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 |
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7,060,865 | I created a simple test jar executable file, but when I tried to run it, it wouldn't work because it said that the Main-Class manifest attribute from jar.jar wouldn't load. The manifest file (which was called manifest.mf) I typed up looked like this:
Main-Class: JarTest
and the compiler command looked like this:
jar cmf manifest.mf jartest.jar \*.class
any help would be greatly appreciated. | 2011/08/15 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/7060865",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/858819/"
] | The c++ is a really complex language to parse, so it would be really hard / long / expensive to develop such a tool I guess.
The general rule is to never modify generated code ( in your case the code is generated by Qt designer)
You can
* Subclass the generated class and put your modifications in the sub class
* Code all your interfaces by yourself from scratch.
* If you think Qt designer lack features you can request them or submit patches to Qt. But I don't think Qt intend to extend that, since QML has become the new way to go with interfaces.
The best option for you is probably the first. | A software introspection tool, [GammaRay](https://github.com/KDAB/GammaRay), can save widgets from a running Qt application to `.ui` files (since 2012, I believe). Tested on Qt 5.12 - layout is perfectly correct, but no signals, no object names, though it gives a good starting point in restoring objects' hierarchy and its properties.
All kudos to [Marc Mutz - mmutz](https://stackoverflow.com/users/134841/marc-mutz-mmutz) and [his answer](https://stackoverflow.com/a/9214657/1104612). |
17,537,722 | I'm trying to cluster the Twitter stream. I want to put each tweet to a cluster that talk about the same topic. I tried to cluster the stream using an online clustering algorithm with tf/idf and cosine similarity but I found that the results are quite bad.
The main disadvantages of using tf/idf is that it clusters documents that are keyword similar so it's only good to identify near identical documents. For example consider the following sentences:
1- The website Stackoverflow is a nice place.
2- Stackoverflow is a website.
The prevoiuse two sentences will likely by clustered together with a reasonable threshold value since they share a lot of keywords. But now consider the following two sentences:
1- The website Stackoverflow is a nice place.
2- I visit Stackoverflow regularly.
Now by using tf/idf the clustering algorithm will fail miserably because they only share one keyword even tho they both talk about the same topic.
My question: is there better techniques to cluster documents? | 2013/07/08 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/17537722",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/2464658/"
] | In my experience, cosine similarity on [latent semantic analysis](http://t.co/I1wtljOr) (LSA/LSI) vectors works a lot better than raw tf-idf for text clustering, though I admit I haven't tried it on Twitter data. In particular, it tends to take care of the sparsity problem that you're encountering, where the documents just don't contain enough common terms.
Topic models such as LDA might work even better. | **Long answer:**
TfxIdf is currently one of the most famous search method. What you need are some preprocessing from Natural Langage Processing (NLP). There is a lot of resources that can help you for english (for example the lib 'nltk' in python).
You must use the NLP analysis both on your querys (questions) and on yours documents before indexing.
The point is : while tfxidf (or tfxidf^2 like in lucene) is good, you should use it on annotated resource with meta-linguistics information. That can be hard and require extensive knowledge about your core search engine, grammar analysis (syntax) and the domain of document.
**Short answer** : The better technique is to use TFxIDF with light grammar NLP annotations, and both re-write query and indexing. |
17,537,722 | I'm trying to cluster the Twitter stream. I want to put each tweet to a cluster that talk about the same topic. I tried to cluster the stream using an online clustering algorithm with tf/idf and cosine similarity but I found that the results are quite bad.
The main disadvantages of using tf/idf is that it clusters documents that are keyword similar so it's only good to identify near identical documents. For example consider the following sentences:
1- The website Stackoverflow is a nice place.
2- Stackoverflow is a website.
The prevoiuse two sentences will likely by clustered together with a reasonable threshold value since they share a lot of keywords. But now consider the following two sentences:
1- The website Stackoverflow is a nice place.
2- I visit Stackoverflow regularly.
Now by using tf/idf the clustering algorithm will fail miserably because they only share one keyword even tho they both talk about the same topic.
My question: is there better techniques to cluster documents? | 2013/07/08 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/17537722",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/2464658/"
] | As mentioned in other comments and answers. Using LDA can give good tweet->topic weights.
If these weights are insufficient clustering for your needs you could look at clustering these topic distributions using a clustering algorithm.
While it is training set dependent LDA could easily bundle tweets with stackoverflow, stack-overflow and stack overflow into the same topic. However "my stack of boxes is about to overflow" might instead go into another topic about boxes.
Another example: A tweet with the word Apple could go into a number of different topics (the company, the fruit, New York and others). LDA would look at the other words in the tweet to determine the applicable topics.
1. "Steve Jobs was the CEO at Apple" is clearly about the company
2. "I'm eating the most delicious apple" is clearly about the fruit
3. "I'm going to the big apple when I travel to the USA" is most likely about visiting New York | **Long answer:**
TfxIdf is currently one of the most famous search method. What you need are some preprocessing from Natural Langage Processing (NLP). There is a lot of resources that can help you for english (for example the lib 'nltk' in python).
You must use the NLP analysis both on your querys (questions) and on yours documents before indexing.
The point is : while tfxidf (or tfxidf^2 like in lucene) is good, you should use it on annotated resource with meta-linguistics information. That can be hard and require extensive knowledge about your core search engine, grammar analysis (syntax) and the domain of document.
**Short answer** : The better technique is to use TFxIDF with light grammar NLP annotations, and both re-write query and indexing. |
17,537,722 | I'm trying to cluster the Twitter stream. I want to put each tweet to a cluster that talk about the same topic. I tried to cluster the stream using an online clustering algorithm with tf/idf and cosine similarity but I found that the results are quite bad.
The main disadvantages of using tf/idf is that it clusters documents that are keyword similar so it's only good to identify near identical documents. For example consider the following sentences:
1- The website Stackoverflow is a nice place.
2- Stackoverflow is a website.
The prevoiuse two sentences will likely by clustered together with a reasonable threshold value since they share a lot of keywords. But now consider the following two sentences:
1- The website Stackoverflow is a nice place.
2- I visit Stackoverflow regularly.
Now by using tf/idf the clustering algorithm will fail miserably because they only share one keyword even tho they both talk about the same topic.
My question: is there better techniques to cluster documents? | 2013/07/08 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/17537722",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/2464658/"
] | In my experience, cosine similarity on [latent semantic analysis](http://t.co/I1wtljOr) (LSA/LSI) vectors works a lot better than raw tf-idf for text clustering, though I admit I haven't tried it on Twitter data. In particular, it tends to take care of the sparsity problem that you're encountering, where the documents just don't contain enough common terms.
Topic models such as LDA might work even better. | As mentioned in other comments and answers. Using LDA can give good tweet->topic weights.
If these weights are insufficient clustering for your needs you could look at clustering these topic distributions using a clustering algorithm.
While it is training set dependent LDA could easily bundle tweets with stackoverflow, stack-overflow and stack overflow into the same topic. However "my stack of boxes is about to overflow" might instead go into another topic about boxes.
Another example: A tweet with the word Apple could go into a number of different topics (the company, the fruit, New York and others). LDA would look at the other words in the tweet to determine the applicable topics.
1. "Steve Jobs was the CEO at Apple" is clearly about the company
2. "I'm eating the most delicious apple" is clearly about the fruit
3. "I'm going to the big apple when I travel to the USA" is most likely about visiting New York |
24,737 | My connected flight was purchased from Air France from Paris to Vancouver. The first flight (Paris-Toronto) was operated by Air France, the second one (Toronto-Vancouver) was operated by Air Canada. In Paris, Air France told me my baggage would be delivered to Vancouver airport directly. So I have filled out the declaration form to pass customs in Toronto without collecting my baggage. But after I arrived at Vancouver airport, Air Canada told me I should have collected baggage to pass the customs in Toronto and then checked in again. So Air Canada doesn't know where my baggage is right now.
In this situation, what should I do now? | 2014/03/04 | [
"https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/24737",
"https://travel.stackexchange.com",
"https://travel.stackexchange.com/users/12012/"
] | That's unfortunate, and when it's all sorted out, I'd suggest a letter to Air Canada / Air France asking for some points as compensation.
In the meanwhile, you can only do a few things:
* wait. This will take time. All bags are tracked electronically in the system, so it's a case of the right person finding the log for where it has been, and it should show up soon enough.
* keep in contact with Air Canada. Ask them for updates, and ask them WHEN you can expect a new update, whether the bag is found or not. Don't let it just languish.
* contact Air France as well, they should know when it left their control / responsibility. If it was in Toronto, then at least you'll know it should be there. And also they'll have a record of whether it actually made it to Toronto, or whether it might even still be in Paris(!).
* consider calling the airport in Toronto, and asking them to investigate. They might even liaise with Air Canada's and Air France's staff there to see what can happen. There's usually a missing baggage helpline at most major airports. However it [does say on their page that lost baggage is the responsibility of the airlines](http://www.torontopearson.com/en/lostfound/).
Air Canada's page also has a [process for you to follow](http://www.aircanada.com/en/travelinfo/airport/baggage/delayed.html) when dealing with what they call 'delayed baggage'. I'd recommend having a look through there and making sure you've done as much as you can.
Good luck, and I hope you're reunited with your stuff soon! | I was in a similar situation. I was flying from Melbourne, Australia to Kuala Lumpur by Malaysian Airlines and then KL to Singapore by Singapore Airlines. When I checked in at Melbourne, I was told that I will be able to collect my bags at Singapore directly. Well, this had never happened with me before, so I was a bit hesitant.
At KL airport, my restless mind couldn't control it and I went to the baggage claim area. Obviously, I didn't find my bags there, so I spoke with this officer there and explained the situation to him. He assured me that I will get my bags at Singapore. Lucky for me, he wrote it down on a paper and signed it.
At Singapore, I didn't get my bags. Officials said that it wasn't their responsibility. They can't do anything about it. They asked me to speak with Malaysian Airlines. Malaysian Airlines said that they hold no responsibility as the bags were transferred to Singapore Airlines. So, after all this back and forth, I pulled out the letter and suddenly Singapore Airlines did a U-turn. They checked with Malaysian and confirmed that my bags will be delivered the next day.
So, all I can say is HARASS them. Contact Air France and get confirmation. Contact Air Canada and ask them for updates. This is a pretty sad situation, I know. But, you should get your bags in a day or two. Sometimes, airlines send the bags directly to the final destination. So, I'd say contact Air France first and see on which flight was it sent.
Good luck. |
101,741 | Tonight a band of lizardfolk was towing a large raft (some 30-feet square raft) over shallow swamp waters. Some 4~5 feet deep. Since the raft had some several key townsfolk tied up on it and was on its way to be sacrificed to some hideous demi-human deity, the wizard decided to cast web below the raft.
His rationale was that the web would anchor between the raft and the swamp floor, trapping some of the lizardfolk but also stopping the raft from moving.
He was underwater, had water breathing on, and could see underneath the raft, so targeting was not an issue.
Would the web anchor (prevent movement of) the raft? | 2017/06/17 | [
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/101741",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/11402/"
] | I would say yes, because the Web spell can be layered over the bottom of the raft, and the web spell says that:
>
> Webs layered over a flat surface have a depth of 5 feet.
>
>
>
Since this is, or more than, the depth of the river, the web could be considered anchored to both points, as it would be the exactly the same if you cast web on the floor or the raft.
The creatures pulling it would be able to make a dex save to not get entangled, but if they do get trapped then they must make a strength check to break free. You could consider the raft trapped by this and therefore unable to move, but any free creature would be able to make that strength check for the raft to break it free. | The *web* spell can't hold the raft
===================================
The *web* spell says:
>
> If the webs aren't anchored **between two solid masses (such as walls or trees)** or layered across a floor, wall, or ceiling, the conjured web collapses on itself, **and the spell ends at the start of your next turn**. Webs layered over a flat surface have a depth of 5 feet.
>
>
>
It seems like the underside of the raft is being used as a solid mass, and the types of masses the spell expects are walls or trees -- ie, sturdy and unlikely to collapse.
This implies the structural integrity of the web relies on the surfaces it's bound to, not the other way around. If the structures can't hold the web in place, the web collapses and the spell ends.
Moreover, there is no guarantee that the bottom of the river is solid in the way a tree or wall is solid. It could be made of mud or silt, offering no anchor points for the spell.
Alternatives
============
[This question](https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/92653/is-there-an-anchor-or-weight-spell/92660) looks at ways to increase weight of objects for the purpose of anchoring them down.
* *Enlarge/Reduce* spell multiplies the target's weight by 8
* *Flesh to Stone* spell multiplies the target's weight by 10
* *Immovable rod* item cannot be moved unless the mover succeeds a DC 30 Str check |
39,302 | Last week, I rode AMT005 (the westbound *California Zephyr*) from Omaha to Salt Lake City as part of an itinerary that went as follows:
* Omaha to SLC via Denver and the Central Corridor on AMT005
* SLC to Evanston, WY via private vehicle
However, due to a rockslide that blocked the Central Corridor (ex-D&RGW) mainline in Colorado about halfway between Granby and Glenwood Springs, AMT005/006 were detoured through northern CO and southern WY for several days -- including our trip; furthermore, this detour sent us directly *through* our final destination of Evanston, WY.
Is it generally not possible to take advantage of this situation, or is a stop/disembarkation at the final destination in this case possible (if so, how would one approach this?), or is this completely up to the conductor?
Note that this was *personal* travel -- business travel between these two points would be an utterly different situation in my case, and far outside the scope of this question! | 2014/12/03 | [
"https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/39302",
"https://travel.stackexchange.com",
"https://travel.stackexchange.com/users/22968/"
] | I think the only real answer to this is that it can't hurt to ask the on-train staff -- politely and without sounding like you have a *right* to be let off there.
However, I wouldn't get my hopes up. There doesn't seem to be a passenger station in Evanston, and railway regulations generally frown on letting passengers alight between stations except in an actual emergency. You would wind up by the trackside, on railway property where you have no business being, and would need to fend your way to a public road for yourself. The train staff probably don't have authority to allow you to do that (particularly since the railway property in question is not Amtrak property).
It looks from Google Maps like there aren't even any level crossings where you could alight directly onto a public road -- and even if there were, that would bring its own set of complications, such as holding up road traffic for longer than necessary by stopping *on* the crossing.
A further reason why this might be a problem even if there were a station platform to alight at is that if the line is being used for diversions because another one is blocked, it may be under capacity pressure that would be exacerbated by trains making unscheduled stops. | *Possibly*. The reason is, Amtrak has to do *something* with its passengers for Glenwood Springs, and you are allowed to make the most out of that "something".
To be clear, #5 did *not* roll into Ogden via the Transcontinental Railroad and then double back into Colorado to Glenwood Springs. That equipment needed to be in Oakland tomorrow to protect the *next* day's #6. I also doubt they ran Granby and Glenwood Springs customers all the way to Ogden and doubled them back. Most likely Amtrak *precisely did* stop at some achievable location, say Green River or who knows? Evanston? -- and put people on buses or cabs. It may be possible to send your cab to Evanston.
So the best thing to do, really, is to contact Amtrak, and also talk to the conductor about your needs.
They are better at this than you think: it's not their first rodeo. |
41,279 | I've only heard about living hedge barriers, but would dead stick barriers help keep out the deer so they go around the garden also? | 2018/08/04 | [
"https://gardening.stackexchange.com/questions/41279",
"https://gardening.stackexchange.com",
"https://gardening.stackexchange.com/users/13136/"
] | That is a [Sulphur Cosmos](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmos_sulphureus) I believe. | Possibly a variety of Bur Marigold (*[Bidens](https://garden.org/plants/view/710289/Bur-Marigold-Bidens-Campfire-Fireburst/)*). Bidens are known for [attractiveness to bees](https://www.ballseed.com/PlantInfo/?phid=010000001034831). |
41,279 | I've only heard about living hedge barriers, but would dead stick barriers help keep out the deer so they go around the garden also? | 2018/08/04 | [
"https://gardening.stackexchange.com/questions/41279",
"https://gardening.stackexchange.com",
"https://gardening.stackexchange.com/users/13136/"
] | [](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZiL3Z.jpg)
Most echinachea I know are cool colors such as purples and pinks. I didn't know that you could get this color from echinachea. Gorgeous. But I could be wrong...so we'll wait for others to input their views. Please send foliage pictures as well! | Possibly a variety of Bur Marigold (*[Bidens](https://garden.org/plants/view/710289/Bur-Marigold-Bidens-Campfire-Fireburst/)*). Bidens are known for [attractiveness to bees](https://www.ballseed.com/PlantInfo/?phid=010000001034831). |
41,279 | I've only heard about living hedge barriers, but would dead stick barriers help keep out the deer so they go around the garden also? | 2018/08/04 | [
"https://gardening.stackexchange.com/questions/41279",
"https://gardening.stackexchange.com",
"https://gardening.stackexchange.com/users/13136/"
] | It's most likely Tithonia rotundifolia (common name is Mexican sunflower). A great plant: tall, wide, floriferous and excellent for pollinators. I used to grow it (or the Torch cultivar) when I had larger gardens. Here are some photos:
* [Multiple flowers](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vppusJc1Nis/UtbNZGNv6-I/AAAAAAAAjrA/R_yD28M99rk/s1600/Tithonia+rotundifolia+'Torch'+09.jpg)
* [plant habit](https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-58pLwqgprj0/U9dU6lyEKtI/AAAAAAAAZR8/VeI8-xr1_9I/s1600/Tithonia_rotundifolia.jpg)
* [A photo that's nearly identical to the one posted](https://lindenhillgardens.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/tithonia.jpg) | Possibly a variety of Bur Marigold (*[Bidens](https://garden.org/plants/view/710289/Bur-Marigold-Bidens-Campfire-Fireburst/)*). Bidens are known for [attractiveness to bees](https://www.ballseed.com/PlantInfo/?phid=010000001034831). |
99,839 | My organic eggs have a date of June 24 on them; today is June 28. Can I still cook them? (I am not used to purchasing organic eggs.) | 2019/06/28 | [
"https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/99839",
"https://cooking.stackexchange.com",
"https://cooking.stackexchange.com/users/76253/"
] | Check again, the date should be 'sell by' rather than 'eat by'. If you're in the US, you should have at least a couple weeks to eat them after the sell by date. | use a glass of water, if they float to the top not good, if the sink they are fresh, if they kinda float but not to the top they are ok |
8,240 | I have a 3 way switch that was wired incorrectly when the switches were replaced with a different color switch. Is there a methodical way for me to identify which wires represent which piece of the system so I can correct the bad wiring?
Currently if switch 1 is on, switch 2 can turn light on or off. If switch 1 is off, then switch 2 does nothing. | 2011/08/11 | [
"https://diy.stackexchange.com/questions/8240",
"https://diy.stackexchange.com",
"https://diy.stackexchange.com/users/255/"
] | As Karl points out, first find the hot (source) wire. On a standard three way switch, this is usually attached to the screw on the side of the switch that only has one screw. The screw on the switch is usually a darker color too. There will be one of these on each switch obviously, so there are really only two wires to test. Use a multimeter by touching the wire, and the other lead from the multimeter to the white (in the US) or to ground.
Once you find the hot, the wire attached to the other switch on the side with the single screw is probably the one that goes to your lights.
The other two wires should be attached to both switches, and these are called the travelers. They let the power move from one switch to the other switch, and alternate sending power based which way the switch is positions. So one of these is always hot. | Yes. You will need some basic testing equipment; a multimeter should do. There will be a live wire coming in one box, and two traveller wires also in that box (usually a black/white pair.) The traveler pair will go to the other box.
Use your multimeter to figure out what is live whe nothing else is. This is the hot 'in' wire. The next two wires are the traveler. The third wire in the other box at the far end of the traveler is the wire that goes to the Fixture. It sounds like the traveler on the far side of the box might have gotten swapped with one of the wires to the fixture. Just take it apart, figure out which wire is supposed to be which, and put it back together right. |
8,240 | I have a 3 way switch that was wired incorrectly when the switches were replaced with a different color switch. Is there a methodical way for me to identify which wires represent which piece of the system so I can correct the bad wiring?
Currently if switch 1 is on, switch 2 can turn light on or off. If switch 1 is off, then switch 2 does nothing. | 2011/08/11 | [
"https://diy.stackexchange.com/questions/8240",
"https://diy.stackexchange.com",
"https://diy.stackexchange.com/users/255/"
] | I had this EXACT issue when I moved into my new (to me) house. The original owner was a bit of a handyman and had done several small (and big) projects all over. In many cases regarding electrical work he'd done, I had to go back in and clean up.
Here's a fail-safe process to fix a three way setup that isn't working:
1. Turn off the breaker controlling this light. You may also need to cut additional breakers if either or both of the 3-ways are in "multi-gang" boxes with other switches on different circuits. Use a non-contact voltage tester to ensure all of the screws on the side of all the switches in both boxes are dead before pulling out any switches.
2. Disconnect all wires from both of the 3-way switches (but do not unwrap or un-nut any of the twisted wire bundles, or disassemble any other switches). Pull these wires out of the box and separate them so there is no bare copper touching any other metal.
3. Turn the panel breaker back on. From this moment until step 5, the second you are not extremely cautious around every bit of bare metal in that box, you will pay for it.
4. Probe all the wires you disconnected and separated one at a time with your non-contact voltage tester, being extremely careful not to touch any of the other wires with the tester or any part of you. You will find one loose black wire in one of the two boxes that is live, and all other wires should be dead. The live wire is your panel hot; remember it.
5. Turn off the breaker at the panel again.
6. Back at the box with the wire you identified as the panel hot, connect the hot wire to the "common" terminal of the 3-way switch for that box. Looking at the body of a three-way switch, the common terminal is the terminal that has another terminal screw on the switch body facing the same way, but *doesn't* have a screw directly *across* the switch body facing the *other* way. A picture's worth a thousand words; see below.
7. The other two insulated wires you removed from the switch are the "traveler" wires. One will be black, and the other red, and they should both be a part of the same "trunk" of Romex wire. Connect the black to one of the remaining terminals other than the grounding terminal, and the red to the other terminal.
8. Both of the two wire "trunks" should have white and bare wires in addition to the black and/or red; ALL the white wires in the box should be twisted into a bundle with a wire nut, and all bares should be twisted in a bundle with or without a nut.
9. Screw the terminals down firmly, attach the ground wire to the green grounding terminal screw if one was connected (bathrooms require a bare wire ground to be connected to the switch, most other rooms don't), cover all the switch terminals with a layer or two of electrical tape, and, being careful not to short out any wires, push the wires and switch back into the J-box and screw it down.
10. Now, go to the other switch box. Examine the loose wires which you disconnected from the switch (there should be two black and one red). The black wire that doesn't go into the same outer insulation conduit as the red wire is the hot lead to the light. The other two wires are the other ends of your traveler line. Both these "trunks" should have white and bare wires in addition to the black and/or red; the white wires should be twisted into a bundle with a wire nut, and bares should be twisted in a bundle with or without a nut.
11. Connect the light's hot wire to the switch's common terminal.
12. One note; if you connect the black wire from the traveler to the same side of the second switch that you connected the black traveler wire to on the first switch, the switches must be set opposite each other (one up and one down) for the light to be off. Personally, I prefer to be able to turn every light in the house off by pushing all the light switches down. If you're like me, then swap the red and black wires of the traveler pair, connecting the black wire to the opposite traveler terminal from the one you used on the first switch. This will result in the circuit being off when the switches are set the same way (both down or up).
13. Connect the traveler wires to the other switch terminals in the manner you choose, and connect the ground if you have one. Wrap the terminals in electrical tape, and put the switch back in the wall box.
14. Turn the panel breaker(s) back on. Have another person stand at one switch, while you stand at the other. If the light is on, flip one of the switches. Now, have the other person flip their switch; the light goes on. Flip yours (light off). Flip theirs again (light on), then flip yours again (light off). You've now gone through all four combinations of light positions, and verified that either switch can turn the light on or off.
15. If something still doesn't work, turn off the panel and take the switches out of the box (but don't disconnect them). Make sure none of the terminals are shorting out against any other piece of metal in the box (including the box itself, if it's conductive). If it STILL doesn't work, replace one or both switches (they're about $3 a pop). if it **STILL** doesn't work, I'd call an electrician; there may be a break in the wires of this circuit, or there may have been a mix-up involving multiple switches in the boxes; pretty much any way you slice it it could be dangerous or expensive for you to continue to try to fix it.
16. Once the switches are working to your satisfaction, put the switch plate back on over the box (make sure before you start screwing in plate screws that ALL the holes line up), and enjoy your repaired three-way circuit. | Yes. You will need some basic testing equipment; a multimeter should do. There will be a live wire coming in one box, and two traveller wires also in that box (usually a black/white pair.) The traveler pair will go to the other box.
Use your multimeter to figure out what is live whe nothing else is. This is the hot 'in' wire. The next two wires are the traveler. The third wire in the other box at the far end of the traveler is the wire that goes to the Fixture. It sounds like the traveler on the far side of the box might have gotten swapped with one of the wires to the fixture. Just take it apart, figure out which wire is supposed to be which, and put it back together right. |
8,240 | I have a 3 way switch that was wired incorrectly when the switches were replaced with a different color switch. Is there a methodical way for me to identify which wires represent which piece of the system so I can correct the bad wiring?
Currently if switch 1 is on, switch 2 can turn light on or off. If switch 1 is off, then switch 2 does nothing. | 2011/08/11 | [
"https://diy.stackexchange.com/questions/8240",
"https://diy.stackexchange.com",
"https://diy.stackexchange.com/users/255/"
] | Yes. You will need some basic testing equipment; a multimeter should do. There will be a live wire coming in one box, and two traveller wires also in that box (usually a black/white pair.) The traveler pair will go to the other box.
Use your multimeter to figure out what is live whe nothing else is. This is the hot 'in' wire. The next two wires are the traveler. The third wire in the other box at the far end of the traveler is the wire that goes to the Fixture. It sounds like the traveler on the far side of the box might have gotten swapped with one of the wires to the fixture. Just take it apart, figure out which wire is supposed to be which, and put it back together right. | sometimes when 3-way switches don't function it is because they were installed without a 3-wire cable . The installer maynot have known that a 3-wire cable was needed for 3-way switches |
8,240 | I have a 3 way switch that was wired incorrectly when the switches were replaced with a different color switch. Is there a methodical way for me to identify which wires represent which piece of the system so I can correct the bad wiring?
Currently if switch 1 is on, switch 2 can turn light on or off. If switch 1 is off, then switch 2 does nothing. | 2011/08/11 | [
"https://diy.stackexchange.com/questions/8240",
"https://diy.stackexchange.com",
"https://diy.stackexchange.com/users/255/"
] | I had this EXACT issue when I moved into my new (to me) house. The original owner was a bit of a handyman and had done several small (and big) projects all over. In many cases regarding electrical work he'd done, I had to go back in and clean up.
Here's a fail-safe process to fix a three way setup that isn't working:
1. Turn off the breaker controlling this light. You may also need to cut additional breakers if either or both of the 3-ways are in "multi-gang" boxes with other switches on different circuits. Use a non-contact voltage tester to ensure all of the screws on the side of all the switches in both boxes are dead before pulling out any switches.
2. Disconnect all wires from both of the 3-way switches (but do not unwrap or un-nut any of the twisted wire bundles, or disassemble any other switches). Pull these wires out of the box and separate them so there is no bare copper touching any other metal.
3. Turn the panel breaker back on. From this moment until step 5, the second you are not extremely cautious around every bit of bare metal in that box, you will pay for it.
4. Probe all the wires you disconnected and separated one at a time with your non-contact voltage tester, being extremely careful not to touch any of the other wires with the tester or any part of you. You will find one loose black wire in one of the two boxes that is live, and all other wires should be dead. The live wire is your panel hot; remember it.
5. Turn off the breaker at the panel again.
6. Back at the box with the wire you identified as the panel hot, connect the hot wire to the "common" terminal of the 3-way switch for that box. Looking at the body of a three-way switch, the common terminal is the terminal that has another terminal screw on the switch body facing the same way, but *doesn't* have a screw directly *across* the switch body facing the *other* way. A picture's worth a thousand words; see below.
7. The other two insulated wires you removed from the switch are the "traveler" wires. One will be black, and the other red, and they should both be a part of the same "trunk" of Romex wire. Connect the black to one of the remaining terminals other than the grounding terminal, and the red to the other terminal.
8. Both of the two wire "trunks" should have white and bare wires in addition to the black and/or red; ALL the white wires in the box should be twisted into a bundle with a wire nut, and all bares should be twisted in a bundle with or without a nut.
9. Screw the terminals down firmly, attach the ground wire to the green grounding terminal screw if one was connected (bathrooms require a bare wire ground to be connected to the switch, most other rooms don't), cover all the switch terminals with a layer or two of electrical tape, and, being careful not to short out any wires, push the wires and switch back into the J-box and screw it down.
10. Now, go to the other switch box. Examine the loose wires which you disconnected from the switch (there should be two black and one red). The black wire that doesn't go into the same outer insulation conduit as the red wire is the hot lead to the light. The other two wires are the other ends of your traveler line. Both these "trunks" should have white and bare wires in addition to the black and/or red; the white wires should be twisted into a bundle with a wire nut, and bares should be twisted in a bundle with or without a nut.
11. Connect the light's hot wire to the switch's common terminal.
12. One note; if you connect the black wire from the traveler to the same side of the second switch that you connected the black traveler wire to on the first switch, the switches must be set opposite each other (one up and one down) for the light to be off. Personally, I prefer to be able to turn every light in the house off by pushing all the light switches down. If you're like me, then swap the red and black wires of the traveler pair, connecting the black wire to the opposite traveler terminal from the one you used on the first switch. This will result in the circuit being off when the switches are set the same way (both down or up).
13. Connect the traveler wires to the other switch terminals in the manner you choose, and connect the ground if you have one. Wrap the terminals in electrical tape, and put the switch back in the wall box.
14. Turn the panel breaker(s) back on. Have another person stand at one switch, while you stand at the other. If the light is on, flip one of the switches. Now, have the other person flip their switch; the light goes on. Flip yours (light off). Flip theirs again (light on), then flip yours again (light off). You've now gone through all four combinations of light positions, and verified that either switch can turn the light on or off.
15. If something still doesn't work, turn off the panel and take the switches out of the box (but don't disconnect them). Make sure none of the terminals are shorting out against any other piece of metal in the box (including the box itself, if it's conductive). If it STILL doesn't work, replace one or both switches (they're about $3 a pop). if it **STILL** doesn't work, I'd call an electrician; there may be a break in the wires of this circuit, or there may have been a mix-up involving multiple switches in the boxes; pretty much any way you slice it it could be dangerous or expensive for you to continue to try to fix it.
16. Once the switches are working to your satisfaction, put the switch plate back on over the box (make sure before you start screwing in plate screws that ALL the holes line up), and enjoy your repaired three-way circuit. | As Karl points out, first find the hot (source) wire. On a standard three way switch, this is usually attached to the screw on the side of the switch that only has one screw. The screw on the switch is usually a darker color too. There will be one of these on each switch obviously, so there are really only two wires to test. Use a multimeter by touching the wire, and the other lead from the multimeter to the white (in the US) or to ground.
Once you find the hot, the wire attached to the other switch on the side with the single screw is probably the one that goes to your lights.
The other two wires should be attached to both switches, and these are called the travelers. They let the power move from one switch to the other switch, and alternate sending power based which way the switch is positions. So one of these is always hot. |
8,240 | I have a 3 way switch that was wired incorrectly when the switches were replaced with a different color switch. Is there a methodical way for me to identify which wires represent which piece of the system so I can correct the bad wiring?
Currently if switch 1 is on, switch 2 can turn light on or off. If switch 1 is off, then switch 2 does nothing. | 2011/08/11 | [
"https://diy.stackexchange.com/questions/8240",
"https://diy.stackexchange.com",
"https://diy.stackexchange.com/users/255/"
] | As Karl points out, first find the hot (source) wire. On a standard three way switch, this is usually attached to the screw on the side of the switch that only has one screw. The screw on the switch is usually a darker color too. There will be one of these on each switch obviously, so there are really only two wires to test. Use a multimeter by touching the wire, and the other lead from the multimeter to the white (in the US) or to ground.
Once you find the hot, the wire attached to the other switch on the side with the single screw is probably the one that goes to your lights.
The other two wires should be attached to both switches, and these are called the travelers. They let the power move from one switch to the other switch, and alternate sending power based which way the switch is positions. So one of these is always hot. | sometimes when 3-way switches don't function it is because they were installed without a 3-wire cable . The installer maynot have known that a 3-wire cable was needed for 3-way switches |
8,240 | I have a 3 way switch that was wired incorrectly when the switches were replaced with a different color switch. Is there a methodical way for me to identify which wires represent which piece of the system so I can correct the bad wiring?
Currently if switch 1 is on, switch 2 can turn light on or off. If switch 1 is off, then switch 2 does nothing. | 2011/08/11 | [
"https://diy.stackexchange.com/questions/8240",
"https://diy.stackexchange.com",
"https://diy.stackexchange.com/users/255/"
] | I had this EXACT issue when I moved into my new (to me) house. The original owner was a bit of a handyman and had done several small (and big) projects all over. In many cases regarding electrical work he'd done, I had to go back in and clean up.
Here's a fail-safe process to fix a three way setup that isn't working:
1. Turn off the breaker controlling this light. You may also need to cut additional breakers if either or both of the 3-ways are in "multi-gang" boxes with other switches on different circuits. Use a non-contact voltage tester to ensure all of the screws on the side of all the switches in both boxes are dead before pulling out any switches.
2. Disconnect all wires from both of the 3-way switches (but do not unwrap or un-nut any of the twisted wire bundles, or disassemble any other switches). Pull these wires out of the box and separate them so there is no bare copper touching any other metal.
3. Turn the panel breaker back on. From this moment until step 5, the second you are not extremely cautious around every bit of bare metal in that box, you will pay for it.
4. Probe all the wires you disconnected and separated one at a time with your non-contact voltage tester, being extremely careful not to touch any of the other wires with the tester or any part of you. You will find one loose black wire in one of the two boxes that is live, and all other wires should be dead. The live wire is your panel hot; remember it.
5. Turn off the breaker at the panel again.
6. Back at the box with the wire you identified as the panel hot, connect the hot wire to the "common" terminal of the 3-way switch for that box. Looking at the body of a three-way switch, the common terminal is the terminal that has another terminal screw on the switch body facing the same way, but *doesn't* have a screw directly *across* the switch body facing the *other* way. A picture's worth a thousand words; see below.
7. The other two insulated wires you removed from the switch are the "traveler" wires. One will be black, and the other red, and they should both be a part of the same "trunk" of Romex wire. Connect the black to one of the remaining terminals other than the grounding terminal, and the red to the other terminal.
8. Both of the two wire "trunks" should have white and bare wires in addition to the black and/or red; ALL the white wires in the box should be twisted into a bundle with a wire nut, and all bares should be twisted in a bundle with or without a nut.
9. Screw the terminals down firmly, attach the ground wire to the green grounding terminal screw if one was connected (bathrooms require a bare wire ground to be connected to the switch, most other rooms don't), cover all the switch terminals with a layer or two of electrical tape, and, being careful not to short out any wires, push the wires and switch back into the J-box and screw it down.
10. Now, go to the other switch box. Examine the loose wires which you disconnected from the switch (there should be two black and one red). The black wire that doesn't go into the same outer insulation conduit as the red wire is the hot lead to the light. The other two wires are the other ends of your traveler line. Both these "trunks" should have white and bare wires in addition to the black and/or red; the white wires should be twisted into a bundle with a wire nut, and bares should be twisted in a bundle with or without a nut.
11. Connect the light's hot wire to the switch's common terminal.
12. One note; if you connect the black wire from the traveler to the same side of the second switch that you connected the black traveler wire to on the first switch, the switches must be set opposite each other (one up and one down) for the light to be off. Personally, I prefer to be able to turn every light in the house off by pushing all the light switches down. If you're like me, then swap the red and black wires of the traveler pair, connecting the black wire to the opposite traveler terminal from the one you used on the first switch. This will result in the circuit being off when the switches are set the same way (both down or up).
13. Connect the traveler wires to the other switch terminals in the manner you choose, and connect the ground if you have one. Wrap the terminals in electrical tape, and put the switch back in the wall box.
14. Turn the panel breaker(s) back on. Have another person stand at one switch, while you stand at the other. If the light is on, flip one of the switches. Now, have the other person flip their switch; the light goes on. Flip yours (light off). Flip theirs again (light on), then flip yours again (light off). You've now gone through all four combinations of light positions, and verified that either switch can turn the light on or off.
15. If something still doesn't work, turn off the panel and take the switches out of the box (but don't disconnect them). Make sure none of the terminals are shorting out against any other piece of metal in the box (including the box itself, if it's conductive). If it STILL doesn't work, replace one or both switches (they're about $3 a pop). if it **STILL** doesn't work, I'd call an electrician; there may be a break in the wires of this circuit, or there may have been a mix-up involving multiple switches in the boxes; pretty much any way you slice it it could be dangerous or expensive for you to continue to try to fix it.
16. Once the switches are working to your satisfaction, put the switch plate back on over the box (make sure before you start screwing in plate screws that ALL the holes line up), and enjoy your repaired three-way circuit. | sometimes when 3-way switches don't function it is because they were installed without a 3-wire cable . The installer maynot have known that a 3-wire cable was needed for 3-way switches |
12,022,579 | The manifest defines the app icon that I want. But when I deploy the app the app icon is a completely different icon. What could possibly be going on?
The image that was showing as the icon is no where to be found in any of my project files. I haven't moved my ic\_launcher images at all so they are all still in their appropriate drawable folder. It was showing fine an hour ago on another computer.
It started showing differently when I downloaded my code from an svn repository on another computer and started eclipse.
Cleaning my project fixed this. | 2012/08/18 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/12022579",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/657936/"
] | Check paths (/res/drawable-\*) and try to clean your project | It could be possible, that your phone uses an other density than the icon you provided. Did you scale you icon down to all densities? Did you forget to delete the default app icon in the ldpi, mdpi and hdpi folder? |
12,022,579 | The manifest defines the app icon that I want. But when I deploy the app the app icon is a completely different icon. What could possibly be going on?
The image that was showing as the icon is no where to be found in any of my project files. I haven't moved my ic\_launcher images at all so they are all still in their appropriate drawable folder. It was showing fine an hour ago on another computer.
It started showing differently when I downloaded my code from an svn repository on another computer and started eclipse.
Cleaning my project fixed this. | 2012/08/18 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/12022579",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/657936/"
] | Check paths (/res/drawable-\*) and try to clean your project | Make sure that you have the res/drawable-hdpi,ldpi,mdpi have the correct images and sizes.
The website below might help you out with the sizes..
<http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/ui_guidelines/icon_design_launcher.html> |
86,912 | I see an event is being organised in Washington, DC, called the [Million Muppet March](http://millionmuppetmarch.com/). In British English, at least, [muppet](http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/muppet) has no very positive connotations:-
>
> muppet (ˈmʌpɪt) — n slang a stupid person
>
>
>
Is that also the case in American slang? | 2012/10/15 | [
"https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/86912",
"https://english.stackexchange.com",
"https://english.stackexchange.com/users/305/"
] | In American English, 'muppet', capitalized or not, has no meaning other than being characterized by the Jim Henson branded characters. The idea of it being a 'stupid person' is unknown. Some of the Muppet characters are slow, others are bright, others have other personality traits.
To call someone in the US a muppet would only make one wonder, 'Which one? Miss Piggy? Fozzy? Beaker?' | They are genuinely going to march with Muppets (capitalised and trademarked) to protest the cutting of funding for PBS (who hosts Sesame Street)
[WSBT](http://articles.wsbt.com/2012-10-14/puppet-protest_34453644)
>
> A grassroots protest to save PBS funding, dubbed the Million Muppet March, is scheduled for Saturday, Nov. 3 -- three days before the presidential election -- at the National Mall.
>
> Mitt Romney's threats during the first presidential debate to cut federal subsidies for PBS galvanized support for the "Sesame Street" network -- including Michael Bellavia and Chris Mecham.
>
>
>
[Muppet (n.)](http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=Muppet)
>
> Trademark (U.S.) Sept. 26, 1972, claiming use from 1971, but in print from Sept. 1970. Name coined by creator Jim Henson (1936-1990), who said, despite the resemblance to marionette and puppet (they have qualities of both), it has no etymology; he just liked the sound.
>
>
>
As for the question about the slang, I would think calling someone a muppet will be negative in any language, denoting a person with someone else's hand up inside making them do their bidding
[muppet - Urban Dictionary](http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=muppet):
>
> A person who is ignorant and generally has no idea about anything.
>
>
> |
86,912 | I see an event is being organised in Washington, DC, called the [Million Muppet March](http://millionmuppetmarch.com/). In British English, at least, [muppet](http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/muppet) has no very positive connotations:-
>
> muppet (ˈmʌpɪt) — n slang a stupid person
>
>
>
Is that also the case in American slang? | 2012/10/15 | [
"https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/86912",
"https://english.stackexchange.com",
"https://english.stackexchange.com/users/305/"
] | They are genuinely going to march with Muppets (capitalised and trademarked) to protest the cutting of funding for PBS (who hosts Sesame Street)
[WSBT](http://articles.wsbt.com/2012-10-14/puppet-protest_34453644)
>
> A grassroots protest to save PBS funding, dubbed the Million Muppet March, is scheduled for Saturday, Nov. 3 -- three days before the presidential election -- at the National Mall.
>
> Mitt Romney's threats during the first presidential debate to cut federal subsidies for PBS galvanized support for the "Sesame Street" network -- including Michael Bellavia and Chris Mecham.
>
>
>
[Muppet (n.)](http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=Muppet)
>
> Trademark (U.S.) Sept. 26, 1972, claiming use from 1971, but in print from Sept. 1970. Name coined by creator Jim Henson (1936-1990), who said, despite the resemblance to marionette and puppet (they have qualities of both), it has no etymology; he just liked the sound.
>
>
>
As for the question about the slang, I would think calling someone a muppet will be negative in any language, denoting a person with someone else's hand up inside making them do their bidding
[muppet - Urban Dictionary](http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=muppet):
>
> A person who is ignorant and generally has no idea about anything.
>
>
> | In the U.S., the term "muppet" is also used in the financial product sales industry (read: stock brokers) to refer to a "mark"; a ignorant individual who can be easily exploited. |
86,912 | I see an event is being organised in Washington, DC, called the [Million Muppet March](http://millionmuppetmarch.com/). In British English, at least, [muppet](http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/muppet) has no very positive connotations:-
>
> muppet (ˈmʌpɪt) — n slang a stupid person
>
>
>
Is that also the case in American slang? | 2012/10/15 | [
"https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/86912",
"https://english.stackexchange.com",
"https://english.stackexchange.com/users/305/"
] | In American English, 'muppet', capitalized or not, has no meaning other than being characterized by the Jim Henson branded characters. The idea of it being a 'stupid person' is unknown. Some of the Muppet characters are slow, others are bright, others have other personality traits.
To call someone in the US a muppet would only make one wonder, 'Which one? Miss Piggy? Fozzy? Beaker?' | As a dual citizen of both countries I can say beyond a doubt there is no American equivalent of the British slang word muppet. Same goes for plonker, wally, jesse and many many more. The British are very creative. |
86,912 | I see an event is being organised in Washington, DC, called the [Million Muppet March](http://millionmuppetmarch.com/). In British English, at least, [muppet](http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/muppet) has no very positive connotations:-
>
> muppet (ˈmʌpɪt) — n slang a stupid person
>
>
>
Is that also the case in American slang? | 2012/10/15 | [
"https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/86912",
"https://english.stackexchange.com",
"https://english.stackexchange.com/users/305/"
] | As a dual citizen of both countries I can say beyond a doubt there is no American equivalent of the British slang word muppet. Same goes for plonker, wally, jesse and many many more. The British are very creative. | For an example of the British usage of "muppet", see the film *Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels*, in which the character "Hatchet" Harry Lonsdale (played by P.H. Moriarty) remarks, "I don't care who you use as long as they're not complete muppets".
"Moppet" is an alternative spelling for "Poppet" (see the Wikipedia article on Poppet) and has nothing to do with "muppet". If a chap calls his girlfriend a poppet he will probably be in her good books; if he calls her a muppet he will regret it. |
86,912 | I see an event is being organised in Washington, DC, called the [Million Muppet March](http://millionmuppetmarch.com/). In British English, at least, [muppet](http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/muppet) has no very positive connotations:-
>
> muppet (ˈmʌpɪt) — n slang a stupid person
>
>
>
Is that also the case in American slang? | 2012/10/15 | [
"https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/86912",
"https://english.stackexchange.com",
"https://english.stackexchange.com/users/305/"
] | They are genuinely going to march with Muppets (capitalised and trademarked) to protest the cutting of funding for PBS (who hosts Sesame Street)
[WSBT](http://articles.wsbt.com/2012-10-14/puppet-protest_34453644)
>
> A grassroots protest to save PBS funding, dubbed the Million Muppet March, is scheduled for Saturday, Nov. 3 -- three days before the presidential election -- at the National Mall.
>
> Mitt Romney's threats during the first presidential debate to cut federal subsidies for PBS galvanized support for the "Sesame Street" network -- including Michael Bellavia and Chris Mecham.
>
>
>
[Muppet (n.)](http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=Muppet)
>
> Trademark (U.S.) Sept. 26, 1972, claiming use from 1971, but in print from Sept. 1970. Name coined by creator Jim Henson (1936-1990), who said, despite the resemblance to marionette and puppet (they have qualities of both), it has no etymology; he just liked the sound.
>
>
>
As for the question about the slang, I would think calling someone a muppet will be negative in any language, denoting a person with someone else's hand up inside making them do their bidding
[muppet - Urban Dictionary](http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=muppet):
>
> A person who is ignorant and generally has no idea about anything.
>
>
> | Reuters [reports](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/13/million-muppet-march-romney-pbs-big-bird_n_1962831.html):
*'Million Muppet March' Planned To Defend PBS After Romney Big Bird Comments*
>
> Plans to save Big Bird, the fuzzy yellow character on U.S. public television's "Sesame Street," from possible extinction are taking shape in the form of a puppet-based protest next month dubbed the "Million Muppet March."
>
>
>
The context explains the use of the term Muppet here.
[All about The Muppets & Sesame Street](http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/What_is_a_Muppet?)
>
> The term Muppet was invented by Jim Henson at the beginning of his career to describe his puppet act. It is sometimes claimed, and refuted, that Henson created the term as a combination of the words marionette and puppet. Henson used the Muppet name to define the characters in his productions, and to distinguish his act from those of other puppeteers.
>
>
> |
86,912 | I see an event is being organised in Washington, DC, called the [Million Muppet March](http://millionmuppetmarch.com/). In British English, at least, [muppet](http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/muppet) has no very positive connotations:-
>
> muppet (ˈmʌpɪt) — n slang a stupid person
>
>
>
Is that also the case in American slang? | 2012/10/15 | [
"https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/86912",
"https://english.stackexchange.com",
"https://english.stackexchange.com/users/305/"
] | They are genuinely going to march with Muppets (capitalised and trademarked) to protest the cutting of funding for PBS (who hosts Sesame Street)
[WSBT](http://articles.wsbt.com/2012-10-14/puppet-protest_34453644)
>
> A grassroots protest to save PBS funding, dubbed the Million Muppet March, is scheduled for Saturday, Nov. 3 -- three days before the presidential election -- at the National Mall.
>
> Mitt Romney's threats during the first presidential debate to cut federal subsidies for PBS galvanized support for the "Sesame Street" network -- including Michael Bellavia and Chris Mecham.
>
>
>
[Muppet (n.)](http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=Muppet)
>
> Trademark (U.S.) Sept. 26, 1972, claiming use from 1971, but in print from Sept. 1970. Name coined by creator Jim Henson (1936-1990), who said, despite the resemblance to marionette and puppet (they have qualities of both), it has no etymology; he just liked the sound.
>
>
>
As for the question about the slang, I would think calling someone a muppet will be negative in any language, denoting a person with someone else's hand up inside making them do their bidding
[muppet - Urban Dictionary](http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=muppet):
>
> A person who is ignorant and generally has no idea about anything.
>
>
> | For an example of the British usage of "muppet", see the film *Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels*, in which the character "Hatchet" Harry Lonsdale (played by P.H. Moriarty) remarks, "I don't care who you use as long as they're not complete muppets".
"Moppet" is an alternative spelling for "Poppet" (see the Wikipedia article on Poppet) and has nothing to do with "muppet". If a chap calls his girlfriend a poppet he will probably be in her good books; if he calls her a muppet he will regret it. |
86,912 | I see an event is being organised in Washington, DC, called the [Million Muppet March](http://millionmuppetmarch.com/). In British English, at least, [muppet](http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/muppet) has no very positive connotations:-
>
> muppet (ˈmʌpɪt) — n slang a stupid person
>
>
>
Is that also the case in American slang? | 2012/10/15 | [
"https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/86912",
"https://english.stackexchange.com",
"https://english.stackexchange.com/users/305/"
] | In American English, 'muppet', capitalized or not, has no meaning other than being characterized by the Jim Henson branded characters. The idea of it being a 'stupid person' is unknown. Some of the Muppet characters are slow, others are bright, others have other personality traits.
To call someone in the US a muppet would only make one wonder, 'Which one? Miss Piggy? Fozzy? Beaker?' | Reuters [reports](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/13/million-muppet-march-romney-pbs-big-bird_n_1962831.html):
*'Million Muppet March' Planned To Defend PBS After Romney Big Bird Comments*
>
> Plans to save Big Bird, the fuzzy yellow character on U.S. public television's "Sesame Street," from possible extinction are taking shape in the form of a puppet-based protest next month dubbed the "Million Muppet March."
>
>
>
The context explains the use of the term Muppet here.
[All about The Muppets & Sesame Street](http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/What_is_a_Muppet?)
>
> The term Muppet was invented by Jim Henson at the beginning of his career to describe his puppet act. It is sometimes claimed, and refuted, that Henson created the term as a combination of the words marionette and puppet. Henson used the Muppet name to define the characters in his productions, and to distinguish his act from those of other puppeteers.
>
>
> |
86,912 | I see an event is being organised in Washington, DC, called the [Million Muppet March](http://millionmuppetmarch.com/). In British English, at least, [muppet](http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/muppet) has no very positive connotations:-
>
> muppet (ˈmʌpɪt) — n slang a stupid person
>
>
>
Is that also the case in American slang? | 2012/10/15 | [
"https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/86912",
"https://english.stackexchange.com",
"https://english.stackexchange.com/users/305/"
] | In American English, 'muppet', capitalized or not, has no meaning other than being characterized by the Jim Henson branded characters. The idea of it being a 'stupid person' is unknown. Some of the Muppet characters are slow, others are bright, others have other personality traits.
To call someone in the US a muppet would only make one wonder, 'Which one? Miss Piggy? Fozzy? Beaker?' | For an example of the British usage of "muppet", see the film *Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels*, in which the character "Hatchet" Harry Lonsdale (played by P.H. Moriarty) remarks, "I don't care who you use as long as they're not complete muppets".
"Moppet" is an alternative spelling for "Poppet" (see the Wikipedia article on Poppet) and has nothing to do with "muppet". If a chap calls his girlfriend a poppet he will probably be in her good books; if he calls her a muppet he will regret it. |
86,912 | I see an event is being organised in Washington, DC, called the [Million Muppet March](http://millionmuppetmarch.com/). In British English, at least, [muppet](http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/muppet) has no very positive connotations:-
>
> muppet (ˈmʌpɪt) — n slang a stupid person
>
>
>
Is that also the case in American slang? | 2012/10/15 | [
"https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/86912",
"https://english.stackexchange.com",
"https://english.stackexchange.com/users/305/"
] | As a dual citizen of both countries I can say beyond a doubt there is no American equivalent of the British slang word muppet. Same goes for plonker, wally, jesse and many many more. The British are very creative. | In the U.S., the term "muppet" is also used in the financial product sales industry (read: stock brokers) to refer to a "mark"; a ignorant individual who can be easily exploited. |
86,912 | I see an event is being organised in Washington, DC, called the [Million Muppet March](http://millionmuppetmarch.com/). In British English, at least, [muppet](http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/muppet) has no very positive connotations:-
>
> muppet (ˈmʌpɪt) — n slang a stupid person
>
>
>
Is that also the case in American slang? | 2012/10/15 | [
"https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/86912",
"https://english.stackexchange.com",
"https://english.stackexchange.com/users/305/"
] | In American English, 'muppet', capitalized or not, has no meaning other than being characterized by the Jim Henson branded characters. The idea of it being a 'stupid person' is unknown. Some of the Muppet characters are slow, others are bright, others have other personality traits.
To call someone in the US a muppet would only make one wonder, 'Which one? Miss Piggy? Fozzy? Beaker?' | In the U.S., the term "muppet" is also used in the financial product sales industry (read: stock brokers) to refer to a "mark"; a ignorant individual who can be easily exploited. |
1,200,527 | I have a job setup in SQL Server 2005 which has an Operating System (CmdExec) step.
The step calls a program which can take a long time to run. I see that if the program takes longer than 1 minute 40 seconds to respond the step fails with an error message "The operation has timed out". The program actually continues to run and generates the desired results.
How can I set the timeout period for the step in this job. Alternatively if there is a way to set the timeout for the entire job that would be just as useful since this is the only step in the job. If all else fails I would be willing to change the timeout for the entire server although obviously this would be a last resort.
I have tried looking into the properties for the step, job, and SQL Server Agent but have not managed to find anywhere to set this option. | 2009/07/29 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/1200527",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/3821/"
] | SQL jobs don't have timeouts -- you can't configure them to stop on their own if they run too long, or reach a particular point in time. (Woulda saved me a lot of development time if you could!) You can configure steps to check for times or durations, and can code the actions taken within steps to check for times, but at the job or the step level, no.
Which is what makes this an interesting question. Why are you getting a timeout? Based on what you've said, I'd guess that SQL Agent is unable to tell that the OS has received the "do this" command you're sending via the cmdexec step. After sending and waiting, it thinks the job never started and reports accordingly (and there's your hidden system timeout). How is this happening? You could investingate security configurations or file access rights, but I'd start by reviewing whatever routine it is that you're starting up -- something about it smells fishy to me. | The Webservices is your answer. As Phillip pointed out, there is no time out for steps in SQL Server jobs.
A question you might need to ask is why the web service is timing out. In my experience, the problem could be that you're running too large a request, either returning too long a result or resulting in somerthing else that's causing the web servce to run long.
Otherwise you need to talk to the web service provider to extend the time out. |
19,697,978 | In the introduction to ZFS file system, I saw one statement:
>
> ZFS file system is quite scalable, 128 bit filesystem
>
>
>
What does 128-bit filesystem mean? What makes it scalable? | 2013/10/31 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/19697978",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/161289/"
] | ZFS is a “128 bit” file system, which means 128 bits is the largest size address for any unit within it. This size allows capacities and sizes not likely to become confining anytime in the foreseeable future. For instance, the theoretical limits it imposes include 2^48 entries per directory, a maximum file size of 16 EB (2^64 or ~16 \* 2^18 bytes), and a maximum of 2^64 devices per “zpool”. Source: [File System Char.](http://www.whamcloud.com/resources/file-system-characteristics/)
The ZFS 128-bit addressing scheme and can store 256 quadrillion zettabytes, which translates into a scalable file system that exceeds 1000s of PB (petabytes) of storage capacity, while allowing to be managed in single or multiple ZFS’s Z-RAID arrays. Source: [zfs-unlimited-scalability](http://www.areasys.com/zfs-unlimited-scalability/) | TLDR it can hold much larger files then a 64 bit F. such as. EXT.
ZFS is a 128-bit file system,[85] so it can address 1.84 × 1019 times more data than 64-bit systems such as Btrfs. The limitations of ZFS are designed to be so large that they should not be encountered in the foreseeable future.
Some theoretical limits in ZFS are:
248 — Number of entries in any individual directory[86]
16 Exbibytes (264 bytes) — Maximum size of a single file
16 Exbibytes — Maximum size of any attribute
256 Zebibytes (278 bytes) — Maximum size of any zpool
256 — Number of attributes of a file (actually constrained to 248 for the number of files in a ZFS file system)
264 — Number of devices in any zpool
264 — Number of zpools in a system
264 — Number of file systems in a zpool
[More](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFS) here. |
168,624 | When a semicolon is used to join two or more ideas (parts) in a sentence, those ideas are then given equal position or rank.
>
> Some people write with a word processor; others write with a pen or pencil.
>
>
>
Can you use the semi colon or dash to break down this example:
>
> You are the highest bidder; you are to blame; no one else. I can't help you -- try and look for some other help.
>
>
>
As a full stop would change the tone. | 2018/06/05 | [
"https://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/168624",
"https://ell.stackexchange.com",
"https://ell.stackexchange.com/users/73722/"
] | The two common usages I'm aware of are linking complete sentences that are related to each other and separating items in a list where the items consist of more than one word.
Your first example should use a comma instead of a semi-colon as the second part relies on the first to make sense. Other what? Other people. What other people? Ones that use word processors.
Second example is informal writing based on speech so rules are different.
I'd put: "You are the highest bidder. You are to blame, no one else." The second part is fine, the dashes suggest a pause for dramatic effect. | The purpose of all punctuation is to clarify meaning. The principle use of the semi-colon is to join two related sentences. So ask yourself "If I used a full-stop, would this still make sense".
>
> Some people write with a word processor.
>
> Others write with a pen or pencil.
>
>
>
These are both grammatically complete so the work as complete sentences. But the second one refers to the first, so linking them into a single sentence with semicolon is a good idea.
>
> You are the highest bidder.
>
> You are to blame.
>
> No one else.
>
>
>
> I can't help you -- try and look for some other help.
>
>
>
The first two are complete sentences. You could link these with a semicolon, but they are not particularly related, so a full-stop would also be correct. The third is not a complete sentence, so a semicolon doesn't work here. It would be best to use "and"
>
> You the highest bidder. You are to blame, and no one else.
>
>
>
In the last part, a dash has been used instead of a semicolon or full stop, for dramatic effect. That seems reasonable; it certainly doesn't make it hard to understand. |
382,465 | I have a desktop with a large music library connected to a high quality stereo and I'd like to be able to control which songs are playing, and in an ideal world, make playlists, using a laptop.
Essentially, I want the iTunes Remote app, which I have installed on my iPhone, to work from a laptop as well.
Desktop: Windows 7
Laptops: Windows Vista/XP
Note: I am not asking how to stream music from my desktop to my laptop. | 2012/01/25 | [
"https://superuser.com/questions/382465",
"https://superuser.com",
"https://superuser.com/users/113973/"
] | You can use [TeamViewer](http://www.teamviewer.com/en/index.aspx), a free app which works both on a PC and mobile devices such as the iPhone and gives you remove access to any device/PC via the Internet.
It is not a direct iTunes-remote-control, however, you can do almost anything you normally do on your PC (including operate iTunes) from a remote device, i.e. your iPhone. | Here is a link to a java base app from google:
<https://code.google.com/archive/p/tunesremote-se/wikis>
Seems to work. |
382,465 | I have a desktop with a large music library connected to a high quality stereo and I'd like to be able to control which songs are playing, and in an ideal world, make playlists, using a laptop.
Essentially, I want the iTunes Remote app, which I have installed on my iPhone, to work from a laptop as well.
Desktop: Windows 7
Laptops: Windows Vista/XP
Note: I am not asking how to stream music from my desktop to my laptop. | 2012/01/25 | [
"https://superuser.com/questions/382465",
"https://superuser.com",
"https://superuser.com/users/113973/"
] | Realise this is an old thread, however, there is an app in the Windows Store called "rtRemote for iTunes" - this is a Windows 8 /RT remote control for iTunes that is very similar to the Apple Remote app but you can run it on a laptop or a tablet. Whilst this is for Windows 8 (not Windows 7 as per your specific scenario), as the thread is almost a year old, you may have upgraded by now!
See <http://www.bizmodeller.com/rtRemote> | Here is a link to a java base app from google:
<https://code.google.com/archive/p/tunesremote-se/wikis>
Seems to work. |
92,167 | I am measuring a time of about 100-150 milliseconds from sending TCP SYN to getting SYN/ACK, between two linux computers connected to the same Cisco switch.
Consider:
* The machines are very powerful, and neither them nor the switch is heavily loaded.
* From analyzing tcpdumps logs on the two machines I see the problem is not in the endpoints but rather in the network itself (the client sees 100-150 ms delay, but the server processes the responses in about 10 ms).
* Only SYN requests are slow. Afterwards, a normal TCP packets gets an ACK right away.
So, my questions are:
* Am I right to think this is way, way too much?
* What latency should I aim for?
* What can I do to further diagnose and solve the issue?
**Edit** - We've taken the switch out of the equation. The two computers are now connected in a cross cable, and we're still seeing the problem. Both are on full duplex, 100 MBPS. | 2009/12/08 | [
"https://serverfault.com/questions/92167",
"https://serverfault.com",
"https://serverfault.com/users/88/"
] | The usual suspects:
* Duplex mismatch
+ check on switch for collisions or errors
+ check on hosts for collisions or errorsIf you see collisions, that end is half duplex and should be set to full. If you see errors, check the other end for collisions. If both ends have errors, you may have a bad cable.
* DNS timeouts
+ log onto one host, lookup with nslookup the IP of the other. You should get a name or an error very quickly | This seems like the latency you would get going from one side of US to the other. Is the switch managed? Can you connect to the switch and check for issues? I would expect <1-2 ms on a local network |
92,167 | I am measuring a time of about 100-150 milliseconds from sending TCP SYN to getting SYN/ACK, between two linux computers connected to the same Cisco switch.
Consider:
* The machines are very powerful, and neither them nor the switch is heavily loaded.
* From analyzing tcpdumps logs on the two machines I see the problem is not in the endpoints but rather in the network itself (the client sees 100-150 ms delay, but the server processes the responses in about 10 ms).
* Only SYN requests are slow. Afterwards, a normal TCP packets gets an ACK right away.
So, my questions are:
* Am I right to think this is way, way too much?
* What latency should I aim for?
* What can I do to further diagnose and solve the issue?
**Edit** - We've taken the switch out of the equation. The two computers are now connected in a cross cable, and we're still seeing the problem. Both are on full duplex, 100 MBPS. | 2009/12/08 | [
"https://serverfault.com/questions/92167",
"https://serverfault.com",
"https://serverfault.com/users/88/"
] | The usual suspects:
* Duplex mismatch
+ check on switch for collisions or errors
+ check on hosts for collisions or errorsIf you see collisions, that end is half duplex and should be set to full. If you see errors, check the other end for collisions. If both ends have errors, you may have a bad cable.
* DNS timeouts
+ log onto one host, lookup with nslookup the IP of the other. You should get a name or an error very quickly | What model of Cisco switch are you using? One thing that could be happening is if the switch doesn't know which port you're server is on, it will need to flood all ports with the packet, which could take time (shouldn't take 100ms though). You can verify by running TCP dump on another server that isn't one of the two servers you are using. Once the server responds, it will then learn the port-mac assignment and do the forwarding in asic. This could be especially prevalent on lower end cisco switches.
Also, do you have per-port ACL's? That could also require CPU switching which would be orders of magnitude slower than in ASIC. Do you have the same problem when running pings, in that the first ping has 100ms delay, and then subsequent pings are <1ms? If it's a lower end switch and only getting delay on tcp/ip, I'd check that there isn't an ACL that is applied to TCP/IP packets.
I would also check the switch for CPU load, even if it's low usage, if it's got some stupid config that is causing it to switch in CPU, it can easily be overloaded. We've overloaded high end switches (10Gbps backhaul) with traffic in the 100Mbps range because we were inadvertently sending traffic that had to be switched within the CPU. |
92,167 | I am measuring a time of about 100-150 milliseconds from sending TCP SYN to getting SYN/ACK, between two linux computers connected to the same Cisco switch.
Consider:
* The machines are very powerful, and neither them nor the switch is heavily loaded.
* From analyzing tcpdumps logs on the two machines I see the problem is not in the endpoints but rather in the network itself (the client sees 100-150 ms delay, but the server processes the responses in about 10 ms).
* Only SYN requests are slow. Afterwards, a normal TCP packets gets an ACK right away.
So, my questions are:
* Am I right to think this is way, way too much?
* What latency should I aim for?
* What can I do to further diagnose and solve the issue?
**Edit** - We've taken the switch out of the equation. The two computers are now connected in a cross cable, and we're still seeing the problem. Both are on full duplex, 100 MBPS. | 2009/12/08 | [
"https://serverfault.com/questions/92167",
"https://serverfault.com",
"https://serverfault.com/users/88/"
] | What model of Cisco switch are you using? One thing that could be happening is if the switch doesn't know which port you're server is on, it will need to flood all ports with the packet, which could take time (shouldn't take 100ms though). You can verify by running TCP dump on another server that isn't one of the two servers you are using. Once the server responds, it will then learn the port-mac assignment and do the forwarding in asic. This could be especially prevalent on lower end cisco switches.
Also, do you have per-port ACL's? That could also require CPU switching which would be orders of magnitude slower than in ASIC. Do you have the same problem when running pings, in that the first ping has 100ms delay, and then subsequent pings are <1ms? If it's a lower end switch and only getting delay on tcp/ip, I'd check that there isn't an ACL that is applied to TCP/IP packets.
I would also check the switch for CPU load, even if it's low usage, if it's got some stupid config that is causing it to switch in CPU, it can easily be overloaded. We've overloaded high end switches (10Gbps backhaul) with traffic in the 100Mbps range because we were inadvertently sending traffic that had to be switched within the CPU. | This seems like the latency you would get going from one side of US to the other. Is the switch managed? Can you connect to the switch and check for issues? I would expect <1-2 ms on a local network |
92,167 | I am measuring a time of about 100-150 milliseconds from sending TCP SYN to getting SYN/ACK, between two linux computers connected to the same Cisco switch.
Consider:
* The machines are very powerful, and neither them nor the switch is heavily loaded.
* From analyzing tcpdumps logs on the two machines I see the problem is not in the endpoints but rather in the network itself (the client sees 100-150 ms delay, but the server processes the responses in about 10 ms).
* Only SYN requests are slow. Afterwards, a normal TCP packets gets an ACK right away.
So, my questions are:
* Am I right to think this is way, way too much?
* What latency should I aim for?
* What can I do to further diagnose and solve the issue?
**Edit** - We've taken the switch out of the equation. The two computers are now connected in a cross cable, and we're still seeing the problem. Both are on full duplex, 100 MBPS. | 2009/12/08 | [
"https://serverfault.com/questions/92167",
"https://serverfault.com",
"https://serverfault.com/users/88/"
] | Well, crap. It appears I misread both the tcpdump and wireshark logs. The delay I was getting was 100 microseconds, not millis!
[alt text http://ironicsurrealism.blogivists.com/files/2009/10/homer-simpson-doh.gif](http://ironicsurrealism.blogivists.com/files/2009/10/homer-simpson-doh.gif) | Have you checked the cabling? Bad cables and/or punchdowns can result in retries that can greatly increase latency. |
92,167 | I am measuring a time of about 100-150 milliseconds from sending TCP SYN to getting SYN/ACK, between two linux computers connected to the same Cisco switch.
Consider:
* The machines are very powerful, and neither them nor the switch is heavily loaded.
* From analyzing tcpdumps logs on the two machines I see the problem is not in the endpoints but rather in the network itself (the client sees 100-150 ms delay, but the server processes the responses in about 10 ms).
* Only SYN requests are slow. Afterwards, a normal TCP packets gets an ACK right away.
So, my questions are:
* Am I right to think this is way, way too much?
* What latency should I aim for?
* What can I do to further diagnose and solve the issue?
**Edit** - We've taken the switch out of the equation. The two computers are now connected in a cross cable, and we're still seeing the problem. Both are on full duplex, 100 MBPS. | 2009/12/08 | [
"https://serverfault.com/questions/92167",
"https://serverfault.com",
"https://serverfault.com/users/88/"
] | The usual suspects:
* Duplex mismatch
+ check on switch for collisions or errors
+ check on hosts for collisions or errorsIf you see collisions, that end is half duplex and should be set to full. If you see errors, check the other end for collisions. If both ends have errors, you may have a bad cable.
* DNS timeouts
+ log onto one host, lookup with nslookup the IP of the other. You should get a name or an error very quickly | Have you checked the cabling? Bad cables and/or punchdowns can result in retries that can greatly increase latency. |
92,167 | I am measuring a time of about 100-150 milliseconds from sending TCP SYN to getting SYN/ACK, between two linux computers connected to the same Cisco switch.
Consider:
* The machines are very powerful, and neither them nor the switch is heavily loaded.
* From analyzing tcpdumps logs on the two machines I see the problem is not in the endpoints but rather in the network itself (the client sees 100-150 ms delay, but the server processes the responses in about 10 ms).
* Only SYN requests are slow. Afterwards, a normal TCP packets gets an ACK right away.
So, my questions are:
* Am I right to think this is way, way too much?
* What latency should I aim for?
* What can I do to further diagnose and solve the issue?
**Edit** - We've taken the switch out of the equation. The two computers are now connected in a cross cable, and we're still seeing the problem. Both are on full duplex, 100 MBPS. | 2009/12/08 | [
"https://serverfault.com/questions/92167",
"https://serverfault.com",
"https://serverfault.com/users/88/"
] | Have you checked the cabling? Bad cables and/or punchdowns can result in retries that can greatly increase latency. | This seems like the latency you would get going from one side of US to the other. Is the switch managed? Can you connect to the switch and check for issues? I would expect <1-2 ms on a local network |
92,167 | I am measuring a time of about 100-150 milliseconds from sending TCP SYN to getting SYN/ACK, between two linux computers connected to the same Cisco switch.
Consider:
* The machines are very powerful, and neither them nor the switch is heavily loaded.
* From analyzing tcpdumps logs on the two machines I see the problem is not in the endpoints but rather in the network itself (the client sees 100-150 ms delay, but the server processes the responses in about 10 ms).
* Only SYN requests are slow. Afterwards, a normal TCP packets gets an ACK right away.
So, my questions are:
* Am I right to think this is way, way too much?
* What latency should I aim for?
* What can I do to further diagnose and solve the issue?
**Edit** - We've taken the switch out of the equation. The two computers are now connected in a cross cable, and we're still seeing the problem. Both are on full duplex, 100 MBPS. | 2009/12/08 | [
"https://serverfault.com/questions/92167",
"https://serverfault.com",
"https://serverfault.com/users/88/"
] | Well, crap. It appears I misread both the tcpdump and wireshark logs. The delay I was getting was 100 microseconds, not millis!
[alt text http://ironicsurrealism.blogivists.com/files/2009/10/homer-simpson-doh.gif](http://ironicsurrealism.blogivists.com/files/2009/10/homer-simpson-doh.gif) | The usual suspects:
* Duplex mismatch
+ check on switch for collisions or errors
+ check on hosts for collisions or errorsIf you see collisions, that end is half duplex and should be set to full. If you see errors, check the other end for collisions. If both ends have errors, you may have a bad cable.
* DNS timeouts
+ log onto one host, lookup with nslookup the IP of the other. You should get a name or an error very quickly |
92,167 | I am measuring a time of about 100-150 milliseconds from sending TCP SYN to getting SYN/ACK, between two linux computers connected to the same Cisco switch.
Consider:
* The machines are very powerful, and neither them nor the switch is heavily loaded.
* From analyzing tcpdumps logs on the two machines I see the problem is not in the endpoints but rather in the network itself (the client sees 100-150 ms delay, but the server processes the responses in about 10 ms).
* Only SYN requests are slow. Afterwards, a normal TCP packets gets an ACK right away.
So, my questions are:
* Am I right to think this is way, way too much?
* What latency should I aim for?
* What can I do to further diagnose and solve the issue?
**Edit** - We've taken the switch out of the equation. The two computers are now connected in a cross cable, and we're still seeing the problem. Both are on full duplex, 100 MBPS. | 2009/12/08 | [
"https://serverfault.com/questions/92167",
"https://serverfault.com",
"https://serverfault.com/users/88/"
] | What model of Cisco switch are you using? One thing that could be happening is if the switch doesn't know which port you're server is on, it will need to flood all ports with the packet, which could take time (shouldn't take 100ms though). You can verify by running TCP dump on another server that isn't one of the two servers you are using. Once the server responds, it will then learn the port-mac assignment and do the forwarding in asic. This could be especially prevalent on lower end cisco switches.
Also, do you have per-port ACL's? That could also require CPU switching which would be orders of magnitude slower than in ASIC. Do you have the same problem when running pings, in that the first ping has 100ms delay, and then subsequent pings are <1ms? If it's a lower end switch and only getting delay on tcp/ip, I'd check that there isn't an ACL that is applied to TCP/IP packets.
I would also check the switch for CPU load, even if it's low usage, if it's got some stupid config that is causing it to switch in CPU, it can easily be overloaded. We've overloaded high end switches (10Gbps backhaul) with traffic in the 100Mbps range because we were inadvertently sending traffic that had to be switched within the CPU. | In my experience Cisco switches should insert less than 1ms to the latency, so yes, this is an indication of a problem.
Are both devices connected to the switch via wires (i.e. not 802.11)? In the same VLAN?
Is this a trusted network? If the devices and switches are lightly loaded I would be concerned that someone was using an ARP hijack to insert themselves in the traffic flow as a man-in-the-middle...
If you check the ARP table on these boxes (arp -an) and check the IP address of the other box with the output of ifconfig, do the MAC addresses match?
You mention that you are analysing tcpdump output. Are you comparing the timestamps between the two boxes? If so, are you sure that the clocks are in sync?
Do you have access to a third host on the network to compare performance to the other two boxes? |
92,167 | I am measuring a time of about 100-150 milliseconds from sending TCP SYN to getting SYN/ACK, between two linux computers connected to the same Cisco switch.
Consider:
* The machines are very powerful, and neither them nor the switch is heavily loaded.
* From analyzing tcpdumps logs on the two machines I see the problem is not in the endpoints but rather in the network itself (the client sees 100-150 ms delay, but the server processes the responses in about 10 ms).
* Only SYN requests are slow. Afterwards, a normal TCP packets gets an ACK right away.
So, my questions are:
* Am I right to think this is way, way too much?
* What latency should I aim for?
* What can I do to further diagnose and solve the issue?
**Edit** - We've taken the switch out of the equation. The two computers are now connected in a cross cable, and we're still seeing the problem. Both are on full duplex, 100 MBPS. | 2009/12/08 | [
"https://serverfault.com/questions/92167",
"https://serverfault.com",
"https://serverfault.com/users/88/"
] | Well, crap. It appears I misread both the tcpdump and wireshark logs. The delay I was getting was 100 microseconds, not millis!
[alt text http://ironicsurrealism.blogivists.com/files/2009/10/homer-simpson-doh.gif](http://ironicsurrealism.blogivists.com/files/2009/10/homer-simpson-doh.gif) | What model of Cisco switch are you using? One thing that could be happening is if the switch doesn't know which port you're server is on, it will need to flood all ports with the packet, which could take time (shouldn't take 100ms though). You can verify by running TCP dump on another server that isn't one of the two servers you are using. Once the server responds, it will then learn the port-mac assignment and do the forwarding in asic. This could be especially prevalent on lower end cisco switches.
Also, do you have per-port ACL's? That could also require CPU switching which would be orders of magnitude slower than in ASIC. Do you have the same problem when running pings, in that the first ping has 100ms delay, and then subsequent pings are <1ms? If it's a lower end switch and only getting delay on tcp/ip, I'd check that there isn't an ACL that is applied to TCP/IP packets.
I would also check the switch for CPU load, even if it's low usage, if it's got some stupid config that is causing it to switch in CPU, it can easily be overloaded. We've overloaded high end switches (10Gbps backhaul) with traffic in the 100Mbps range because we were inadvertently sending traffic that had to be switched within the CPU. |
92,167 | I am measuring a time of about 100-150 milliseconds from sending TCP SYN to getting SYN/ACK, between two linux computers connected to the same Cisco switch.
Consider:
* The machines are very powerful, and neither them nor the switch is heavily loaded.
* From analyzing tcpdumps logs on the two machines I see the problem is not in the endpoints but rather in the network itself (the client sees 100-150 ms delay, but the server processes the responses in about 10 ms).
* Only SYN requests are slow. Afterwards, a normal TCP packets gets an ACK right away.
So, my questions are:
* Am I right to think this is way, way too much?
* What latency should I aim for?
* What can I do to further diagnose and solve the issue?
**Edit** - We've taken the switch out of the equation. The two computers are now connected in a cross cable, and we're still seeing the problem. Both are on full duplex, 100 MBPS. | 2009/12/08 | [
"https://serverfault.com/questions/92167",
"https://serverfault.com",
"https://serverfault.com/users/88/"
] | Have you checked the cabling? Bad cables and/or punchdowns can result in retries that can greatly increase latency. | In my experience Cisco switches should insert less than 1ms to the latency, so yes, this is an indication of a problem.
Are both devices connected to the switch via wires (i.e. not 802.11)? In the same VLAN?
Is this a trusted network? If the devices and switches are lightly loaded I would be concerned that someone was using an ARP hijack to insert themselves in the traffic flow as a man-in-the-middle...
If you check the ARP table on these boxes (arp -an) and check the IP address of the other box with the output of ifconfig, do the MAC addresses match?
You mention that you are analysing tcpdump output. Are you comparing the timestamps between the two boxes? If so, are you sure that the clocks are in sync?
Do you have access to a third host on the network to compare performance to the other two boxes? |
51,529 | I have a 24 inch, mid-2007 iMac purchased used. I don't know the original owner and it's out of warranty.
On the display is a series of tan or yellowish horizontal lines - all an approximate inch apart, for a total of about eight or so. The spacing between is regular. They're wider (about an inch wide) at the left and right edges of the screen and taper to nothing at the middle of the screen. They are particularly noticeable on light-colored or white backgrounds, such as a Pages document, most web sites, etc.
I'm certainly open to disassembling the iMac and getting at whatever it may be (the onboard GPU?) that's causing the problem. In fact I have opened the machine for an HD replacement and fanned and cleaned, but to no result.
I also use [smcFanControl](http://www.eidac.de/?p=207) to boost the fans, as I thought it may be poor cooling in the machine, but this has no effect.
Does any one have ideas or suggestions as to what is causing these discolored lines?
 | 2012/05/17 | [
"https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/51529",
"https://apple.stackexchange.com",
"https://apple.stackexchange.com/users/22623/"
] | This looks like a backlight uniformity issue.
This is where the screen isn't being evenly lit by the CCFL bulbs behind it. Some of them are outputting differing amounts of light and cause this perceived 'discolouration'. The lighter colours really do show it.
Unfortunately, this is one of the disadvantages of a CCFL backlight system as opposed to something like LED backlighting - backlight uniformity can become an issue, especially with time.
You'd be looking at a screen replacement - outside of warranty, that's gonna cost you. | If you boot the Mac holding the option key, this will have the firmware drive the screen and isolate any software corruption or odd driver bugs in most cases and let you know it's a hardware issue.
Usually vertical lines are the LCD failing - then a cable issue - lastly the GPU.
Usually horizontal lines are a cabling issue - then a GPU issue - lastly a LCD issue.
That's not to say you even have a hardware failure. Do post a picture and we can refine things based on the actual failure. |
51,529 | I have a 24 inch, mid-2007 iMac purchased used. I don't know the original owner and it's out of warranty.
On the display is a series of tan or yellowish horizontal lines - all an approximate inch apart, for a total of about eight or so. The spacing between is regular. They're wider (about an inch wide) at the left and right edges of the screen and taper to nothing at the middle of the screen. They are particularly noticeable on light-colored or white backgrounds, such as a Pages document, most web sites, etc.
I'm certainly open to disassembling the iMac and getting at whatever it may be (the onboard GPU?) that's causing the problem. In fact I have opened the machine for an HD replacement and fanned and cleaned, but to no result.
I also use [smcFanControl](http://www.eidac.de/?p=207) to boost the fans, as I thought it may be poor cooling in the machine, but this has no effect.
Does any one have ideas or suggestions as to what is causing these discolored lines?
 | 2012/05/17 | [
"https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/51529",
"https://apple.stackexchange.com",
"https://apple.stackexchange.com/users/22623/"
] | If you boot the Mac holding the option key, this will have the firmware drive the screen and isolate any software corruption or odd driver bugs in most cases and let you know it's a hardware issue.
Usually vertical lines are the LCD failing - then a cable issue - lastly the GPU.
Usually horizontal lines are a cabling issue - then a GPU issue - lastly a LCD issue.
That's not to say you even have a hardware failure. Do post a picture and we can refine things based on the actual failure. | Translation by google off the content above:
The lower plastic layer diffuser matrix is yellowing with time, and the lamp loses brightness, as a result - the common yellow color images and brightness differences (strip) from the brightness is insufficient. Solution - replacement of this layer, and preferably tubes. Analyze the matrix bands are clearly visible on this layer.
нижний пластиковый слой светорассеивателя матрицы желтеет со временем, а лампы теряют яркость, как результат - общий желтый тон картинки и перепады яркости (полосы) от недостаточной яркости подсевших ламп. решение - замена этого слоя, и желательно ламп. разбирал матрицу, полосы хорошо видны на этом слое |
51,529 | I have a 24 inch, mid-2007 iMac purchased used. I don't know the original owner and it's out of warranty.
On the display is a series of tan or yellowish horizontal lines - all an approximate inch apart, for a total of about eight or so. The spacing between is regular. They're wider (about an inch wide) at the left and right edges of the screen and taper to nothing at the middle of the screen. They are particularly noticeable on light-colored or white backgrounds, such as a Pages document, most web sites, etc.
I'm certainly open to disassembling the iMac and getting at whatever it may be (the onboard GPU?) that's causing the problem. In fact I have opened the machine for an HD replacement and fanned and cleaned, but to no result.
I also use [smcFanControl](http://www.eidac.de/?p=207) to boost the fans, as I thought it may be poor cooling in the machine, but this has no effect.
Does any one have ideas or suggestions as to what is causing these discolored lines?
 | 2012/05/17 | [
"https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/51529",
"https://apple.stackexchange.com",
"https://apple.stackexchange.com/users/22623/"
] | This looks like a backlight uniformity issue.
This is where the screen isn't being evenly lit by the CCFL bulbs behind it. Some of them are outputting differing amounts of light and cause this perceived 'discolouration'. The lighter colours really do show it.
Unfortunately, this is one of the disadvantages of a CCFL backlight system as opposed to something like LED backlighting - backlight uniformity can become an issue, especially with time.
You'd be looking at a screen replacement - outside of warranty, that's gonna cost you. | Translation by google off the content above:
The lower plastic layer diffuser matrix is yellowing with time, and the lamp loses brightness, as a result - the common yellow color images and brightness differences (strip) from the brightness is insufficient. Solution - replacement of this layer, and preferably tubes. Analyze the matrix bands are clearly visible on this layer.
нижний пластиковый слой светорассеивателя матрицы желтеет со временем, а лампы теряют яркость, как результат - общий желтый тон картинки и перепады яркости (полосы) от недостаточной яркости подсевших ламп. решение - замена этого слоя, и желательно ламп. разбирал матрицу, полосы хорошо видны на этом слое |
7,922 | Two days ago I read in the [news](http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/07/25/canada-bomb-threat-flight-panama/13180759/):
>
> Two U.S. fighter jets escorted a Canada-to-Panama flight back to
> Toronto after a passenger allegedly threatened the plane Friday
> morning. The nature of the threat or why the passenger was agitated
> were not specified. CBS News reported that the passenger told a
> flight attendant, "I have a bomb and I will blow up Canada."
>
>
>
What's the point of escorting the flight while it has been threatened by a passenger? How do they help to eliminate the threat? | 2014/07/28 | [
"https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/7922",
"https://aviation.stackexchange.com",
"https://aviation.stackexchange.com/users/1997/"
] | Fighter jets escorting planes after various sorts of emergencies seems to be standard procedure in many countries, you hear about it quite frequently. It's sometimes implied in the media that if the situation would turn into a 9/11-type hijacking it might be necessary to shoot the plane down but nobody seems willing to fully clarify who could take such a decision and under what conditions on the record.
Now, in most cases, there isn't even a suggestion that a hijacking is happening but it's difficult to determine that in a timely manner and there are still two things fighters can do in other cases:
* Get a visual confirmation of the situation aboard the plane (Is the plane damaged? The cockpit windows obscured? Who is in the cockpit?)
* “Guide” a pilot who has lost communication to an airport.
Also, one factor is that being able to scramble jets is often seen as a basic requirement to assert sovereignty (witness the mini-controversy in Switzerland when it was revealed that the air force could not do it at certain times of the day) so politically it seems difficult to entirely give up on it, even if it could be argued that it's a waste of money for smaller countries to maintain an air force that does very little beside this type of missions. | If absolutely necessary the plane can be prevented from making a mess of a major city, but it is basically a rather obvious visible sign to anyone misbehaving in the plane that they are in very, very deep trouble.
Given the threat of "I have a bomb and I will blow up Canada" the cabin crew are clearly overreacting. Highly unlikely a bomb big enough to take out Canada would go unnoticed, esp. as the plane would be grossly overweight with it. |
7,922 | Two days ago I read in the [news](http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/07/25/canada-bomb-threat-flight-panama/13180759/):
>
> Two U.S. fighter jets escorted a Canada-to-Panama flight back to
> Toronto after a passenger allegedly threatened the plane Friday
> morning. The nature of the threat or why the passenger was agitated
> were not specified. CBS News reported that the passenger told a
> flight attendant, "I have a bomb and I will blow up Canada."
>
>
>
What's the point of escorting the flight while it has been threatened by a passenger? How do they help to eliminate the threat? | 2014/07/28 | [
"https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/7922",
"https://aviation.stackexchange.com",
"https://aviation.stackexchange.com/users/1997/"
] | Especially post-911 it became paramount to ensure that such aircraft form no threat to cities and other places where crashing an aircraft into them would cause serious damage.
Blowing it out of the sky, however bad it would be for the passengers (not to mention the psychological impact on the fighter crews and their controllers) would be preferable to having thousands of victims on the ground (and a major PR coup for some terrorist group).
So jet fighters are scrambled to escort the aircraft until it's on the ground somewhere or the threat otherwise neutralised (say the attempted hijacking foiled by people on board).
This is little different from fighters being scrambled to escort intruders into a nation's airspace (and in extreme cases shoot them down) which has been done since the end of WW2 and maybe sporadically before (without radar to detect intruders and guide interceptors it's a lot harder to do so obviously, and prior to WW2 that wasn't available).
In this specific case it may have been overreaction to a madman with a fake bomb, but not knowing whether the threat was real or not it's easier to send up the fighters and later recall them than to have to explain to congress and even worse the press why you didn't act after the jetliner crashes into some city center during lunch hour...
Be happy that they have the option to send up fighters and don't have to rely on guided missiles alone, as there's no recalling those once launched... | If absolutely necessary the plane can be prevented from making a mess of a major city, but it is basically a rather obvious visible sign to anyone misbehaving in the plane that they are in very, very deep trouble.
Given the threat of "I have a bomb and I will blow up Canada" the cabin crew are clearly overreacting. Highly unlikely a bomb big enough to take out Canada would go unnoticed, esp. as the plane would be grossly overweight with it. |
7,922 | Two days ago I read in the [news](http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/07/25/canada-bomb-threat-flight-panama/13180759/):
>
> Two U.S. fighter jets escorted a Canada-to-Panama flight back to
> Toronto after a passenger allegedly threatened the plane Friday
> morning. The nature of the threat or why the passenger was agitated
> were not specified. CBS News reported that the passenger told a
> flight attendant, "I have a bomb and I will blow up Canada."
>
>
>
What's the point of escorting the flight while it has been threatened by a passenger? How do they help to eliminate the threat? | 2014/07/28 | [
"https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/7922",
"https://aviation.stackexchange.com",
"https://aviation.stackexchange.com/users/1997/"
] | Fighter jets escorting planes after various sorts of emergencies seems to be standard procedure in many countries, you hear about it quite frequently. It's sometimes implied in the media that if the situation would turn into a 9/11-type hijacking it might be necessary to shoot the plane down but nobody seems willing to fully clarify who could take such a decision and under what conditions on the record.
Now, in most cases, there isn't even a suggestion that a hijacking is happening but it's difficult to determine that in a timely manner and there are still two things fighters can do in other cases:
* Get a visual confirmation of the situation aboard the plane (Is the plane damaged? The cockpit windows obscured? Who is in the cockpit?)
* “Guide” a pilot who has lost communication to an airport.
Also, one factor is that being able to scramble jets is often seen as a basic requirement to assert sovereignty (witness the mini-controversy in Switzerland when it was revealed that the air force could not do it at certain times of the day) so politically it seems difficult to entirely give up on it, even if it could be argued that it's a waste of money for smaller countries to maintain an air force that does very little beside this type of missions. | Especially post-911 it became paramount to ensure that such aircraft form no threat to cities and other places where crashing an aircraft into them would cause serious damage.
Blowing it out of the sky, however bad it would be for the passengers (not to mention the psychological impact on the fighter crews and their controllers) would be preferable to having thousands of victims on the ground (and a major PR coup for some terrorist group).
So jet fighters are scrambled to escort the aircraft until it's on the ground somewhere or the threat otherwise neutralised (say the attempted hijacking foiled by people on board).
This is little different from fighters being scrambled to escort intruders into a nation's airspace (and in extreme cases shoot them down) which has been done since the end of WW2 and maybe sporadically before (without radar to detect intruders and guide interceptors it's a lot harder to do so obviously, and prior to WW2 that wasn't available).
In this specific case it may have been overreaction to a madman with a fake bomb, but not knowing whether the threat was real or not it's easier to send up the fighters and later recall them than to have to explain to congress and even worse the press why you didn't act after the jetliner crashes into some city center during lunch hour...
Be happy that they have the option to send up fighters and don't have to rely on guided missiles alone, as there's no recalling those once launched... |
7,922 | Two days ago I read in the [news](http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/07/25/canada-bomb-threat-flight-panama/13180759/):
>
> Two U.S. fighter jets escorted a Canada-to-Panama flight back to
> Toronto after a passenger allegedly threatened the plane Friday
> morning. The nature of the threat or why the passenger was agitated
> were not specified. CBS News reported that the passenger told a
> flight attendant, "I have a bomb and I will blow up Canada."
>
>
>
What's the point of escorting the flight while it has been threatened by a passenger? How do they help to eliminate the threat? | 2014/07/28 | [
"https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/7922",
"https://aviation.stackexchange.com",
"https://aviation.stackexchange.com/users/1997/"
] | Fighter jets escorting planes after various sorts of emergencies seems to be standard procedure in many countries, you hear about it quite frequently. It's sometimes implied in the media that if the situation would turn into a 9/11-type hijacking it might be necessary to shoot the plane down but nobody seems willing to fully clarify who could take such a decision and under what conditions on the record.
Now, in most cases, there isn't even a suggestion that a hijacking is happening but it's difficult to determine that in a timely manner and there are still two things fighters can do in other cases:
* Get a visual confirmation of the situation aboard the plane (Is the plane damaged? The cockpit windows obscured? Who is in the cockpit?)
* “Guide” a pilot who has lost communication to an airport.
Also, one factor is that being able to scramble jets is often seen as a basic requirement to assert sovereignty (witness the mini-controversy in Switzerland when it was revealed that the air force could not do it at certain times of the day) so politically it seems difficult to entirely give up on it, even if it could be argued that it's a waste of money for smaller countries to maintain an air force that does very little beside this type of missions. | In addition to @Relaxed's answer, one additional reason would be if the hijacker gets control of the cockpit and turns off the transponder. ATC works on secondary radar with a signal bounced back from the plane in order for ATC to track the aircraft.
If the transponder is turned off, it would be very difficult for ATC to track the exact whereabouts of the plane. By having escort planes, they could maintain positioning of the endangered aircraft. |
7,922 | Two days ago I read in the [news](http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/07/25/canada-bomb-threat-flight-panama/13180759/):
>
> Two U.S. fighter jets escorted a Canada-to-Panama flight back to
> Toronto after a passenger allegedly threatened the plane Friday
> morning. The nature of the threat or why the passenger was agitated
> were not specified. CBS News reported that the passenger told a
> flight attendant, "I have a bomb and I will blow up Canada."
>
>
>
What's the point of escorting the flight while it has been threatened by a passenger? How do they help to eliminate the threat? | 2014/07/28 | [
"https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/7922",
"https://aviation.stackexchange.com",
"https://aviation.stackexchange.com/users/1997/"
] | Fighter jets escorting planes after various sorts of emergencies seems to be standard procedure in many countries, you hear about it quite frequently. It's sometimes implied in the media that if the situation would turn into a 9/11-type hijacking it might be necessary to shoot the plane down but nobody seems willing to fully clarify who could take such a decision and under what conditions on the record.
Now, in most cases, there isn't even a suggestion that a hijacking is happening but it's difficult to determine that in a timely manner and there are still two things fighters can do in other cases:
* Get a visual confirmation of the situation aboard the plane (Is the plane damaged? The cockpit windows obscured? Who is in the cockpit?)
* “Guide” a pilot who has lost communication to an airport.
Also, one factor is that being able to scramble jets is often seen as a basic requirement to assert sovereignty (witness the mini-controversy in Switzerland when it was revealed that the air force could not do it at certain times of the day) so politically it seems difficult to entirely give up on it, even if it could be argued that it's a waste of money for smaller countries to maintain an air force that does very little beside this type of missions. | In addition to the reasons above (911-ish & transponder out), it is also an indication that somebody on the ground is aware and cares if communications are cut off and passengers do not know what is going on. They may not be able to do anything and passengers may realize that, but at least you know the ground is aware and you aren't alone.
As far as an on board nut-job being aware of any possible "trouble" he/she may get into, I think they usually don't care if they are 911 fodder.
When I heard that a second plane hit on 911, on the way to work, I knew life (mostly @ airports) had changed right then. |
7,922 | Two days ago I read in the [news](http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/07/25/canada-bomb-threat-flight-panama/13180759/):
>
> Two U.S. fighter jets escorted a Canada-to-Panama flight back to
> Toronto after a passenger allegedly threatened the plane Friday
> morning. The nature of the threat or why the passenger was agitated
> were not specified. CBS News reported that the passenger told a
> flight attendant, "I have a bomb and I will blow up Canada."
>
>
>
What's the point of escorting the flight while it has been threatened by a passenger? How do they help to eliminate the threat? | 2014/07/28 | [
"https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/7922",
"https://aviation.stackexchange.com",
"https://aviation.stackexchange.com/users/1997/"
] | Fighter jets escorting planes after various sorts of emergencies seems to be standard procedure in many countries, you hear about it quite frequently. It's sometimes implied in the media that if the situation would turn into a 9/11-type hijacking it might be necessary to shoot the plane down but nobody seems willing to fully clarify who could take such a decision and under what conditions on the record.
Now, in most cases, there isn't even a suggestion that a hijacking is happening but it's difficult to determine that in a timely manner and there are still two things fighters can do in other cases:
* Get a visual confirmation of the situation aboard the plane (Is the plane damaged? The cockpit windows obscured? Who is in the cockpit?)
* “Guide” a pilot who has lost communication to an airport.
Also, one factor is that being able to scramble jets is often seen as a basic requirement to assert sovereignty (witness the mini-controversy in Switzerland when it was revealed that the air force could not do it at certain times of the day) so politically it seems difficult to entirely give up on it, even if it could be argued that it's a waste of money for smaller countries to maintain an air force that does very little beside this type of missions. | The utility of sending fighter jets is to destroy the plane before an hypothetical attempt. It's unfortunate, but the point is to kill a few people to save many. This can also possibly have the impact of scaring the hijacker/terrorist.
In the mean time, someone in the ATC can attempt to negotiate with the terrorist before any shoot-downs are needed.
In France, we send two fighter jets, because one jet is there to make contact with the pilot (seated on the left of the cockpit) while the other fighter stays behind the aircraft ready fire if needed.
The only person allowed to make the decision to fire, is the Prime Minister.
In fact, fighter jets take off on these missions quite often, but it's usually only for providing assistance (e.g. providing landing clearance to an aircraft with dead radio). |
7,922 | Two days ago I read in the [news](http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/07/25/canada-bomb-threat-flight-panama/13180759/):
>
> Two U.S. fighter jets escorted a Canada-to-Panama flight back to
> Toronto after a passenger allegedly threatened the plane Friday
> morning. The nature of the threat or why the passenger was agitated
> were not specified. CBS News reported that the passenger told a
> flight attendant, "I have a bomb and I will blow up Canada."
>
>
>
What's the point of escorting the flight while it has been threatened by a passenger? How do they help to eliminate the threat? | 2014/07/28 | [
"https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/7922",
"https://aviation.stackexchange.com",
"https://aviation.stackexchange.com/users/1997/"
] | Especially post-911 it became paramount to ensure that such aircraft form no threat to cities and other places where crashing an aircraft into them would cause serious damage.
Blowing it out of the sky, however bad it would be for the passengers (not to mention the psychological impact on the fighter crews and their controllers) would be preferable to having thousands of victims on the ground (and a major PR coup for some terrorist group).
So jet fighters are scrambled to escort the aircraft until it's on the ground somewhere or the threat otherwise neutralised (say the attempted hijacking foiled by people on board).
This is little different from fighters being scrambled to escort intruders into a nation's airspace (and in extreme cases shoot them down) which has been done since the end of WW2 and maybe sporadically before (without radar to detect intruders and guide interceptors it's a lot harder to do so obviously, and prior to WW2 that wasn't available).
In this specific case it may have been overreaction to a madman with a fake bomb, but not knowing whether the threat was real or not it's easier to send up the fighters and later recall them than to have to explain to congress and even worse the press why you didn't act after the jetliner crashes into some city center during lunch hour...
Be happy that they have the option to send up fighters and don't have to rely on guided missiles alone, as there's no recalling those once launched... | In addition to @Relaxed's answer, one additional reason would be if the hijacker gets control of the cockpit and turns off the transponder. ATC works on secondary radar with a signal bounced back from the plane in order for ATC to track the aircraft.
If the transponder is turned off, it would be very difficult for ATC to track the exact whereabouts of the plane. By having escort planes, they could maintain positioning of the endangered aircraft. |
7,922 | Two days ago I read in the [news](http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/07/25/canada-bomb-threat-flight-panama/13180759/):
>
> Two U.S. fighter jets escorted a Canada-to-Panama flight back to
> Toronto after a passenger allegedly threatened the plane Friday
> morning. The nature of the threat or why the passenger was agitated
> were not specified. CBS News reported that the passenger told a
> flight attendant, "I have a bomb and I will blow up Canada."
>
>
>
What's the point of escorting the flight while it has been threatened by a passenger? How do they help to eliminate the threat? | 2014/07/28 | [
"https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/7922",
"https://aviation.stackexchange.com",
"https://aviation.stackexchange.com/users/1997/"
] | Especially post-911 it became paramount to ensure that such aircraft form no threat to cities and other places where crashing an aircraft into them would cause serious damage.
Blowing it out of the sky, however bad it would be for the passengers (not to mention the psychological impact on the fighter crews and their controllers) would be preferable to having thousands of victims on the ground (and a major PR coup for some terrorist group).
So jet fighters are scrambled to escort the aircraft until it's on the ground somewhere or the threat otherwise neutralised (say the attempted hijacking foiled by people on board).
This is little different from fighters being scrambled to escort intruders into a nation's airspace (and in extreme cases shoot them down) which has been done since the end of WW2 and maybe sporadically before (without radar to detect intruders and guide interceptors it's a lot harder to do so obviously, and prior to WW2 that wasn't available).
In this specific case it may have been overreaction to a madman with a fake bomb, but not knowing whether the threat was real or not it's easier to send up the fighters and later recall them than to have to explain to congress and even worse the press why you didn't act after the jetliner crashes into some city center during lunch hour...
Be happy that they have the option to send up fighters and don't have to rely on guided missiles alone, as there's no recalling those once launched... | In addition to the reasons above (911-ish & transponder out), it is also an indication that somebody on the ground is aware and cares if communications are cut off and passengers do not know what is going on. They may not be able to do anything and passengers may realize that, but at least you know the ground is aware and you aren't alone.
As far as an on board nut-job being aware of any possible "trouble" he/she may get into, I think they usually don't care if they are 911 fodder.
When I heard that a second plane hit on 911, on the way to work, I knew life (mostly @ airports) had changed right then. |
7,922 | Two days ago I read in the [news](http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/07/25/canada-bomb-threat-flight-panama/13180759/):
>
> Two U.S. fighter jets escorted a Canada-to-Panama flight back to
> Toronto after a passenger allegedly threatened the plane Friday
> morning. The nature of the threat or why the passenger was agitated
> were not specified. CBS News reported that the passenger told a
> flight attendant, "I have a bomb and I will blow up Canada."
>
>
>
What's the point of escorting the flight while it has been threatened by a passenger? How do they help to eliminate the threat? | 2014/07/28 | [
"https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/7922",
"https://aviation.stackexchange.com",
"https://aviation.stackexchange.com/users/1997/"
] | Especially post-911 it became paramount to ensure that such aircraft form no threat to cities and other places where crashing an aircraft into them would cause serious damage.
Blowing it out of the sky, however bad it would be for the passengers (not to mention the psychological impact on the fighter crews and their controllers) would be preferable to having thousands of victims on the ground (and a major PR coup for some terrorist group).
So jet fighters are scrambled to escort the aircraft until it's on the ground somewhere or the threat otherwise neutralised (say the attempted hijacking foiled by people on board).
This is little different from fighters being scrambled to escort intruders into a nation's airspace (and in extreme cases shoot them down) which has been done since the end of WW2 and maybe sporadically before (without radar to detect intruders and guide interceptors it's a lot harder to do so obviously, and prior to WW2 that wasn't available).
In this specific case it may have been overreaction to a madman with a fake bomb, but not knowing whether the threat was real or not it's easier to send up the fighters and later recall them than to have to explain to congress and even worse the press why you didn't act after the jetliner crashes into some city center during lunch hour...
Be happy that they have the option to send up fighters and don't have to rely on guided missiles alone, as there's no recalling those once launched... | The utility of sending fighter jets is to destroy the plane before an hypothetical attempt. It's unfortunate, but the point is to kill a few people to save many. This can also possibly have the impact of scaring the hijacker/terrorist.
In the mean time, someone in the ATC can attempt to negotiate with the terrorist before any shoot-downs are needed.
In France, we send two fighter jets, because one jet is there to make contact with the pilot (seated on the left of the cockpit) while the other fighter stays behind the aircraft ready fire if needed.
The only person allowed to make the decision to fire, is the Prime Minister.
In fact, fighter jets take off on these missions quite often, but it's usually only for providing assistance (e.g. providing landing clearance to an aircraft with dead radio). |
425 | On [Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Civil_War), I ran into an article talking about World War I to World War II and some of the adjacent wars before WWI as being a "European Civil War" or a "Second Thirty Years War". What is the scholarly basis of this? I saw a few names but it wasn't expecially concrete. There are listed citations from various authors but how rigorous is historicity of such a claim? | 2011/10/19 | [
"https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/425",
"https://history.stackexchange.com",
"https://history.stackexchange.com/users/-1/"
] | Clive Ponting, in his excellent "[World History: A New Perspective](http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0712665722)" argued that WWI and the European part of WWII are, as the earlier big European wars, wars to determine who gets's to build a European Empire, and that they, as the earlier attempts, were inconclusive. (Or rather, WWII was conclusive in as much as the allies won, but a split between the Soviet Union and the democratic states meant that Europe instead was split in two "empires".
Although there is a case for seeing WWI and the European part of WWII as the same, as Germany was not conclusively defeated at the end of WWI and the treaties was used as an excuse to start WWII, if you do that extension you will have to more or less extend that to all wars in Europe from the middle ages, which makes little sense. | It makes sense to look for a pattern of world civil wars in the 1850s-60s as the Industrial Revolution began to change wars. Guns were being mass-produced, railways being put in war use, and better communications. Antagonists soon tried out these new methods.
China had an extremely bloody civil war over this period, its a good candidate for a foreign equivalent of the American Civil War certainly to the Chinese.
The Franco-Prussian War cannot be squeezed into the template of a European Civil War and the respective leaders and states had nothing in common except a border.
Ongoing European geo-political conflict can be expressed in many ways and needs a wider range of concepts than simply 'civil war'. |
84,061 | I am working on a project right now and I just noticed something, that makes sense, but I did not realize it.
The Visualforce page and the Visualforce component both use the same controller. Now correct me if I am wrong, but when the Visualforce component is called from the Visualforce page, the component will then instantiate the controller again and have its own instance of the controller.
This is essentially doubling the amount of SOQL depending on the code used (if you have many SOQL in the constructor). If what I am saying is correct, could you see a way to pass in a pointer to the component, from the page, that will indicate to use the already instantiated controller? I do not believe something like this is possible currently, but that is my thought on how it could be done in future instances if they were to make this possible.
I noticed this when I called a component from repeat in the visualforce page, and then I called a component from repeat in the previously created component. I had 5 SOQLs in my constructor, and this led to me hitting the SOQL limit on page load. I believe this was due to the 2nd component being called so much and doing the 5 SOQLs over and over again.
I'm looking for clarification to see if what I am saying is correct in this matter. | 2015/07/20 | [
"https://salesforce.stackexchange.com/questions/84061",
"https://salesforce.stackexchange.com",
"https://salesforce.stackexchange.com/users/18481/"
] | Yes, you are right. All the visualforce components and page loaded in a single apex transaction.
An Apex transaction represents a set of operations that are executed as a single unit. All DML operations in a transaction either complete successfully, or if an error occurs in one operation, the entire transaction is rolled back and no data is committed to the database. | As Badan said, you are correct. So, what we do to share a large amount of data from the page to the component is:
1) Build a data class containing objects and values you want both items to share.
2) After populating an instance the data class in the page controller or extension constructor, pass it to the component as an attribute.
Value changes in the component will be reflected in the page controller and visa versa.
You can also use the data class as a base class using the "extends" keyword. |
728 | This is the place to submit and vote on photos for the week of Feb 14 to be featured on the main site. Rules:
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[Last week's thread](https://photo.meta.stackexchange.com/q/696/21) | 2011/02/06 | [
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[Larger version](http://www.redbubble.com/people/tomm89/art/6622179-2-sunset-in-las-grutas) | Market - Santa Fe, New Mexico
 |
728 | This is the place to submit and vote on photos for the week of Feb 14 to be featured on the main site. Rules:
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[Last week's thread](https://photo.meta.stackexchange.com/q/696/21) | 2011/02/06 | [
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"https://photo.meta.stackexchange.com/users/21/"
] | ### Church yard gate in setting sun
Aspö, Sweden. July 2009.
[Original](http://www.guffa.com/Photo_result.asp?place=12&words=grind+solnedg%E5ng) | Market - Santa Fe, New Mexico
 |
728 | This is the place to submit and vote on photos for the week of Feb 14 to be featured on the main site. Rules:
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"Playing With Fire" Spokane, WA - 2.4.2011
[Bigger version](http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeffla/5419080417/lightbox/) | Sunrise on Gurten - Bern, Switzerland
Original: <http://www.flickr.com/photos/rawyler/4978792309/> |
728 | This is the place to submit and vote on photos for the week of Feb 14 to be featured on the main site. Rules:
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[Last week's thread](https://photo.meta.stackexchange.com/q/696/21) | 2011/02/06 | [
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"Playing With Fire" Spokane, WA - 2.4.2011
[Bigger version](http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeffla/5419080417/lightbox/) | Sunset in Las Grutas - Rio Negro, Argentina
[Larger version](http://www.redbubble.com/people/tomm89/art/6622179-2-sunset-in-las-grutas) |
728 | This is the place to submit and vote on photos for the week of Feb 14 to be featured on the main site. Rules:
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[Last week's thread](https://photo.meta.stackexchange.com/q/696/21) | 2011/02/06 | [
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Crazy Meow by Sergiu Bacioiu <http://sergiubacioiu.com> | Market - Santa Fe, New Mexico
 |
728 | This is the place to submit and vote on photos for the week of Feb 14 to be featured on the main site. Rules:
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[Last week's thread](https://photo.meta.stackexchange.com/q/696/21) | 2011/02/06 | [
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] | Sunrise on Gurten - Bern, Switzerland
Original: <http://www.flickr.com/photos/rawyler/4978792309/> | 
Crazy Meow by Sergiu Bacioiu <http://sergiubacioiu.com> |
728 | This is the place to submit and vote on photos for the week of Feb 14 to be featured on the main site. Rules:
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"Playing With Fire" Spokane, WA - 2.4.2011
[Bigger version](http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeffla/5419080417/lightbox/) | ### Church yard gate in setting sun
Aspö, Sweden. July 2009.
[Original](http://www.guffa.com/Photo_result.asp?place=12&words=grind+solnedg%E5ng) |
728 | This is the place to submit and vote on photos for the week of Feb 14 to be featured on the main site. Rules:
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[Last week's thread](https://photo.meta.stackexchange.com/q/696/21) | 2011/02/06 | [
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"Playing With Fire" Spokane, WA - 2.4.2011
[Bigger version](http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeffla/5419080417/lightbox/) | "Locked"
 |
728 | This is the place to submit and vote on photos for the week of Feb 14 to be featured on the main site. Rules:
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[Last week's thread](https://photo.meta.stackexchange.com/q/696/21) | 2011/02/06 | [
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[Larger version](http://www.redbubble.com/people/tomm89/art/6622179-2-sunset-in-las-grutas) | 
Crazy Meow by Sergiu Bacioiu <http://sergiubacioiu.com> |
728 | This is the place to submit and vote on photos for the week of Feb 14 to be featured on the main site. Rules:
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[Last week's thread](https://photo.meta.stackexchange.com/q/696/21) | 2011/02/06 | [
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Original: <http://www.flickr.com/photos/rawyler/4978792309/> | Market - Santa Fe, New Mexico
 |
158,369 | I've got a request from a customer to automatically detect the type of mobile device (not the browser, the type. ex: Moto Q, Blackjack II, etc.) and automatically select the device from a drop down with a list of supported devices.
So far I've found that the HTTP Headers (submitted by mobile IE) contain information such as
* Resolution
* UA-CPU (i've seen ARM from WM 2003 and x86 from WM5)
* User Agent (which basically just says Windows CE)
The only thing I can think of right now is possibly using a combination of the resolution/cpu and making a "best guess"
Any thoughts? | 2008/10/01 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/158369",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/53001/"
] | What exactly does the customer mean by "supported". Surely it means that the phone in question supports the web application and it's inner functionality - wouldn't it be better then to forget device detection and simply focus on detecting those capabilities required for the app to function properly? For example, if my mobile website requires Ajax to work then instead of listing all the devices which are said to "support Ajax" I could do some simple object detection to find out for myself.
Device detection, just like browser detection is unreliable. Yes, it's possible but I wouldn't recomend it... on a project I've done we used the User Agent string to detect various devices. The indexOf javaScript method came in handy! :) | You may want to have a look at WURFL, here: <http://wurfl.sourceforge.net/>.
From the site:
>
> So... What is WURFL?
> The WURFL is an XML configuration file which contains information about capabilities and features of many mobile devices.
>
>
> The main scope of the file is to collect as much information as we can about all the existing mobile devices that access WAP pages so that developers will be able to build better applications and better services for the users.
>
>
> |
158,369 | I've got a request from a customer to automatically detect the type of mobile device (not the browser, the type. ex: Moto Q, Blackjack II, etc.) and automatically select the device from a drop down with a list of supported devices.
So far I've found that the HTTP Headers (submitted by mobile IE) contain information such as
* Resolution
* UA-CPU (i've seen ARM from WM 2003 and x86 from WM5)
* User Agent (which basically just says Windows CE)
The only thing I can think of right now is possibly using a combination of the resolution/cpu and making a "best guess"
Any thoughts? | 2008/10/01 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/158369",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/53001/"
] | What exactly does the customer mean by "supported". Surely it means that the phone in question supports the web application and it's inner functionality - wouldn't it be better then to forget device detection and simply focus on detecting those capabilities required for the app to function properly? For example, if my mobile website requires Ajax to work then instead of listing all the devices which are said to "support Ajax" I could do some simple object detection to find out for myself.
Device detection, just like browser detection is unreliable. Yes, it's possible but I wouldn't recomend it... on a project I've done we used the User Agent string to detect various devices. The indexOf javaScript method came in handy! :) | Another fast and easy solution is Apache Mobile Filter: <http://www.apachemobilefilter.org> |
158,369 | I've got a request from a customer to automatically detect the type of mobile device (not the browser, the type. ex: Moto Q, Blackjack II, etc.) and automatically select the device from a drop down with a list of supported devices.
So far I've found that the HTTP Headers (submitted by mobile IE) contain information such as
* Resolution
* UA-CPU (i've seen ARM from WM 2003 and x86 from WM5)
* User Agent (which basically just says Windows CE)
The only thing I can think of right now is possibly using a combination of the resolution/cpu and making a "best guess"
Any thoughts? | 2008/10/01 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/158369",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/53001/"
] | You may want to have a look at WURFL, here: <http://wurfl.sourceforge.net/>.
From the site:
>
> So... What is WURFL?
> The WURFL is an XML configuration file which contains information about capabilities and features of many mobile devices.
>
>
> The main scope of the file is to collect as much information as we can about all the existing mobile devices that access WAP pages so that developers will be able to build better applications and better services for the users.
>
>
> | Another fast and easy solution is Apache Mobile Filter: <http://www.apachemobilefilter.org> |
264 | There have been questions that received answers before being closed, e.g. [this one](https://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/1135/what-are-local-networkss-ip). I feel like there have been more, but I might be wrong.
Should we discourage people from providing answers to questions that are obviously or apparently (existence of [more than one] close vote) off-topic or otherwise prone to closing?
I know that there is such [a policy on cstheory.SE](https://cstheory.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1127/1546).
Related question: What to do with existing answers on closed questions? | 2012/04/10 | [
"https://cs.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/264",
"https://cs.meta.stackexchange.com",
"https://cs.meta.stackexchange.com/users/98/"
] | So far I don't really see that answers to off topic questions are an issue for this site yet. Most other SE sites (probably around 99%) do not have or needed to discourage users from answering off-topic questions, I don't see why we need it either.
We are also in a better shape than cstheory because most off-topic questions are actually migrate-able if this even becomes an issue, while the same cannot be said about cstheory before cs.SE. Additionally, our set of off-topic questions are considerably smaller compared to cstheory, so it is inherently harder to ask an off-topic question here compared to cstheory. Our site resembles more like 99% of the other SE sites that don't adopt this policy, and cstheory is an exception among all of the SE sites, we are nothing like cstheory except we share some of the same topics.
Maybe if in the future, that this is indeed a real problem, we can talk about it again, but for now, my vote would be a solid **no**. | I know I *hated* the policy on cstheory because I felt that (good) questions too basic for the site deserved an answer. This can clearly not be the case here, though; questions we close are (hopefully) clearly offtopic and/or really bad.
Reasons for implementing such a policy:
* **Protecting our scope** -- If we answer even offtopic/bad questions, we can stop closing altogether. "But it received a good answer!" should never be a reason not to close.
* **Consistency** -- The question might be salvaged, but it might be changed heavily in the process. Existing answers may become invalid.
* **Ensuring quality** -- The quality measure when formulating a question has to be a YES-answer to "Is it good?" and not to "Can I ask it in such a way and at such a time that I will get an answer before enough close votes?"; we don't want the ensuing races.
* **Prevent reputation fishing** -- questions about to be closed are obvious target to write a quick and dirty answer that get all (answer) votes this question will ever get. In the worst case, people inclined to write offtopic/bad posts answer each others questions, forming a subcommunity.
Reasons against:
* If the question turns out to be salvagable or the problem was a misunderstanding, users might be offended.
* It is hard to enforce beyond deleting answers.
* Especially new users might feel that their contribution is not appreciated.
All in all, I am pro such a policy. Items one and three of the reasons against can be prevented (or at least softened) by friendly explaining the issue. |
264 | There have been questions that received answers before being closed, e.g. [this one](https://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/1135/what-are-local-networkss-ip). I feel like there have been more, but I might be wrong.
Should we discourage people from providing answers to questions that are obviously or apparently (existence of [more than one] close vote) off-topic or otherwise prone to closing?
I know that there is such [a policy on cstheory.SE](https://cstheory.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1127/1546).
Related question: What to do with existing answers on closed questions? | 2012/04/10 | [
"https://cs.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/264",
"https://cs.meta.stackexchange.com",
"https://cs.meta.stackexchange.com/users/98/"
] | It's up to each poster to decide whether the question belongs on the site or not. If you think the question doesn't belong here, vote to close. If you think the question belongs here and you have an answer, post your answer. That others have answered should not influence you not to vote to close, and that others have voted to close should not influence you not to answer, other than the obvious way in which you may let others' arguments for or against the question sway you.
CSTheory.SE is a special case, as it gets many questions that are off-topic solely because hey are too basic, so that the audience would be capable of answering them.
Generally speaking, if you vote to close a question:
* as duplicate, answer on the duplicate.
* as off-topic, don't answer, because the site's audience will not be capable of evaluating your answer. Stack Exchange maintains the quality of its answers by peer review; answers to off-topic questions get no peer review and are therefore automatically suspicious.
+ Exception: if you think the question is likely to be migrated to a site where it will be on-topic, it's ok to answer without waiting; your answer will be evaluated on the target site.
* as non-constructive, don't answer, because non-constructive means that there cannot be a balanced answer, or the risk of provoking arguments is large; answering a non-constructive question defeats the purpose of closing these questions.
* as not a real question: the meaning of this close reason is that it is not reasonably possible to answer this question, so answering is logically inconsistent.
* as too localized: this is a bit of a special case; I consider it bad form (but might leave a comment).
There's no need to do anything special with answers to closed questions. Closed questions (except duplicates) are normally deleted when it becomes clear that they won't be reopened. | I know I *hated* the policy on cstheory because I felt that (good) questions too basic for the site deserved an answer. This can clearly not be the case here, though; questions we close are (hopefully) clearly offtopic and/or really bad.
Reasons for implementing such a policy:
* **Protecting our scope** -- If we answer even offtopic/bad questions, we can stop closing altogether. "But it received a good answer!" should never be a reason not to close.
* **Consistency** -- The question might be salvaged, but it might be changed heavily in the process. Existing answers may become invalid.
* **Ensuring quality** -- The quality measure when formulating a question has to be a YES-answer to "Is it good?" and not to "Can I ask it in such a way and at such a time that I will get an answer before enough close votes?"; we don't want the ensuing races.
* **Prevent reputation fishing** -- questions about to be closed are obvious target to write a quick and dirty answer that get all (answer) votes this question will ever get. In the worst case, people inclined to write offtopic/bad posts answer each others questions, forming a subcommunity.
Reasons against:
* If the question turns out to be salvagable or the problem was a misunderstanding, users might be offended.
* It is hard to enforce beyond deleting answers.
* Especially new users might feel that their contribution is not appreciated.
All in all, I am pro such a policy. Items one and three of the reasons against can be prevented (or at least softened) by friendly explaining the issue. |
264 | There have been questions that received answers before being closed, e.g. [this one](https://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/1135/what-are-local-networkss-ip). I feel like there have been more, but I might be wrong.
Should we discourage people from providing answers to questions that are obviously or apparently (existence of [more than one] close vote) off-topic or otherwise prone to closing?
I know that there is such [a policy on cstheory.SE](https://cstheory.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1127/1546).
Related question: What to do with existing answers on closed questions? | 2012/04/10 | [
"https://cs.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/264",
"https://cs.meta.stackexchange.com",
"https://cs.meta.stackexchange.com/users/98/"
] | I generally agree with Gilles that people should answer questions they think they should give good answers to. If the answers are more interesting than the question, this is a sign to try and fix the question, not to close it. | I know I *hated* the policy on cstheory because I felt that (good) questions too basic for the site deserved an answer. This can clearly not be the case here, though; questions we close are (hopefully) clearly offtopic and/or really bad.
Reasons for implementing such a policy:
* **Protecting our scope** -- If we answer even offtopic/bad questions, we can stop closing altogether. "But it received a good answer!" should never be a reason not to close.
* **Consistency** -- The question might be salvaged, but it might be changed heavily in the process. Existing answers may become invalid.
* **Ensuring quality** -- The quality measure when formulating a question has to be a YES-answer to "Is it good?" and not to "Can I ask it in such a way and at such a time that I will get an answer before enough close votes?"; we don't want the ensuing races.
* **Prevent reputation fishing** -- questions about to be closed are obvious target to write a quick and dirty answer that get all (answer) votes this question will ever get. In the worst case, people inclined to write offtopic/bad posts answer each others questions, forming a subcommunity.
Reasons against:
* If the question turns out to be salvagable or the problem was a misunderstanding, users might be offended.
* It is hard to enforce beyond deleting answers.
* Especially new users might feel that their contribution is not appreciated.
All in all, I am pro such a policy. Items one and three of the reasons against can be prevented (or at least softened) by friendly explaining the issue. |
264 | There have been questions that received answers before being closed, e.g. [this one](https://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/1135/what-are-local-networkss-ip). I feel like there have been more, but I might be wrong.
Should we discourage people from providing answers to questions that are obviously or apparently (existence of [more than one] close vote) off-topic or otherwise prone to closing?
I know that there is such [a policy on cstheory.SE](https://cstheory.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1127/1546).
Related question: What to do with existing answers on closed questions? | 2012/04/10 | [
"https://cs.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/264",
"https://cs.meta.stackexchange.com",
"https://cs.meta.stackexchange.com/users/98/"
] | It's up to each poster to decide whether the question belongs on the site or not. If you think the question doesn't belong here, vote to close. If you think the question belongs here and you have an answer, post your answer. That others have answered should not influence you not to vote to close, and that others have voted to close should not influence you not to answer, other than the obvious way in which you may let others' arguments for or against the question sway you.
CSTheory.SE is a special case, as it gets many questions that are off-topic solely because hey are too basic, so that the audience would be capable of answering them.
Generally speaking, if you vote to close a question:
* as duplicate, answer on the duplicate.
* as off-topic, don't answer, because the site's audience will not be capable of evaluating your answer. Stack Exchange maintains the quality of its answers by peer review; answers to off-topic questions get no peer review and are therefore automatically suspicious.
+ Exception: if you think the question is likely to be migrated to a site where it will be on-topic, it's ok to answer without waiting; your answer will be evaluated on the target site.
* as non-constructive, don't answer, because non-constructive means that there cannot be a balanced answer, or the risk of provoking arguments is large; answering a non-constructive question defeats the purpose of closing these questions.
* as not a real question: the meaning of this close reason is that it is not reasonably possible to answer this question, so answering is logically inconsistent.
* as too localized: this is a bit of a special case; I consider it bad form (but might leave a comment).
There's no need to do anything special with answers to closed questions. Closed questions (except duplicates) are normally deleted when it becomes clear that they won't be reopened. | So far I don't really see that answers to off topic questions are an issue for this site yet. Most other SE sites (probably around 99%) do not have or needed to discourage users from answering off-topic questions, I don't see why we need it either.
We are also in a better shape than cstheory because most off-topic questions are actually migrate-able if this even becomes an issue, while the same cannot be said about cstheory before cs.SE. Additionally, our set of off-topic questions are considerably smaller compared to cstheory, so it is inherently harder to ask an off-topic question here compared to cstheory. Our site resembles more like 99% of the other SE sites that don't adopt this policy, and cstheory is an exception among all of the SE sites, we are nothing like cstheory except we share some of the same topics.
Maybe if in the future, that this is indeed a real problem, we can talk about it again, but for now, my vote would be a solid **no**. |
264 | There have been questions that received answers before being closed, e.g. [this one](https://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/1135/what-are-local-networkss-ip). I feel like there have been more, but I might be wrong.
Should we discourage people from providing answers to questions that are obviously or apparently (existence of [more than one] close vote) off-topic or otherwise prone to closing?
I know that there is such [a policy on cstheory.SE](https://cstheory.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1127/1546).
Related question: What to do with existing answers on closed questions? | 2012/04/10 | [
"https://cs.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/264",
"https://cs.meta.stackexchange.com",
"https://cs.meta.stackexchange.com/users/98/"
] | It's up to each poster to decide whether the question belongs on the site or not. If you think the question doesn't belong here, vote to close. If you think the question belongs here and you have an answer, post your answer. That others have answered should not influence you not to vote to close, and that others have voted to close should not influence you not to answer, other than the obvious way in which you may let others' arguments for or against the question sway you.
CSTheory.SE is a special case, as it gets many questions that are off-topic solely because hey are too basic, so that the audience would be capable of answering them.
Generally speaking, if you vote to close a question:
* as duplicate, answer on the duplicate.
* as off-topic, don't answer, because the site's audience will not be capable of evaluating your answer. Stack Exchange maintains the quality of its answers by peer review; answers to off-topic questions get no peer review and are therefore automatically suspicious.
+ Exception: if you think the question is likely to be migrated to a site where it will be on-topic, it's ok to answer without waiting; your answer will be evaluated on the target site.
* as non-constructive, don't answer, because non-constructive means that there cannot be a balanced answer, or the risk of provoking arguments is large; answering a non-constructive question defeats the purpose of closing these questions.
* as not a real question: the meaning of this close reason is that it is not reasonably possible to answer this question, so answering is logically inconsistent.
* as too localized: this is a bit of a special case; I consider it bad form (but might leave a comment).
There's no need to do anything special with answers to closed questions. Closed questions (except duplicates) are normally deleted when it becomes clear that they won't be reopened. | I generally agree with Gilles that people should answer questions they think they should give good answers to. If the answers are more interesting than the question, this is a sign to try and fix the question, not to close it. |
11,121 | Seems like a no-brainer feature to have, specifically regarding the date and location properties of images.
And yes, I know I can use VZ Exif, but for performance reasons, I'd prefer to have that metadata in Assets' DB instead of reading the data from the filesystem every time. | 2013/06/09 | [
"https://expressionengine.stackexchange.com/questions/11121",
"https://expressionengine.stackexchange.com",
"https://expressionengine.stackexchange.com/users/544/"
] | I'd just like to point out that, in order to read EXIF data, you must have PHP compiled using --exif-enabled flag, which is not something all hosting parties provide, hence Assets is not sporting this feature, but this is on our list of things to do, probably by using some 3rd party library for this, that parses jpg files. | Yes, you are correct with the plugin "VZ EXIF", all the EXIF data are being fetched for that file dynamically.
I couldn't see such any file handling field type which stores EXIF data also.
I think, a field type or module can be developed for it which would be great :). |
91,208 | i am working on a product details page for an ecommerce website and i am dealing with complicated products like (sofa , bed ..etc) in these pages we have a lot of variation regarding colors and sizes.
can you suggest complicated benchmark product details page with different variations i can review ?
Thanks, | 2016/03/09 | [
"https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/91208",
"https://ux.stackexchange.com",
"https://ux.stackexchange.com/users/75663/"
] | I Feel for all the product you can't have one template. First list out all the features of the product and choose the common one. Decide the template based on the common feature and present the product page. For example if its 1000 product, it fall in to 50 Category. Based on the category and common feature it will fall into around 5 to 10 template.
It really needs some research work to come up with final answer, hope this helps to get you final answer.
Some reference for you to strengthen the product page - <https://www.shopify.com/blog/16204608-7-effective-ecommerce-product-pages-how-to-turn-visitors-into-customers> | In cases like this, you want to consider the simplest and most complex products in terms of:
1. Variations
What is the product with the least attributes? (like a chair with no color or size choices)
What is the product with the most attributes? (a chair with color, height, width, number of legs, material, cover, etc choices)
2. Bundles
Are there products which are really a group of products which can be purchased separately? (Like a desk with leg choices, drawer mechanism choices, etc etc etc which can all be purchased ad parts as well)
Or a bundle with choices for 3,5,7 item choices. Meaning bundles of 3,5 or 7 and then you can pick what items those should be.
---
Identify those first, it will allow you to design for both extremes and decide on how many product detail page variations you need. |
91,208 | i am working on a product details page for an ecommerce website and i am dealing with complicated products like (sofa , bed ..etc) in these pages we have a lot of variation regarding colors and sizes.
can you suggest complicated benchmark product details page with different variations i can review ?
Thanks, | 2016/03/09 | [
"https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/91208",
"https://ux.stackexchange.com",
"https://ux.stackexchange.com/users/75663/"
] | I Feel for all the product you can't have one template. First list out all the features of the product and choose the common one. Decide the template based on the common feature and present the product page. For example if its 1000 product, it fall in to 50 Category. Based on the category and common feature it will fall into around 5 to 10 template.
It really needs some research work to come up with final answer, hope this helps to get you final answer.
Some reference for you to strengthen the product page - <https://www.shopify.com/blog/16204608-7-effective-ecommerce-product-pages-how-to-turn-visitors-into-customers> | If you have a product that has a big range of available choices, in color or sizes for example, you could do something like below.. (pic1) or more of an Amazon approach of providing drop downs for available choices, and then a details section that changes with the user selection.
Pic 1 :
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/hbYLy.jpg)
Pic 2 (Amazon approach)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/SzNbF.jpg) |
91,208 | i am working on a product details page for an ecommerce website and i am dealing with complicated products like (sofa , bed ..etc) in these pages we have a lot of variation regarding colors and sizes.
can you suggest complicated benchmark product details page with different variations i can review ?
Thanks, | 2016/03/09 | [
"https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/91208",
"https://ux.stackexchange.com",
"https://ux.stackexchange.com/users/75663/"
] | I Feel for all the product you can't have one template. First list out all the features of the product and choose the common one. Decide the template based on the common feature and present the product page. For example if its 1000 product, it fall in to 50 Category. Based on the category and common feature it will fall into around 5 to 10 template.
It really needs some research work to come up with final answer, hope this helps to get you final answer.
Some reference for you to strengthen the product page - <https://www.shopify.com/blog/16204608-7-effective-ecommerce-product-pages-how-to-turn-visitors-into-customers> | Dizzying options a click away
-----------------------------
Zappos does a pretty nice job of dealing with this problem. Many of the shoes they carry are available in all sorts of color combinations and sizes. There are also plenty of related products that, to some extent, are part of the whole purchase consideration and should be readily available even from the detail page.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZRQga.jpg)
They've done a great job of providing visual navigation that configures the configuration on the right. The cart button stays in an active state even when the size has not been configured, but pops hint text on the size selector on hover.
They have wide-ranging cross-sells in the lower part of the right column and very directly related cross-sells just below the product description. The latter category is what I would propose is almost like more product options in the shoe market and possibly for your furniture as well. |
118,874 | I was writing a 3-question examination today (undergrad) with 1200 other students when our professor comes in after ~2/3 of the exam and changes a question to make it solvable. This was a 1.5 hour exam where each question was designed to take 30 minutes so unless you did the other two questions knowing that question was impossible to solve and waited for an announcement on instructions of how to solve, you would not be able to finish. When I walked out of the exam, you could tell that everyone was mad that this changed question could have impacted their overall mark by 15-20%. What should I do to help out myself and my fellow classmates who were screwed over by this change? Has anyone ever had a similar situation? | 2018/10/24 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/118874",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/99629/"
] | This does happen sometimes, despite a professor's best efforts to check the exam beforehand. Professors are humans and make mistakes.
You can write a polite email to the professor (or whoever is in charge of grading the exam, if different), letting them know that you feel this had a disproportionate negative impact on your score.
That's about all you can do. It is ultimately up to the professor (or grading committee, etc) to decide what to do about this issue, if anything. They might:
* Do nothing, reasoning that although the correction was unfortunate, it affected all students equally.
* Give credit to students who made an appropriate attempt to solve the impossible version of the problem.
* Adjust the "curve" or other statistical correction of the exam score to take this into account.
* Discard the question's score, and reweight the scores on the other questions.
* Discard the entire exam and hold a new one.
* Discard the entire exam and reweight other exams in the course to compensate.
In principle, if you don't agree with the professor's decision, you may be able to appeal to some higher authority. This would depend on your university's regulations, and my guess is that it would be unlikely to succeed, if the professor did anything halfway reasonable. I'd consider that any of the above options would satisfy that. | Yes, these things happen. No one is perfect, not even a professor. But what you need is a fair resolution. One would be to just cancel the exam and adjust grading rubric accordingly. Another, not quite as good, would be to reschedule another exam.
But you need to find a, hopefully polite, way to let the professor know that some people spent a lot of time on an impossible question and others did not. Even giving everyone full marks on that question isn't fair due to the frustration that some experienced.
If the professor is focused on teaching and not just on grading, then it should be possible to work out a solution.
With 1200 people it is hard to form a delegation to meet with the professor, but that would be a logical step.
But if this just happened, it may be that the professor will announce a suitable accommodation at the next meeting. If not, you might bring it up with the TAs for the course. I wouldn't escalate it to any formal complaint, however, until you have more evidence about how the professor intends to deal with it.
---
My advice to the professor, however, is that if you give a diagnostic that you know is invalid, you need to drop it entirely. It can't be finessed. |
118,874 | I was writing a 3-question examination today (undergrad) with 1200 other students when our professor comes in after ~2/3 of the exam and changes a question to make it solvable. This was a 1.5 hour exam where each question was designed to take 30 minutes so unless you did the other two questions knowing that question was impossible to solve and waited for an announcement on instructions of how to solve, you would not be able to finish. When I walked out of the exam, you could tell that everyone was mad that this changed question could have impacted their overall mark by 15-20%. What should I do to help out myself and my fellow classmates who were screwed over by this change? Has anyone ever had a similar situation? | 2018/10/24 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/118874",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/99629/"
] | This does happen sometimes, despite a professor's best efforts to check the exam beforehand. Professors are humans and make mistakes.
You can write a polite email to the professor (or whoever is in charge of grading the exam, if different), letting them know that you feel this had a disproportionate negative impact on your score.
That's about all you can do. It is ultimately up to the professor (or grading committee, etc) to decide what to do about this issue, if anything. They might:
* Do nothing, reasoning that although the correction was unfortunate, it affected all students equally.
* Give credit to students who made an appropriate attempt to solve the impossible version of the problem.
* Adjust the "curve" or other statistical correction of the exam score to take this into account.
* Discard the question's score, and reweight the scores on the other questions.
* Discard the entire exam and hold a new one.
* Discard the entire exam and reweight other exams in the course to compensate.
In principle, if you don't agree with the professor's decision, you may be able to appeal to some higher authority. This would depend on your university's regulations, and my guess is that it would be unlikely to succeed, if the professor did anything halfway reasonable. I'd consider that any of the above options would satisfy that. | Other answers respond to the questions raised in the main body of your message, I'd like to comment on the broader question (asked in the title), *What should I do if my professor changes the question mid-exam?*, with particular reference to
>
> unless you did the other two questions knowing [the other] question was impossible to solve and waited for an announcement on instructions of how to solve, you would not be able to finish.
>
>
>
Exam strategy can help here: I recommend considering the entire examination script before writing. If you're able to identify an issue with any question, then immediately raise it with invigilators. (They should promptly raise such issues with the professor.) This maximises the window during which a professor can respond to the issue. Divide the remaining time between questions, with the goal of maximising your score. If you were able to identify an issue with a question, then that question should be delayed, because you might receive additional information during the exam. Returning to the question:
>
> What should I do if my professor changes the question mid-exam?
>
>
>
Be prepared: Anticipate this possibility and adopt an exam strategy that optimises your advantage.
---
Response to comments
>
> You're not answering the question. You're giving advice about [what] one can do before a change [of an exam script] to reduce the impact, not what to do in response to a change.
>
>
>
and
>
> The question of *How to preparation for when a professor changes the question mid-exam* would be well answered by this. What to do *after the fact* is the OP's question. Unless you have a time-machine allowing the OP to follow your advice "preemptively", this does not answer the question.
>
>
>
After an event such as the OP's, one must reflect and consider how to improve themselves. My answer explains how the OP should improve themselves for a similar such event in the future. I consider this to be a crucial part of the OP's response. |
118,874 | I was writing a 3-question examination today (undergrad) with 1200 other students when our professor comes in after ~2/3 of the exam and changes a question to make it solvable. This was a 1.5 hour exam where each question was designed to take 30 minutes so unless you did the other two questions knowing that question was impossible to solve and waited for an announcement on instructions of how to solve, you would not be able to finish. When I walked out of the exam, you could tell that everyone was mad that this changed question could have impacted their overall mark by 15-20%. What should I do to help out myself and my fellow classmates who were screwed over by this change? Has anyone ever had a similar situation? | 2018/10/24 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/118874",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/99629/"
] | This does happen sometimes, despite a professor's best efforts to check the exam beforehand. Professors are humans and make mistakes.
You can write a polite email to the professor (or whoever is in charge of grading the exam, if different), letting them know that you feel this had a disproportionate negative impact on your score.
That's about all you can do. It is ultimately up to the professor (or grading committee, etc) to decide what to do about this issue, if anything. They might:
* Do nothing, reasoning that although the correction was unfortunate, it affected all students equally.
* Give credit to students who made an appropriate attempt to solve the impossible version of the problem.
* Adjust the "curve" or other statistical correction of the exam score to take this into account.
* Discard the question's score, and reweight the scores on the other questions.
* Discard the entire exam and hold a new one.
* Discard the entire exam and reweight other exams in the course to compensate.
In principle, if you don't agree with the professor's decision, you may be able to appeal to some higher authority. This would depend on your university's regulations, and my guess is that it would be unlikely to succeed, if the professor did anything halfway reasonable. I'd consider that any of the above options would satisfy that. | Consider not doing anything.
The issue isn't time sensitive. Its not like the grades can't be changed after the fact. It's very reasonable to believe the professor is going to analyze the grades that came out of the exam and find a solution.
The professor will have information you don't have. While you know your exam was affected, and you can estimate how it affected 1199 other people, the professor will be making decisions with all 1200 graded exams in front of them.
Now if the professor hands you back the graded papers and doesn't do anything to resolve the issues, that's a good time to start making noise. |
118,874 | I was writing a 3-question examination today (undergrad) with 1200 other students when our professor comes in after ~2/3 of the exam and changes a question to make it solvable. This was a 1.5 hour exam where each question was designed to take 30 minutes so unless you did the other two questions knowing that question was impossible to solve and waited for an announcement on instructions of how to solve, you would not be able to finish. When I walked out of the exam, you could tell that everyone was mad that this changed question could have impacted their overall mark by 15-20%. What should I do to help out myself and my fellow classmates who were screwed over by this change? Has anyone ever had a similar situation? | 2018/10/24 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/118874",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/99629/"
] | This does happen sometimes, despite a professor's best efforts to check the exam beforehand. Professors are humans and make mistakes.
You can write a polite email to the professor (or whoever is in charge of grading the exam, if different), letting them know that you feel this had a disproportionate negative impact on your score.
That's about all you can do. It is ultimately up to the professor (or grading committee, etc) to decide what to do about this issue, if anything. They might:
* Do nothing, reasoning that although the correction was unfortunate, it affected all students equally.
* Give credit to students who made an appropriate attempt to solve the impossible version of the problem.
* Adjust the "curve" or other statistical correction of the exam score to take this into account.
* Discard the question's score, and reweight the scores on the other questions.
* Discard the entire exam and hold a new one.
* Discard the entire exam and reweight other exams in the course to compensate.
In principle, if you don't agree with the professor's decision, you may be able to appeal to some higher authority. This would depend on your university's regulations, and my guess is that it would be unlikely to succeed, if the professor did anything halfway reasonable. I'd consider that any of the above options would satisfy that. | One of my professors had a blanket rule that was applied to handle situations like these -
You must solve the question to the best of your ability. If the missing piece of information can be simply substituted by a variable, say 'x', your answer must be in terms of 'x'.
If you think that a question is not solvable, you should prove so in your answer. If you are successfully able to do it, you get full points for that question. Based on the difficulty of said proof, they also awarded bonus points, thus turning a potentially problematic situation on its head.
This worked wonders. The students were thrilled when they were able to successfully do this, and the professor had achieved a higher goal than what a simple exam would do. In fact there were unconfirmed rumours of the professor 'making a mistake' on purpose every once in a while. You can suggest that your professor adopt a similar policy in the future.
As for what you can do now, your options are limited. People make mistakes. You can contact the professor via a polite email and make your concerns known. You can also ask what strategy they would apply, to make it fairer. Whatever they do, it's probably not going to be 100% fair anyway. If they do nothing, or their strategy is blatantly unfair, that would be the time for you to take your complaint further if need be. But any half decent strategy is probably going to get the support of any grading committee(s) and/or department heads. |
118,874 | I was writing a 3-question examination today (undergrad) with 1200 other students when our professor comes in after ~2/3 of the exam and changes a question to make it solvable. This was a 1.5 hour exam where each question was designed to take 30 minutes so unless you did the other two questions knowing that question was impossible to solve and waited for an announcement on instructions of how to solve, you would not be able to finish. When I walked out of the exam, you could tell that everyone was mad that this changed question could have impacted their overall mark by 15-20%. What should I do to help out myself and my fellow classmates who were screwed over by this change? Has anyone ever had a similar situation? | 2018/10/24 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/118874",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/99629/"
] | Yes, these things happen. No one is perfect, not even a professor. But what you need is a fair resolution. One would be to just cancel the exam and adjust grading rubric accordingly. Another, not quite as good, would be to reschedule another exam.
But you need to find a, hopefully polite, way to let the professor know that some people spent a lot of time on an impossible question and others did not. Even giving everyone full marks on that question isn't fair due to the frustration that some experienced.
If the professor is focused on teaching and not just on grading, then it should be possible to work out a solution.
With 1200 people it is hard to form a delegation to meet with the professor, but that would be a logical step.
But if this just happened, it may be that the professor will announce a suitable accommodation at the next meeting. If not, you might bring it up with the TAs for the course. I wouldn't escalate it to any formal complaint, however, until you have more evidence about how the professor intends to deal with it.
---
My advice to the professor, however, is that if you give a diagnostic that you know is invalid, you need to drop it entirely. It can't be finessed. | Other answers respond to the questions raised in the main body of your message, I'd like to comment on the broader question (asked in the title), *What should I do if my professor changes the question mid-exam?*, with particular reference to
>
> unless you did the other two questions knowing [the other] question was impossible to solve and waited for an announcement on instructions of how to solve, you would not be able to finish.
>
>
>
Exam strategy can help here: I recommend considering the entire examination script before writing. If you're able to identify an issue with any question, then immediately raise it with invigilators. (They should promptly raise such issues with the professor.) This maximises the window during which a professor can respond to the issue. Divide the remaining time between questions, with the goal of maximising your score. If you were able to identify an issue with a question, then that question should be delayed, because you might receive additional information during the exam. Returning to the question:
>
> What should I do if my professor changes the question mid-exam?
>
>
>
Be prepared: Anticipate this possibility and adopt an exam strategy that optimises your advantage.
---
Response to comments
>
> You're not answering the question. You're giving advice about [what] one can do before a change [of an exam script] to reduce the impact, not what to do in response to a change.
>
>
>
and
>
> The question of *How to preparation for when a professor changes the question mid-exam* would be well answered by this. What to do *after the fact* is the OP's question. Unless you have a time-machine allowing the OP to follow your advice "preemptively", this does not answer the question.
>
>
>
After an event such as the OP's, one must reflect and consider how to improve themselves. My answer explains how the OP should improve themselves for a similar such event in the future. I consider this to be a crucial part of the OP's response. |
118,874 | I was writing a 3-question examination today (undergrad) with 1200 other students when our professor comes in after ~2/3 of the exam and changes a question to make it solvable. This was a 1.5 hour exam where each question was designed to take 30 minutes so unless you did the other two questions knowing that question was impossible to solve and waited for an announcement on instructions of how to solve, you would not be able to finish. When I walked out of the exam, you could tell that everyone was mad that this changed question could have impacted their overall mark by 15-20%. What should I do to help out myself and my fellow classmates who were screwed over by this change? Has anyone ever had a similar situation? | 2018/10/24 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/118874",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/99629/"
] | Yes, these things happen. No one is perfect, not even a professor. But what you need is a fair resolution. One would be to just cancel the exam and adjust grading rubric accordingly. Another, not quite as good, would be to reschedule another exam.
But you need to find a, hopefully polite, way to let the professor know that some people spent a lot of time on an impossible question and others did not. Even giving everyone full marks on that question isn't fair due to the frustration that some experienced.
If the professor is focused on teaching and not just on grading, then it should be possible to work out a solution.
With 1200 people it is hard to form a delegation to meet with the professor, but that would be a logical step.
But if this just happened, it may be that the professor will announce a suitable accommodation at the next meeting. If not, you might bring it up with the TAs for the course. I wouldn't escalate it to any formal complaint, however, until you have more evidence about how the professor intends to deal with it.
---
My advice to the professor, however, is that if you give a diagnostic that you know is invalid, you need to drop it entirely. It can't be finessed. | Consider not doing anything.
The issue isn't time sensitive. Its not like the grades can't be changed after the fact. It's very reasonable to believe the professor is going to analyze the grades that came out of the exam and find a solution.
The professor will have information you don't have. While you know your exam was affected, and you can estimate how it affected 1199 other people, the professor will be making decisions with all 1200 graded exams in front of them.
Now if the professor hands you back the graded papers and doesn't do anything to resolve the issues, that's a good time to start making noise. |
118,874 | I was writing a 3-question examination today (undergrad) with 1200 other students when our professor comes in after ~2/3 of the exam and changes a question to make it solvable. This was a 1.5 hour exam where each question was designed to take 30 minutes so unless you did the other two questions knowing that question was impossible to solve and waited for an announcement on instructions of how to solve, you would not be able to finish. When I walked out of the exam, you could tell that everyone was mad that this changed question could have impacted their overall mark by 15-20%. What should I do to help out myself and my fellow classmates who were screwed over by this change? Has anyone ever had a similar situation? | 2018/10/24 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/118874",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/99629/"
] | Yes, these things happen. No one is perfect, not even a professor. But what you need is a fair resolution. One would be to just cancel the exam and adjust grading rubric accordingly. Another, not quite as good, would be to reschedule another exam.
But you need to find a, hopefully polite, way to let the professor know that some people spent a lot of time on an impossible question and others did not. Even giving everyone full marks on that question isn't fair due to the frustration that some experienced.
If the professor is focused on teaching and not just on grading, then it should be possible to work out a solution.
With 1200 people it is hard to form a delegation to meet with the professor, but that would be a logical step.
But if this just happened, it may be that the professor will announce a suitable accommodation at the next meeting. If not, you might bring it up with the TAs for the course. I wouldn't escalate it to any formal complaint, however, until you have more evidence about how the professor intends to deal with it.
---
My advice to the professor, however, is that if you give a diagnostic that you know is invalid, you need to drop it entirely. It can't be finessed. | One of my professors had a blanket rule that was applied to handle situations like these -
You must solve the question to the best of your ability. If the missing piece of information can be simply substituted by a variable, say 'x', your answer must be in terms of 'x'.
If you think that a question is not solvable, you should prove so in your answer. If you are successfully able to do it, you get full points for that question. Based on the difficulty of said proof, they also awarded bonus points, thus turning a potentially problematic situation on its head.
This worked wonders. The students were thrilled when they were able to successfully do this, and the professor had achieved a higher goal than what a simple exam would do. In fact there were unconfirmed rumours of the professor 'making a mistake' on purpose every once in a while. You can suggest that your professor adopt a similar policy in the future.
As for what you can do now, your options are limited. People make mistakes. You can contact the professor via a polite email and make your concerns known. You can also ask what strategy they would apply, to make it fairer. Whatever they do, it's probably not going to be 100% fair anyway. If they do nothing, or their strategy is blatantly unfair, that would be the time for you to take your complaint further if need be. But any half decent strategy is probably going to get the support of any grading committee(s) and/or department heads. |
34,473 | With more and more people using mobile devices (or devices which doesn't have right click gesture), its getting tough to indicate that there is an activity that involves right click on desktop devices, especially for those applications which became popular on mobile devices or people started using them on mobile devices first like facebook or gmail.
Do you think right click is still an important gesture to hold on too, or should it be completely ignored while doing website design? | 2013/02/11 | [
"https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/34473",
"https://ux.stackexchange.com",
"https://ux.stackexchange.com/users/25193/"
] | It's possible that in the future the right click will go the way of the Dodo, but a lot here depends on your intentions and your user demographic.
If your intention is to be strictly cutting edge and your user demographic is very familiar with gestures (and perhaps Mac users?), then by all means avoid it.
If your intention is to hang on to conventions that most users will recognize and your users are a broader range of people including older people who may not be up to date on gestures, then my advice is to continue using a right click.
It should be noted that **intention** is the most critical aspect of great web design.
This article will give you great insight:
<http://sachagreif.com/the-flat-sink/> | yes I Back,JohnGB. Right click is not recommended for websites. If you are using it, please be cautious about the findability score of that feature.
Again Mouse Hover is also auto-of scope for touch devices.
So Try to be selective, minimilistic about features and pitch on the most commonly used interactions. |
34,473 | With more and more people using mobile devices (or devices which doesn't have right click gesture), its getting tough to indicate that there is an activity that involves right click on desktop devices, especially for those applications which became popular on mobile devices or people started using them on mobile devices first like facebook or gmail.
Do you think right click is still an important gesture to hold on too, or should it be completely ignored while doing website design? | 2013/02/11 | [
"https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/34473",
"https://ux.stackexchange.com",
"https://ux.stackexchange.com/users/25193/"
] | Firstly, right click isn't a consideration in website design, but may be in desktop software.
Try to **design your software to not need a right click** in the first place. It will be more **discoverable**, and will **translate to mobile** well. I have seen some applications use a long press as the equivalent of a right click, but I wouldn't recommend this as you would be breaking the generally accepted use of long press. The Android design guide recommends long press as:
 | I don't think that there is a generic answer to this. You need to determine if your users expect there a contextual menu.
If your users (or some important subset of your users) expect that there should be a contextual menu, and have expectations about what that contextual menu should contain, then you probably need a contextual menu. If you increase the time that it takes for a user to complete their goal, or if you block them from completing a goal, then you are negatively impacting their user experience. There are many workflows on a website that could benefit from quick access via a contextual menu instead of having to look elsewhere to find the same functionality.
That said, I strongly agree with the Apple [Human Interface Guidelines](http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/AppleHIGuidelines/OSXHIGuidelines.pdf), which says this:
>
> Avoid providing access to features only in toolbars or contextual
> menus. Because toolbars and contextual menus may be hidden, the
> commands they contain should always be available in menu bar menus as
> well.
> Presuming that your website won't have its own menu bar, but the point remains the same: a contextual menu should never be the only way that a feature can be accessed. There should always be another entry point.
>
>
>
For the purposes of this answer, I'm not drawing a distinction between a website (ex: <http://google.com/>) and a web application (ex: <http://mail.google.com/>). The line between these two is thin and getting thinner with each passing day, as it becomes easier to create very rich web experiences. |
34,473 | With more and more people using mobile devices (or devices which doesn't have right click gesture), its getting tough to indicate that there is an activity that involves right click on desktop devices, especially for those applications which became popular on mobile devices or people started using them on mobile devices first like facebook or gmail.
Do you think right click is still an important gesture to hold on too, or should it be completely ignored while doing website design? | 2013/02/11 | [
"https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/34473",
"https://ux.stackexchange.com",
"https://ux.stackexchange.com/users/25193/"
] | I have rather strong views on this subject so please take my opinions with whatever serving of salt you like.
That said, I love right click in the browser. When I am on the desktop and working within a web application (Google Dive for example) I often find myself right clicking and seeking to perform an action. And often times - especially when operating within a web app - I am disappointed to find limited or no functionality nestled away in that menu.
That said, I don't believe you should ever *have* to right click in a web browser for any reason. And for our touch only friends this can be especially frustrating.
So, my approach when designing web applications where I could see benefit of adding a right click context menu to some portions of the app is to first design the interactions so that they can be accomplished with no right clicking whatsoever. Once that is done, if I do believe that some significant portion of users will find benefit from a right click context menu *and* there is enough time and resources to properly implement the menu, I say go for it!
I hold this same view on keyboard shortcuts. A lot of users don't know about them or care to use them, but for some certain power users they sure make life easier and work quicker. | yes I Back,JohnGB. Right click is not recommended for websites. If you are using it, please be cautious about the findability score of that feature.
Again Mouse Hover is also auto-of scope for touch devices.
So Try to be selective, minimilistic about features and pitch on the most commonly used interactions. |
34,473 | With more and more people using mobile devices (or devices which doesn't have right click gesture), its getting tough to indicate that there is an activity that involves right click on desktop devices, especially for those applications which became popular on mobile devices or people started using them on mobile devices first like facebook or gmail.
Do you think right click is still an important gesture to hold on too, or should it be completely ignored while doing website design? | 2013/02/11 | [
"https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/34473",
"https://ux.stackexchange.com",
"https://ux.stackexchange.com/users/25193/"
] | Firstly, right click isn't a consideration in website design, but may be in desktop software.
Try to **design your software to not need a right click** in the first place. It will be more **discoverable**, and will **translate to mobile** well. I have seen some applications use a long press as the equivalent of a right click, but I wouldn't recommend this as you would be breaking the generally accepted use of long press. The Android design guide recommends long press as:
 | yes I Back,JohnGB. Right click is not recommended for websites. If you are using it, please be cautious about the findability score of that feature.
Again Mouse Hover is also auto-of scope for touch devices.
So Try to be selective, minimilistic about features and pitch on the most commonly used interactions. |
34,473 | With more and more people using mobile devices (or devices which doesn't have right click gesture), its getting tough to indicate that there is an activity that involves right click on desktop devices, especially for those applications which became popular on mobile devices or people started using them on mobile devices first like facebook or gmail.
Do you think right click is still an important gesture to hold on too, or should it be completely ignored while doing website design? | 2013/02/11 | [
"https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/34473",
"https://ux.stackexchange.com",
"https://ux.stackexchange.com/users/25193/"
] | I have rather strong views on this subject so please take my opinions with whatever serving of salt you like.
That said, I love right click in the browser. When I am on the desktop and working within a web application (Google Dive for example) I often find myself right clicking and seeking to perform an action. And often times - especially when operating within a web app - I am disappointed to find limited or no functionality nestled away in that menu.
That said, I don't believe you should ever *have* to right click in a web browser for any reason. And for our touch only friends this can be especially frustrating.
So, my approach when designing web applications where I could see benefit of adding a right click context menu to some portions of the app is to first design the interactions so that they can be accomplished with no right clicking whatsoever. Once that is done, if I do believe that some significant portion of users will find benefit from a right click context menu *and* there is enough time and resources to properly implement the menu, I say go for it!
I hold this same view on keyboard shortcuts. A lot of users don't know about them or care to use them, but for some certain power users they sure make life easier and work quicker. | I don't think that there is a generic answer to this. You need to determine if your users expect there a contextual menu.
If your users (or some important subset of your users) expect that there should be a contextual menu, and have expectations about what that contextual menu should contain, then you probably need a contextual menu. If you increase the time that it takes for a user to complete their goal, or if you block them from completing a goal, then you are negatively impacting their user experience. There are many workflows on a website that could benefit from quick access via a contextual menu instead of having to look elsewhere to find the same functionality.
That said, I strongly agree with the Apple [Human Interface Guidelines](http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/AppleHIGuidelines/OSXHIGuidelines.pdf), which says this:
>
> Avoid providing access to features only in toolbars or contextual
> menus. Because toolbars and contextual menus may be hidden, the
> commands they contain should always be available in menu bar menus as
> well.
> Presuming that your website won't have its own menu bar, but the point remains the same: a contextual menu should never be the only way that a feature can be accessed. There should always be another entry point.
>
>
>
For the purposes of this answer, I'm not drawing a distinction between a website (ex: <http://google.com/>) and a web application (ex: <http://mail.google.com/>). The line between these two is thin and getting thinner with each passing day, as it becomes easier to create very rich web experiences. |
34,473 | With more and more people using mobile devices (or devices which doesn't have right click gesture), its getting tough to indicate that there is an activity that involves right click on desktop devices, especially for those applications which became popular on mobile devices or people started using them on mobile devices first like facebook or gmail.
Do you think right click is still an important gesture to hold on too, or should it be completely ignored while doing website design? | 2013/02/11 | [
"https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/34473",
"https://ux.stackexchange.com",
"https://ux.stackexchange.com/users/25193/"
] | I have rather strong views on this subject so please take my opinions with whatever serving of salt you like.
That said, I love right click in the browser. When I am on the desktop and working within a web application (Google Dive for example) I often find myself right clicking and seeking to perform an action. And often times - especially when operating within a web app - I am disappointed to find limited or no functionality nestled away in that menu.
That said, I don't believe you should ever *have* to right click in a web browser for any reason. And for our touch only friends this can be especially frustrating.
So, my approach when designing web applications where I could see benefit of adding a right click context menu to some portions of the app is to first design the interactions so that they can be accomplished with no right clicking whatsoever. Once that is done, if I do believe that some significant portion of users will find benefit from a right click context menu *and* there is enough time and resources to properly implement the menu, I say go for it!
I hold this same view on keyboard shortcuts. A lot of users don't know about them or care to use them, but for some certain power users they sure make life easier and work quicker. | I don't know that right-click is going to ever disappear completely because it is such a well used and loved tool for desktop design. I have seen many a user trying to use right click in user tests as well.
A great way I and other designers have found to avoid using right click in web based design is by giving a settings or tools button in the upper right hand corner of whatever card or div the user wants to take action on. By giving them a button to open up the context menu you avoid the discoverability issues that come with invisible right clicks, while still giving the user those nifty contextual tools in a semi familiar way.
Example:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/X6WQX.png) |
34,473 | With more and more people using mobile devices (or devices which doesn't have right click gesture), its getting tough to indicate that there is an activity that involves right click on desktop devices, especially for those applications which became popular on mobile devices or people started using them on mobile devices first like facebook or gmail.
Do you think right click is still an important gesture to hold on too, or should it be completely ignored while doing website design? | 2013/02/11 | [
"https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/34473",
"https://ux.stackexchange.com",
"https://ux.stackexchange.com/users/25193/"
] | I have rather strong views on this subject so please take my opinions with whatever serving of salt you like.
That said, I love right click in the browser. When I am on the desktop and working within a web application (Google Dive for example) I often find myself right clicking and seeking to perform an action. And often times - especially when operating within a web app - I am disappointed to find limited or no functionality nestled away in that menu.
That said, I don't believe you should ever *have* to right click in a web browser for any reason. And for our touch only friends this can be especially frustrating.
So, my approach when designing web applications where I could see benefit of adding a right click context menu to some portions of the app is to first design the interactions so that they can be accomplished with no right clicking whatsoever. Once that is done, if I do believe that some significant portion of users will find benefit from a right click context menu *and* there is enough time and resources to properly implement the menu, I say go for it!
I hold this same view on keyboard shortcuts. A lot of users don't know about them or care to use them, but for some certain power users they sure make life easier and work quicker. | It's possible that in the future the right click will go the way of the Dodo, but a lot here depends on your intentions and your user demographic.
If your intention is to be strictly cutting edge and your user demographic is very familiar with gestures (and perhaps Mac users?), then by all means avoid it.
If your intention is to hang on to conventions that most users will recognize and your users are a broader range of people including older people who may not be up to date on gestures, then my advice is to continue using a right click.
It should be noted that **intention** is the most critical aspect of great web design.
This article will give you great insight:
<http://sachagreif.com/the-flat-sink/> |
34,473 | With more and more people using mobile devices (or devices which doesn't have right click gesture), its getting tough to indicate that there is an activity that involves right click on desktop devices, especially for those applications which became popular on mobile devices or people started using them on mobile devices first like facebook or gmail.
Do you think right click is still an important gesture to hold on too, or should it be completely ignored while doing website design? | 2013/02/11 | [
"https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/34473",
"https://ux.stackexchange.com",
"https://ux.stackexchange.com/users/25193/"
] | I have rather strong views on this subject so please take my opinions with whatever serving of salt you like.
That said, I love right click in the browser. When I am on the desktop and working within a web application (Google Dive for example) I often find myself right clicking and seeking to perform an action. And often times - especially when operating within a web app - I am disappointed to find limited or no functionality nestled away in that menu.
That said, I don't believe you should ever *have* to right click in a web browser for any reason. And for our touch only friends this can be especially frustrating.
So, my approach when designing web applications where I could see benefit of adding a right click context menu to some portions of the app is to first design the interactions so that they can be accomplished with no right clicking whatsoever. Once that is done, if I do believe that some significant portion of users will find benefit from a right click context menu *and* there is enough time and resources to properly implement the menu, I say go for it!
I hold this same view on keyboard shortcuts. A lot of users don't know about them or care to use them, but for some certain power users they sure make life easier and work quicker. | Firstly, right click isn't a consideration in website design, but may be in desktop software.
Try to **design your software to not need a right click** in the first place. It will be more **discoverable**, and will **translate to mobile** well. I have seen some applications use a long press as the equivalent of a right click, but I wouldn't recommend this as you would be breaking the generally accepted use of long press. The Android design guide recommends long press as:
 |
34,473 | With more and more people using mobile devices (or devices which doesn't have right click gesture), its getting tough to indicate that there is an activity that involves right click on desktop devices, especially for those applications which became popular on mobile devices or people started using them on mobile devices first like facebook or gmail.
Do you think right click is still an important gesture to hold on too, or should it be completely ignored while doing website design? | 2013/02/11 | [
"https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/34473",
"https://ux.stackexchange.com",
"https://ux.stackexchange.com/users/25193/"
] | It's possible that in the future the right click will go the way of the Dodo, but a lot here depends on your intentions and your user demographic.
If your intention is to be strictly cutting edge and your user demographic is very familiar with gestures (and perhaps Mac users?), then by all means avoid it.
If your intention is to hang on to conventions that most users will recognize and your users are a broader range of people including older people who may not be up to date on gestures, then my advice is to continue using a right click.
It should be noted that **intention** is the most critical aspect of great web design.
This article will give you great insight:
<http://sachagreif.com/the-flat-sink/> | I don't think that there is a generic answer to this. You need to determine if your users expect there a contextual menu.
If your users (or some important subset of your users) expect that there should be a contextual menu, and have expectations about what that contextual menu should contain, then you probably need a contextual menu. If you increase the time that it takes for a user to complete their goal, or if you block them from completing a goal, then you are negatively impacting their user experience. There are many workflows on a website that could benefit from quick access via a contextual menu instead of having to look elsewhere to find the same functionality.
That said, I strongly agree with the Apple [Human Interface Guidelines](http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/AppleHIGuidelines/OSXHIGuidelines.pdf), which says this:
>
> Avoid providing access to features only in toolbars or contextual
> menus. Because toolbars and contextual menus may be hidden, the
> commands they contain should always be available in menu bar menus as
> well.
> Presuming that your website won't have its own menu bar, but the point remains the same: a contextual menu should never be the only way that a feature can be accessed. There should always be another entry point.
>
>
>
For the purposes of this answer, I'm not drawing a distinction between a website (ex: <http://google.com/>) and a web application (ex: <http://mail.google.com/>). The line between these two is thin and getting thinner with each passing day, as it becomes easier to create very rich web experiences. |
34,473 | With more and more people using mobile devices (or devices which doesn't have right click gesture), its getting tough to indicate that there is an activity that involves right click on desktop devices, especially for those applications which became popular on mobile devices or people started using them on mobile devices first like facebook or gmail.
Do you think right click is still an important gesture to hold on too, or should it be completely ignored while doing website design? | 2013/02/11 | [
"https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/34473",
"https://ux.stackexchange.com",
"https://ux.stackexchange.com/users/25193/"
] | Firstly, right click isn't a consideration in website design, but may be in desktop software.
Try to **design your software to not need a right click** in the first place. It will be more **discoverable**, and will **translate to mobile** well. I have seen some applications use a long press as the equivalent of a right click, but I wouldn't recommend this as you would be breaking the generally accepted use of long press. The Android design guide recommends long press as:
 | I don't know that right-click is going to ever disappear completely because it is such a well used and loved tool for desktop design. I have seen many a user trying to use right click in user tests as well.
A great way I and other designers have found to avoid using right click in web based design is by giving a settings or tools button in the upper right hand corner of whatever card or div the user wants to take action on. By giving them a button to open up the context menu you avoid the discoverability issues that come with invisible right clicks, while still giving the user those nifty contextual tools in a semi familiar way.
Example:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/X6WQX.png) |
106,499 | An entry in [Fortnightly Topic Challenge #47: "Wacky Sudokus"](https://puzzling.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7139/fortnightly-topic-challenge-47-wacky-sudokus)
[Other puzzles in this series](https://puzzling.stackexchange.com/search?q=user%3A18250+%5Bsudoku%5D+title%3A%22SS%23%22)
---
Welcome to the second puzzle in this suduko series! For more information about the series, [see the first puzzle and the introduction](https://puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/106461/the-blind-killer-a-new-series-ss1). Enjoy!
---
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/urDkx.png)
---
**This sudoku appears to have a different set of numbers... and some of the clues don't seem complete!**
[Google Sheets Link](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11Ov8OYpFpoul0Dyr2FjkBjNruhKnBzqSOKiIipBbpW8/edit?usp=sharing)
**RULES**:
* Normal Sudoku rules apply
* The 'digits' are the trinary representation of the numbers 0-8:
+ 00, 01, 02, 10, 11, 12, 20, 21, 22
* Some cells contain half of a trinary number. The correct entry for that cell will be a trinary number which matches the clue.
+ E.g. '\_0' must be either 00, 10 or 20
Good luck!!! | 2021/01/11 | [
"https://puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/106499",
"https://puzzling.stackexchange.com",
"https://puzzling.stackexchange.com/users/18250/"
] | **Step 1**
>
> I started solving this by hand, and then I realized there was a way
> easier way to solve this: convert each number to base 10, and
> convert each partial number (eg. \_1) into notes denoting its
> possibilities (eg. 01, 11, 21 = 2, 5, 8). Doing so produces:
> [](https://i.stack.imgur.com/v3fyD.png)
>
>
>
**Step 2**
>
> Simplifying this new sudoku based on its notes and entries yields:
> [](https://i.stack.imgur.com/WACa4.png)
>
>
>
**Step 3**
>
> This grid can then be solved as usual:
> [](https://i.stack.imgur.com/9X2vS.png)
>
>
>
**Step 4**
>
> And then it can be converted back into trinary:
> [](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Q2mKA.png)
>
>
> | The first thing to note is that some standard sudoku principles apply.
For example for each row and column as well as each block can only contain a particular digit 3 times in each place.
I will use notation [row,column].
To start off we can notice that in the fifth row all 3 of the right zeros ( -0)
are filled in so entry [5,4] (2-) must be equal to 22 since the block containing it has a 21.
Then entry [4,2] must be 22 as the row and column of it contains the others.
Entry [4,9] must be 12.
Entry [3,5] must be 20 because of the column.
Entry [3,1] must be 22.
Entry [3,6] must be 01 as the other -1 entries are filled.
Entry [1,8] must be 10 by the 1- entries in the block.
Entry [5,8] must be 20 by the column.
Entry [6,3] must be 12 by column and block.
Then [6,1] must be 02 by elimination.
Entry [7,1] must be 12 by column.
Entry [1,4] must be 00 since row below contains 00 and block contains 20.
Entry [1,5] must be 12 by row and column.
Entry [5,2] must be 01 by block and column.
Entry [9,5] must be 11 by column and row.
Then [9,3] must be 21 by elimination.
Entry [7,4] must be 10 by block and column.
Entry [8,6] must be 21 by block and column.
Entry [6,5] must be 00 by row and column.
Entry [2,5] must be 10 because adjacent columns already contain it and the block must have one.
Entry [3,3] must have one by a similar argument.
Entry [3,9] must be 00 because rows above contain it and adjacent column contains it and the block must have one.
Then this implies that [5,9] below must be 10.
By the same token [5,7] must be 00.
At this point we can actually convert the whole puzzle to a standard Sudoku puzzle
and solve it by known means.
To convert we use Dec(Trinary) + 1. So if we have a 2 digit trinary number ab then
Dec(ab) = 3\*a + b in decimal. We add the one to have the numbers span 1-9 instead of 0-8.
Or using the following key:
>
> 00 - 1
> 01 - 2
> 02 - 3
> 10 - 4
> 11 - 5
> 12 - 6
> 20 - 7
> 21 - 8
> 22 - 9
>
>
>
So we get the regular Sudoku puzzle:
>
> [5,X,3][1,6,X][X,4,X]
>
> [X,1,X][X,4,X][6,X,8]
>
> [9,X,4][8,7,2][5,X,1]
>
>
>
> [X,9,X][X,8,4][3,X,6]
>
> [X,2,X][9,X,X][1,7,4]
>
> [3,4,6][X,1,X][X,8,X]
>
>
>
> [6,X,X][4,9,X][X,1,X]
>
> [X,7,X][X,X,8][X,5,X]
>
> [X,X,8][X,5,X][2,X,X]
>
>
>
>
Which has the solution
>
> [5,8,3][1,6,9][7,4,2]
>
> [2,1,7][3,4,5][6,9,8]
>
> [9,6,4][8,7,2][5,3,1]
>
>
>
> [7,9,1][5,8,4][3,2,6]
>
> [8,2,5][9,3,6][1,7,4]
>
> [3,4,6][2,1,7][9,8,5]
>
>
>
> [6,5,2][4,9,3][8,1,7]
>
> [1,7,9][6,2,8][4,5,3]
>
> [4,3,8][7,5,1][2,6,9]
>
>
>
>
Converting back to the puzzle format:
>
> [11,21,02][00,12,22][20,10,01]
>
> [01,00,20][02,10,11][12,22,21]
>
> [22,12,10][21,20,01][11,02,00]
>
>
>
> [20,22,00][11,21,10][02,01,12]
>
> [21,01,11][22,02,12][00,20,10]
>
> [02,10,12][01,00,20][22,21,11]
>
>
>
> [12,11,01][10,22,02][21,00,20]
>
> [00,20,22][12,01,21][10,11,02]
>
> [10,02,21][20,11,00][01,12,22]
>
>
> |
425,206 | Let f(x) be a polynomial in F[x]. Let K be the splitting field of f over F.
Let a be an element of F. Is K also the splitting field of (x-a)f(x)? I think it should be.
I just want to make sure I'm not being stupid! | 2013/06/20 | [
"https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/425206",
"https://math.stackexchange.com",
"https://math.stackexchange.com/users/77318/"
] | In my opinion, nothing ever 'changes' in mathematics, so the fixed/nonfixed distinction probably doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Unless you're trying to model things changing in time, of course, but the point is, the distinction is less fundamental than the other other two. Good question, by the way.
So without the fixed/nonfixed distinction, we have:
1. unordered unique - set
2. unordered non-unique - heap (or 'multiset' if you prefer)
3. ordered unique - chain (or 'linearly ordered set' if you prefer)
4. ordered non-unique - function whose source (or 'domain' if you prefer) is a chain.
Hope this is what you were after.
*Edit*. Here's a different idea. Under this point of view, 'ordered non-unique' is the most general, and the other concepts specialize this concept.
1. ordered non-unique - quasi-ordered set.
2. ordered unique - partially ordered set
3. unordered non-unique - equivalence relation
4. unordered unique - an ordered set whose order relation coincides with equality. | A related taxonomy is the [Boom hierarchy](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.49.3252), where datastructures are classified according to whether they are 'unital', associative, commutative and/or idempotent with respect to the 'joining together' operation.
In your terminology, a set has all four of these properties, vectors and arrays are unital and associative (but not commutative or idempotent). The fixed/non-fixed distinction doesn't come into the picture, but there's a lot of other structures like trees, or mobiles (trees where the order of the children doesn't matter) to look at. |
125 | Like how to vectorize the data structure, how to visualize the computational results in an elegant way, or can we share the code or subroutine here? | 2012/01/19 | [
"https://scicomp.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/125",
"https://scicomp.meta.stackexchange.com",
"https://scicomp.meta.stackexchange.com/users/350/"
] | I would say yes, definitely. There have already been a few questions of this sort. | I agree with David... As always, some effort must be shown in asking the question. |
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