, there is now support for blob storage syncing along with regular offline data sync, and it uses SAS tokens to connect securely. Here's a tutorial for Xamarin.Forms: [Connect to Azure Storage in your Xamarin.Forms app](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/app-service-mobile-xamarin-forms-blob-storage/). It includes a sample that you can deploy to your own Azure subscription with one click.
For your specific question, you could modify the Todo sample (or look at the more full-featured [Field Engineer](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/samples/app-service-mobile-dotnet-fieldengineer/) sample) and add tables for Players and Games. | There are a number of offering on the Azure platform that will allow you to store your golf players. However, the page you linked to is for BLOB storage, and I would not recommend using that.
There is Azure table storage. Which is a NoSQL store on the Azure platform. It's highly scalable and schema-less, so very flexible. You can leverage the Azure SDK to read and write to it - or go REST if that's what you prefer. Check out the tutorial here: <https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/storage-dotnet-how-to-use-tables/>
Then there is Azure SQL, which is SQL server offered on the Azure platform. This is a traditional relational database store, but more scalable ( since it's on the Azure Platform ). You can also use this solution, but it does require a bit of extra work, since you probably want to use an ORM like Entity Framework.
So in all - I would go for Azure table storage. It's really easy to get started with and will do what you want to do. |
40,055 | The following image shows trails of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites as seen in the sky above the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) in Chile:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/iqYbp.jpg)
Image Source: [SpaceX’s Newly Launched Starlink Satellites Block Galaxy Observation](https://observer.com/2019/11/spacex-starlink-satellites-astronomy-observation-galaxy/)
In the top left corner of the image, it can be seen that two satellites travel in nearly parallel lines and not in coincident lines. Or in other words, it seems that the two satellites travel in two different orbits. What is the reason for this? Why is that one particular satellite not following the queue, even though all satellites have the same orbit parameters (radius, inclination, etc.)?
Here's a zoom in on the upper-left corner:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/u12ko.png)
---
Here's another image:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/nf87z.png)
Image Source: [Elon Musk made a ‘satellite train’ in the night sky – Here’s how to see it](https://www.thesouthafrican.com/tech/space/elon-musk-starlink-satellite-train-visible-night-sky/)
*Here, everyone is going in a straight line!*
I think Earth's rotation is not the culprit here, because if that was the case, then there should have been a shift for the rest of the satellites in the first image. So, why is there a deviation in one image and not in the other?
*Thank you in advance.* | 2019/11/22 | [
"https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/40055",
"https://space.stackexchange.com",
"https://space.stackexchange.com/users/32757/"
] | Basically they are not quite in the same plane. As a satellite raises or lowers, not only does it change the relative position within an orbital plane, it also will slowly shift the longitude of the ascending node with respect to the other satellites, called the "[Nodal Precession](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nodal_precession)". In fact, this happens every day. There is a lot in this, but the bottom line is a satellite such as the International Space Station will rotate its longitude of the ascending node completely around the globe in about 2 months, hence why there is a few minutes difference in a launch window to the ISS from day to day. This effect is caused because the Earth isn't a perfect sphere. If two satellite are at the same inclination, but different altitudes, the rate of change of the nodal precession will differ slightly, causing the two satellites to not quite be in the same line.
I would need to identify exactly which satellites these were and see, but that pretty much has to be the answer as to why the two are different. Any difference of inclination will be microscopic, no more than a small fraction of a degree. | The streaks are due to extended exposures.
From a non-rotating earth, the satellites (this close to release) would follow each other in the same arc across the sky. That arc is the projection of the orbit and never changes.
From a rotating earth, that arc is *not* always in the same place: the earth rotates under it. So a satellite is moving along an arc that is itself moving with respect to the camera.
If you take an instantaneous snapshot, you see dots on the arc where it is at that moment.
If you take an extended image, the satellites will have moved a bit sideways by the time they reach the end of the page. And that causes the overlap. |
40,055 | The following image shows trails of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites as seen in the sky above the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) in Chile:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/iqYbp.jpg)
Image Source: [SpaceX’s Newly Launched Starlink Satellites Block Galaxy Observation](https://observer.com/2019/11/spacex-starlink-satellites-astronomy-observation-galaxy/)
In the top left corner of the image, it can be seen that two satellites travel in nearly parallel lines and not in coincident lines. Or in other words, it seems that the two satellites travel in two different orbits. What is the reason for this? Why is that one particular satellite not following the queue, even though all satellites have the same orbit parameters (radius, inclination, etc.)?
Here's a zoom in on the upper-left corner:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/u12ko.png)
---
Here's another image:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/nf87z.png)
Image Source: [Elon Musk made a ‘satellite train’ in the night sky – Here’s how to see it](https://www.thesouthafrican.com/tech/space/elon-musk-starlink-satellite-train-visible-night-sky/)
*Here, everyone is going in a straight line!*
I think Earth's rotation is not the culprit here, because if that was the case, then there should have been a shift for the rest of the satellites in the first image. So, why is there a deviation in one image and not in the other?
*Thank you in advance.* | 2019/11/22 | [
"https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/40055",
"https://space.stackexchange.com",
"https://space.stackexchange.com/users/32757/"
] | Basically they are not quite in the same plane. As a satellite raises or lowers, not only does it change the relative position within an orbital plane, it also will slowly shift the longitude of the ascending node with respect to the other satellites, called the "[Nodal Precession](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nodal_precession)". In fact, this happens every day. There is a lot in this, but the bottom line is a satellite such as the International Space Station will rotate its longitude of the ascending node completely around the globe in about 2 months, hence why there is a few minutes difference in a launch window to the ISS from day to day. This effect is caused because the Earth isn't a perfect sphere. If two satellite are at the same inclination, but different altitudes, the rate of change of the nodal precession will differ slightly, causing the two satellites to not quite be in the same line.
I would need to identify exactly which satellites these were and see, but that pretty much has to be the answer as to why the two are different. Any difference of inclination will be microscopic, no more than a small fraction of a degree. | [](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ntqw3.jpg)
>
> Starlink satellites trail through the field of view of the Dark Energy Camera. Credit: DELVE Survey/CTIO/AURA/NSF
>
>
>
From [Stalking Starlink's DartSat](https://www.universetoday.com/144659/stalking-starlinks-darksat/), Field of view diameter is about [2.2 degrees](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Energy_Survey#DECam)
(**even better image:** <https://i.stack.imgur.com/EBpeP.jpg> from [NYTimes](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/06/science/oneweb-launch.html))
---
---
* [IAU Statement on Satellite Constellations, 03 June 2019](https://www.iau.org/news/announcements/detail/ann19035/)
* <https://www.iau.org/public/images/detail/ann19035a/>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/TuYNc.jpg)
>
> An image of the NGC 5353/4 galaxy group made with a telescope at Lowell Observatory in Arizona, USA on the night of Saturday 25 May 2019. The diagonal lines running across the image are trails of reflected light left by more than 25 of the 60 recently launched Starlink satellites as they passed through the telescope’s field of view.
>
>
> Although this image serves as an illustration of the impact of reflections from satellite constellations, please note that the density of these satellites is significantly higher in the days after launch (as seen here) and also that the satellites will diminish in brightness as they reach their final orbital altitude.
>
>
> Credit: Victoria Girgis/Lowell Observatory
>
>
>
---
The first batch of ~60 Starlink satellites was a scrappy lot. Below is a plot from [What are these four “debris” objects along with the Starlink satellites?](https://space.stackexchange.com/q/36507/12102) about *two weeks* and then *six weeks* after launch, showing that they took substantially different paths to reach their ultimate target orbit.
Ignoring time zones, the photo was taken on 18-Nov-2019, a week after the 11-Nov-2019 launch. So in addition to whatever differences in their orbit accumulated due to initial order 0.1 to 1 m/s deployment differential, drag differences due to initial random attitudes and Earth's lumpy gravity field, each took it's own course once it stabilized in attitude and started climbing. **So in any given snapshot during their individual journeys there should be no expectation for them to be in he same orbit.**
I don't know if their destinations are all in a single orbital plane, but if so they will need to distribute themselves evenly by "phasing" which means some need to be a little higher and some a little lower in order to spread out along the track. Viewed from the side and not from underneath, different altitudes will appear as offsets in their paths, so this can be contributing as well.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/l0fo9.png) |
28,099 | In a recent Dresden Files game, I was whacking a sorcerer in the face with a hammer. Things were going swimmingly (for me, anyway), and the sorcerer was going to run away because he decided that hammers weren't fun anymore. The GM allowed me a contested roll on Athletics to keep him from escaping, with the implication that if I didn't keep him from going, he was going to get away somehow. (My GM prefers to hint things rather than spell them out mechanically, so I'm unclear on whether the sorcerer was going to fly away, teleport, hop in a car and drive, or just run really fast.) I succeeded in the contested roll to keep him from running away, and ended up painting the walls with him.
After the session, I couldn't remember any rules that would allow me to keep someone from escaping on foot. I suppose I could have done a Block, but that would involve *not* hitting him in the face; if it was just me against him, the combat would go nowhere. (Or he'd choose to attack me in exchanges where I Block him, and run away in rounds where I didn't.) If he sprinted away, then I wouldn't be able to catch him and knock him down or hurt him: if you move more than one zone, you can't do an action at the end of the move.
I have two related questions:
1. If you didn't prepare ahead of time with other actions, can you keep someone from escaping melee range?
2. What actions can you take to keep someone from running away, while still attacking (or allowing you to attack in future turns while still keeping them from running away)?
I'm looking for answers about the system mechanics; my GM runs [a moderately-gamist version of Dresden Files](https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/19566/should-the-gm-in-dresden-files-be-telling-us-what-the-target-numbers-are-for-tha), and I can't rely on him always giving me free opportunities to stop people. | 2013/08/20 | [
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/28099",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/3882/"
] | There are a few ways mechanically to arrest movement from a strictly rules-based standpoint.
1. Perform a maneuver and put an aspect on him. You can place an aspect on him that would prevent, or at least slow down, movement- but this would involve knowing how he was going to escape, whether that was knock over a trashcan to knock him over, whip your belt at his ankles to tie him up, or just sweep the leg.
2. Use a grapple as a block to bring him to the ground. Once you have him grappled, you can inflict damage, per YS211.
3. Attack. With enough damage, you can inflict a consequence that could stop the target, i.e. take that hammer to the knee. | In the Dresden Files version of *Fate*, here are your options:
1. Grapple your opponent. That would let you maintain the block on your turn while also inflicting stress on your target. Unfortunately, you probably don't have Might as your apex skill. Since your opponent can try to break your grapple with *anything*, he'll pick something better than your Might score and this whole thing will never, ever work. On the off chance that you have super strength and made Might an apex skill, go hog wild, you're basically unbeatable by anyone with less Fate points to spend than you.
2. Make a maneuver to establish some escape-preventing aspect on your target or the scene. When your opponent wants to escape, use the aspect (whether you're invoking the aspect on the scene or compelling the aspect on the target) to keep him around. Depending on how your game is run, you may need to spend more fate points to keep invoking the effect on subsequent turns, but you'll have your action each round to beat the target up. If you can inflict consequences on the target with your beating, I'd recommend making them things that could also be compelled to prevent an escape.
Alternate option:
In *Fate Core*, you're allowed to use the Athletics skill to 'Defend' against people moving past you if it makes sense that you could oppose it. That's not a bad rule (I'd also allow Might personally), so maybe you can add that to your game too. |
28,099 | In a recent Dresden Files game, I was whacking a sorcerer in the face with a hammer. Things were going swimmingly (for me, anyway), and the sorcerer was going to run away because he decided that hammers weren't fun anymore. The GM allowed me a contested roll on Athletics to keep him from escaping, with the implication that if I didn't keep him from going, he was going to get away somehow. (My GM prefers to hint things rather than spell them out mechanically, so I'm unclear on whether the sorcerer was going to fly away, teleport, hop in a car and drive, or just run really fast.) I succeeded in the contested roll to keep him from running away, and ended up painting the walls with him.
After the session, I couldn't remember any rules that would allow me to keep someone from escaping on foot. I suppose I could have done a Block, but that would involve *not* hitting him in the face; if it was just me against him, the combat would go nowhere. (Or he'd choose to attack me in exchanges where I Block him, and run away in rounds where I didn't.) If he sprinted away, then I wouldn't be able to catch him and knock him down or hurt him: if you move more than one zone, you can't do an action at the end of the move.
I have two related questions:
1. If you didn't prepare ahead of time with other actions, can you keep someone from escaping melee range?
2. What actions can you take to keep someone from running away, while still attacking (or allowing you to attack in future turns while still keeping them from running away)?
I'm looking for answers about the system mechanics; my GM runs [a moderately-gamist version of Dresden Files](https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/19566/should-the-gm-in-dresden-files-be-telling-us-what-the-target-numbers-are-for-tha), and I can't rely on him always giving me free opportunities to stop people. | 2013/08/20 | [
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/28099",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/3882/"
] | I think that the first problem here is that your GM has made an error. Fate mechanics give in-system support to the fiction - not the other way around. You said:
>
> My GM prefers to hint things rather than spell them out mechanically,
> so I'm unclear on whether the sorcerer was going to fly away,
> teleport, hop in a car and drive, or just run really fast.
>
>
>
Which is where I think the problem came from - how is flying away or teleporting an Athletics roll? The GM needed to provide a development in the fiction - something that follows logically from the pre-established conditions - and then apply mechanics to support that development. For example:
>
> GM: The sorcerer presses a hand to his injured face, and as he backs away from you, his eyes dart towards the open doorway to your left.
>
>
> YOU: I back him into a corner so I can finish the job.
>
>
> GM: The sorcerer ducks his head, covering it with his arms, and barrels forward, trying to get to the doorway before you can kill him. If he wins this Athletics contest, he'll get past you without being hit again...
>
>
>
In that example, the sorcerer takes a fictional action that follows (who likes being hit with hammers?) and the GM tells you some important things:
1. What is happening in the story - important so you can imagine the scene
2. What game mechanics are going to inflect into the story now - it's going to be an Athletics contest
3. What the stakes of that contest are - IF he wins THEN he is out of the room without being hit any further
You now have an opportunity to respond, showing what happens in the fiction from your end - "I rush him, checking him hard and low with my shoulder!"
When the rolls are finished, you can use:
* Your own Apects (*Aging Jock* means I know how to hit someone!)
* scene Aspects (You said the old storeroom was cluttered, I'm betting there's *Debris on the Floor*)
* Or Consequences you just inflicted (He's having trouble standing, let alone running because I just put *Staggering* on him!)
To influence and re-roll, which I'm sure you know. But the point is, the mechanical influences all **follow from the fiction**.
So your GM's **primary responsibility** is to provide a clear view of the fiction - the surroundings, the events, even people's attitudes, etc., as far as your character can know them - because it is **from** the fiction that all mechanical interventions are drawn, and it is **back to** the fiction that all mechanical interventions are fed.
And the clear setting of stakes is important, too. Look at the stakes as I imagined they might be set - "he'll get past you without being hit again..." Even if you *won*, he might have gotten to the door - you'd just have gotten another lick in first! With stakes like that, if the sorcerer had fled, it might have led to a chase through the rest of the building, or it might have led to him getting to a vehicle and maybe a car chase, or a million other options. The stakes let you know how much Fate a roll is worth, right? If the GM sets stakes with more black-and-white conditions - "If he wins, he gets away!" - then you know you can't afford to fail and you'd better go all in. Whereas with my "softer" stakes, you might hang onto some points for the chases and possible resumption of combat you can see coming.
I would talk with my GM about stuff like this - even during the game. GMing is hard! Sometimes, if someone asks for clarification about situations, actions, or the exact stakes, it helps remind me that my players can't read my mind. And it definitely shows that they're paying attention, which all GMs appreciate! | In the Dresden Files version of *Fate*, here are your options:
1. Grapple your opponent. That would let you maintain the block on your turn while also inflicting stress on your target. Unfortunately, you probably don't have Might as your apex skill. Since your opponent can try to break your grapple with *anything*, he'll pick something better than your Might score and this whole thing will never, ever work. On the off chance that you have super strength and made Might an apex skill, go hog wild, you're basically unbeatable by anyone with less Fate points to spend than you.
2. Make a maneuver to establish some escape-preventing aspect on your target or the scene. When your opponent wants to escape, use the aspect (whether you're invoking the aspect on the scene or compelling the aspect on the target) to keep him around. Depending on how your game is run, you may need to spend more fate points to keep invoking the effect on subsequent turns, but you'll have your action each round to beat the target up. If you can inflict consequences on the target with your beating, I'd recommend making them things that could also be compelled to prevent an escape.
Alternate option:
In *Fate Core*, you're allowed to use the Athletics skill to 'Defend' against people moving past you if it makes sense that you could oppose it. That's not a bad rule (I'd also allow Might personally), so maybe you can add that to your game too. |
28,099 | In a recent Dresden Files game, I was whacking a sorcerer in the face with a hammer. Things were going swimmingly (for me, anyway), and the sorcerer was going to run away because he decided that hammers weren't fun anymore. The GM allowed me a contested roll on Athletics to keep him from escaping, with the implication that if I didn't keep him from going, he was going to get away somehow. (My GM prefers to hint things rather than spell them out mechanically, so I'm unclear on whether the sorcerer was going to fly away, teleport, hop in a car and drive, or just run really fast.) I succeeded in the contested roll to keep him from running away, and ended up painting the walls with him.
After the session, I couldn't remember any rules that would allow me to keep someone from escaping on foot. I suppose I could have done a Block, but that would involve *not* hitting him in the face; if it was just me against him, the combat would go nowhere. (Or he'd choose to attack me in exchanges where I Block him, and run away in rounds where I didn't.) If he sprinted away, then I wouldn't be able to catch him and knock him down or hurt him: if you move more than one zone, you can't do an action at the end of the move.
I have two related questions:
1. If you didn't prepare ahead of time with other actions, can you keep someone from escaping melee range?
2. What actions can you take to keep someone from running away, while still attacking (or allowing you to attack in future turns while still keeping them from running away)?
I'm looking for answers about the system mechanics; my GM runs [a moderately-gamist version of Dresden Files](https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/19566/should-the-gm-in-dresden-files-be-telling-us-what-the-target-numbers-are-for-tha), and I can't rely on him always giving me free opportunities to stop people. | 2013/08/20 | [
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/28099",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/3882/"
] | In the Dresden Files version of *Fate*, here are your options:
1. Grapple your opponent. That would let you maintain the block on your turn while also inflicting stress on your target. Unfortunately, you probably don't have Might as your apex skill. Since your opponent can try to break your grapple with *anything*, he'll pick something better than your Might score and this whole thing will never, ever work. On the off chance that you have super strength and made Might an apex skill, go hog wild, you're basically unbeatable by anyone with less Fate points to spend than you.
2. Make a maneuver to establish some escape-preventing aspect on your target or the scene. When your opponent wants to escape, use the aspect (whether you're invoking the aspect on the scene or compelling the aspect on the target) to keep him around. Depending on how your game is run, you may need to spend more fate points to keep invoking the effect on subsequent turns, but you'll have your action each round to beat the target up. If you can inflict consequences on the target with your beating, I'd recommend making them things that could also be compelled to prevent an escape.
Alternate option:
In *Fate Core*, you're allowed to use the Athletics skill to 'Defend' against people moving past you if it makes sense that you could oppose it. That's not a bad rule (I'd also allow Might personally), so maybe you can add that to your game too. | What if the sorceror took a Concession? He'd need to meet the guidelines on YS pg. 206, but I think that's one way the GM could have him escape without you being able to stop him. Though as described in the Concessions details he would have to be greatly hindered in the future for doing so and the Concession "terms" would have to pass group approval. |
28,099 | In a recent Dresden Files game, I was whacking a sorcerer in the face with a hammer. Things were going swimmingly (for me, anyway), and the sorcerer was going to run away because he decided that hammers weren't fun anymore. The GM allowed me a contested roll on Athletics to keep him from escaping, with the implication that if I didn't keep him from going, he was going to get away somehow. (My GM prefers to hint things rather than spell them out mechanically, so I'm unclear on whether the sorcerer was going to fly away, teleport, hop in a car and drive, or just run really fast.) I succeeded in the contested roll to keep him from running away, and ended up painting the walls with him.
After the session, I couldn't remember any rules that would allow me to keep someone from escaping on foot. I suppose I could have done a Block, but that would involve *not* hitting him in the face; if it was just me against him, the combat would go nowhere. (Or he'd choose to attack me in exchanges where I Block him, and run away in rounds where I didn't.) If he sprinted away, then I wouldn't be able to catch him and knock him down or hurt him: if you move more than one zone, you can't do an action at the end of the move.
I have two related questions:
1. If you didn't prepare ahead of time with other actions, can you keep someone from escaping melee range?
2. What actions can you take to keep someone from running away, while still attacking (or allowing you to attack in future turns while still keeping them from running away)?
I'm looking for answers about the system mechanics; my GM runs [a moderately-gamist version of Dresden Files](https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/19566/should-the-gm-in-dresden-files-be-telling-us-what-the-target-numbers-are-for-tha), and I can't rely on him always giving me free opportunities to stop people. | 2013/08/20 | [
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/28099",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/3882/"
] | There are a few ways mechanically to arrest movement from a strictly rules-based standpoint.
1. Perform a maneuver and put an aspect on him. You can place an aspect on him that would prevent, or at least slow down, movement- but this would involve knowing how he was going to escape, whether that was knock over a trashcan to knock him over, whip your belt at his ankles to tie him up, or just sweep the leg.
2. Use a grapple as a block to bring him to the ground. Once you have him grappled, you can inflict damage, per YS211.
3. Attack. With enough damage, you can inflict a consequence that could stop the target, i.e. take that hammer to the knee. | What if the sorceror took a Concession? He'd need to meet the guidelines on YS pg. 206, but I think that's one way the GM could have him escape without you being able to stop him. Though as described in the Concessions details he would have to be greatly hindered in the future for doing so and the Concession "terms" would have to pass group approval. |
28,099 | In a recent Dresden Files game, I was whacking a sorcerer in the face with a hammer. Things were going swimmingly (for me, anyway), and the sorcerer was going to run away because he decided that hammers weren't fun anymore. The GM allowed me a contested roll on Athletics to keep him from escaping, with the implication that if I didn't keep him from going, he was going to get away somehow. (My GM prefers to hint things rather than spell them out mechanically, so I'm unclear on whether the sorcerer was going to fly away, teleport, hop in a car and drive, or just run really fast.) I succeeded in the contested roll to keep him from running away, and ended up painting the walls with him.
After the session, I couldn't remember any rules that would allow me to keep someone from escaping on foot. I suppose I could have done a Block, but that would involve *not* hitting him in the face; if it was just me against him, the combat would go nowhere. (Or he'd choose to attack me in exchanges where I Block him, and run away in rounds where I didn't.) If he sprinted away, then I wouldn't be able to catch him and knock him down or hurt him: if you move more than one zone, you can't do an action at the end of the move.
I have two related questions:
1. If you didn't prepare ahead of time with other actions, can you keep someone from escaping melee range?
2. What actions can you take to keep someone from running away, while still attacking (or allowing you to attack in future turns while still keeping them from running away)?
I'm looking for answers about the system mechanics; my GM runs [a moderately-gamist version of Dresden Files](https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/19566/should-the-gm-in-dresden-files-be-telling-us-what-the-target-numbers-are-for-tha), and I can't rely on him always giving me free opportunities to stop people. | 2013/08/20 | [
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/28099",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/3882/"
] | I think that the first problem here is that your GM has made an error. Fate mechanics give in-system support to the fiction - not the other way around. You said:
>
> My GM prefers to hint things rather than spell them out mechanically,
> so I'm unclear on whether the sorcerer was going to fly away,
> teleport, hop in a car and drive, or just run really fast.
>
>
>
Which is where I think the problem came from - how is flying away or teleporting an Athletics roll? The GM needed to provide a development in the fiction - something that follows logically from the pre-established conditions - and then apply mechanics to support that development. For example:
>
> GM: The sorcerer presses a hand to his injured face, and as he backs away from you, his eyes dart towards the open doorway to your left.
>
>
> YOU: I back him into a corner so I can finish the job.
>
>
> GM: The sorcerer ducks his head, covering it with his arms, and barrels forward, trying to get to the doorway before you can kill him. If he wins this Athletics contest, he'll get past you without being hit again...
>
>
>
In that example, the sorcerer takes a fictional action that follows (who likes being hit with hammers?) and the GM tells you some important things:
1. What is happening in the story - important so you can imagine the scene
2. What game mechanics are going to inflect into the story now - it's going to be an Athletics contest
3. What the stakes of that contest are - IF he wins THEN he is out of the room without being hit any further
You now have an opportunity to respond, showing what happens in the fiction from your end - "I rush him, checking him hard and low with my shoulder!"
When the rolls are finished, you can use:
* Your own Apects (*Aging Jock* means I know how to hit someone!)
* scene Aspects (You said the old storeroom was cluttered, I'm betting there's *Debris on the Floor*)
* Or Consequences you just inflicted (He's having trouble standing, let alone running because I just put *Staggering* on him!)
To influence and re-roll, which I'm sure you know. But the point is, the mechanical influences all **follow from the fiction**.
So your GM's **primary responsibility** is to provide a clear view of the fiction - the surroundings, the events, even people's attitudes, etc., as far as your character can know them - because it is **from** the fiction that all mechanical interventions are drawn, and it is **back to** the fiction that all mechanical interventions are fed.
And the clear setting of stakes is important, too. Look at the stakes as I imagined they might be set - "he'll get past you without being hit again..." Even if you *won*, he might have gotten to the door - you'd just have gotten another lick in first! With stakes like that, if the sorcerer had fled, it might have led to a chase through the rest of the building, or it might have led to him getting to a vehicle and maybe a car chase, or a million other options. The stakes let you know how much Fate a roll is worth, right? If the GM sets stakes with more black-and-white conditions - "If he wins, he gets away!" - then you know you can't afford to fail and you'd better go all in. Whereas with my "softer" stakes, you might hang onto some points for the chases and possible resumption of combat you can see coming.
I would talk with my GM about stuff like this - even during the game. GMing is hard! Sometimes, if someone asks for clarification about situations, actions, or the exact stakes, it helps remind me that my players can't read my mind. And it definitely shows that they're paying attention, which all GMs appreciate! | What if the sorceror took a Concession? He'd need to meet the guidelines on YS pg. 206, but I think that's one way the GM could have him escape without you being able to stop him. Though as described in the Concessions details he would have to be greatly hindered in the future for doing so and the Concession "terms" would have to pass group approval. |
20,206,282 | I'm sorry for such basic question, but I'm trying to implements two finger rotation on Android and I found several post here on SO, trying to make sense of them I couldn't understand why sometimes the result of atan2 is considered between -Pi and Pi and sometimes 0, 360 or -180, 180.
I really can't understand this: <https://stackoverflow.com/a/10682187/1692502> where the user perform a modulo %360 on a result that's supposed to be < 3.14...
thanks | 2013/11/26 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/20206282",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/1692502/"
] | Assuming you don't understand the difference of 360° and 2 Pi: There are different ways to express a distance on a circle's perimeter. An *angle* of 0° to 360° is probably the most common one, but in scientific notation, it is more common to use radians - which is a distance on the perimeter of the unit circle.
If you think of the unit circle (a circle with radius 1), you'll notice the perimeter is 2 Pi. If you only go around half the circle, the perimeter of that would be Pi - and you went from 0° to 180°. So all the notations that you mentioned in your question actually mean the same, just expressed in a different way.
atan2 returns a value between -Pi and +Pi (which covers 2 Pi and is thus a full circle) that can easily be converted to degrees using Math.toDegrees() | From the [Javadoc for atan2](http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/lang/Math.html#atan2%28double,%20double%29):
>
> public static double atan2(double y,
> double x)
>
>
> Returns the angle theta from the conversion of rectangular coordinates (x, y) to polar coordinates (r, theta). This method computes the phase theta by computing an arc tangent of y/x in the range of -pi to pi.
>
>
>
not sure where the confusion lies (it seems the linked SO Answer is wrong) |
49,251 | This American Standard faucet worked yesterday. But today, water barely trickles from it.
I can rotate it just fine and when I rotate it shut, the trickle stops. My gut feeling is that it catches in one rotation direction but not the other. Water from the adjacent sink flows fine.
**Questions**
1. Why would what seems to be a perfectly good faucet no longer work?
2. I've removed the bolt from the center but nothing comes loose. How do I disassemble it?
3. Any suggestion on how to get water flowing again?
 | 2014/09/25 | [
"https://diy.stackexchange.com/questions/49251",
"https://diy.stackexchange.com",
"https://diy.stackexchange.com/users/3601/"
] | 2) The knobs should pull off. They may be glued in place by mineral accumulation over the years; try wiggling them to break that free.
1, 3) Depends on the type of valve; several are in common use. You won't know what you've got until you have it open. | If you absolutely cannot remove the valve and you suspect debris, then remove any fixtures aerators adjacent to it and then figure out a way to pressurize the fixture you deem blocked...blow that stuff right out. Will it cause more damage than good? Likely, but we all had fun now, didn't we? |
346,283 | In games of Fortnite, streamers such as Ninja often get the maximum amount of medium ammunition possible to carry, and light bullets as well. Does anybody know the maximum amount of shells you can carry? | 2019/02/09 | [
"https://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/346283",
"https://gaming.stackexchange.com",
"https://gaming.stackexchange.com/users/224575/"
] | * Small ammo cap - 999
* Medium ammo cap - 999
* Heavy ammo cap - 999
* Shells cap - 999
* Rockets - 12
Hope this helps! It may be hard to get max shells and heavy ammo types, but it has been done in modes like close encounters and sniper shootout. | The max amount of medium and light ammo is 999, heavy ammo is about 70, rockets are about 12, and shotgun shells are around 80 excluding any already loaded. |
346,283 | In games of Fortnite, streamers such as Ninja often get the maximum amount of medium ammunition possible to carry, and light bullets as well. Does anybody know the maximum amount of shells you can carry? | 2019/02/09 | [
"https://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/346283",
"https://gaming.stackexchange.com",
"https://gaming.stackexchange.com/users/224575/"
] | Whilst the limit shown on the bar where your weapons are stops increasing at 999 the various amounts of ammo you can get increases beyond that. I have personally seen ammo increase easily past 999 into the 1200's. I have never noticed the hard limit myself but the wiki gives the following numbers although it isn't clear if these are for Save the World or Battle Royale though as I noted before I have noticed an increase above 999.
* [Light Bullets](https://fortnite.gamepedia.com/Light_Bullets): 6000
>
> Ammo for weapons that use low caliber bullets. Typically used in weapons with a high rate of fire. You can carry up to 6000 light bullets.
>
>
>
* [Medium Bullets](https://fortnite.gamepedia.com/Medium_Bullets): 4000
>
> Ammo for weapons using mid-range caliber bullets, tyically with balanced firepower and rate of fire. You can carry up to 4000 medium bullets.
>
>
>
* [Heavy Bullets](https://fortnite.gamepedia.com/Heavy_Bullets): 1000
>
> Ammo for weapons that use high caliber bullets, typically for slow and powerful weapons. You can carry up to 1000 heavy bullets.
>
>
>
* [Shells 'n' Slugs](https://fortnite.gamepedia.com/Shells_%27n%27_Slugs): 1200
>
> Ammo for weapons that use all types of shells, such as buckshot or slugs. You can carry up to 1200 shells 'n' slugs.
>
>
>
* [Rockets](https://fortnite.gamepedia.com/Rockets): 12
No information is given in the wiki but my experience and that of others here tells us it is 12. | The max amount of medium and light ammo is 999, heavy ammo is about 70, rockets are about 12, and shotgun shells are around 80 excluding any already loaded. |
346,283 | In games of Fortnite, streamers such as Ninja often get the maximum amount of medium ammunition possible to carry, and light bullets as well. Does anybody know the maximum amount of shells you can carry? | 2019/02/09 | [
"https://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/346283",
"https://gaming.stackexchange.com",
"https://gaming.stackexchange.com/users/224575/"
] | * Small ammo cap - 999
* Medium ammo cap - 999
* Heavy ammo cap - 999
* Shells cap - 999
* Rockets - 12
Hope this helps! It may be hard to get max shells and heavy ammo types, but it has been done in modes like close encounters and sniper shootout. | Whilst the limit shown on the bar where your weapons are stops increasing at 999 the various amounts of ammo you can get increases beyond that. I have personally seen ammo increase easily past 999 into the 1200's. I have never noticed the hard limit myself but the wiki gives the following numbers although it isn't clear if these are for Save the World or Battle Royale though as I noted before I have noticed an increase above 999.
* [Light Bullets](https://fortnite.gamepedia.com/Light_Bullets): 6000
>
> Ammo for weapons that use low caliber bullets. Typically used in weapons with a high rate of fire. You can carry up to 6000 light bullets.
>
>
>
* [Medium Bullets](https://fortnite.gamepedia.com/Medium_Bullets): 4000
>
> Ammo for weapons using mid-range caliber bullets, tyically with balanced firepower and rate of fire. You can carry up to 4000 medium bullets.
>
>
>
* [Heavy Bullets](https://fortnite.gamepedia.com/Heavy_Bullets): 1000
>
> Ammo for weapons that use high caliber bullets, typically for slow and powerful weapons. You can carry up to 1000 heavy bullets.
>
>
>
* [Shells 'n' Slugs](https://fortnite.gamepedia.com/Shells_%27n%27_Slugs): 1200
>
> Ammo for weapons that use all types of shells, such as buckshot or slugs. You can carry up to 1200 shells 'n' slugs.
>
>
>
* [Rockets](https://fortnite.gamepedia.com/Rockets): 12
No information is given in the wiki but my experience and that of others here tells us it is 12. |
215,666 | I am using Wubi. Do I need to make a separate partition for Ubuntu? The last time I tried this, it made a folder called `root` on my drive and I could not access any files on that drive within Ubuntu. | 2012/11/11 | [
"https://askubuntu.com/questions/215666",
"https://askubuntu.com",
"https://askubuntu.com/users/106785/"
] | No, if you are using Wubi (the Windows installer) to install Ubuntu in Windows, you don't need to do any repartitioning. Partitioning your drive is only required if you plan on installing Ubuntu alongside Windows via the LiveCD/USB method. Wubi installs Ubuntu in such a way that it is more like a Windows program instead of a standalone OS with its own space.
If you need to access your Windows files in Ubuntu if you installed it using Wubi, see [Accessing Windows partition inside Wubi](https://askubuntu.com/q/86586/18612).
For more information on Wubi in general, see [here](https://wiki.ubuntu.com/WubiGuide). | I believe you can access it. However, I'd recommend installing it on a small partition of about 20GB.
It will be relatively hassle free (unless you like tinkering with the system). |
215,666 | I am using Wubi. Do I need to make a separate partition for Ubuntu? The last time I tried this, it made a folder called `root` on my drive and I could not access any files on that drive within Ubuntu. | 2012/11/11 | [
"https://askubuntu.com/questions/215666",
"https://askubuntu.com",
"https://askubuntu.com/users/106785/"
] | No, if you are using Wubi (the Windows installer) to install Ubuntu in Windows, you don't need to do any repartitioning. Partitioning your drive is only required if you plan on installing Ubuntu alongside Windows via the LiveCD/USB method. Wubi installs Ubuntu in such a way that it is more like a Windows program instead of a standalone OS with its own space.
If you need to access your Windows files in Ubuntu if you installed it using Wubi, see [Accessing Windows partition inside Wubi](https://askubuntu.com/q/86586/18612).
For more information on Wubi in general, see [here](https://wiki.ubuntu.com/WubiGuide). | you should do it in windows . if you will do it in linux , maybe can be a problem. [Disk Manage Windows](http://www.partition-tool.com/resource/windows-7-partition-manager/windows-7-disk-manager.htm) . after that you can install ubuntu . and you should mount windows disk to ubuntu |
1,409,060 | I have a web site hosted in a CentOS 5-Plesk-Apache server. I have recently added a second site to the server for serve dynamic content. I have established rewrite rules for images (static content) that works pretty well. The module rewrites the URI in the static server to pointing to the the original file.
The problem is that the first site has the minify (<http://code.google.com/p/minify/>) script installed but i cannot realize how to write a modwrite rule that works, so if I have:
...
< style src='<http://www.mystaticserver.com/min/f=style.css>' >
...
somewhere, this becomes in the file with this URL
<http://www.myserver.com/min/f=style.css>
Any ideas? Thank you in advance
PS: I asked this question in serverfault but i don't get any answers | 2009/09/11 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/1409060",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/20367/"
] | Click on the top left icon in the window (the `"C:\"` one) and select "Properties".
Then select the "Layout" tab and change the window size to what you want it to be (I have 128x50 for the screen and 128x999 for the scroll buffer). You can also optionally set the top left position (I always have it at 1,1) if you don't want Windows itself deciding where the window goes.
When you click on OK, make sure you tell it to modify the shortcut that started the window.
Then it will remember.
This is for XP, other MS operating systems may vary slightly but the general idea should be the same. | Command Window Default Properties
---------------------------------
Click on the sytem menu, or with focus set on the Command Windows, press Alt+Space, and select Properties. Change your Font, Window Size, and so on. I always change my Window Size (on the Layout tab) to Width 80 by Height 65 and Screen Buffer Size to 80 by 300. |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.