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16,019 | I have been writing a book, and often times I feel like a lot of the elements in my story are just Freudian slips. I'm not plagiarizing or anything, but sometimes I will go back and read through my drafts, only to remember another story I read/watched with similar elements.
A related problem: How can I take things I've written that are a little to cliche / unoriginal and make them original? Also, how can I avoid this in the future? | 2015/01/27 | [
"https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/16019",
"https://writers.stackexchange.com",
"https://writers.stackexchange.com/users/12765/"
] | In contrast to Neil Fein (in his comment) I understand the question to be:
### How can I be more original?
When it comes to originality, there is a continuum, with plagiarism (and fan fiction) on the one end and originality on the other. But why is not all art original? Or why is not all art derivative? In my opinion, the two tendencies of the originality continuum are the result of two different artist personalities, or two different motivations to create art:
1. One artist loves and is inspired by the art he perceives, and wants to create more of the same.
2. Another artist is interested in certain personal or social issues and uses art to deal with these issues (e.g. art as self-therapy or art as propaganda for certain political or social ideas).
The first type of artist, who is inspired to create art by his love for certain individual works, artists, or genres, will always and forever have the problem that his art looks and feels like it was inspired by something else. It cannot ever be original, **because its whole purpose is to recreate**.
The second type of artist, who is inspired by his experiences or the life around him, will often have the problem that his work falls *outside* of genre conventions and audience expectations. It may be so unique as to be incomprehensible or irrelevant to any but a few select audience with similar problems or views.
The solution – and ideal work – to me is art that combines both these inspirations and finds a middle ground:
**Art that uses a genre or conventions to deal with social or personal issues.**
Since, like most authors, you seem to find yourself closer to the end of plagiarism, how can you shift your art more towards originality? The answer is clear, if you agree with my theroy of what causes originality:
Put more of yourself into your work
-----------------------------------
You do have a life beyond your love for certain artworks, I suppose, so take the blueprint that you have learned in your reading and use it to tell stories from your own life or about the things that you care for in reality.
Sure, even the topics that interest you in real life have been the subject of many books, movies, paintings, choreographies and so on, and no life is so dissimilar of all others as to be totally unique. What will make your writing unique lies in the word "**deal with**" that I used to describe the original extreme of the originality continuum above. Originality is not that what you write about has never been written about before. But that you
Use your writing to deal with what concerns you
-----------------------------------------------
If you are concerned about the safety of your community, or the state of your marriage, or the drought in California, or whatever, use the blueprint of the writings that you love and emulate to find solutions to those problems. And I mean: Don't take the *topic* and find literary examples and emulate those. But take your reality and try to solve the real problem *in writing*.
Let's take an example:
Maybe you love fantasy. And maybe, in real life, you have a small child. Now, you notice how in fantasy the heroes are always single young men unbound by familial responsibility. They can just up and go. But you can't. You can't even party with your friends anymore. So you write the story of a man your age with a child your child's age who hears the call to adventure. He must go (or his world will be destroyed by whatever evil you enjoy), but he must take his child along, because the mother was killed / abducted / is busy with doing the laundry. I don't know if you would want to write or read that story – I have and I would –, but it would certainly be original. And I'm sure you can come up with something that interests *you*.
Have fun! | Embrace what you cannot avoid. All writers are the products of what they read, seasoned with small dashes of what they care about or have experienced in the real world. None of us can escape it and I would venture that there is little reason to try.
Even the authors we love are victim to this recipe. Their writing borrows from the talents of those authors whom they admired and enjoyed.
This is not an act of theft. It is a process of immitation and enhancement. It cannot be theft, because writing is many-faceted and hard. What you write while thinking about another's scenes, is not a plagaristic duplication of their work (unless of course, you copy their work word for word). Your writing will be weaker than theirs in some ways (immitation) and could be stronger than theirs in others (enhancement). It will never be the same.
Quite often, I deliberately steal from the writers I love. I have a bookcase behind me and the top shelf is full of fictions which I have reread so often that their stories are hollow to me now. Each of these novels is full of earmarked pages and scribbled margin notes. They are my pirates booty of stolen treasures, each crafted by a more talented writer than I.
Whenever I get stuck in my writing, (for me that's usually fighting scenes, love scenes and scenes that are emotionally dark) I will sacrifice some of my writing time and just read one of these masterworks. Using my page folds and notes, I can usually find a scene that is similar to what I'm trying to write. Just by reading through the scene, perhaps including a few pages before and after, I remind myself of my favorite techniques for handling this particular writing challenge.
These stories are so old and warn out for me that I don't get caught up in their story telling. Instead, I'm free to pay attention to their word choice, their sentence length and their metre. By drinking in the structure of another author's hand, I'm usually able to find my best voice for the scene I need to write.
This technique has gotten me through those horrible times when without it, nothing I wrote seemed to work at all.
Is it thievery? probably.
Plagerism? no.
Does it help me write my stories in the manner I want the written? definitely.
I wouldn't spend much time worrying about your originality. There is very little opportunity for originality left. Instead, invest that time in reading. Fill your mind with beautifully written scenes and masterfully crafted characters. Then steal everything that is worth taking from them, and pour it into your craft.
Your readers will thank you for it, and if you are lucky, someday they will steal a few scenes from you. |
16,019 | I have been writing a book, and often times I feel like a lot of the elements in my story are just Freudian slips. I'm not plagiarizing or anything, but sometimes I will go back and read through my drafts, only to remember another story I read/watched with similar elements.
A related problem: How can I take things I've written that are a little to cliche / unoriginal and make them original? Also, how can I avoid this in the future? | 2015/01/27 | [
"https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/16019",
"https://writers.stackexchange.com",
"https://writers.stackexchange.com/users/12765/"
] | Let me answer this in a more practical fashion:
Let's say you've written a Hero's Journey, which has a standard pattern. And as you read over your work, you realize "this sounds a lot like *Star Wars*!" (Not unreasonable, since Lucas followed Campbell's *Hero with a Thousand Faces* pretty closely.)
Find the first element which strikes you as unoriginal, and change it. Let's say your protagonist is a farm boy.
* Make him a city boy.
* Make him a nobleman's son.
* Make him a factory worker.
* Make him an astronaut.
* Make him a woman.
and so on. (Choose as many as will fit into your scenario.)
Then take the next element: Her parents were killed, launching her quest.
* Her parents are absent, and she was raised in an orphanage.
* Her parents are present and loving, and she chooses to go.
* Society allows for group marriages, so she has three fathers and five
mothers. Some want her to go and some don't.
Et cetera.
If you change enough of these items, and then carry the changes forward throughout the story, it should deviate you from your visible influences. Your changes can also spark new ideas — for example, if you go with the group marriage idea, that can significantly change the "hero gets the princess" ending, because now the heroine can get the princess, the prince, and maybe a neighboring duchy, and what does that do to inheritance and alliances? And that creates a new, wholly original set of plot problems you can work with. | Embrace what you cannot avoid. All writers are the products of what they read, seasoned with small dashes of what they care about or have experienced in the real world. None of us can escape it and I would venture that there is little reason to try.
Even the authors we love are victim to this recipe. Their writing borrows from the talents of those authors whom they admired and enjoyed.
This is not an act of theft. It is a process of immitation and enhancement. It cannot be theft, because writing is many-faceted and hard. What you write while thinking about another's scenes, is not a plagaristic duplication of their work (unless of course, you copy their work word for word). Your writing will be weaker than theirs in some ways (immitation) and could be stronger than theirs in others (enhancement). It will never be the same.
Quite often, I deliberately steal from the writers I love. I have a bookcase behind me and the top shelf is full of fictions which I have reread so often that their stories are hollow to me now. Each of these novels is full of earmarked pages and scribbled margin notes. They are my pirates booty of stolen treasures, each crafted by a more talented writer than I.
Whenever I get stuck in my writing, (for me that's usually fighting scenes, love scenes and scenes that are emotionally dark) I will sacrifice some of my writing time and just read one of these masterworks. Using my page folds and notes, I can usually find a scene that is similar to what I'm trying to write. Just by reading through the scene, perhaps including a few pages before and after, I remind myself of my favorite techniques for handling this particular writing challenge.
These stories are so old and warn out for me that I don't get caught up in their story telling. Instead, I'm free to pay attention to their word choice, their sentence length and their metre. By drinking in the structure of another author's hand, I'm usually able to find my best voice for the scene I need to write.
This technique has gotten me through those horrible times when without it, nothing I wrote seemed to work at all.
Is it thievery? probably.
Plagerism? no.
Does it help me write my stories in the manner I want the written? definitely.
I wouldn't spend much time worrying about your originality. There is very little opportunity for originality left. Instead, invest that time in reading. Fill your mind with beautifully written scenes and masterfully crafted characters. Then steal everything that is worth taking from them, and pour it into your craft.
Your readers will thank you for it, and if you are lucky, someday they will steal a few scenes from you. |
16,019 | I have been writing a book, and often times I feel like a lot of the elements in my story are just Freudian slips. I'm not plagiarizing or anything, but sometimes I will go back and read through my drafts, only to remember another story I read/watched with similar elements.
A related problem: How can I take things I've written that are a little to cliche / unoriginal and make them original? Also, how can I avoid this in the future? | 2015/01/27 | [
"https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/16019",
"https://writers.stackexchange.com",
"https://writers.stackexchange.com/users/12765/"
] | There's a couple practical things that can help. First, try keeping a dream journal --anyone can learn to remember their dreams, and it's a direct connection to your own personal subconscious.
Second, try exposing yourself to a different form of creativity --music or visual art. At least then if you're influenced, it will be by someone who isn't working in your own field.
Finally --it has often been said that "[Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal](http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/03/06/artists-steal/)." We are all influenced all the time by what we see and read --the question is to what extent are you making something truly your own. After all, even Shakespeare's plots were far from original. Worry less about whether something is reminiscent of something else and more about whether it's good enough to justify using it. | Embrace what you cannot avoid. All writers are the products of what they read, seasoned with small dashes of what they care about or have experienced in the real world. None of us can escape it and I would venture that there is little reason to try.
Even the authors we love are victim to this recipe. Their writing borrows from the talents of those authors whom they admired and enjoyed.
This is not an act of theft. It is a process of immitation and enhancement. It cannot be theft, because writing is many-faceted and hard. What you write while thinking about another's scenes, is not a plagaristic duplication of their work (unless of course, you copy their work word for word). Your writing will be weaker than theirs in some ways (immitation) and could be stronger than theirs in others (enhancement). It will never be the same.
Quite often, I deliberately steal from the writers I love. I have a bookcase behind me and the top shelf is full of fictions which I have reread so often that their stories are hollow to me now. Each of these novels is full of earmarked pages and scribbled margin notes. They are my pirates booty of stolen treasures, each crafted by a more talented writer than I.
Whenever I get stuck in my writing, (for me that's usually fighting scenes, love scenes and scenes that are emotionally dark) I will sacrifice some of my writing time and just read one of these masterworks. Using my page folds and notes, I can usually find a scene that is similar to what I'm trying to write. Just by reading through the scene, perhaps including a few pages before and after, I remind myself of my favorite techniques for handling this particular writing challenge.
These stories are so old and warn out for me that I don't get caught up in their story telling. Instead, I'm free to pay attention to their word choice, their sentence length and their metre. By drinking in the structure of another author's hand, I'm usually able to find my best voice for the scene I need to write.
This technique has gotten me through those horrible times when without it, nothing I wrote seemed to work at all.
Is it thievery? probably.
Plagerism? no.
Does it help me write my stories in the manner I want the written? definitely.
I wouldn't spend much time worrying about your originality. There is very little opportunity for originality left. Instead, invest that time in reading. Fill your mind with beautifully written scenes and masterfully crafted characters. Then steal everything that is worth taking from them, and pour it into your craft.
Your readers will thank you for it, and if you are lucky, someday they will steal a few scenes from you. |
1,503 | I make web applications for a living working from home.
Sometimes a client pick a technology stack that is likely to hurt the project (severely over-engineered, bad combination of components or just the wrong set of tools for the task).
The cynical may think: bad choices for the client are not necessarily a bad deal for you, aren't you charging by hour?
However this is a tough spot when you operate over online freelancer markets like oDesk/Elance, because a disaster project is likely to get you a bad review and hurt your reputation, even if it is not your fault.
My dad used to say that either you have the customer or have the reason; how do you talk sense into a client that made wrong choices for the project? | 2014/03/05 | [
"https://freelancing.stackexchange.com/questions/1503",
"https://freelancing.stackexchange.com",
"https://freelancing.stackexchange.com/users/2214/"
] | In my experience, when prospective clients specify technologies, they're coming more from a place of having heard of others using them successfully, rather than of having considered the use case and made an educated and informed decision. I talk to them about why they chose the tools they did. If their reasoning is sound, awesome. If not, I remind them that they hired me for my expertise and that my job is to choose the most appropriate tools. | If, after talking with them at length about their requirements and how well their requirements mesh with my capabilities, they still choose a platform that isn't as well suited to their project as others, I make sure to include assumptions in my proposal that cover problems I anticipate I might have. I'll have made sure to tell them that some requirements, like choosing the platform, may increase development time required even if all other aspects of the project remain the same.
For instance, a client may choose Ruby on Rails, and require that Heroku be used. Now a simple three file PHP site with a DB on a cheap host might meet all their other needs, but if they insist then I make sure to quote my time estimates accordingly, beef up the section on website maintenance needed after my development is done, suggesting that maintenance will be necessary due to various Heroku issues I've dealt with in the past, and added assumptions such as, "Heroku supports necessary rails libraries and I won't have to debug anything but my own code" etc. They know that if the assumptions break, then we'll have to have a talk about time estimate overruns. |
1,311,708 | I have read that a hard disk is divided into regions called sectors (a sector can be for example 512 bytes in size).
And that a file system will arrange groups of sectors into blocks (a block can consist for example of 8 sectors) and when Linux writes a file to the hard disk, it actually writes to these blocks and not to the sectors.
Now my question is, are all storage devices (for example: USB drive, CD, DVD, etc.) divided into sectors, or is it just hard disks? | 2018/04/07 | [
"https://superuser.com/questions/1311708",
"https://superuser.com",
"https://superuser.com/users/892143/"
] | Virtually all storage devices are divided into sectors.
Most are 512 bytes
Some new large drives are 4096
CD-ROM are 2048
A few manufacturers have custom storage for specialty storage needs, but most do not. Most of these devices only have a few KB or a couple MB of storage meant for internal usage.
Even then the amount of work it takes to "make your own filesystem" is high enough that most just use someone else's file system. If they want to block the user from messing with it they encrypt it.
The "sector" is simply a way to divide up an amount of storage so the people writing file systems and other infrastructure have a common base to work with. Also the entirety of storage can't be loaded into ram all at once so it has to be sub-divided.
If sectors were allowed to be **any** size the people writing file systems would have to handle all possible values making there job that much harder. The harder it is the more room for human error and the greater the chance something goes horribly wrong and you lose your data.
Also optimizing for performance would also be much harder as people who choose exceptionally low number like 2 bytes would always have terrible performance. | ### Are all storage devices divided into sectors?
No.
Random access storage devices *may* be divided into sectors, it depends on the device driver.
Linear access storage devices (for example Tape Drives) will not be divided into sectors. |
1,311,708 | I have read that a hard disk is divided into regions called sectors (a sector can be for example 512 bytes in size).
And that a file system will arrange groups of sectors into blocks (a block can consist for example of 8 sectors) and when Linux writes a file to the hard disk, it actually writes to these blocks and not to the sectors.
Now my question is, are all storage devices (for example: USB drive, CD, DVD, etc.) divided into sectors, or is it just hard disks? | 2018/04/07 | [
"https://superuser.com/questions/1311708",
"https://superuser.com",
"https://superuser.com/users/892143/"
] | >
> Are all storage devices divided into sectors?
>
>
>
No.
One of the oldest storage media is tape (magnetic, paper, mylar), and data is not written to tape in sectors.
Sectors are an intrinsic and salient property of hard disks.
Since most modern storage peripherals emulate a HDD at the ATA interface level (in order to gain faster acceptance by users), you as a user might think that these other peripherals actually have sectors also.
At the ATA interface, there certainly is the concept of a sector.
But NAND flash memory, which is the underlying storage device in SSDs, USB flash drives, and SD cards, is organized in pages and blocks, and do not have sectors.
Users might refer to NAND flash pages as "sectors", but the various NAND chip datasheets I've looked at (e.g. [Micron](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiO-pbQpKnaAhUD34MKHS28Cv4QFghRMAM&url=http%3A%2F%2Fe2e.ti.com%2Fcfs-file%2F__key%2Fcommunityserver-discussions-components-files%2F639%2F3005.MT29F1G08ABBEAH4E.pdf&usg=AOvVaw0grW_tcyq6B9icFtVjwZO2), [Numonyx](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjnxqS5nqnaAhVC44MKHTpcB_4QFggzMAI&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.micron.com%2F~%2Fmedia%2Fdocuments%2Fproducts%2Fdata-sheet%2Fnor-flash%2Fparallel%2Fp33%2F208034_p33_65nm_sbc_64m_128m_discrete_ds.pdf&usg=AOvVaw0YpqNLHQ0BNr7l8zSaHyW6)) did not even contain the word "sector".
Of course there could be another NAND flash chip out there that does use the "sector" terminology for familiarity (like wikipedia).
From a Micron datasheet:
>
> • Organization
>
> – Page size x8: 2112 bytes (2048 + 64 bytes)
>
> – Page size x16: 1056 words (1024 + 32 words)
>
> – Block size: 64 pages (128K + 4K bytes)
>
> – Device size: 1Gb: 1024 blocks
>
>
> The NAND Flash memory array is programmed and read using page-based
> operations and is erased using block-based operations.
>
>
> | ### Are all storage devices divided into sectors?
No.
Random access storage devices *may* be divided into sectors, it depends on the device driver.
Linear access storage devices (for example Tape Drives) will not be divided into sectors. |
1,311,708 | I have read that a hard disk is divided into regions called sectors (a sector can be for example 512 bytes in size).
And that a file system will arrange groups of sectors into blocks (a block can consist for example of 8 sectors) and when Linux writes a file to the hard disk, it actually writes to these blocks and not to the sectors.
Now my question is, are all storage devices (for example: USB drive, CD, DVD, etc.) divided into sectors, or is it just hard disks? | 2018/04/07 | [
"https://superuser.com/questions/1311708",
"https://superuser.com",
"https://superuser.com/users/892143/"
] | No. There are numerous storage devices that dont use sectors, such as [punch cards](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punched_card).
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Dbq2B.jpg)
As you can see there are no sectors here.
No real reason to add this answer, other than I wanted to put a picture of a punch card. :) | ### Are all storage devices divided into sectors?
No.
Random access storage devices *may* be divided into sectors, it depends on the device driver.
Linear access storage devices (for example Tape Drives) will not be divided into sectors. |
92,749 | The answer to "[Are there limits or costs to Wishing forever for ability score increases?](https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/50481/are-there-limits-or-costs-to-wishing-forever-for-ability-score-increases)" seems to indicate "There is a 33% chance you can never cast wish again." Several other answers on here take that for granted. However, the exact text from the PBH says:
>
> The stress of casting this spell to produce any effect other than
> duplicating another spell weakens you. After enduring that stress,
> each time you cast a spell until you finish a long rest, you take 1d10
> necrotic damage per level of that spell. This damage can't be reduced
> or prevented in any way. **In addition**, your Strength drops to 3, if it
> isn't 3 or lower already, for 2d4 days. For each of those days that
> you spend resting and doing nothing more than light activity, your
> remaining recovery time decreases by 2 days. Finally, there is a 33
> percent chance that you are unable to cast wish ever again if you
> suffer this stress.
>
>
>
From a grammatical point, this is as ambiguous as "Peter sees the park with the telescope." Is he looking through it, or is it in his hand?
I am looking for the RAW answer regarding the "In addition..." Is that grammatically modifying the 1d10 damage, in which case the remaining text only applies if you cast a spell before finishing a long rest, or does it apply to "After enduring that stress," in which case all of these effects apply automatically after casting the spell? | 2017/01/07 | [
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/92749",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/33272/"
] | Neither reading you suggest is correct. The 33% is conditional on whether you use *wish* for duplication of another spell effect or not.
Any casting of *wish* used for **an ad-hoc effect** causes a kind of stress, which includes the 33% chance:
>
> The **stress** of casting this spell to produce any effect other than duplicating another spell weakens you. After enduring **that stress** …
>
>
>
What follows is a list of three effects of this weakening. This weakening due to the **stress** mentioned at the beginning of your quote has as its third effect:
>
> Finally, there is a 33 percent chance that you are unable to cast wish ever again if you suffer **this stress**.
>
>
>
So:
1. Casting to duplicate another spell effect
→ no chance to lose the ability to cast *wish*.
2. Casting for a bespoke effect
→ 33% chance of losing the ability to cast *wish*.
---
If the above reading obtained from the spell as-written is insufficient and Word of Designer would be more convincing, Jeremy Crawford has [confirmed](https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/653629926864609280) ([twice](https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/795696477305606144)) the above reading is how to read *wish*, in response to this exact question:
1. >
>
> >
> > **Nick DeVito** @NDevito1
> >
> > @JeremyECrawford Casting Wish: do you always have a 33% chance of never casting it again or is it only if you cast another spell b4 a rest?
> >
> >
> >
>
>
> **Jeremy Crawford**
>
> @JeremyECrawford
>
> There's a 33% chance of not casting wish again if it does anything other than duplicate a spell of level 0-8. #DnD
>
> [10:54 AM · Oct 12, 2015](https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/653629926864609280)
>
>
>
2. >
> **Jeremy Crawford**
>
> @JeremyECrawford
>
> Wish spell: (1) Duplicated a spell of 8th level or lower? No stress. (2) Did anything else with wish? Stress. #DnD
>
> [10:36 AM - 7 Nov 2016](https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/795696477305606144)
>
>
> | ### The paragraph is about *the stress of producing any other effect with Wish*
Since the OP is concerned about the grammar of the rules and there clarifications, here is a grammatical analysis
The quotation is a classical paragraph, and fits very well with the definition of a paragraph provided by University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC).
### Topic Sentence
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) defines a topic sentence as follows:
>
> Not only is a topic sentence the first sentence of a paragraph, but, more importantly, it is the most general sentence in a paragraph. What does "most general" mean? It means that there are not many details in the sentence, but that the sentence introduces an overall idea that you want to discuss later in the paragraph.
>
>
>
Our first sentence epitomises a topic sentence: it introduces a topic without providing any specific details.
>
> *The stress of casting this spell to produce any effect other than duplicating another spell weakens you.*
>
>
>
### Supporting Sentences
UIUC continues:
>
> The second and third sentences are called supporting sentences. They are called "supporting" because they "support," or explain, the idea expressed in the topic sentence.
>
>
>
That describes how how we should understand our second and third sentences.
### Concluding Sentence
UIUC says this about ending a paragraph:
>
> You can understand concluding sentences with this example. Consider a hamburger that you can buy at a fast-food restaurant. A hamburger has a top bun (a kind of bread), meat, cheese, lettuce, and other elements in the middle of the hamburger, and a bottom bun. Note how the top bun and the bottom bun are very similar. The top bun, in a way, is like a topic sentence, and the bottom bun is like the concluding sentence…the concluding sentence is similar to, but not exactly the same as, the topic sentence.
>
>
>
Here is our concluding sentence:
>
> *Finally, there is a 33 percent chance that you are unable to cast wish ever again if you suffer this stress.*
>
>
>
While this sentence breaks a rule of a classical *concluding statement* (in that it provides some additional details) it does serve as a conclusion. It lets the reader know a topic is coming to an end (with the word “finally”) and it reminds the reader of that topic: “this stress.”
As we are still on the same topic, “the stress of producing any other effect with *Wish*,” it’s clear the intervening statements in the paragraph is about that topic, specifically. |
92,749 | The answer to "[Are there limits or costs to Wishing forever for ability score increases?](https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/50481/are-there-limits-or-costs-to-wishing-forever-for-ability-score-increases)" seems to indicate "There is a 33% chance you can never cast wish again." Several other answers on here take that for granted. However, the exact text from the PBH says:
>
> The stress of casting this spell to produce any effect other than
> duplicating another spell weakens you. After enduring that stress,
> each time you cast a spell until you finish a long rest, you take 1d10
> necrotic damage per level of that spell. This damage can't be reduced
> or prevented in any way. **In addition**, your Strength drops to 3, if it
> isn't 3 or lower already, for 2d4 days. For each of those days that
> you spend resting and doing nothing more than light activity, your
> remaining recovery time decreases by 2 days. Finally, there is a 33
> percent chance that you are unable to cast wish ever again if you
> suffer this stress.
>
>
>
From a grammatical point, this is as ambiguous as "Peter sees the park with the telescope." Is he looking through it, or is it in his hand?
I am looking for the RAW answer regarding the "In addition..." Is that grammatically modifying the 1d10 damage, in which case the remaining text only applies if you cast a spell before finishing a long rest, or does it apply to "After enduring that stress," in which case all of these effects apply automatically after casting the spell? | 2017/01/07 | [
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/92749",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/33272/"
] | Neither reading you suggest is correct. The 33% is conditional on whether you use *wish* for duplication of another spell effect or not.
Any casting of *wish* used for **an ad-hoc effect** causes a kind of stress, which includes the 33% chance:
>
> The **stress** of casting this spell to produce any effect other than duplicating another spell weakens you. After enduring **that stress** …
>
>
>
What follows is a list of three effects of this weakening. This weakening due to the **stress** mentioned at the beginning of your quote has as its third effect:
>
> Finally, there is a 33 percent chance that you are unable to cast wish ever again if you suffer **this stress**.
>
>
>
So:
1. Casting to duplicate another spell effect
→ no chance to lose the ability to cast *wish*.
2. Casting for a bespoke effect
→ 33% chance of losing the ability to cast *wish*.
---
If the above reading obtained from the spell as-written is insufficient and Word of Designer would be more convincing, Jeremy Crawford has [confirmed](https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/653629926864609280) ([twice](https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/795696477305606144)) the above reading is how to read *wish*, in response to this exact question:
1. >
>
> >
> > **Nick DeVito** @NDevito1
> >
> > @JeremyECrawford Casting Wish: do you always have a 33% chance of never casting it again or is it only if you cast another spell b4 a rest?
> >
> >
> >
>
>
> **Jeremy Crawford**
>
> @JeremyECrawford
>
> There's a 33% chance of not casting wish again if it does anything other than duplicate a spell of level 0-8. #DnD
>
> [10:54 AM · Oct 12, 2015](https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/653629926864609280)
>
>
>
2. >
> **Jeremy Crawford**
>
> @JeremyECrawford
>
> Wish spell: (1) Duplicated a spell of 8th level or lower? No stress. (2) Did anything else with wish? Stress. #DnD
>
> [10:36 AM - 7 Nov 2016](https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/795696477305606144)
>
>
> | You suffer the chance of never casting *Wish* again if you do anything other then duplicate a spell 0-8th level
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
**The RAW Reading:**
The RAW reading, as evidenced by this post's history, is very contentious.
1. All of the listed effects happen when you do anything other then duplicate a spell 0-8th level.
2. Only a *general stress* occurs if you do something other then duplicate a spell 0-8th level. If you then cast another spell before taking a long rest, you experience the other effects, including a 33% chance to never cast wish again.
Intelligent people have believed both options and changed their opinions. Therefore, I conclude there *is no useful RAW reading.*
Therefore, we consult the RAI, in this case *Sage Advice*:
**Question**
>
> Whenever you cast wish, do you always have a 33 percent chance of
> never casting it again?
>
>
>
**Answer**
>
> If you cast wish to duplicate a spell of level
> 0–8, there are no detrimental effects. However, if you do anything
> other than duplicate a spell of level 0–8, you suffer the stress
> described in the final paragraph of the spell. If you suffer that
> stress, there is a 33 percent chance that you are unable to cast wish
> again.
>
>
>
Since the RAI is equivalent to one of the RAW interpretations, *we can conclude that this is the RAW answer.* |
92,749 | The answer to "[Are there limits or costs to Wishing forever for ability score increases?](https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/50481/are-there-limits-or-costs-to-wishing-forever-for-ability-score-increases)" seems to indicate "There is a 33% chance you can never cast wish again." Several other answers on here take that for granted. However, the exact text from the PBH says:
>
> The stress of casting this spell to produce any effect other than
> duplicating another spell weakens you. After enduring that stress,
> each time you cast a spell until you finish a long rest, you take 1d10
> necrotic damage per level of that spell. This damage can't be reduced
> or prevented in any way. **In addition**, your Strength drops to 3, if it
> isn't 3 or lower already, for 2d4 days. For each of those days that
> you spend resting and doing nothing more than light activity, your
> remaining recovery time decreases by 2 days. Finally, there is a 33
> percent chance that you are unable to cast wish ever again if you
> suffer this stress.
>
>
>
From a grammatical point, this is as ambiguous as "Peter sees the park with the telescope." Is he looking through it, or is it in his hand?
I am looking for the RAW answer regarding the "In addition..." Is that grammatically modifying the 1d10 damage, in which case the remaining text only applies if you cast a spell before finishing a long rest, or does it apply to "After enduring that stress," in which case all of these effects apply automatically after casting the spell? | 2017/01/07 | [
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/92749",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/33272/"
] | You suffer the chance of never casting *Wish* again if you do anything other then duplicate a spell 0-8th level
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
**The RAW Reading:**
The RAW reading, as evidenced by this post's history, is very contentious.
1. All of the listed effects happen when you do anything other then duplicate a spell 0-8th level.
2. Only a *general stress* occurs if you do something other then duplicate a spell 0-8th level. If you then cast another spell before taking a long rest, you experience the other effects, including a 33% chance to never cast wish again.
Intelligent people have believed both options and changed their opinions. Therefore, I conclude there *is no useful RAW reading.*
Therefore, we consult the RAI, in this case *Sage Advice*:
**Question**
>
> Whenever you cast wish, do you always have a 33 percent chance of
> never casting it again?
>
>
>
**Answer**
>
> If you cast wish to duplicate a spell of level
> 0–8, there are no detrimental effects. However, if you do anything
> other than duplicate a spell of level 0–8, you suffer the stress
> described in the final paragraph of the spell. If you suffer that
> stress, there is a 33 percent chance that you are unable to cast wish
> again.
>
>
>
Since the RAI is equivalent to one of the RAW interpretations, *we can conclude that this is the RAW answer.* | ### The paragraph is about *the stress of producing any other effect with Wish*
Since the OP is concerned about the grammar of the rules and there clarifications, here is a grammatical analysis
The quotation is a classical paragraph, and fits very well with the definition of a paragraph provided by University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC).
### Topic Sentence
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) defines a topic sentence as follows:
>
> Not only is a topic sentence the first sentence of a paragraph, but, more importantly, it is the most general sentence in a paragraph. What does "most general" mean? It means that there are not many details in the sentence, but that the sentence introduces an overall idea that you want to discuss later in the paragraph.
>
>
>
Our first sentence epitomises a topic sentence: it introduces a topic without providing any specific details.
>
> *The stress of casting this spell to produce any effect other than duplicating another spell weakens you.*
>
>
>
### Supporting Sentences
UIUC continues:
>
> The second and third sentences are called supporting sentences. They are called "supporting" because they "support," or explain, the idea expressed in the topic sentence.
>
>
>
That describes how how we should understand our second and third sentences.
### Concluding Sentence
UIUC says this about ending a paragraph:
>
> You can understand concluding sentences with this example. Consider a hamburger that you can buy at a fast-food restaurant. A hamburger has a top bun (a kind of bread), meat, cheese, lettuce, and other elements in the middle of the hamburger, and a bottom bun. Note how the top bun and the bottom bun are very similar. The top bun, in a way, is like a topic sentence, and the bottom bun is like the concluding sentence…the concluding sentence is similar to, but not exactly the same as, the topic sentence.
>
>
>
Here is our concluding sentence:
>
> *Finally, there is a 33 percent chance that you are unable to cast wish ever again if you suffer this stress.*
>
>
>
While this sentence breaks a rule of a classical *concluding statement* (in that it provides some additional details) it does serve as a conclusion. It lets the reader know a topic is coming to an end (with the word “finally”) and it reminds the reader of that topic: “this stress.”
As we are still on the same topic, “the stress of producing any other effect with *Wish*,” it’s clear the intervening statements in the paragraph is about that topic, specifically. |
3,037 | Right now we have two simulator tags:
* [flight-simulator](https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/flight-simulator "show questions tagged 'flight-simulator'") has [33 questions](https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/flight-simulator)
* [simulator](https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/simulator "show questions tagged 'simulator'") has has [12 questions](https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/simulator)
There doesn't seem to be any obvious reason to have both. Should we merge them, and if so, into what? | 2016/07/07 | [
"https://aviation.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3037",
"https://aviation.meta.stackexchange.com",
"https://aviation.meta.stackexchange.com/users/62/"
] | Based on the existence of [What regulations exist for ATC real time RADAR simulator software?](https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/14405/what-regulations-exist-for-atc-real-time-radar-simulator-software) and [Where can I find an ATM simulation software to investigate traffic flow capacities?](https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/9844/where-can-i-find-an-atm-simulation-software-to-investigate-traffic-flow-capaciti) I've created a new ATC-Simulator tag for ATC simulation software.
If there are no strong objections I'm going to start gradually re-tagging questions out of [simulator](https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/simulator "show questions tagged 'simulator'") into [atc-simulator](https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/atc-simulator "show questions tagged 'atc-simulator'") and [flight-simulator](https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/flight-simulator "show questions tagged 'flight-simulator'") as appropriate.
This will eventually kill the "simulator" tag and leave us with two distinct and non-meta tags for the most common types of simulators people will ask about. | I suggest merging them to [simulator](https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/simulator "show questions tagged 'simulator'"), since there are other kinds of simulators (e.g. ATC simulator) as well. |
156,268 | I am writing a Steanpunk novel and am interested in having a "plausible" Union Steam Gun that would help turn the tide in an Alternate History American Civil War.
The gun can be either a machine gun type weapon that is operated by two or more soldiers or a hand held carbine or type weapon handed out to Union Cavalry.
My research found there was a Steam weapon called the Winans Steam Gun, that was also a centrifuge gun. Perhaps ideas on how to modify that to make it more effective.
By, the By, Thanks to everyone who answered my "Quick destruction Of a helium filled airship," question. You all are absolutely amazing, wonderful, creative thinkers. I am so grateful that you all choose to freely share your ideas and knowledge on this site. It is a wonderful tool and blessing for authors. | 2019/09/16 | [
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/156268",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/67227/"
] | "Plausible", "Hand held" and "Steam Powered" are mutually exclusive terms when you're dealing with steam power in the age of steam.
Steam is big, it's heavy, if you're lucky it's self propelled, and even then the Winans Steam Gun didn't match the power of gunpowder weapons and its accuracy was terrible. If you want steam powered weapons, start with self propelled artillery and work your way up to tanks, but hand held is out of the question.
[Traction engines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traction_engine) did exist by that point, so having a steam powered base for your mobile artillery is possible. Making the weapon more effective is possible, but with steam it's almost always about boiler pressure, and at that point higher boiler pressure means a bigger, heavier, boiler and a bigger, heavier, furnace. | Building a steam cannon, starting with rank ignorance. Well, a gun is a tube that contains high pressure in it. The pressure accelerates a projectile out the tube.
We have a steam boiler so there is your pressure. It operates over known pressures. How can we manipulate barrel size and projectile weight to make something comparable to existing firearms?
I found this sweet excel table here
<http://closefocusresearch.com/calculating-barrel-pressure-and-projectile-velocity-gun-systems>
It does the calculations. I included the whole thing so you can see stats for real guns. Then my cannon.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/yEJXP.png)
The pressure from a steam boiler is substantially less than that in a gun barrel. I used 350 psi as representative of boilers from the 1860s. 2 orders of magnitude low. How to fix?
1. More acceleration time. I made the barrel 10 feet long. The projectile has more time to accelerate. Longer would be better but I worried it might get droopy and people might not think you were enthusiastic for the project. 10 feet is plenty long.
2. I made the projectile big: 2000 grains. That is 4.5 oz or 1/3 pound - hefty but not stupidly so. Less than triple the .50 cal.
3. I tripled the bore diameter. Also someone painted it like a barber pole.
The generously long Willk cannon lobs giant bullets at about half the speed of a Minie ball but with the energy of a .44 magnum bullet and a lot of momentum.
The barrel is essentially just a steam whistle: a tube connected to the boiler. For the feed mechanism, a rotating wheel occludes the connection between barrel and boiler, breech slides open, bullet drops in from magazine hopper, breech closes, connection to boiler opens. Repeat. I cannot calculate fire rate. I will assert it is fast but probably not as fast as a Gatlin gun.
A gun like this would be a phenomenal naval weapon for a steamship. You would fire in an arc, as they used machine guns in WW1. The big bullets could travel great distances and would come down through other watercraft or if you were beseiging a city, down through roofs.
---
Thinking about the steam cannon: bullets would be pointed, hollow iron cups. They would be filled with water then sealed with a cork. They will be lighter to transport & iron is less prone to denting than lead. Water is cheap and heavy and will be used to provide extra mass on site. If water is in short supply, then dirt or rocks. |
156,268 | I am writing a Steanpunk novel and am interested in having a "plausible" Union Steam Gun that would help turn the tide in an Alternate History American Civil War.
The gun can be either a machine gun type weapon that is operated by two or more soldiers or a hand held carbine or type weapon handed out to Union Cavalry.
My research found there was a Steam weapon called the Winans Steam Gun, that was also a centrifuge gun. Perhaps ideas on how to modify that to make it more effective.
By, the By, Thanks to everyone who answered my "Quick destruction Of a helium filled airship," question. You all are absolutely amazing, wonderful, creative thinkers. I am so grateful that you all choose to freely share your ideas and knowledge on this site. It is a wonderful tool and blessing for authors. | 2019/09/16 | [
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/156268",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/67227/"
] | Let's try a look at the 'machine gun type weapon operated by two or more soldiers', because handheld isn't going to work, and I see no reason to drag the poor horses into this mess. The problem with the Winans Steam Gun is that it's just markedly inferior to rifles and and the Gatling Gun. So let's discuss Gatling Guns.
The Gatling Gun, by which I mean the one invented by Richard J. Gatling, and not the modern guns which bear the classification 'gatling', was invented right before the Civil War, with the intention being to 'reduce the size of armies and show the futility of war', of which it only accomplished one of those things. It had a few unique features, like the 'rotating barrel' concept, letting it fire faster without the barrel overheating, and used a gravity fed hopper. Now, here's the interesting part - it was hand-cranked. And where I see a hand-crank, I see a spot for a steam engine.
In other words, if you hook up the steam engine to the gatling gun, you can eliminate the need for a person to hand-crank the gun and possibly improve the firing rate - though not too much, because at a certain point overheating starts being an issue, but you could work through those problem by increasing the number of barrels (it started at 6) and reducing the caliber of bullet (started at .58), and the increased weight wouldn't be an issue, because it's not hand cranked, perhaps even up to a thousand rounds a minute. (Possibly - the highest it actually got was [900](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gatling_gun#cite_note-Parker,_John_H._2006-3).) At which point it's not exactly hand-held, and would take a team of soldiers to use, and is only slightly better than the original Gatling Gun, but does work. Slightly.
Though if you want, you can stretch plausibility slightly by mounting the thing on a traction engine, add some deflective armor, and you suddenly have an impromptu half-track slowly charging at the enemy. It won't work on uneven terrain, get stopped cold by trenches (which were everywhere), and be a massive target for enemy cannons but just imagine these things tearing through a Confederate charge. | The fix for the low pressure of the steam piston and subsequent low projectile velocity might be to incorporate it into a 'light gas gun'. In a light gas gun, a large piston is used to pressurize a light gas like hydrogen or helium. This also heats the gas, raising its speed of sound, which gives the projectile higher velocity.
The large steam piston pushes the gas into a much smaller barrel, so the pressures can get insanely high. At the end of a barrel is a burst disk calibrated to blow upen at a specified pressure. When the pressure is reached, the disk ruptures, and all that gas rushes down the barrel at the (very high) speed of sound. This pushes the projectile down the barrel and out.
Light gas guns can attain extremely high speeds. In fact, they are primarily used to test high speed impacts, and projectiles can reach 8.5 km/s - fast enough that if you had one on the Moon, you should shoot projectiles at the Earth. But normally, the super high speed ones have huge pistons driven by explosion, not steam.
Still, a much scaled down, steam powered version of that might still get you some decent projectile velocities.
But I have my doubts that it would ever be small enough that one or two men could handle it, and I certainly wouldn't want to stand beside a steam boiler on a battlefield. It'd have to be incredibly well armored, which would make it not very portable, or it would be a terrific target for the enemy.
More details here: [Wikipedia: Light Gas Gun](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-gas_gun) |
156,268 | I am writing a Steanpunk novel and am interested in having a "plausible" Union Steam Gun that would help turn the tide in an Alternate History American Civil War.
The gun can be either a machine gun type weapon that is operated by two or more soldiers or a hand held carbine or type weapon handed out to Union Cavalry.
My research found there was a Steam weapon called the Winans Steam Gun, that was also a centrifuge gun. Perhaps ideas on how to modify that to make it more effective.
By, the By, Thanks to everyone who answered my "Quick destruction Of a helium filled airship," question. You all are absolutely amazing, wonderful, creative thinkers. I am so grateful that you all choose to freely share your ideas and knowledge on this site. It is a wonderful tool and blessing for authors. | 2019/09/16 | [
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/156268",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/67227/"
] | [To prove a Mythbusters related point, scientists at MIT built a steam mortar cannon using technology and designs developed before 200 BC](https://web.mit.edu/2.009/www/experiments/steamCannon/ArchimedesSteamCannon.html). This mortar could hurl projectiles with more energy than a modern .50 cal machine gun.
As @Separatrix rightly says, steam is an ugly beast that is difficult to fully weaponise. However, the invention of a small and (relatively) portable mortar cannon would allow your army to respond agilely to combat scenarios.
**The invention of the mortar (especially one more powerful than a cannon) would allow your Union to lay down cannonfire faster and more frequently than the enemy**, so your army's tactics are very difficult to respond to because you could have projectiles flying at the speed of sound at any moment. The stealth advantages of mortars over cannons is also something to consider.
Mortars were reinvented in-promptu at [The Siege of Vicksberg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Vicksburg#Siege_operations) in 1863, and proved remarkably effective. In fact, the result was a decisive Union victory that many consider to have been the war's turning point. Any side that developed this technology first (and in a more scientific way than right on the battlefield) would be a serious threat. | I think that any civilisation using a steam gun would have to have some sort of inability to produce any other sort of explosive charge that could propel a projectile.
Steam although i think would be kind of awesome cannot produce in high enough quantities the required Psi quickly enough to fire a projectile efficiently.
Other types of weapon like maybe a steam powered fist or really anything driven by a piston may well be viable. Steam generally needs time to build pressure.
I guess maybe, water under very high pressure Ie. water forced into a container smaller than water's natural mass perhaps?
But then that's not exactly steam, steam being heated water.
I truly wish it were not so. |
156,268 | I am writing a Steanpunk novel and am interested in having a "plausible" Union Steam Gun that would help turn the tide in an Alternate History American Civil War.
The gun can be either a machine gun type weapon that is operated by two or more soldiers or a hand held carbine or type weapon handed out to Union Cavalry.
My research found there was a Steam weapon called the Winans Steam Gun, that was also a centrifuge gun. Perhaps ideas on how to modify that to make it more effective.
By, the By, Thanks to everyone who answered my "Quick destruction Of a helium filled airship," question. You all are absolutely amazing, wonderful, creative thinkers. I am so grateful that you all choose to freely share your ideas and knowledge on this site. It is a wonderful tool and blessing for authors. | 2019/09/16 | [
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/156268",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/67227/"
] | Let's try a look at the 'machine gun type weapon operated by two or more soldiers', because handheld isn't going to work, and I see no reason to drag the poor horses into this mess. The problem with the Winans Steam Gun is that it's just markedly inferior to rifles and and the Gatling Gun. So let's discuss Gatling Guns.
The Gatling Gun, by which I mean the one invented by Richard J. Gatling, and not the modern guns which bear the classification 'gatling', was invented right before the Civil War, with the intention being to 'reduce the size of armies and show the futility of war', of which it only accomplished one of those things. It had a few unique features, like the 'rotating barrel' concept, letting it fire faster without the barrel overheating, and used a gravity fed hopper. Now, here's the interesting part - it was hand-cranked. And where I see a hand-crank, I see a spot for a steam engine.
In other words, if you hook up the steam engine to the gatling gun, you can eliminate the need for a person to hand-crank the gun and possibly improve the firing rate - though not too much, because at a certain point overheating starts being an issue, but you could work through those problem by increasing the number of barrels (it started at 6) and reducing the caliber of bullet (started at .58), and the increased weight wouldn't be an issue, because it's not hand cranked, perhaps even up to a thousand rounds a minute. (Possibly - the highest it actually got was [900](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gatling_gun#cite_note-Parker,_John_H._2006-3).) At which point it's not exactly hand-held, and would take a team of soldiers to use, and is only slightly better than the original Gatling Gun, but does work. Slightly.
Though if you want, you can stretch plausibility slightly by mounting the thing on a traction engine, add some deflective armor, and you suddenly have an impromptu half-track slowly charging at the enemy. It won't work on uneven terrain, get stopped cold by trenches (which were everywhere), and be a massive target for enemy cannons but just imagine these things tearing through a Confederate charge. | Not exactly the answer you are looking for, but I would suggest a steam power tank instead of gun. Heavy armor for protection and a early breach loading cannon in a platform moved by a steam traction engine. You could add a couple of Gatling guns for antipersonnel protection. |
156,268 | I am writing a Steanpunk novel and am interested in having a "plausible" Union Steam Gun that would help turn the tide in an Alternate History American Civil War.
The gun can be either a machine gun type weapon that is operated by two or more soldiers or a hand held carbine or type weapon handed out to Union Cavalry.
My research found there was a Steam weapon called the Winans Steam Gun, that was also a centrifuge gun. Perhaps ideas on how to modify that to make it more effective.
By, the By, Thanks to everyone who answered my "Quick destruction Of a helium filled airship," question. You all are absolutely amazing, wonderful, creative thinkers. I am so grateful that you all choose to freely share your ideas and knowledge on this site. It is a wonderful tool and blessing for authors. | 2019/09/16 | [
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/156268",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/67227/"
] | Let's try a look at the 'machine gun type weapon operated by two or more soldiers', because handheld isn't going to work, and I see no reason to drag the poor horses into this mess. The problem with the Winans Steam Gun is that it's just markedly inferior to rifles and and the Gatling Gun. So let's discuss Gatling Guns.
The Gatling Gun, by which I mean the one invented by Richard J. Gatling, and not the modern guns which bear the classification 'gatling', was invented right before the Civil War, with the intention being to 'reduce the size of armies and show the futility of war', of which it only accomplished one of those things. It had a few unique features, like the 'rotating barrel' concept, letting it fire faster without the barrel overheating, and used a gravity fed hopper. Now, here's the interesting part - it was hand-cranked. And where I see a hand-crank, I see a spot for a steam engine.
In other words, if you hook up the steam engine to the gatling gun, you can eliminate the need for a person to hand-crank the gun and possibly improve the firing rate - though not too much, because at a certain point overheating starts being an issue, but you could work through those problem by increasing the number of barrels (it started at 6) and reducing the caliber of bullet (started at .58), and the increased weight wouldn't be an issue, because it's not hand cranked, perhaps even up to a thousand rounds a minute. (Possibly - the highest it actually got was [900](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gatling_gun#cite_note-Parker,_John_H._2006-3).) At which point it's not exactly hand-held, and would take a team of soldiers to use, and is only slightly better than the original Gatling Gun, but does work. Slightly.
Though if you want, you can stretch plausibility slightly by mounting the thing on a traction engine, add some deflective armor, and you suddenly have an impromptu half-track slowly charging at the enemy. It won't work on uneven terrain, get stopped cold by trenches (which were everywhere), and be a massive target for enemy cannons but just imagine these things tearing through a Confederate charge. | Building a steam cannon, starting with rank ignorance. Well, a gun is a tube that contains high pressure in it. The pressure accelerates a projectile out the tube.
We have a steam boiler so there is your pressure. It operates over known pressures. How can we manipulate barrel size and projectile weight to make something comparable to existing firearms?
I found this sweet excel table here
<http://closefocusresearch.com/calculating-barrel-pressure-and-projectile-velocity-gun-systems>
It does the calculations. I included the whole thing so you can see stats for real guns. Then my cannon.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/yEJXP.png)
The pressure from a steam boiler is substantially less than that in a gun barrel. I used 350 psi as representative of boilers from the 1860s. 2 orders of magnitude low. How to fix?
1. More acceleration time. I made the barrel 10 feet long. The projectile has more time to accelerate. Longer would be better but I worried it might get droopy and people might not think you were enthusiastic for the project. 10 feet is plenty long.
2. I made the projectile big: 2000 grains. That is 4.5 oz or 1/3 pound - hefty but not stupidly so. Less than triple the .50 cal.
3. I tripled the bore diameter. Also someone painted it like a barber pole.
The generously long Willk cannon lobs giant bullets at about half the speed of a Minie ball but with the energy of a .44 magnum bullet and a lot of momentum.
The barrel is essentially just a steam whistle: a tube connected to the boiler. For the feed mechanism, a rotating wheel occludes the connection between barrel and boiler, breech slides open, bullet drops in from magazine hopper, breech closes, connection to boiler opens. Repeat. I cannot calculate fire rate. I will assert it is fast but probably not as fast as a Gatlin gun.
A gun like this would be a phenomenal naval weapon for a steamship. You would fire in an arc, as they used machine guns in WW1. The big bullets could travel great distances and would come down through other watercraft or if you were beseiging a city, down through roofs.
---
Thinking about the steam cannon: bullets would be pointed, hollow iron cups. They would be filled with water then sealed with a cork. They will be lighter to transport & iron is less prone to denting than lead. Water is cheap and heavy and will be used to provide extra mass on site. If water is in short supply, then dirt or rocks. |
156,268 | I am writing a Steanpunk novel and am interested in having a "plausible" Union Steam Gun that would help turn the tide in an Alternate History American Civil War.
The gun can be either a machine gun type weapon that is operated by two or more soldiers or a hand held carbine or type weapon handed out to Union Cavalry.
My research found there was a Steam weapon called the Winans Steam Gun, that was also a centrifuge gun. Perhaps ideas on how to modify that to make it more effective.
By, the By, Thanks to everyone who answered my "Quick destruction Of a helium filled airship," question. You all are absolutely amazing, wonderful, creative thinkers. I am so grateful that you all choose to freely share your ideas and knowledge on this site. It is a wonderful tool and blessing for authors. | 2019/09/16 | [
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/156268",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/67227/"
] | "Plausible", "Hand held" and "Steam Powered" are mutually exclusive terms when you're dealing with steam power in the age of steam.
Steam is big, it's heavy, if you're lucky it's self propelled, and even then the Winans Steam Gun didn't match the power of gunpowder weapons and its accuracy was terrible. If you want steam powered weapons, start with self propelled artillery and work your way up to tanks, but hand held is out of the question.
[Traction engines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traction_engine) did exist by that point, so having a steam powered base for your mobile artillery is possible. Making the weapon more effective is possible, but with steam it's almost always about boiler pressure, and at that point higher boiler pressure means a bigger, heavier, boiler and a bigger, heavier, furnace. | [To prove a Mythbusters related point, scientists at MIT built a steam mortar cannon using technology and designs developed before 200 BC](https://web.mit.edu/2.009/www/experiments/steamCannon/ArchimedesSteamCannon.html). This mortar could hurl projectiles with more energy than a modern .50 cal machine gun.
As @Separatrix rightly says, steam is an ugly beast that is difficult to fully weaponise. However, the invention of a small and (relatively) portable mortar cannon would allow your army to respond agilely to combat scenarios.
**The invention of the mortar (especially one more powerful than a cannon) would allow your Union to lay down cannonfire faster and more frequently than the enemy**, so your army's tactics are very difficult to respond to because you could have projectiles flying at the speed of sound at any moment. The stealth advantages of mortars over cannons is also something to consider.
Mortars were reinvented in-promptu at [The Siege of Vicksberg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Vicksburg#Siege_operations) in 1863, and proved remarkably effective. In fact, the result was a decisive Union victory that many consider to have been the war's turning point. Any side that developed this technology first (and in a more scientific way than right on the battlefield) would be a serious threat. |
156,268 | I am writing a Steanpunk novel and am interested in having a "plausible" Union Steam Gun that would help turn the tide in an Alternate History American Civil War.
The gun can be either a machine gun type weapon that is operated by two or more soldiers or a hand held carbine or type weapon handed out to Union Cavalry.
My research found there was a Steam weapon called the Winans Steam Gun, that was also a centrifuge gun. Perhaps ideas on how to modify that to make it more effective.
By, the By, Thanks to everyone who answered my "Quick destruction Of a helium filled airship," question. You all are absolutely amazing, wonderful, creative thinkers. I am so grateful that you all choose to freely share your ideas and knowledge on this site. It is a wonderful tool and blessing for authors. | 2019/09/16 | [
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/156268",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/67227/"
] | "Plausible", "Hand held" and "Steam Powered" are mutually exclusive terms when you're dealing with steam power in the age of steam.
Steam is big, it's heavy, if you're lucky it's self propelled, and even then the Winans Steam Gun didn't match the power of gunpowder weapons and its accuracy was terrible. If you want steam powered weapons, start with self propelled artillery and work your way up to tanks, but hand held is out of the question.
[Traction engines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traction_engine) did exist by that point, so having a steam powered base for your mobile artillery is possible. Making the weapon more effective is possible, but with steam it's almost always about boiler pressure, and at that point higher boiler pressure means a bigger, heavier, boiler and a bigger, heavier, furnace. | The fix for the low pressure of the steam piston and subsequent low projectile velocity might be to incorporate it into a 'light gas gun'. In a light gas gun, a large piston is used to pressurize a light gas like hydrogen or helium. This also heats the gas, raising its speed of sound, which gives the projectile higher velocity.
The large steam piston pushes the gas into a much smaller barrel, so the pressures can get insanely high. At the end of a barrel is a burst disk calibrated to blow upen at a specified pressure. When the pressure is reached, the disk ruptures, and all that gas rushes down the barrel at the (very high) speed of sound. This pushes the projectile down the barrel and out.
Light gas guns can attain extremely high speeds. In fact, they are primarily used to test high speed impacts, and projectiles can reach 8.5 km/s - fast enough that if you had one on the Moon, you should shoot projectiles at the Earth. But normally, the super high speed ones have huge pistons driven by explosion, not steam.
Still, a much scaled down, steam powered version of that might still get you some decent projectile velocities.
But I have my doubts that it would ever be small enough that one or two men could handle it, and I certainly wouldn't want to stand beside a steam boiler on a battlefield. It'd have to be incredibly well armored, which would make it not very portable, or it would be a terrific target for the enemy.
More details here: [Wikipedia: Light Gas Gun](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-gas_gun) |
156,268 | I am writing a Steanpunk novel and am interested in having a "plausible" Union Steam Gun that would help turn the tide in an Alternate History American Civil War.
The gun can be either a machine gun type weapon that is operated by two or more soldiers or a hand held carbine or type weapon handed out to Union Cavalry.
My research found there was a Steam weapon called the Winans Steam Gun, that was also a centrifuge gun. Perhaps ideas on how to modify that to make it more effective.
By, the By, Thanks to everyone who answered my "Quick destruction Of a helium filled airship," question. You all are absolutely amazing, wonderful, creative thinkers. I am so grateful that you all choose to freely share your ideas and knowledge on this site. It is a wonderful tool and blessing for authors. | 2019/09/16 | [
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/156268",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/67227/"
] | Building a steam cannon, starting with rank ignorance. Well, a gun is a tube that contains high pressure in it. The pressure accelerates a projectile out the tube.
We have a steam boiler so there is your pressure. It operates over known pressures. How can we manipulate barrel size and projectile weight to make something comparable to existing firearms?
I found this sweet excel table here
<http://closefocusresearch.com/calculating-barrel-pressure-and-projectile-velocity-gun-systems>
It does the calculations. I included the whole thing so you can see stats for real guns. Then my cannon.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/yEJXP.png)
The pressure from a steam boiler is substantially less than that in a gun barrel. I used 350 psi as representative of boilers from the 1860s. 2 orders of magnitude low. How to fix?
1. More acceleration time. I made the barrel 10 feet long. The projectile has more time to accelerate. Longer would be better but I worried it might get droopy and people might not think you were enthusiastic for the project. 10 feet is plenty long.
2. I made the projectile big: 2000 grains. That is 4.5 oz or 1/3 pound - hefty but not stupidly so. Less than triple the .50 cal.
3. I tripled the bore diameter. Also someone painted it like a barber pole.
The generously long Willk cannon lobs giant bullets at about half the speed of a Minie ball but with the energy of a .44 magnum bullet and a lot of momentum.
The barrel is essentially just a steam whistle: a tube connected to the boiler. For the feed mechanism, a rotating wheel occludes the connection between barrel and boiler, breech slides open, bullet drops in from magazine hopper, breech closes, connection to boiler opens. Repeat. I cannot calculate fire rate. I will assert it is fast but probably not as fast as a Gatlin gun.
A gun like this would be a phenomenal naval weapon for a steamship. You would fire in an arc, as they used machine guns in WW1. The big bullets could travel great distances and would come down through other watercraft or if you were beseiging a city, down through roofs.
---
Thinking about the steam cannon: bullets would be pointed, hollow iron cups. They would be filled with water then sealed with a cork. They will be lighter to transport & iron is less prone to denting than lead. Water is cheap and heavy and will be used to provide extra mass on site. If water is in short supply, then dirt or rocks. | I think that any civilisation using a steam gun would have to have some sort of inability to produce any other sort of explosive charge that could propel a projectile.
Steam although i think would be kind of awesome cannot produce in high enough quantities the required Psi quickly enough to fire a projectile efficiently.
Other types of weapon like maybe a steam powered fist or really anything driven by a piston may well be viable. Steam generally needs time to build pressure.
I guess maybe, water under very high pressure Ie. water forced into a container smaller than water's natural mass perhaps?
But then that's not exactly steam, steam being heated water.
I truly wish it were not so. |
156,268 | I am writing a Steanpunk novel and am interested in having a "plausible" Union Steam Gun that would help turn the tide in an Alternate History American Civil War.
The gun can be either a machine gun type weapon that is operated by two or more soldiers or a hand held carbine or type weapon handed out to Union Cavalry.
My research found there was a Steam weapon called the Winans Steam Gun, that was also a centrifuge gun. Perhaps ideas on how to modify that to make it more effective.
By, the By, Thanks to everyone who answered my "Quick destruction Of a helium filled airship," question. You all are absolutely amazing, wonderful, creative thinkers. I am so grateful that you all choose to freely share your ideas and knowledge on this site. It is a wonderful tool and blessing for authors. | 2019/09/16 | [
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/156268",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/67227/"
] | "Plausible", "Hand held" and "Steam Powered" are mutually exclusive terms when you're dealing with steam power in the age of steam.
Steam is big, it's heavy, if you're lucky it's self propelled, and even then the Winans Steam Gun didn't match the power of gunpowder weapons and its accuracy was terrible. If you want steam powered weapons, start with self propelled artillery and work your way up to tanks, but hand held is out of the question.
[Traction engines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traction_engine) did exist by that point, so having a steam powered base for your mobile artillery is possible. Making the weapon more effective is possible, but with steam it's almost always about boiler pressure, and at that point higher boiler pressure means a bigger, heavier, boiler and a bigger, heavier, furnace. | Not exactly the answer you are looking for, but I would suggest a steam power tank instead of gun. Heavy armor for protection and a early breach loading cannon in a platform moved by a steam traction engine. You could add a couple of Gatling guns for antipersonnel protection. |
156,268 | I am writing a Steanpunk novel and am interested in having a "plausible" Union Steam Gun that would help turn the tide in an Alternate History American Civil War.
The gun can be either a machine gun type weapon that is operated by two or more soldiers or a hand held carbine or type weapon handed out to Union Cavalry.
My research found there was a Steam weapon called the Winans Steam Gun, that was also a centrifuge gun. Perhaps ideas on how to modify that to make it more effective.
By, the By, Thanks to everyone who answered my "Quick destruction Of a helium filled airship," question. You all are absolutely amazing, wonderful, creative thinkers. I am so grateful that you all choose to freely share your ideas and knowledge on this site. It is a wonderful tool and blessing for authors. | 2019/09/16 | [
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/156268",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/67227/"
] | Let's try a look at the 'machine gun type weapon operated by two or more soldiers', because handheld isn't going to work, and I see no reason to drag the poor horses into this mess. The problem with the Winans Steam Gun is that it's just markedly inferior to rifles and and the Gatling Gun. So let's discuss Gatling Guns.
The Gatling Gun, by which I mean the one invented by Richard J. Gatling, and not the modern guns which bear the classification 'gatling', was invented right before the Civil War, with the intention being to 'reduce the size of armies and show the futility of war', of which it only accomplished one of those things. It had a few unique features, like the 'rotating barrel' concept, letting it fire faster without the barrel overheating, and used a gravity fed hopper. Now, here's the interesting part - it was hand-cranked. And where I see a hand-crank, I see a spot for a steam engine.
In other words, if you hook up the steam engine to the gatling gun, you can eliminate the need for a person to hand-crank the gun and possibly improve the firing rate - though not too much, because at a certain point overheating starts being an issue, but you could work through those problem by increasing the number of barrels (it started at 6) and reducing the caliber of bullet (started at .58), and the increased weight wouldn't be an issue, because it's not hand cranked, perhaps even up to a thousand rounds a minute. (Possibly - the highest it actually got was [900](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gatling_gun#cite_note-Parker,_John_H._2006-3).) At which point it's not exactly hand-held, and would take a team of soldiers to use, and is only slightly better than the original Gatling Gun, but does work. Slightly.
Though if you want, you can stretch plausibility slightly by mounting the thing on a traction engine, add some deflective armor, and you suddenly have an impromptu half-track slowly charging at the enemy. It won't work on uneven terrain, get stopped cold by trenches (which were everywhere), and be a massive target for enemy cannons but just imagine these things tearing through a Confederate charge. | I think that any civilisation using a steam gun would have to have some sort of inability to produce any other sort of explosive charge that could propel a projectile.
Steam although i think would be kind of awesome cannot produce in high enough quantities the required Psi quickly enough to fire a projectile efficiently.
Other types of weapon like maybe a steam powered fist or really anything driven by a piston may well be viable. Steam generally needs time to build pressure.
I guess maybe, water under very high pressure Ie. water forced into a container smaller than water's natural mass perhaps?
But then that's not exactly steam, steam being heated water.
I truly wish it were not so. |
20,135 | I've been reading about XSS prevention on OWASP and other security channels. They all say that I should use ESAPI or a similar library and do input filtering through a whitelist approach.
However, I use a framework (Webobjects) which encodes by default, so using ESAPI changes my input and is therefore not an option for me.
The second option is to use a whitelist approach. I support many languages like Japanese, Russian, Korean etc, so how do I decide what characters to whitelist?
Also, why is whitelist approach better than a blacklist approach as mentioned by OWASP? Why not just block a handfull of characters used in XSS like `<`, `>`, etc? | 2012/09/13 | [
"https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/20135",
"https://security.stackexchange.com",
"https://security.stackexchange.com/users/6862/"
] | >
> Also, why is whitelist approach better than blacklist approach as
> mentioned by OWASP. Why not just block a handfull of characters used
> in XSS like < , > , etc
>
>
>
Blacklists are static in the sense, they prevent 'known bad' from happening. The problem with this is, there are new attack vectors found everyday and you would need to constantly update your black list to be safe. Whitelist on the other hand is more robust because, you can create a filter on exactly what you want. That answers your question on why whitelists are suggested by OWASP. | I think you might have rejected ESAPI too quickly. To defend against XSS, I recommend you do output escaping: any place where you insert data dynamically into an HTML document, escape the data (in a way suitable for that parse context). ESAPI provides libraries for the escaping and is very useful. This does not involve "changing your input".
For more, read OWASP's [XSS (Cross Site Scripting) Prevention Cheat Sheet](https://www.owasp.org/index.php/XSS_%28Cross_Site_Scripting%29_Prevention_Cheat_Sheet), and [Can anybody explain XSS to an idiot?](https://security.stackexchange.com/q/1368/971), and [Filter user input before the database or upon display?](https://security.stackexchange.com/q/9415/971), and [Canonicalization & Output Encoding](https://security.stackexchange.com/q/18328/971). |
20,135 | I've been reading about XSS prevention on OWASP and other security channels. They all say that I should use ESAPI or a similar library and do input filtering through a whitelist approach.
However, I use a framework (Webobjects) which encodes by default, so using ESAPI changes my input and is therefore not an option for me.
The second option is to use a whitelist approach. I support many languages like Japanese, Russian, Korean etc, so how do I decide what characters to whitelist?
Also, why is whitelist approach better than a blacklist approach as mentioned by OWASP? Why not just block a handfull of characters used in XSS like `<`, `>`, etc? | 2012/09/13 | [
"https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/20135",
"https://security.stackexchange.com",
"https://security.stackexchange.com/users/6862/"
] | >
> Also, why is whitelist approach better than blacklist approach as
> mentioned by OWASP. Why not just block a handfull of characters used
> in XSS like < , > , etc
>
>
>
Blacklists are static in the sense, they prevent 'known bad' from happening. The problem with this is, there are new attack vectors found everyday and you would need to constantly update your black list to be safe. Whitelist on the other hand is more robust because, you can create a filter on exactly what you want. That answers your question on why whitelists are suggested by OWASP. | >
> do input filtering
>
>
>
[No, no, no.](http://symcbean.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/validate-input-escape-output.html?m=0)
By all means do input *validation* - accept or reject the input based on rules. Don't try to change the input data. If the interface between your webserver and your application language allows content through which compromises you application language then there's something very, *very* wrong. Certainly you can't handle this kind of scenario within your application code.
Vulnerabilities in applications typically arise at the point where data leaves your application language - and in the case of XSS, this is where they always arise. So this is the point at which you should apply any transformation to the data. An the transformation must be apropriate to where the data is going - how you escape data you are writing to a database is very different from data to be written into html. |
20,135 | I've been reading about XSS prevention on OWASP and other security channels. They all say that I should use ESAPI or a similar library and do input filtering through a whitelist approach.
However, I use a framework (Webobjects) which encodes by default, so using ESAPI changes my input and is therefore not an option for me.
The second option is to use a whitelist approach. I support many languages like Japanese, Russian, Korean etc, so how do I decide what characters to whitelist?
Also, why is whitelist approach better than a blacklist approach as mentioned by OWASP? Why not just block a handfull of characters used in XSS like `<`, `>`, etc? | 2012/09/13 | [
"https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/20135",
"https://security.stackexchange.com",
"https://security.stackexchange.com/users/6862/"
] | It is not just a block of handful characters that you need to blacklist. In security we go by this dogma:
>
> "There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That
> is to say there are things that we now know we don't know. But there
> are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don't
> know."
>
>
>
Blacklist might help you prevent the first two cases, a whitelist helps covers all three :)
While it is easy to identify and validate a set of characters that are harmless, its difficult to identify all known bad. Most anti-virus software employ blacklist approach(signatures), however they still fail to catch a 0-day because it was something they didn't know as a known bad and hence didn't have a signature for that. | I think you might have rejected ESAPI too quickly. To defend against XSS, I recommend you do output escaping: any place where you insert data dynamically into an HTML document, escape the data (in a way suitable for that parse context). ESAPI provides libraries for the escaping and is very useful. This does not involve "changing your input".
For more, read OWASP's [XSS (Cross Site Scripting) Prevention Cheat Sheet](https://www.owasp.org/index.php/XSS_%28Cross_Site_Scripting%29_Prevention_Cheat_Sheet), and [Can anybody explain XSS to an idiot?](https://security.stackexchange.com/q/1368/971), and [Filter user input before the database or upon display?](https://security.stackexchange.com/q/9415/971), and [Canonicalization & Output Encoding](https://security.stackexchange.com/q/18328/971). |
20,135 | I've been reading about XSS prevention on OWASP and other security channels. They all say that I should use ESAPI or a similar library and do input filtering through a whitelist approach.
However, I use a framework (Webobjects) which encodes by default, so using ESAPI changes my input and is therefore not an option for me.
The second option is to use a whitelist approach. I support many languages like Japanese, Russian, Korean etc, so how do I decide what characters to whitelist?
Also, why is whitelist approach better than a blacklist approach as mentioned by OWASP? Why not just block a handfull of characters used in XSS like `<`, `>`, etc? | 2012/09/13 | [
"https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/20135",
"https://security.stackexchange.com",
"https://security.stackexchange.com/users/6862/"
] | It is not just a block of handful characters that you need to blacklist. In security we go by this dogma:
>
> "There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That
> is to say there are things that we now know we don't know. But there
> are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don't
> know."
>
>
>
Blacklist might help you prevent the first two cases, a whitelist helps covers all three :)
While it is easy to identify and validate a set of characters that are harmless, its difficult to identify all known bad. Most anti-virus software employ blacklist approach(signatures), however they still fail to catch a 0-day because it was something they didn't know as a known bad and hence didn't have a signature for that. | >
> do input filtering
>
>
>
[No, no, no.](http://symcbean.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/validate-input-escape-output.html?m=0)
By all means do input *validation* - accept or reject the input based on rules. Don't try to change the input data. If the interface between your webserver and your application language allows content through which compromises you application language then there's something very, *very* wrong. Certainly you can't handle this kind of scenario within your application code.
Vulnerabilities in applications typically arise at the point where data leaves your application language - and in the case of XSS, this is where they always arise. So this is the point at which you should apply any transformation to the data. An the transformation must be apropriate to where the data is going - how you escape data you are writing to a database is very different from data to be written into html. |
133,160 | While running a session, I found that some of the players would like to "call shots".
Now while I don't want to allow "crit on desire" by always aiming for the head/eyes/etc., I was thinking about allowing it on a natural 20 - it's already guaranteed to hit & also do critical damage (most of the time), so what would be the effect of allowing this, assuming that the extra damage from "hitting in the head" would be the same as the normal crit bonus? This would be a fluff-only with no other effect besides the normal critical damage.
Has anyone tried running something similar to this? Does anyone see potential issues or unintended consequences? I'm looking at it as a way to allow the "fluff" without really changing the mechanics of it at all.
---
Related question: [Aiming at specific body parts](https://rpg.stackexchange.com/q/72836/16187) | 2018/10/07 | [
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/133160",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/16187/"
] | As long as the crit is unchanged, then it is balanced.
======================================================
If nothing is different besides the narration, then by definition the mechanics of the game remain balanced, at least to a first approximation.
Crits are meant to represent great successes in the midst of combat, so they are a nice opportunity for you or the player to add some narrative flair to the combat.
Beware of extreme called shots.
-------------------------------
There are some called shots that simply *cannot* be successful without any mechanical implications. Consider these examples, where a player crits and wants the called shot to be: a decapitation with a greatsword; an arrow in the enemy's only eye; a strike that cripples a wing.
These called shots are admittedly extreme, but nonetheless it's clear that if they are successful they *must* come with unbalancing consequences: instant death, permament blindness, and loss of flight respectively.
Your premise is that such consequences do not occur, so your narration will have to undermine called shot like those to explain why the enemy only takes damage. The problem is that those called shots now feel like relative failures instead of unequivocal successes, because the player hoped for something more *besides* damage.
You have to manage your player's expectations
---------------------------------------------
"Called shots" is not the term I would use to manage such expectations, because the default assumption is that called shots *can* include extra effects besides damage. Instead, just ask "Why don't you describe this crit?" or "How do you want me to describe this crit?". Questions like these provide just as much opportunity for flair and narration, without any of the expectations of a called shot. | You're the GM, and so if your decision is that called shots are narrative flavor only, and no mechanical effects are allowed, then gameplay won't change in any way and there will be no balancing issues to deal with.
If you allow for any mechanical changes then the balance question comes down to what specific new things you allow, and not a general-case sort of answer.
That in mind, *in general* I would think that there are two issues, the former relevant if you do not allow any mechanical changes and the latter relevant if you do:
1. A called shot is a just a more difficult *kind* of shot, one that tries to hit a smaller and/or more mobile target. You try for the harder shot because there is some benefit to doing so-- maybe you damage an opponent's leg, slowing them down, or knock the weapon out of their hand, etc. I can't imagine any table bothering with a called shot that does nothing-- why not just let them narrate their combat moves however they want, if there is no mechanical difference? So I would think that any table where called shots are possible is one where players will constantly want them to do things beyond a garden-variety crit. If your players expect more than nothing from this, then you can expect regular conflict and disappointment from them.
2. Calling a shot after the roll seems odd to me. Since called shots are more just a harder kind of regular shot, I would expect a called shot to have a higher difficulty than a regular one. If you allow the called shot declaration *after* rolling, then a player will essentially be taking the "easier" shot, and its associated difficulty, and getting the outcome of a "harder" shot, perhaps one difficult enough that the player might not have attempted it. Again, if there are no mechanical changes at all then it's all irrelevant flavor and no need for varying difficulties. But if there is any mechanical change then I would think that called shots should be harder, not luckier. |
133,160 | While running a session, I found that some of the players would like to "call shots".
Now while I don't want to allow "crit on desire" by always aiming for the head/eyes/etc., I was thinking about allowing it on a natural 20 - it's already guaranteed to hit & also do critical damage (most of the time), so what would be the effect of allowing this, assuming that the extra damage from "hitting in the head" would be the same as the normal crit bonus? This would be a fluff-only with no other effect besides the normal critical damage.
Has anyone tried running something similar to this? Does anyone see potential issues or unintended consequences? I'm looking at it as a way to allow the "fluff" without really changing the mechanics of it at all.
---
Related question: [Aiming at specific body parts](https://rpg.stackexchange.com/q/72836/16187) | 2018/10/07 | [
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/133160",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/16187/"
] | Adding narrative details to your combat actions without any implications to game mechanics is not considered a *called shot*, it is simply a stylistic approach to describing battle.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A *called shot* refers to a method of combat where participants choose the part or region of their adversary's body they wish to strike. On a successful attack to that specific part/region of the body there is additional damage inflicted, the creature is affected by a condition, or there is some other additional negative impact on the creature. Because the effect is more severe, called shots are usually designed to be more difficult to achieve than a standard attack.
The question you are asking can be reduced to:
Should I let players participate in narrating their attacks?
------------------------------------------------------------
Absolutely, Yes.
================
Giving players the opportunity to direct the details of their actions will make them more active participants in the world you have created. It will make the game more immersive, more fun, and you will experience more memorable events in your world and at your gaming table.
If, as you state, there is no change to game mechanics, then you can narrate however you choose without any concerns about balance.
In January I was GMing a game that included 4 players between 8 and 10 years old.
>
> Kid 1: I want to hit the goblin in the pee pee!
>
>
> Me: Which weapon do you use?
>
>
> Kid 1: My sword!
>
>
> Kid 2: No! Use the warhammer!
>
>
> All kids: *Laughing*
>
>
> Kid 1: My warhammer!
>
>
> Me: Ok, with one or two hands?
>
>
> Kid 1: Two hands! (*more laughing*)
>
>
> [rolls 20]
>
>
> *Literally 7 minutes of laughter ensue.* The kids are literally on the floor. Kids are laughing, adults are laughing at/with the kids. I'm laughing. It's an absolute riot.
>
>
> Me: You nail the goblin between the legs and he flies into the air, knocking down the five goblins behind him. They get up, and are madder than ever. Now you're in for it!
>
>
> Kid 1: Yeah!
>
>
> All kids: *shouting, screaming, laughing and imitating the goblin flying back holding his goblinny goobers.*
>
>
>
Nothing changed in-game with this hit. Yes I said the other goblins got knocked down, but it was just for narrative flair and had no impact on their movement, actions or anything else. Mechanically, it was just a standard critical hit.
9 months later, the campaign has ended and that moment still comes up not infrequently in conversation between these kids.
How different would it have been if the conversation went like this?
>
> Kid 1: I attack the goblin.
>
>
> Me: Which weapon do you use?
>
>
> Kid 1: My sword.
>
>
> [rolls 20]
>
>
> Me: You nail him!
>
>
> *(roll damage and move on to next player)*
>
>
>
If there are game-tables that tear through battle scenes, only following mechanics and never adding narrative flair I don't know of them. I'm sure they exist, and I'm sure they have fun, and I have no judgement, but that is not how I have seen anyone ever play the game. Sure there are times when efficiency trumps narration, and each table finds a comfortable balance, but it's always a balance between the two.
The game-table is a collection of players, including the GM. The GM's role is to build the world, narrate the actions of non-player characters and describe the results of player actions based on player input and dice roll. The more input the players give the GM as to the focus of their action, the easier it makes the GM's job of narrating that action.
### When a player is specific about their attack it means there is something they want to see happen in the game narrative and the GM should *absolutely run with it*. | You're the GM, and so if your decision is that called shots are narrative flavor only, and no mechanical effects are allowed, then gameplay won't change in any way and there will be no balancing issues to deal with.
If you allow for any mechanical changes then the balance question comes down to what specific new things you allow, and not a general-case sort of answer.
That in mind, *in general* I would think that there are two issues, the former relevant if you do not allow any mechanical changes and the latter relevant if you do:
1. A called shot is a just a more difficult *kind* of shot, one that tries to hit a smaller and/or more mobile target. You try for the harder shot because there is some benefit to doing so-- maybe you damage an opponent's leg, slowing them down, or knock the weapon out of their hand, etc. I can't imagine any table bothering with a called shot that does nothing-- why not just let them narrate their combat moves however they want, if there is no mechanical difference? So I would think that any table where called shots are possible is one where players will constantly want them to do things beyond a garden-variety crit. If your players expect more than nothing from this, then you can expect regular conflict and disappointment from them.
2. Calling a shot after the roll seems odd to me. Since called shots are more just a harder kind of regular shot, I would expect a called shot to have a higher difficulty than a regular one. If you allow the called shot declaration *after* rolling, then a player will essentially be taking the "easier" shot, and its associated difficulty, and getting the outcome of a "harder" shot, perhaps one difficult enough that the player might not have attempted it. Again, if there are no mechanical changes at all then it's all irrelevant flavor and no need for varying difficulties. But if there is any mechanical change then I would think that called shots should be harder, not luckier. |
133,160 | While running a session, I found that some of the players would like to "call shots".
Now while I don't want to allow "crit on desire" by always aiming for the head/eyes/etc., I was thinking about allowing it on a natural 20 - it's already guaranteed to hit & also do critical damage (most of the time), so what would be the effect of allowing this, assuming that the extra damage from "hitting in the head" would be the same as the normal crit bonus? This would be a fluff-only with no other effect besides the normal critical damage.
Has anyone tried running something similar to this? Does anyone see potential issues or unintended consequences? I'm looking at it as a way to allow the "fluff" without really changing the mechanics of it at all.
---
Related question: [Aiming at specific body parts](https://rpg.stackexchange.com/q/72836/16187) | 2018/10/07 | [
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/133160",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/16187/"
] | You're the GM, and so if your decision is that called shots are narrative flavor only, and no mechanical effects are allowed, then gameplay won't change in any way and there will be no balancing issues to deal with.
If you allow for any mechanical changes then the balance question comes down to what specific new things you allow, and not a general-case sort of answer.
That in mind, *in general* I would think that there are two issues, the former relevant if you do not allow any mechanical changes and the latter relevant if you do:
1. A called shot is a just a more difficult *kind* of shot, one that tries to hit a smaller and/or more mobile target. You try for the harder shot because there is some benefit to doing so-- maybe you damage an opponent's leg, slowing them down, or knock the weapon out of their hand, etc. I can't imagine any table bothering with a called shot that does nothing-- why not just let them narrate their combat moves however they want, if there is no mechanical difference? So I would think that any table where called shots are possible is one where players will constantly want them to do things beyond a garden-variety crit. If your players expect more than nothing from this, then you can expect regular conflict and disappointment from them.
2. Calling a shot after the roll seems odd to me. Since called shots are more just a harder kind of regular shot, I would expect a called shot to have a higher difficulty than a regular one. If you allow the called shot declaration *after* rolling, then a player will essentially be taking the "easier" shot, and its associated difficulty, and getting the outcome of a "harder" shot, perhaps one difficult enough that the player might not have attempted it. Again, if there are no mechanical changes at all then it's all irrelevant flavor and no need for varying difficulties. But if there is any mechanical change then I would think that called shots should be harder, not luckier. | Another option: adding a feat to handle it
==========================================
I think you cannot avoid there being unintended consequences if you are something of a "simulationist" (*a la* [GNS theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNS_theory)). This is because there are some "called shots" that would have a clear tactical advantage, like slashing the Achilles tendon, where a simulationist would insist that it *must* have a natural consequence (like hobbling the target's movement). This sort of thing would upset play balance dramatically if you have clever players.
So at my 5e table, while I always allow players to freely add narrative fluff to their shots, if they want to go beyond that to some truly impactful, tactical aimed shots, then I make them take a (half-)feat to pull it off:
>
> **Critical Aim.**
>
>
> * Increase your Strength or Dexterity score by 1, to a maximum of 20.
> * When you score a critical hit with a finesse or ranged weapon, you have the option that instead of inflicting additional damage, you may select which part of your target's body is hit, provided that the part is in your weapon's reach or range and can be seen by you.
>
>
>
Note the requirement of "finesse or ranged" because this is inherently a finesse-style thing to do, IMO. |
133,160 | While running a session, I found that some of the players would like to "call shots".
Now while I don't want to allow "crit on desire" by always aiming for the head/eyes/etc., I was thinking about allowing it on a natural 20 - it's already guaranteed to hit & also do critical damage (most of the time), so what would be the effect of allowing this, assuming that the extra damage from "hitting in the head" would be the same as the normal crit bonus? This would be a fluff-only with no other effect besides the normal critical damage.
Has anyone tried running something similar to this? Does anyone see potential issues or unintended consequences? I'm looking at it as a way to allow the "fluff" without really changing the mechanics of it at all.
---
Related question: [Aiming at specific body parts](https://rpg.stackexchange.com/q/72836/16187) | 2018/10/07 | [
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/133160",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/16187/"
] | As long as the crit is unchanged, then it is balanced.
======================================================
If nothing is different besides the narration, then by definition the mechanics of the game remain balanced, at least to a first approximation.
Crits are meant to represent great successes in the midst of combat, so they are a nice opportunity for you or the player to add some narrative flair to the combat.
Beware of extreme called shots.
-------------------------------
There are some called shots that simply *cannot* be successful without any mechanical implications. Consider these examples, where a player crits and wants the called shot to be: a decapitation with a greatsword; an arrow in the enemy's only eye; a strike that cripples a wing.
These called shots are admittedly extreme, but nonetheless it's clear that if they are successful they *must* come with unbalancing consequences: instant death, permament blindness, and loss of flight respectively.
Your premise is that such consequences do not occur, so your narration will have to undermine called shot like those to explain why the enemy only takes damage. The problem is that those called shots now feel like relative failures instead of unequivocal successes, because the player hoped for something more *besides* damage.
You have to manage your player's expectations
---------------------------------------------
"Called shots" is not the term I would use to manage such expectations, because the default assumption is that called shots *can* include extra effects besides damage. Instead, just ask "Why don't you describe this crit?" or "How do you want me to describe this crit?". Questions like these provide just as much opportunity for flair and narration, without any of the expectations of a called shot. | Adding narrative details to your combat actions without any implications to game mechanics is not considered a *called shot*, it is simply a stylistic approach to describing battle.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A *called shot* refers to a method of combat where participants choose the part or region of their adversary's body they wish to strike. On a successful attack to that specific part/region of the body there is additional damage inflicted, the creature is affected by a condition, or there is some other additional negative impact on the creature. Because the effect is more severe, called shots are usually designed to be more difficult to achieve than a standard attack.
The question you are asking can be reduced to:
Should I let players participate in narrating their attacks?
------------------------------------------------------------
Absolutely, Yes.
================
Giving players the opportunity to direct the details of their actions will make them more active participants in the world you have created. It will make the game more immersive, more fun, and you will experience more memorable events in your world and at your gaming table.
If, as you state, there is no change to game mechanics, then you can narrate however you choose without any concerns about balance.
In January I was GMing a game that included 4 players between 8 and 10 years old.
>
> Kid 1: I want to hit the goblin in the pee pee!
>
>
> Me: Which weapon do you use?
>
>
> Kid 1: My sword!
>
>
> Kid 2: No! Use the warhammer!
>
>
> All kids: *Laughing*
>
>
> Kid 1: My warhammer!
>
>
> Me: Ok, with one or two hands?
>
>
> Kid 1: Two hands! (*more laughing*)
>
>
> [rolls 20]
>
>
> *Literally 7 minutes of laughter ensue.* The kids are literally on the floor. Kids are laughing, adults are laughing at/with the kids. I'm laughing. It's an absolute riot.
>
>
> Me: You nail the goblin between the legs and he flies into the air, knocking down the five goblins behind him. They get up, and are madder than ever. Now you're in for it!
>
>
> Kid 1: Yeah!
>
>
> All kids: *shouting, screaming, laughing and imitating the goblin flying back holding his goblinny goobers.*
>
>
>
Nothing changed in-game with this hit. Yes I said the other goblins got knocked down, but it was just for narrative flair and had no impact on their movement, actions or anything else. Mechanically, it was just a standard critical hit.
9 months later, the campaign has ended and that moment still comes up not infrequently in conversation between these kids.
How different would it have been if the conversation went like this?
>
> Kid 1: I attack the goblin.
>
>
> Me: Which weapon do you use?
>
>
> Kid 1: My sword.
>
>
> [rolls 20]
>
>
> Me: You nail him!
>
>
> *(roll damage and move on to next player)*
>
>
>
If there are game-tables that tear through battle scenes, only following mechanics and never adding narrative flair I don't know of them. I'm sure they exist, and I'm sure they have fun, and I have no judgement, but that is not how I have seen anyone ever play the game. Sure there are times when efficiency trumps narration, and each table finds a comfortable balance, but it's always a balance between the two.
The game-table is a collection of players, including the GM. The GM's role is to build the world, narrate the actions of non-player characters and describe the results of player actions based on player input and dice roll. The more input the players give the GM as to the focus of their action, the easier it makes the GM's job of narrating that action.
### When a player is specific about their attack it means there is something they want to see happen in the game narrative and the GM should *absolutely run with it*. |
133,160 | While running a session, I found that some of the players would like to "call shots".
Now while I don't want to allow "crit on desire" by always aiming for the head/eyes/etc., I was thinking about allowing it on a natural 20 - it's already guaranteed to hit & also do critical damage (most of the time), so what would be the effect of allowing this, assuming that the extra damage from "hitting in the head" would be the same as the normal crit bonus? This would be a fluff-only with no other effect besides the normal critical damage.
Has anyone tried running something similar to this? Does anyone see potential issues or unintended consequences? I'm looking at it as a way to allow the "fluff" without really changing the mechanics of it at all.
---
Related question: [Aiming at specific body parts](https://rpg.stackexchange.com/q/72836/16187) | 2018/10/07 | [
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/133160",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/16187/"
] | As long as the crit is unchanged, then it is balanced.
======================================================
If nothing is different besides the narration, then by definition the mechanics of the game remain balanced, at least to a first approximation.
Crits are meant to represent great successes in the midst of combat, so they are a nice opportunity for you or the player to add some narrative flair to the combat.
Beware of extreme called shots.
-------------------------------
There are some called shots that simply *cannot* be successful without any mechanical implications. Consider these examples, where a player crits and wants the called shot to be: a decapitation with a greatsword; an arrow in the enemy's only eye; a strike that cripples a wing.
These called shots are admittedly extreme, but nonetheless it's clear that if they are successful they *must* come with unbalancing consequences: instant death, permament blindness, and loss of flight respectively.
Your premise is that such consequences do not occur, so your narration will have to undermine called shot like those to explain why the enemy only takes damage. The problem is that those called shots now feel like relative failures instead of unequivocal successes, because the player hoped for something more *besides* damage.
You have to manage your player's expectations
---------------------------------------------
"Called shots" is not the term I would use to manage such expectations, because the default assumption is that called shots *can* include extra effects besides damage. Instead, just ask "Why don't you describe this crit?" or "How do you want me to describe this crit?". Questions like these provide just as much opportunity for flair and narration, without any of the expectations of a called shot. | Beware of allowing automatic called shots. Players will frequently assume that such attacks will have a debilitating effect, when in fact they're just doing damage. It's important to clarify beforehand that it's just damage, but even then players will sometimes assume that their attack is an exception because "hitting it in the wing is obviously going to have an additional effect".
A potential alternate is found in the rules for [Epic Level 6](https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Epic6), a 3.5 variant in which the levels are capped at 6 (and after that characters just get feats to progress). 5e has bounded accuracy, which solves most of the problems that E6 was made to solve.
>
> Raising the Stakes
> ==================
>
>
> At any time, a player can choose to make a 'raise' before rolling their d20s. The terms of the raise are up to the player, but the GM can either accept ("Call") or decide "no bet."
>
>
> For example: "I attack the goblin, raise you a decapitation frightening his buddies against me falling prone." "Call."
>
>
> "I attack the goblin, raise you 2d6 damage against 2d6 damage" "Call."
>
>
> Modifiers will be left to the standard underlying rules, and raises based on odds that are too strong will simply be declined. So if the fighter has a 95% chance of hitting the goblin, the raise of "I do an extra 5d6 or take an extra 5d6 damage." would be declined. Instead, a raise could be : "OK, if I hit, I decapitate the goblin and his friends are frightened. If I miss, I'm on the ground grappled by 5 goblins and I take 2d6 damage."
>
>
> This can be used also to bypass other less fun mechanics "OK, I walk up to the sorcerer and hit him with my dagger. I raise grappling him against getting knocked back 10 feet and taking 2d6 damage from cracking my head on the pillar."
>
>
> |
133,160 | While running a session, I found that some of the players would like to "call shots".
Now while I don't want to allow "crit on desire" by always aiming for the head/eyes/etc., I was thinking about allowing it on a natural 20 - it's already guaranteed to hit & also do critical damage (most of the time), so what would be the effect of allowing this, assuming that the extra damage from "hitting in the head" would be the same as the normal crit bonus? This would be a fluff-only with no other effect besides the normal critical damage.
Has anyone tried running something similar to this? Does anyone see potential issues or unintended consequences? I'm looking at it as a way to allow the "fluff" without really changing the mechanics of it at all.
---
Related question: [Aiming at specific body parts](https://rpg.stackexchange.com/q/72836/16187) | 2018/10/07 | [
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/133160",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/16187/"
] | As long as the crit is unchanged, then it is balanced.
======================================================
If nothing is different besides the narration, then by definition the mechanics of the game remain balanced, at least to a first approximation.
Crits are meant to represent great successes in the midst of combat, so they are a nice opportunity for you or the player to add some narrative flair to the combat.
Beware of extreme called shots.
-------------------------------
There are some called shots that simply *cannot* be successful without any mechanical implications. Consider these examples, where a player crits and wants the called shot to be: a decapitation with a greatsword; an arrow in the enemy's only eye; a strike that cripples a wing.
These called shots are admittedly extreme, but nonetheless it's clear that if they are successful they *must* come with unbalancing consequences: instant death, permament blindness, and loss of flight respectively.
Your premise is that such consequences do not occur, so your narration will have to undermine called shot like those to explain why the enemy only takes damage. The problem is that those called shots now feel like relative failures instead of unequivocal successes, because the player hoped for something more *besides* damage.
You have to manage your player's expectations
---------------------------------------------
"Called shots" is not the term I would use to manage such expectations, because the default assumption is that called shots *can* include extra effects besides damage. Instead, just ask "Why don't you describe this crit?" or "How do you want me to describe this crit?". Questions like these provide just as much opportunity for flair and narration, without any of the expectations of a called shot. | Another option: adding a feat to handle it
==========================================
I think you cannot avoid there being unintended consequences if you are something of a "simulationist" (*a la* [GNS theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNS_theory)). This is because there are some "called shots" that would have a clear tactical advantage, like slashing the Achilles tendon, where a simulationist would insist that it *must* have a natural consequence (like hobbling the target's movement). This sort of thing would upset play balance dramatically if you have clever players.
So at my 5e table, while I always allow players to freely add narrative fluff to their shots, if they want to go beyond that to some truly impactful, tactical aimed shots, then I make them take a (half-)feat to pull it off:
>
> **Critical Aim.**
>
>
> * Increase your Strength or Dexterity score by 1, to a maximum of 20.
> * When you score a critical hit with a finesse or ranged weapon, you have the option that instead of inflicting additional damage, you may select which part of your target's body is hit, provided that the part is in your weapon's reach or range and can be seen by you.
>
>
>
Note the requirement of "finesse or ranged" because this is inherently a finesse-style thing to do, IMO. |
133,160 | While running a session, I found that some of the players would like to "call shots".
Now while I don't want to allow "crit on desire" by always aiming for the head/eyes/etc., I was thinking about allowing it on a natural 20 - it's already guaranteed to hit & also do critical damage (most of the time), so what would be the effect of allowing this, assuming that the extra damage from "hitting in the head" would be the same as the normal crit bonus? This would be a fluff-only with no other effect besides the normal critical damage.
Has anyone tried running something similar to this? Does anyone see potential issues or unintended consequences? I'm looking at it as a way to allow the "fluff" without really changing the mechanics of it at all.
---
Related question: [Aiming at specific body parts](https://rpg.stackexchange.com/q/72836/16187) | 2018/10/07 | [
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/133160",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/16187/"
] | Adding narrative details to your combat actions without any implications to game mechanics is not considered a *called shot*, it is simply a stylistic approach to describing battle.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A *called shot* refers to a method of combat where participants choose the part or region of their adversary's body they wish to strike. On a successful attack to that specific part/region of the body there is additional damage inflicted, the creature is affected by a condition, or there is some other additional negative impact on the creature. Because the effect is more severe, called shots are usually designed to be more difficult to achieve than a standard attack.
The question you are asking can be reduced to:
Should I let players participate in narrating their attacks?
------------------------------------------------------------
Absolutely, Yes.
================
Giving players the opportunity to direct the details of their actions will make them more active participants in the world you have created. It will make the game more immersive, more fun, and you will experience more memorable events in your world and at your gaming table.
If, as you state, there is no change to game mechanics, then you can narrate however you choose without any concerns about balance.
In January I was GMing a game that included 4 players between 8 and 10 years old.
>
> Kid 1: I want to hit the goblin in the pee pee!
>
>
> Me: Which weapon do you use?
>
>
> Kid 1: My sword!
>
>
> Kid 2: No! Use the warhammer!
>
>
> All kids: *Laughing*
>
>
> Kid 1: My warhammer!
>
>
> Me: Ok, with one or two hands?
>
>
> Kid 1: Two hands! (*more laughing*)
>
>
> [rolls 20]
>
>
> *Literally 7 minutes of laughter ensue.* The kids are literally on the floor. Kids are laughing, adults are laughing at/with the kids. I'm laughing. It's an absolute riot.
>
>
> Me: You nail the goblin between the legs and he flies into the air, knocking down the five goblins behind him. They get up, and are madder than ever. Now you're in for it!
>
>
> Kid 1: Yeah!
>
>
> All kids: *shouting, screaming, laughing and imitating the goblin flying back holding his goblinny goobers.*
>
>
>
Nothing changed in-game with this hit. Yes I said the other goblins got knocked down, but it was just for narrative flair and had no impact on their movement, actions or anything else. Mechanically, it was just a standard critical hit.
9 months later, the campaign has ended and that moment still comes up not infrequently in conversation between these kids.
How different would it have been if the conversation went like this?
>
> Kid 1: I attack the goblin.
>
>
> Me: Which weapon do you use?
>
>
> Kid 1: My sword.
>
>
> [rolls 20]
>
>
> Me: You nail him!
>
>
> *(roll damage and move on to next player)*
>
>
>
If there are game-tables that tear through battle scenes, only following mechanics and never adding narrative flair I don't know of them. I'm sure they exist, and I'm sure they have fun, and I have no judgement, but that is not how I have seen anyone ever play the game. Sure there are times when efficiency trumps narration, and each table finds a comfortable balance, but it's always a balance between the two.
The game-table is a collection of players, including the GM. The GM's role is to build the world, narrate the actions of non-player characters and describe the results of player actions based on player input and dice roll. The more input the players give the GM as to the focus of their action, the easier it makes the GM's job of narrating that action.
### When a player is specific about their attack it means there is something they want to see happen in the game narrative and the GM should *absolutely run with it*. | Beware of allowing automatic called shots. Players will frequently assume that such attacks will have a debilitating effect, when in fact they're just doing damage. It's important to clarify beforehand that it's just damage, but even then players will sometimes assume that their attack is an exception because "hitting it in the wing is obviously going to have an additional effect".
A potential alternate is found in the rules for [Epic Level 6](https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Epic6), a 3.5 variant in which the levels are capped at 6 (and after that characters just get feats to progress). 5e has bounded accuracy, which solves most of the problems that E6 was made to solve.
>
> Raising the Stakes
> ==================
>
>
> At any time, a player can choose to make a 'raise' before rolling their d20s. The terms of the raise are up to the player, but the GM can either accept ("Call") or decide "no bet."
>
>
> For example: "I attack the goblin, raise you a decapitation frightening his buddies against me falling prone." "Call."
>
>
> "I attack the goblin, raise you 2d6 damage against 2d6 damage" "Call."
>
>
> Modifiers will be left to the standard underlying rules, and raises based on odds that are too strong will simply be declined. So if the fighter has a 95% chance of hitting the goblin, the raise of "I do an extra 5d6 or take an extra 5d6 damage." would be declined. Instead, a raise could be : "OK, if I hit, I decapitate the goblin and his friends are frightened. If I miss, I'm on the ground grappled by 5 goblins and I take 2d6 damage."
>
>
> This can be used also to bypass other less fun mechanics "OK, I walk up to the sorcerer and hit him with my dagger. I raise grappling him against getting knocked back 10 feet and taking 2d6 damage from cracking my head on the pillar."
>
>
> |
133,160 | While running a session, I found that some of the players would like to "call shots".
Now while I don't want to allow "crit on desire" by always aiming for the head/eyes/etc., I was thinking about allowing it on a natural 20 - it's already guaranteed to hit & also do critical damage (most of the time), so what would be the effect of allowing this, assuming that the extra damage from "hitting in the head" would be the same as the normal crit bonus? This would be a fluff-only with no other effect besides the normal critical damage.
Has anyone tried running something similar to this? Does anyone see potential issues or unintended consequences? I'm looking at it as a way to allow the "fluff" without really changing the mechanics of it at all.
---
Related question: [Aiming at specific body parts](https://rpg.stackexchange.com/q/72836/16187) | 2018/10/07 | [
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/133160",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/16187/"
] | Adding narrative details to your combat actions without any implications to game mechanics is not considered a *called shot*, it is simply a stylistic approach to describing battle.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A *called shot* refers to a method of combat where participants choose the part or region of their adversary's body they wish to strike. On a successful attack to that specific part/region of the body there is additional damage inflicted, the creature is affected by a condition, or there is some other additional negative impact on the creature. Because the effect is more severe, called shots are usually designed to be more difficult to achieve than a standard attack.
The question you are asking can be reduced to:
Should I let players participate in narrating their attacks?
------------------------------------------------------------
Absolutely, Yes.
================
Giving players the opportunity to direct the details of their actions will make them more active participants in the world you have created. It will make the game more immersive, more fun, and you will experience more memorable events in your world and at your gaming table.
If, as you state, there is no change to game mechanics, then you can narrate however you choose without any concerns about balance.
In January I was GMing a game that included 4 players between 8 and 10 years old.
>
> Kid 1: I want to hit the goblin in the pee pee!
>
>
> Me: Which weapon do you use?
>
>
> Kid 1: My sword!
>
>
> Kid 2: No! Use the warhammer!
>
>
> All kids: *Laughing*
>
>
> Kid 1: My warhammer!
>
>
> Me: Ok, with one or two hands?
>
>
> Kid 1: Two hands! (*more laughing*)
>
>
> [rolls 20]
>
>
> *Literally 7 minutes of laughter ensue.* The kids are literally on the floor. Kids are laughing, adults are laughing at/with the kids. I'm laughing. It's an absolute riot.
>
>
> Me: You nail the goblin between the legs and he flies into the air, knocking down the five goblins behind him. They get up, and are madder than ever. Now you're in for it!
>
>
> Kid 1: Yeah!
>
>
> All kids: *shouting, screaming, laughing and imitating the goblin flying back holding his goblinny goobers.*
>
>
>
Nothing changed in-game with this hit. Yes I said the other goblins got knocked down, but it was just for narrative flair and had no impact on their movement, actions or anything else. Mechanically, it was just a standard critical hit.
9 months later, the campaign has ended and that moment still comes up not infrequently in conversation between these kids.
How different would it have been if the conversation went like this?
>
> Kid 1: I attack the goblin.
>
>
> Me: Which weapon do you use?
>
>
> Kid 1: My sword.
>
>
> [rolls 20]
>
>
> Me: You nail him!
>
>
> *(roll damage and move on to next player)*
>
>
>
If there are game-tables that tear through battle scenes, only following mechanics and never adding narrative flair I don't know of them. I'm sure they exist, and I'm sure they have fun, and I have no judgement, but that is not how I have seen anyone ever play the game. Sure there are times when efficiency trumps narration, and each table finds a comfortable balance, but it's always a balance between the two.
The game-table is a collection of players, including the GM. The GM's role is to build the world, narrate the actions of non-player characters and describe the results of player actions based on player input and dice roll. The more input the players give the GM as to the focus of their action, the easier it makes the GM's job of narrating that action.
### When a player is specific about their attack it means there is something they want to see happen in the game narrative and the GM should *absolutely run with it*. | Another option: adding a feat to handle it
==========================================
I think you cannot avoid there being unintended consequences if you are something of a "simulationist" (*a la* [GNS theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNS_theory)). This is because there are some "called shots" that would have a clear tactical advantage, like slashing the Achilles tendon, where a simulationist would insist that it *must* have a natural consequence (like hobbling the target's movement). This sort of thing would upset play balance dramatically if you have clever players.
So at my 5e table, while I always allow players to freely add narrative fluff to their shots, if they want to go beyond that to some truly impactful, tactical aimed shots, then I make them take a (half-)feat to pull it off:
>
> **Critical Aim.**
>
>
> * Increase your Strength or Dexterity score by 1, to a maximum of 20.
> * When you score a critical hit with a finesse or ranged weapon, you have the option that instead of inflicting additional damage, you may select which part of your target's body is hit, provided that the part is in your weapon's reach or range and can be seen by you.
>
>
>
Note the requirement of "finesse or ranged" because this is inherently a finesse-style thing to do, IMO. |
133,160 | While running a session, I found that some of the players would like to "call shots".
Now while I don't want to allow "crit on desire" by always aiming for the head/eyes/etc., I was thinking about allowing it on a natural 20 - it's already guaranteed to hit & also do critical damage (most of the time), so what would be the effect of allowing this, assuming that the extra damage from "hitting in the head" would be the same as the normal crit bonus? This would be a fluff-only with no other effect besides the normal critical damage.
Has anyone tried running something similar to this? Does anyone see potential issues or unintended consequences? I'm looking at it as a way to allow the "fluff" without really changing the mechanics of it at all.
---
Related question: [Aiming at specific body parts](https://rpg.stackexchange.com/q/72836/16187) | 2018/10/07 | [
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/133160",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/16187/"
] | Beware of allowing automatic called shots. Players will frequently assume that such attacks will have a debilitating effect, when in fact they're just doing damage. It's important to clarify beforehand that it's just damage, but even then players will sometimes assume that their attack is an exception because "hitting it in the wing is obviously going to have an additional effect".
A potential alternate is found in the rules for [Epic Level 6](https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Epic6), a 3.5 variant in which the levels are capped at 6 (and after that characters just get feats to progress). 5e has bounded accuracy, which solves most of the problems that E6 was made to solve.
>
> Raising the Stakes
> ==================
>
>
> At any time, a player can choose to make a 'raise' before rolling their d20s. The terms of the raise are up to the player, but the GM can either accept ("Call") or decide "no bet."
>
>
> For example: "I attack the goblin, raise you a decapitation frightening his buddies against me falling prone." "Call."
>
>
> "I attack the goblin, raise you 2d6 damage against 2d6 damage" "Call."
>
>
> Modifiers will be left to the standard underlying rules, and raises based on odds that are too strong will simply be declined. So if the fighter has a 95% chance of hitting the goblin, the raise of "I do an extra 5d6 or take an extra 5d6 damage." would be declined. Instead, a raise could be : "OK, if I hit, I decapitate the goblin and his friends are frightened. If I miss, I'm on the ground grappled by 5 goblins and I take 2d6 damage."
>
>
> This can be used also to bypass other less fun mechanics "OK, I walk up to the sorcerer and hit him with my dagger. I raise grappling him against getting knocked back 10 feet and taking 2d6 damage from cracking my head on the pillar."
>
>
> | Another option: adding a feat to handle it
==========================================
I think you cannot avoid there being unintended consequences if you are something of a "simulationist" (*a la* [GNS theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNS_theory)). This is because there are some "called shots" that would have a clear tactical advantage, like slashing the Achilles tendon, where a simulationist would insist that it *must* have a natural consequence (like hobbling the target's movement). This sort of thing would upset play balance dramatically if you have clever players.
So at my 5e table, while I always allow players to freely add narrative fluff to their shots, if they want to go beyond that to some truly impactful, tactical aimed shots, then I make them take a (half-)feat to pull it off:
>
> **Critical Aim.**
>
>
> * Increase your Strength or Dexterity score by 1, to a maximum of 20.
> * When you score a critical hit with a finesse or ranged weapon, you have the option that instead of inflicting additional damage, you may select which part of your target's body is hit, provided that the part is in your weapon's reach or range and can be seen by you.
>
>
>
Note the requirement of "finesse or ranged" because this is inherently a finesse-style thing to do, IMO. |
188,692 | I am working in a research team that consists of researchers and a team lead. The team lead asked me with another teammate to experiment with several methodologies to get good results on a data. When we presented the results, we found that my teammate was getting good results compared to my results. Thus, the team lead asked me to have a meeting with the teammate to understand why my results are not good.
During the meeting with my teammate, I found that he has an issue with the way he is producing his results; he was working in a way that is biased and incorrect (he wants to get good results in anyway, and I don't know if it was intentional). I mentioned the issue to him and he understood it.
Later on, we had a meeting with the team lead again to discuss the results. He asked my teammate why there were differences in the results, and my teammate answered with a different reason. So he answered with something else to hide that he had an issue.
I didn't say anything because I felt that this will make our meeting weird and make him looks like a liar (which is actually the case). My team lead asked us to work more on the results to align them following the "wrong" reason that my teammate responded with.
I didn't like what happened and I was thinking to report that to my team lead, but I didn't want him to think that I am snitching. Also, I don't want him to talk to my teammate and then our working environment will be "weird".
What do you suggest me to do?
p.s. I noticed something in my teammate's behavior that he always acts as if he is sure of everything (in public meetings), but when I have private meetings with him, I find many issues in his work. Because of that, I thought that what he was doing is intentional to make him look good. | 2022/11/21 | [
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/188692",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/users/119550/"
] | It may be too late now, but how I would have handled it during the meeting with the team lead would be to say something like "I thought you said that the reason was X, did I misunderstand?". Couching it this way doesn't directly accuse the coworker of lying, but it makes the team lead aware of the alternate explanation, and puts him on the spot to explain the discrepancy.
Now that the meeting is over, I don't think you have any choice other than to tell the team lead that he gave a different explanation during your private meeting and the meeting with the lead. Then it's his job to confront the coworker and reconcile this.
Yes, your coworker may resent you for telling on him, but if that's what it takes to resolve the technical problem, so be it. You already have a weird relationship, because you resent him for throwing you under the bus. | I find it is almost always best to handle the situation at the lowest level possible. As such, I would speak directly to your coworker first. Explain that you are not comfortable moving forward under the present circumstances and ask how he would like to present your boss the correct information together. Do not, under any circumstances, agree to him presenting to your boss alone.
If he refuses, you may (if you're comfortable with it) give him the ultimatum of doing it together or you doing it on your own. If he still refuses, or if you don't feel comfortable, then you have to go to your boss directly.
You can start off by expressing the you feel awkward doing this but you don't know what else to do. Then, you need to tell the complete truth, including the fact that you and your teammate knew about this before your last meeting. That had agreed to tell them the correct information but your coworker had not done so and you were caught off guard and didn't know how to react in the moment. And include that you tried to talk to your coworker about coming forward but he refused.
You've tried your best to be a good co-worker and not a "snitch" but this is rapidly approaching cause for termination (if it's not already there) |
188,692 | I am working in a research team that consists of researchers and a team lead. The team lead asked me with another teammate to experiment with several methodologies to get good results on a data. When we presented the results, we found that my teammate was getting good results compared to my results. Thus, the team lead asked me to have a meeting with the teammate to understand why my results are not good.
During the meeting with my teammate, I found that he has an issue with the way he is producing his results; he was working in a way that is biased and incorrect (he wants to get good results in anyway, and I don't know if it was intentional). I mentioned the issue to him and he understood it.
Later on, we had a meeting with the team lead again to discuss the results. He asked my teammate why there were differences in the results, and my teammate answered with a different reason. So he answered with something else to hide that he had an issue.
I didn't say anything because I felt that this will make our meeting weird and make him looks like a liar (which is actually the case). My team lead asked us to work more on the results to align them following the "wrong" reason that my teammate responded with.
I didn't like what happened and I was thinking to report that to my team lead, but I didn't want him to think that I am snitching. Also, I don't want him to talk to my teammate and then our working environment will be "weird".
What do you suggest me to do?
p.s. I noticed something in my teammate's behavior that he always acts as if he is sure of everything (in public meetings), but when I have private meetings with him, I find many issues in his work. Because of that, I thought that what he was doing is intentional to make him look good. | 2022/11/21 | [
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/188692",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/users/119550/"
] | I'm going to answer this question, with another question:
Imagine you are not doing research data, but you are doing Engineering and building a Bridge. You notice mistakes, but decide you don't want to be a snitch and you don't want your work environment to be weird.
Then the bridge collapses and people die.
Is it worth it?
You might counter that it's 'just' research (although we don't know the field and whether that research is likely to be consequential or not) - but I would counter with, it doesn't matter. You have a personal and ethical obligation to advocate for the Truth.
Even if it means that in the short-term it might suck a little bit. | I'm not going to tell him. You are.
Sorry but "just snitch" avoids the entire conundrum. It will destroy the environment at work, your relationship with your colleague, the trust that let you understand this problem in the first place, your reputation, and people may die.
Snitching doesn't keep the "bridge" from collapsing. Snitching inspires people to hide the issue. Giving people the freedom to correct issues openly does. An environment where this problem is corrected because the one who made it fessed up is safer than one where they simply got caught.
Which makes me suspect the lead already understands what's happening and is just watching what you guys will do about it. The longer it takes to resolve this the worse it is for both of you.
Help your colleague find a way to explain what is really happening. It's not the end of the world if they save face. Don't take any unjustified blame but don't create more than needs to exist. Make it into something to learn from.
I've worked on life critical projects. Having an open atmosphere is a must. Judge the work. Not the people. Check your ego at the door.
The first 3 way meeting may be over. But nothing says it will be the last one. |
188,692 | I am working in a research team that consists of researchers and a team lead. The team lead asked me with another teammate to experiment with several methodologies to get good results on a data. When we presented the results, we found that my teammate was getting good results compared to my results. Thus, the team lead asked me to have a meeting with the teammate to understand why my results are not good.
During the meeting with my teammate, I found that he has an issue with the way he is producing his results; he was working in a way that is biased and incorrect (he wants to get good results in anyway, and I don't know if it was intentional). I mentioned the issue to him and he understood it.
Later on, we had a meeting with the team lead again to discuss the results. He asked my teammate why there were differences in the results, and my teammate answered with a different reason. So he answered with something else to hide that he had an issue.
I didn't say anything because I felt that this will make our meeting weird and make him looks like a liar (which is actually the case). My team lead asked us to work more on the results to align them following the "wrong" reason that my teammate responded with.
I didn't like what happened and I was thinking to report that to my team lead, but I didn't want him to think that I am snitching. Also, I don't want him to talk to my teammate and then our working environment will be "weird".
What do you suggest me to do?
p.s. I noticed something in my teammate's behavior that he always acts as if he is sure of everything (in public meetings), but when I have private meetings with him, I find many issues in his work. Because of that, I thought that what he was doing is intentional to make him look good. | 2022/11/21 | [
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/188692",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/users/119550/"
] | I'm going to answer this question, with another question:
Imagine you are not doing research data, but you are doing Engineering and building a Bridge. You notice mistakes, but decide you don't want to be a snitch and you don't want your work environment to be weird.
Then the bridge collapses and people die.
Is it worth it?
You might counter that it's 'just' research (although we don't know the field and whether that research is likely to be consequential or not) - but I would counter with, it doesn't matter. You have a personal and ethical obligation to advocate for the Truth.
Even if it means that in the short-term it might suck a little bit. | You talked to your coworker and know how he is getting the "good" results by biasing the data or inputs or whatever. But you do not want to snitch, or point him out.
In that case you can point those things out by reconfirming the requirements.
I've kept my inputs pure, [abc] and that gave me results [x]. Is that correct? Or can I apply a filter to the inputs to get [bc] which can get me results closer to [y].
Am I allowed to add tweaks to the code or process so the results get closer to [y] or are those code/processes hardwired and must be used as is. How much leeway or tweaking can I do.
Without snitching you've opened the question, and whether your coworker did those things or not when you said you did it the way you thought the requirements are. Who knows maybe you were wrong. |
188,692 | I am working in a research team that consists of researchers and a team lead. The team lead asked me with another teammate to experiment with several methodologies to get good results on a data. When we presented the results, we found that my teammate was getting good results compared to my results. Thus, the team lead asked me to have a meeting with the teammate to understand why my results are not good.
During the meeting with my teammate, I found that he has an issue with the way he is producing his results; he was working in a way that is biased and incorrect (he wants to get good results in anyway, and I don't know if it was intentional). I mentioned the issue to him and he understood it.
Later on, we had a meeting with the team lead again to discuss the results. He asked my teammate why there were differences in the results, and my teammate answered with a different reason. So he answered with something else to hide that he had an issue.
I didn't say anything because I felt that this will make our meeting weird and make him looks like a liar (which is actually the case). My team lead asked us to work more on the results to align them following the "wrong" reason that my teammate responded with.
I didn't like what happened and I was thinking to report that to my team lead, but I didn't want him to think that I am snitching. Also, I don't want him to talk to my teammate and then our working environment will be "weird".
What do you suggest me to do?
p.s. I noticed something in my teammate's behavior that he always acts as if he is sure of everything (in public meetings), but when I have private meetings with him, I find many issues in his work. Because of that, I thought that what he was doing is intentional to make him look good. | 2022/11/21 | [
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/188692",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/users/119550/"
] | I'm not going to tell him. You are.
Sorry but "just snitch" avoids the entire conundrum. It will destroy the environment at work, your relationship with your colleague, the trust that let you understand this problem in the first place, your reputation, and people may die.
Snitching doesn't keep the "bridge" from collapsing. Snitching inspires people to hide the issue. Giving people the freedom to correct issues openly does. An environment where this problem is corrected because the one who made it fessed up is safer than one where they simply got caught.
Which makes me suspect the lead already understands what's happening and is just watching what you guys will do about it. The longer it takes to resolve this the worse it is for both of you.
Help your colleague find a way to explain what is really happening. It's not the end of the world if they save face. Don't take any unjustified blame but don't create more than needs to exist. Make it into something to learn from.
I've worked on life critical projects. Having an open atmosphere is a must. Judge the work. Not the people. Check your ego at the door.
The first 3 way meeting may be over. But nothing says it will be the last one. | You talked to your coworker and know how he is getting the "good" results by biasing the data or inputs or whatever. But you do not want to snitch, or point him out.
In that case you can point those things out by reconfirming the requirements.
I've kept my inputs pure, [abc] and that gave me results [x]. Is that correct? Or can I apply a filter to the inputs to get [bc] which can get me results closer to [y].
Am I allowed to add tweaks to the code or process so the results get closer to [y] or are those code/processes hardwired and must be used as is. How much leeway or tweaking can I do.
Without snitching you've opened the question, and whether your coworker did those things or not when you said you did it the way you thought the requirements are. Who knows maybe you were wrong. |
188,692 | I am working in a research team that consists of researchers and a team lead. The team lead asked me with another teammate to experiment with several methodologies to get good results on a data. When we presented the results, we found that my teammate was getting good results compared to my results. Thus, the team lead asked me to have a meeting with the teammate to understand why my results are not good.
During the meeting with my teammate, I found that he has an issue with the way he is producing his results; he was working in a way that is biased and incorrect (he wants to get good results in anyway, and I don't know if it was intentional). I mentioned the issue to him and he understood it.
Later on, we had a meeting with the team lead again to discuss the results. He asked my teammate why there were differences in the results, and my teammate answered with a different reason. So he answered with something else to hide that he had an issue.
I didn't say anything because I felt that this will make our meeting weird and make him looks like a liar (which is actually the case). My team lead asked us to work more on the results to align them following the "wrong" reason that my teammate responded with.
I didn't like what happened and I was thinking to report that to my team lead, but I didn't want him to think that I am snitching. Also, I don't want him to talk to my teammate and then our working environment will be "weird".
What do you suggest me to do?
p.s. I noticed something in my teammate's behavior that he always acts as if he is sure of everything (in public meetings), but when I have private meetings with him, I find many issues in his work. Because of that, I thought that what he was doing is intentional to make him look good. | 2022/11/21 | [
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/188692",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/users/119550/"
] | I'm going to answer this question, with another question:
Imagine you are not doing research data, but you are doing Engineering and building a Bridge. You notice mistakes, but decide you don't want to be a snitch and you don't want your work environment to be weird.
Then the bridge collapses and people die.
Is it worth it?
You might counter that it's 'just' research (although we don't know the field and whether that research is likely to be consequential or not) - but I would counter with, it doesn't matter. You have a personal and ethical obligation to advocate for the Truth.
Even if it means that in the short-term it might suck a little bit. | Talk to team mate and tell him to come forward and pronounce he discovered a flaw in his method and the fixed results are unfortunately not so good - otherwise you will have too.
If you do it he will resent you. If you do not, you will resent him.
Eventually it comes out, resentment abounds.
Deal with it fast: buddy you have to fix that calc its wrong, or I have to fix it.
Time may heal if you continue to treat him professional after. |
188,692 | I am working in a research team that consists of researchers and a team lead. The team lead asked me with another teammate to experiment with several methodologies to get good results on a data. When we presented the results, we found that my teammate was getting good results compared to my results. Thus, the team lead asked me to have a meeting with the teammate to understand why my results are not good.
During the meeting with my teammate, I found that he has an issue with the way he is producing his results; he was working in a way that is biased and incorrect (he wants to get good results in anyway, and I don't know if it was intentional). I mentioned the issue to him and he understood it.
Later on, we had a meeting with the team lead again to discuss the results. He asked my teammate why there were differences in the results, and my teammate answered with a different reason. So he answered with something else to hide that he had an issue.
I didn't say anything because I felt that this will make our meeting weird and make him looks like a liar (which is actually the case). My team lead asked us to work more on the results to align them following the "wrong" reason that my teammate responded with.
I didn't like what happened and I was thinking to report that to my team lead, but I didn't want him to think that I am snitching. Also, I don't want him to talk to my teammate and then our working environment will be "weird".
What do you suggest me to do?
p.s. I noticed something in my teammate's behavior that he always acts as if he is sure of everything (in public meetings), but when I have private meetings with him, I find many issues in his work. Because of that, I thought that what he was doing is intentional to make him look good. | 2022/11/21 | [
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/188692",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/users/119550/"
] | Talk to team mate and tell him to come forward and pronounce he discovered a flaw in his method and the fixed results are unfortunately not so good - otherwise you will have too.
If you do it he will resent you. If you do not, you will resent him.
Eventually it comes out, resentment abounds.
Deal with it fast: buddy you have to fix that calc its wrong, or I have to fix it.
Time may heal if you continue to treat him professional after. | You talked to your coworker and know how he is getting the "good" results by biasing the data or inputs or whatever. But you do not want to snitch, or point him out.
In that case you can point those things out by reconfirming the requirements.
I've kept my inputs pure, [abc] and that gave me results [x]. Is that correct? Or can I apply a filter to the inputs to get [bc] which can get me results closer to [y].
Am I allowed to add tweaks to the code or process so the results get closer to [y] or are those code/processes hardwired and must be used as is. How much leeway or tweaking can I do.
Without snitching you've opened the question, and whether your coworker did those things or not when you said you did it the way you thought the requirements are. Who knows maybe you were wrong. |
188,692 | I am working in a research team that consists of researchers and a team lead. The team lead asked me with another teammate to experiment with several methodologies to get good results on a data. When we presented the results, we found that my teammate was getting good results compared to my results. Thus, the team lead asked me to have a meeting with the teammate to understand why my results are not good.
During the meeting with my teammate, I found that he has an issue with the way he is producing his results; he was working in a way that is biased and incorrect (he wants to get good results in anyway, and I don't know if it was intentional). I mentioned the issue to him and he understood it.
Later on, we had a meeting with the team lead again to discuss the results. He asked my teammate why there were differences in the results, and my teammate answered with a different reason. So he answered with something else to hide that he had an issue.
I didn't say anything because I felt that this will make our meeting weird and make him looks like a liar (which is actually the case). My team lead asked us to work more on the results to align them following the "wrong" reason that my teammate responded with.
I didn't like what happened and I was thinking to report that to my team lead, but I didn't want him to think that I am snitching. Also, I don't want him to talk to my teammate and then our working environment will be "weird".
What do you suggest me to do?
p.s. I noticed something in my teammate's behavior that he always acts as if he is sure of everything (in public meetings), but when I have private meetings with him, I find many issues in his work. Because of that, I thought that what he was doing is intentional to make him look good. | 2022/11/21 | [
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/188692",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/users/119550/"
] | It may be too late now, but how I would have handled it during the meeting with the team lead would be to say something like "I thought you said that the reason was X, did I misunderstand?". Couching it this way doesn't directly accuse the coworker of lying, but it makes the team lead aware of the alternate explanation, and puts him on the spot to explain the discrepancy.
Now that the meeting is over, I don't think you have any choice other than to tell the team lead that he gave a different explanation during your private meeting and the meeting with the lead. Then it's his job to confront the coworker and reconcile this.
Yes, your coworker may resent you for telling on him, but if that's what it takes to resolve the technical problem, so be it. You already have a weird relationship, because you resent him for throwing you under the bus. | You talked to your coworker and know how he is getting the "good" results by biasing the data or inputs or whatever. But you do not want to snitch, or point him out.
In that case you can point those things out by reconfirming the requirements.
I've kept my inputs pure, [abc] and that gave me results [x]. Is that correct? Or can I apply a filter to the inputs to get [bc] which can get me results closer to [y].
Am I allowed to add tweaks to the code or process so the results get closer to [y] or are those code/processes hardwired and must be used as is. How much leeway or tweaking can I do.
Without snitching you've opened the question, and whether your coworker did those things or not when you said you did it the way you thought the requirements are. Who knows maybe you were wrong. |
188,692 | I am working in a research team that consists of researchers and a team lead. The team lead asked me with another teammate to experiment with several methodologies to get good results on a data. When we presented the results, we found that my teammate was getting good results compared to my results. Thus, the team lead asked me to have a meeting with the teammate to understand why my results are not good.
During the meeting with my teammate, I found that he has an issue with the way he is producing his results; he was working in a way that is biased and incorrect (he wants to get good results in anyway, and I don't know if it was intentional). I mentioned the issue to him and he understood it.
Later on, we had a meeting with the team lead again to discuss the results. He asked my teammate why there were differences in the results, and my teammate answered with a different reason. So he answered with something else to hide that he had an issue.
I didn't say anything because I felt that this will make our meeting weird and make him looks like a liar (which is actually the case). My team lead asked us to work more on the results to align them following the "wrong" reason that my teammate responded with.
I didn't like what happened and I was thinking to report that to my team lead, but I didn't want him to think that I am snitching. Also, I don't want him to talk to my teammate and then our working environment will be "weird".
What do you suggest me to do?
p.s. I noticed something in my teammate's behavior that he always acts as if he is sure of everything (in public meetings), but when I have private meetings with him, I find many issues in his work. Because of that, I thought that what he was doing is intentional to make him look good. | 2022/11/21 | [
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/188692",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/users/119550/"
] | [keshlam](https://workplace.stackexchange.com/users/12989/keshlam)'s (now deleted) comment suggests a good approach that you can take in your meetings. Rather than coming out and saying your teammate is lying, instead say you're not clear on why the problem is reason T (what your teammate gave in the meeting) and ask if and how reason Y (your reason you discussed privately with your teammate) relates to this. That leaves it to him to explain himself to your and your team lead's satisfaction.
You'll want to prepare well for your next meeting with your teammate and the team lead so that you have further "questions" that illuminate problems with explanation T when he gives justifications for why he is correct about that. You can use both any justifications he gave at the last meeting with the team leader and also (very gently) press this approach during your next meeting between just you and your teammate to elicit further justifications that he might use that you need to address with questions. | I'm not going to tell him. You are.
Sorry but "just snitch" avoids the entire conundrum. It will destroy the environment at work, your relationship with your colleague, the trust that let you understand this problem in the first place, your reputation, and people may die.
Snitching doesn't keep the "bridge" from collapsing. Snitching inspires people to hide the issue. Giving people the freedom to correct issues openly does. An environment where this problem is corrected because the one who made it fessed up is safer than one where they simply got caught.
Which makes me suspect the lead already understands what's happening and is just watching what you guys will do about it. The longer it takes to resolve this the worse it is for both of you.
Help your colleague find a way to explain what is really happening. It's not the end of the world if they save face. Don't take any unjustified blame but don't create more than needs to exist. Make it into something to learn from.
I've worked on life critical projects. Having an open atmosphere is a must. Judge the work. Not the people. Check your ego at the door.
The first 3 way meeting may be over. But nothing says it will be the last one. |
188,692 | I am working in a research team that consists of researchers and a team lead. The team lead asked me with another teammate to experiment with several methodologies to get good results on a data. When we presented the results, we found that my teammate was getting good results compared to my results. Thus, the team lead asked me to have a meeting with the teammate to understand why my results are not good.
During the meeting with my teammate, I found that he has an issue with the way he is producing his results; he was working in a way that is biased and incorrect (he wants to get good results in anyway, and I don't know if it was intentional). I mentioned the issue to him and he understood it.
Later on, we had a meeting with the team lead again to discuss the results. He asked my teammate why there were differences in the results, and my teammate answered with a different reason. So he answered with something else to hide that he had an issue.
I didn't say anything because I felt that this will make our meeting weird and make him looks like a liar (which is actually the case). My team lead asked us to work more on the results to align them following the "wrong" reason that my teammate responded with.
I didn't like what happened and I was thinking to report that to my team lead, but I didn't want him to think that I am snitching. Also, I don't want him to talk to my teammate and then our working environment will be "weird".
What do you suggest me to do?
p.s. I noticed something in my teammate's behavior that he always acts as if he is sure of everything (in public meetings), but when I have private meetings with him, I find many issues in his work. Because of that, I thought that what he was doing is intentional to make him look good. | 2022/11/21 | [
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/188692",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/users/119550/"
] | I'm going to answer this question, with another question:
Imagine you are not doing research data, but you are doing Engineering and building a Bridge. You notice mistakes, but decide you don't want to be a snitch and you don't want your work environment to be weird.
Then the bridge collapses and people die.
Is it worth it?
You might counter that it's 'just' research (although we don't know the field and whether that research is likely to be consequential or not) - but I would counter with, it doesn't matter. You have a personal and ethical obligation to advocate for the Truth.
Even if it means that in the short-term it might suck a little bit. | I find it is almost always best to handle the situation at the lowest level possible. As such, I would speak directly to your coworker first. Explain that you are not comfortable moving forward under the present circumstances and ask how he would like to present your boss the correct information together. Do not, under any circumstances, agree to him presenting to your boss alone.
If he refuses, you may (if you're comfortable with it) give him the ultimatum of doing it together or you doing it on your own. If he still refuses, or if you don't feel comfortable, then you have to go to your boss directly.
You can start off by expressing the you feel awkward doing this but you don't know what else to do. Then, you need to tell the complete truth, including the fact that you and your teammate knew about this before your last meeting. That had agreed to tell them the correct information but your coworker had not done so and you were caught off guard and didn't know how to react in the moment. And include that you tried to talk to your coworker about coming forward but he refused.
You've tried your best to be a good co-worker and not a "snitch" but this is rapidly approaching cause for termination (if it's not already there) |
188,692 | I am working in a research team that consists of researchers and a team lead. The team lead asked me with another teammate to experiment with several methodologies to get good results on a data. When we presented the results, we found that my teammate was getting good results compared to my results. Thus, the team lead asked me to have a meeting with the teammate to understand why my results are not good.
During the meeting with my teammate, I found that he has an issue with the way he is producing his results; he was working in a way that is biased and incorrect (he wants to get good results in anyway, and I don't know if it was intentional). I mentioned the issue to him and he understood it.
Later on, we had a meeting with the team lead again to discuss the results. He asked my teammate why there were differences in the results, and my teammate answered with a different reason. So he answered with something else to hide that he had an issue.
I didn't say anything because I felt that this will make our meeting weird and make him looks like a liar (which is actually the case). My team lead asked us to work more on the results to align them following the "wrong" reason that my teammate responded with.
I didn't like what happened and I was thinking to report that to my team lead, but I didn't want him to think that I am snitching. Also, I don't want him to talk to my teammate and then our working environment will be "weird".
What do you suggest me to do?
p.s. I noticed something in my teammate's behavior that he always acts as if he is sure of everything (in public meetings), but when I have private meetings with him, I find many issues in his work. Because of that, I thought that what he was doing is intentional to make him look good. | 2022/11/21 | [
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/188692",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/users/119550/"
] | I'm not going to tell him. You are.
Sorry but "just snitch" avoids the entire conundrum. It will destroy the environment at work, your relationship with your colleague, the trust that let you understand this problem in the first place, your reputation, and people may die.
Snitching doesn't keep the "bridge" from collapsing. Snitching inspires people to hide the issue. Giving people the freedom to correct issues openly does. An environment where this problem is corrected because the one who made it fessed up is safer than one where they simply got caught.
Which makes me suspect the lead already understands what's happening and is just watching what you guys will do about it. The longer it takes to resolve this the worse it is for both of you.
Help your colleague find a way to explain what is really happening. It's not the end of the world if they save face. Don't take any unjustified blame but don't create more than needs to exist. Make it into something to learn from.
I've worked on life critical projects. Having an open atmosphere is a must. Judge the work. Not the people. Check your ego at the door.
The first 3 way meeting may be over. But nothing says it will be the last one. | Talk to team mate and tell him to come forward and pronounce he discovered a flaw in his method and the fixed results are unfortunately not so good - otherwise you will have too.
If you do it he will resent you. If you do not, you will resent him.
Eventually it comes out, resentment abounds.
Deal with it fast: buddy you have to fix that calc its wrong, or I have to fix it.
Time may heal if you continue to treat him professional after. |
47,636,439 | I got below exception while running xunit test projects which works under VS 2017 15.3
>
> [2017/12/4 23:08:40 Error] [xUnit.net 00:00:00.0033291] xxx.Test: Catastrophic failure: System.TypeInitializationException: The type initializer for 'Xunit.DiaSession' threw an exception. ---> System.IO.FileNotFoundException: Could not load file or assembly 'System.Reflection.TypeExtensions, Version=4.1.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.
> at Xunit.DiaSession..cctor()
> --- End of inner exception stack trace ---
> at Xunit.DiaSession..ctor(String assemblyFileName)
> at Xunit.DiaSessionWrapper..ctor(String assemblyFilename)
> at Xunit.XunitFrontController..ctor(AppDomainSupport appDomainSupport, String assemblyFileName, String configFileName, Boolean shadowCopy, String shadowCopyFolder, ISourceInformationProvider sourceInformationProvider, IMessageSink diagnosticMessageSink)
> at Xunit.Runner.VisualStudio.TestAdapter.VsTestRunner.RunTestsInAssembly(IRunContext runContext, IFrameworkHandle frameworkHandle, LoggerHelper logger, IMessageSinkWithTypes reporterMessageHandler, AssemblyRunInfo runInfo)
> My current VS 2017 version is 15.4.5.
>
>
>
I have tried the work around which has been provided previously, but none did not work. And I have try to downgrade my VS 2016 to 15.3, but I could not find the 15.3 package to install. I have tried to install xunit to latest version.
Any help would be appreciated.
Update:
Project Type:xUnit Test Project(.NET Core)
Target: net 461 | 2017/12/04 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/47636439",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/6265620/"
] | It seems VS 2017 fail to load specific "xunit.runner.visualstudio", after checking [VS2017 15.4.2 - Unable to run tests for projects targeting .NET Framework 4.6.x #1542](https://github.com/xunit/xunit/issues/1542) again, I deleted the "%TEMP%\VisualStudioTestExplorerExtensions", create a new Xunit project, change the nonworked.csproj xunit.runner.visualstudio from 2.2.0 to 2.3.1, it works now. Not sure why it did not work when I try it previous.
Hope it will help others. | You need to install System.Reflection.TypeExtensions using VS Package Manager using the following command:
**Install-Package System.Reflection.TypeExtensions -Version 4.5.1**
for more information please review the following link
[System.Reflection.TypeExtensions](https://www.nuget.org/packages/System.Reflection.TypeExtensions/) |
44,132 | I was reading the answers to this [question](https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/43870/who-won-this-match-of-go), about who has won a game of Go and came across the two following statements.
>
> You pass at the end of the game when you do not think you can increase your score (explained below), and stop when both of you pass one after the other.
>
>
>
And
>
> You needed to finish the game...
>
>
>
As a beginner at go, I think an implicit part of the other question that has possibly been missed is "How do I learn when the game is over". Logically, assuming both players are beginners it is possible that they both think they cannot increase their score and the game is over; where as a more experienced player, such as those answering the question, disagrees.
Is there a suggested method of learning or teaching when the end of the game has been reached? For example continuing to play until only a "few" spaces are unclaimed? | 2018/11/22 | [
"https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/44132",
"https://boardgames.stackexchange.com",
"https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/users/21485/"
] | Under Chinese scoring (AKA area scoring), you can (and with new players should) play until each player has no move they can make.
There is no downside under Chinese scoring for a player to play stones into untenable positions, nor is there downside for a player to defend a position inefficiently (so long as they don't fill in their eyes). As a result, a new player should try to attack any area they think they can and you should attack them on any area you can, even if those areas are too small to build a live group. This will help them get a more concrete sense of why certain groups are alive or dead, understand what territory can or cannot be viably contested, and learn how defend their own groups from attack without losing their eyes.
For these reasons, I actually recommend Chinese scoring for new players. In addition, I believe it's easier for new players to understand. Japanese scoring requires players to understand the concept of territory, which is much easier once a player has played several games. The overall strategy and techniques of Go are not substantially affected by which scoring system you use (it mostly matters in terms of endgame play), so learning to play under Chinese scoring should not be an impediment to later learning Japanese scoring. See [What are the difference between Chinese and Japanese rules in Go?](https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/q/1841/9999) for more information. | There are two logical places when to stop (with Japanese or European rules in mind):
1. When there are only dame points to fill
2. When all dame points are filled
The score does not change between these two stages, there are just zero-point moves in between. I think **2** is easier to see and teach in the beginning, while in practical play passes occur when **1** is reached.
Even beginners should never fill their own territory with unnecessary more additional stones, those moves are diminishing the score by one point. |
44,132 | I was reading the answers to this [question](https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/43870/who-won-this-match-of-go), about who has won a game of Go and came across the two following statements.
>
> You pass at the end of the game when you do not think you can increase your score (explained below), and stop when both of you pass one after the other.
>
>
>
And
>
> You needed to finish the game...
>
>
>
As a beginner at go, I think an implicit part of the other question that has possibly been missed is "How do I learn when the game is over". Logically, assuming both players are beginners it is possible that they both think they cannot increase their score and the game is over; where as a more experienced player, such as those answering the question, disagrees.
Is there a suggested method of learning or teaching when the end of the game has been reached? For example continuing to play until only a "few" spaces are unclaimed? | 2018/11/22 | [
"https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/44132",
"https://boardgames.stackexchange.com",
"https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/users/21485/"
] | Under Chinese scoring (AKA area scoring), you can (and with new players should) play until each player has no move they can make.
There is no downside under Chinese scoring for a player to play stones into untenable positions, nor is there downside for a player to defend a position inefficiently (so long as they don't fill in their eyes). As a result, a new player should try to attack any area they think they can and you should attack them on any area you can, even if those areas are too small to build a live group. This will help them get a more concrete sense of why certain groups are alive or dead, understand what territory can or cannot be viably contested, and learn how defend their own groups from attack without losing their eyes.
For these reasons, I actually recommend Chinese scoring for new players. In addition, I believe it's easier for new players to understand. Japanese scoring requires players to understand the concept of territory, which is much easier once a player has played several games. The overall strategy and techniques of Go are not substantially affected by which scoring system you use (it mostly matters in terms of endgame play), so learning to play under Chinese scoring should not be an impediment to later learning Japanese scoring. See [What are the difference between Chinese and Japanese rules in Go?](https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/q/1841/9999) for more information. | This seems like a much harder problem than it actually is. The key is the undecided territory.
---
You know that you loose points when you play into your own territory (Japanese rules). You also loose points when you play into your opponents territory without requiring an answer. Consequently, virtually all moves go into *undecided* territory. Once the undecided territory is gone, both opponents will pass to avoid loosing points.
It is perfectly possible that beginners see some territory as still undecided when a pro would see it finished, and vice-versa. That's not a problem. As long as one player thinks there is undecided territory, they keep playing. For both it's just a part of getting better to realize "oh, I don't need to answer that move anymore, I can save that point", or "nah, if I play there, my opponent may not even answer it anymore, I can save that point".
My experience is, that the place where the undecided territory is gone is very easily recognizable after playing just a few games. And it will definitely change as players progress. The greater uncertainty for beginners is to agree on which groups are alive and dead. Especially, when seki is involved.
---
I guess, the question of when to finish is much more pressing when a strong player and a newbie play together. In such a setting, the newbie will frequently play end game moves that just loose them points. Simply because the newbie still sees some territory as undecided while the stronger player already knows to whom that territory belongs.
In such games, the newbie will learn to avoid playing moves that their opponent ignores, and thereby which territory is indeed still undecided, and which is not. In any case, it's not a big problem when players disagree about when to pass. It'll just turn into a learning experience for either player when they do. |
83,780 | Is there a one-word term that's understood by role-playing gamers to mean resistance to magical attacks, in the same way that many role-playing gamers would quickly recognize *armor* to mean resistance to physical attacks?
I'm developing a basic MMORPG, using *armor* as the term for resistance to physical attacks. I was using *shield* as the term for resistance to magical attacks, but now that I've added to the game *actual* shields, I need a different yet accessible term.
Is there a simple and, preferably, one-word phrase that role-playing gamers commonly use for a magic resistance attribute?
>
> **Moderator notice**: To answer the question being asked the word should already have currency in English RPG contexts, which answers should include. Suggestions with no evidence that the word is already in use for this meaning are not really answering the question and are liable to be deleted.
>
>
> | 2016/07/08 | [
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/83780",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/30076/"
] | **Resistance** is a perfectly fine word by itself, so long as you do not end up with other types of resistance (energy resistance, for instance).
**Willpower** would work if your magic is primarily mental, though it's not ideal when better willpower helps you resist explosions.
**Warding/Wards** would work. It implies a physical object doing the protecting, but then so does Armor. | A One-word term for *Magical Resistance* is a bit hard. Most RPG and MMO players are fairly used to composite terms for something like that, the two most common being *Magical Resistance* and *Magical Armor*.
Those are frequently abbreviated to *MR* and *MA*, respectively, which is what commonly appears on character sheets. *M. Resistance* and *M. Armor* are also pretty common forms of those terms, and most people who are used to the hobby will immediately get what they mean - and if you couple them with a shield with some sort of fireball inside of it for an icon, even better.
However, if you *really, really* need to use a single word it, you have some choices.
* ***Spirit*** - This is a somewhat less used term that sometimes means magical defenses and sometimes means *regeneration rates*. Other games may add different meanings to it, so it heavily depends on the context of use. When paired with *Intelligence*, Spirit is normally used for the defenses while Intelligence is used for the attack aspect of it.
* ***Willpower or Will*** - This is a common word for RPGs that more often than not refers to the ability of the character to stave off magical effects that affect the mind. A few games also generalize it to mean "magical defenses".
* ***Tenacity*** - A barely used term that when used normally refers to the ability to reduce harmful effects. Also, a really cool word.
* ***Resilience*** - Old-time WoW players will remember this one. On the WoW context, it was some sort of catch-all PVP defense, but it can be used safely to mean magical armors of sorts. Resilience is the term I use on my own RPG System for my "magical defense stuff".
---
Despite my suggestions, I really, really recommend you to use some sort of M.Armor or something like that. It is way easier to associate *M.Armor* to "Magical defenses" than it is for any other single-term word! |
83,780 | Is there a one-word term that's understood by role-playing gamers to mean resistance to magical attacks, in the same way that many role-playing gamers would quickly recognize *armor* to mean resistance to physical attacks?
I'm developing a basic MMORPG, using *armor* as the term for resistance to physical attacks. I was using *shield* as the term for resistance to magical attacks, but now that I've added to the game *actual* shields, I need a different yet accessible term.
Is there a simple and, preferably, one-word phrase that role-playing gamers commonly use for a magic resistance attribute?
>
> **Moderator notice**: To answer the question being asked the word should already have currency in English RPG contexts, which answers should include. Suggestions with no evidence that the word is already in use for this meaning are not really answering the question and are liable to be deleted.
>
>
> | 2016/07/08 | [
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/83780",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/30076/"
] | **Resistance** is a perfectly fine word by itself, so long as you do not end up with other types of resistance (energy resistance, for instance).
**Willpower** would work if your magic is primarily mental, though it's not ideal when better willpower helps you resist explosions.
**Warding/Wards** would work. It implies a physical object doing the protecting, but then so does Armor. | MR is a fantastic abbreviation for **M**agic **R**esistance. It's what *League of Legends* players use. |
83,780 | Is there a one-word term that's understood by role-playing gamers to mean resistance to magical attacks, in the same way that many role-playing gamers would quickly recognize *armor* to mean resistance to physical attacks?
I'm developing a basic MMORPG, using *armor* as the term for resistance to physical attacks. I was using *shield* as the term for resistance to magical attacks, but now that I've added to the game *actual* shields, I need a different yet accessible term.
Is there a simple and, preferably, one-word phrase that role-playing gamers commonly use for a magic resistance attribute?
>
> **Moderator notice**: To answer the question being asked the word should already have currency in English RPG contexts, which answers should include. Suggestions with no evidence that the word is already in use for this meaning are not really answering the question and are liable to be deleted.
>
>
> | 2016/07/08 | [
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/83780",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/30076/"
] | **Resistance** is a perfectly fine word by itself, so long as you do not end up with other types of resistance (energy resistance, for instance).
**Willpower** would work if your magic is primarily mental, though it's not ideal when better willpower helps you resist explosions.
**Warding/Wards** would work. It implies a physical object doing the protecting, but then so does Armor. | Being an old WoW player, I prefer **Resilience** and think of it as a term for "Reducing non-physical damage." So whether the player gets hit by a fireball or falls into a campfire, they wouldn't take as much damage as they normally would, though both would still hurt plenty.
>
> *Total Damage = Rolled Damage - Resilience*
>
>
>
Noting above, **Resistance** is an excellent choice as well. But as SPavel mentioned, this becomes a problem if you start separating types of resistance. However, this can come to your aid if you use Resilience as the base value for mitigating non-physical damage, and use Resistance to augment specific elements.
>
> *Total Damage = Rolled Damage - (Resilience + Resist)*
>
>
>
**Blessing** and **Warding** are good words too, though (to me) they denote a spell being cast for the protection of player(s) or area. |
83,780 | Is there a one-word term that's understood by role-playing gamers to mean resistance to magical attacks, in the same way that many role-playing gamers would quickly recognize *armor* to mean resistance to physical attacks?
I'm developing a basic MMORPG, using *armor* as the term for resistance to physical attacks. I was using *shield* as the term for resistance to magical attacks, but now that I've added to the game *actual* shields, I need a different yet accessible term.
Is there a simple and, preferably, one-word phrase that role-playing gamers commonly use for a magic resistance attribute?
>
> **Moderator notice**: To answer the question being asked the word should already have currency in English RPG contexts, which answers should include. Suggestions with no evidence that the word is already in use for this meaning are not really answering the question and are liable to be deleted.
>
>
> | 2016/07/08 | [
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/83780",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/30076/"
] | **Resistance** is a perfectly fine word by itself, so long as you do not end up with other types of resistance (energy resistance, for instance).
**Willpower** would work if your magic is primarily mental, though it's not ideal when better willpower helps you resist explosions.
**Warding/Wards** would work. It implies a physical object doing the protecting, but then so does Armor. | the Final Fantasy series sometimes uses the term **Barrier** for this.
**Abjuration** perhaps from the D&D school of protective magic?
**Negation** or any of it's synonyms?
the IRL technical term for something that is meant to deflect magic, spirits and misfortune is **Apotropaic**: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apotropaic_magic>
Of everything that's already been suggested I think **ward** works best |
83,780 | Is there a one-word term that's understood by role-playing gamers to mean resistance to magical attacks, in the same way that many role-playing gamers would quickly recognize *armor* to mean resistance to physical attacks?
I'm developing a basic MMORPG, using *armor* as the term for resistance to physical attacks. I was using *shield* as the term for resistance to magical attacks, but now that I've added to the game *actual* shields, I need a different yet accessible term.
Is there a simple and, preferably, one-word phrase that role-playing gamers commonly use for a magic resistance attribute?
>
> **Moderator notice**: To answer the question being asked the word should already have currency in English RPG contexts, which answers should include. Suggestions with no evidence that the word is already in use for this meaning are not really answering the question and are liable to be deleted.
>
>
> | 2016/07/08 | [
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/83780",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/30076/"
] | A One-word term for *Magical Resistance* is a bit hard. Most RPG and MMO players are fairly used to composite terms for something like that, the two most common being *Magical Resistance* and *Magical Armor*.
Those are frequently abbreviated to *MR* and *MA*, respectively, which is what commonly appears on character sheets. *M. Resistance* and *M. Armor* are also pretty common forms of those terms, and most people who are used to the hobby will immediately get what they mean - and if you couple them with a shield with some sort of fireball inside of it for an icon, even better.
However, if you *really, really* need to use a single word it, you have some choices.
* ***Spirit*** - This is a somewhat less used term that sometimes means magical defenses and sometimes means *regeneration rates*. Other games may add different meanings to it, so it heavily depends on the context of use. When paired with *Intelligence*, Spirit is normally used for the defenses while Intelligence is used for the attack aspect of it.
* ***Willpower or Will*** - This is a common word for RPGs that more often than not refers to the ability of the character to stave off magical effects that affect the mind. A few games also generalize it to mean "magical defenses".
* ***Tenacity*** - A barely used term that when used normally refers to the ability to reduce harmful effects. Also, a really cool word.
* ***Resilience*** - Old-time WoW players will remember this one. On the WoW context, it was some sort of catch-all PVP defense, but it can be used safely to mean magical armors of sorts. Resilience is the term I use on my own RPG System for my "magical defense stuff".
---
Despite my suggestions, I really, really recommend you to use some sort of M.Armor or something like that. It is way easier to associate *M.Armor* to "Magical defenses" than it is for any other single-term word! | MR is a fantastic abbreviation for **M**agic **R**esistance. It's what *League of Legends* players use. |
83,780 | Is there a one-word term that's understood by role-playing gamers to mean resistance to magical attacks, in the same way that many role-playing gamers would quickly recognize *armor* to mean resistance to physical attacks?
I'm developing a basic MMORPG, using *armor* as the term for resistance to physical attacks. I was using *shield* as the term for resistance to magical attacks, but now that I've added to the game *actual* shields, I need a different yet accessible term.
Is there a simple and, preferably, one-word phrase that role-playing gamers commonly use for a magic resistance attribute?
>
> **Moderator notice**: To answer the question being asked the word should already have currency in English RPG contexts, which answers should include. Suggestions with no evidence that the word is already in use for this meaning are not really answering the question and are liable to be deleted.
>
>
> | 2016/07/08 | [
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/83780",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/30076/"
] | A One-word term for *Magical Resistance* is a bit hard. Most RPG and MMO players are fairly used to composite terms for something like that, the two most common being *Magical Resistance* and *Magical Armor*.
Those are frequently abbreviated to *MR* and *MA*, respectively, which is what commonly appears on character sheets. *M. Resistance* and *M. Armor* are also pretty common forms of those terms, and most people who are used to the hobby will immediately get what they mean - and if you couple them with a shield with some sort of fireball inside of it for an icon, even better.
However, if you *really, really* need to use a single word it, you have some choices.
* ***Spirit*** - This is a somewhat less used term that sometimes means magical defenses and sometimes means *regeneration rates*. Other games may add different meanings to it, so it heavily depends on the context of use. When paired with *Intelligence*, Spirit is normally used for the defenses while Intelligence is used for the attack aspect of it.
* ***Willpower or Will*** - This is a common word for RPGs that more often than not refers to the ability of the character to stave off magical effects that affect the mind. A few games also generalize it to mean "magical defenses".
* ***Tenacity*** - A barely used term that when used normally refers to the ability to reduce harmful effects. Also, a really cool word.
* ***Resilience*** - Old-time WoW players will remember this one. On the WoW context, it was some sort of catch-all PVP defense, but it can be used safely to mean magical armors of sorts. Resilience is the term I use on my own RPG System for my "magical defense stuff".
---
Despite my suggestions, I really, really recommend you to use some sort of M.Armor or something like that. It is way easier to associate *M.Armor* to "Magical defenses" than it is for any other single-term word! | Being an old WoW player, I prefer **Resilience** and think of it as a term for "Reducing non-physical damage." So whether the player gets hit by a fireball or falls into a campfire, they wouldn't take as much damage as they normally would, though both would still hurt plenty.
>
> *Total Damage = Rolled Damage - Resilience*
>
>
>
Noting above, **Resistance** is an excellent choice as well. But as SPavel mentioned, this becomes a problem if you start separating types of resistance. However, this can come to your aid if you use Resilience as the base value for mitigating non-physical damage, and use Resistance to augment specific elements.
>
> *Total Damage = Rolled Damage - (Resilience + Resist)*
>
>
>
**Blessing** and **Warding** are good words too, though (to me) they denote a spell being cast for the protection of player(s) or area. |
83,780 | Is there a one-word term that's understood by role-playing gamers to mean resistance to magical attacks, in the same way that many role-playing gamers would quickly recognize *armor* to mean resistance to physical attacks?
I'm developing a basic MMORPG, using *armor* as the term for resistance to physical attacks. I was using *shield* as the term for resistance to magical attacks, but now that I've added to the game *actual* shields, I need a different yet accessible term.
Is there a simple and, preferably, one-word phrase that role-playing gamers commonly use for a magic resistance attribute?
>
> **Moderator notice**: To answer the question being asked the word should already have currency in English RPG contexts, which answers should include. Suggestions with no evidence that the word is already in use for this meaning are not really answering the question and are liable to be deleted.
>
>
> | 2016/07/08 | [
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/83780",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/30076/"
] | A One-word term for *Magical Resistance* is a bit hard. Most RPG and MMO players are fairly used to composite terms for something like that, the two most common being *Magical Resistance* and *Magical Armor*.
Those are frequently abbreviated to *MR* and *MA*, respectively, which is what commonly appears on character sheets. *M. Resistance* and *M. Armor* are also pretty common forms of those terms, and most people who are used to the hobby will immediately get what they mean - and if you couple them with a shield with some sort of fireball inside of it for an icon, even better.
However, if you *really, really* need to use a single word it, you have some choices.
* ***Spirit*** - This is a somewhat less used term that sometimes means magical defenses and sometimes means *regeneration rates*. Other games may add different meanings to it, so it heavily depends on the context of use. When paired with *Intelligence*, Spirit is normally used for the defenses while Intelligence is used for the attack aspect of it.
* ***Willpower or Will*** - This is a common word for RPGs that more often than not refers to the ability of the character to stave off magical effects that affect the mind. A few games also generalize it to mean "magical defenses".
* ***Tenacity*** - A barely used term that when used normally refers to the ability to reduce harmful effects. Also, a really cool word.
* ***Resilience*** - Old-time WoW players will remember this one. On the WoW context, it was some sort of catch-all PVP defense, but it can be used safely to mean magical armors of sorts. Resilience is the term I use on my own RPG System for my "magical defense stuff".
---
Despite my suggestions, I really, really recommend you to use some sort of M.Armor or something like that. It is way easier to associate *M.Armor* to "Magical defenses" than it is for any other single-term word! | the Final Fantasy series sometimes uses the term **Barrier** for this.
**Abjuration** perhaps from the D&D school of protective magic?
**Negation** or any of it's synonyms?
the IRL technical term for something that is meant to deflect magic, spirits and misfortune is **Apotropaic**: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apotropaic_magic>
Of everything that's already been suggested I think **ward** works best |
4,015,316 | I am working to reduce the build time of a large Visual C++ 2008 application. One of the worst bottlenecks appears to be the generation of the PDB file: during the linking stage, mspdbsrv.exe quickly consumes available RAM, and the build machine begins to page constantly.
My current theory is that our PDB files are simply too large. However, I've been unable to find any information on what the "normal" size of a PDB file is. I've taking some rough measurements of one of the DLLs in our application, as follows:
* CPP files: 34.5 MB, 900k lines
* Header files: 21 MB, 400k lines
* Compiled DLL: 33 MB (compiled for debug, not release)
* PDB: 187 MB
So, the PDB file is roughly 570% the size of the DLL. **Can someone with experience with large Visual C++ applications tell me whether these ratios and sizes make sense?** Or is there a sign here that we are doing something wrong?
(The largest PDB file in our application is currently 271 MB, for a 47.5 MB DLL. Source code size is harder to measure for that one, though.)
Thanks! | 2010/10/25 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/4015316",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/486489/"
] | Yes, .pdb files can be very large - even of the sizes you mention. Since a .pdb file contains data to map source lines to machine code and you compile a lot of code there's a lot of data in the .pdb file and you likely can't do anything with that directly.
One thing you could try is to split your program into smaller parts - DLLs. Each DLL will have its own independent .pdb. However I seriously doubt it will decrease the build time. | Do you really need full debug information at all time? You can create a configuration with less debug info in it.
But as sharptooth already said, it is time to refactor and split your program in small more maintainable parts. This won't only reduce build time. |
13,712 | If a position requires programming language "A", but I only know a different one, is it recommended to mention that in the cover letter?
Such as when an employer prefers someone knowing [SAS](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAS_%28software%29) over other similar statistical programming languages (such as [R](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_%28programming_language%29)), but I only know R. Is it good to say the following?
>
> Currently, my primary programming languages are R, Python and MATLAB, and I am able to quickly pick up SAS or STATA as needed.
>
>
>
**Should I include the above or not mention it at all?** | 2013/08/08 | [
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/13712",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/users/32543/"
] | If the language is a requirement, then it not showing up in your cover letter / CV at all would be a negative.
The way you have phrased it - that you can pick it up quickly, is (in my eyes) a bonus. You should make a point of R being a statistical programming language - this helps show that you are familiar with the domain as well.
In short - if you **don't** currently have the requisite knowledge, ensure your cover letter makes it an much of a non-issue as possible. | Usually you will find two sets of "requirements" in a job posting.
* Those the applicant must have.
* Those they desire that the applicant have.
If the particular language or technology you are missing is from the must have list that is harder to overcome. You risk that the initial filtering by either the computer or HR will reject the application/resume. They want to see those words. It is easier if you have some experience but not as many years as they describe.
If a skill they desire but don't require is missing from your resume that is much more easily overcome. They realize that applicants resume and experience is shaped by the jobs that they have had. If you worked for a company that only used R you might not have the expertise in SAS. They will usually list a bunch of statistical packages to allow as many applicants to qualify. They expect that every applicant is missing some of the list. The more items of the list you do have the better candidate on paper you are.
The new company will generally give you time to come up to speed on the desired items. They might train you or send you to training. On the other hand items on the required skill list you are expected to know before you walk in the door.
Use your cover letter to overcome the deficiencies, by expanding on the related experience. Though realize that the more you are missing from the required list the more likely your application will be rejected long before the interview.
Most of this concern is moot if you can get a recommendation from somebody on the project, they can more personally vouch that your long experience in the field will overcome some minor deficiencies in the specific technology. |
13,712 | If a position requires programming language "A", but I only know a different one, is it recommended to mention that in the cover letter?
Such as when an employer prefers someone knowing [SAS](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAS_%28software%29) over other similar statistical programming languages (such as [R](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_%28programming_language%29)), but I only know R. Is it good to say the following?
>
> Currently, my primary programming languages are R, Python and MATLAB, and I am able to quickly pick up SAS or STATA as needed.
>
>
>
**Should I include the above or not mention it at all?** | 2013/08/08 | [
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/13712",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/users/32543/"
] | If the language is a requirement, then it not showing up in your cover letter / CV at all would be a negative.
The way you have phrased it - that you can pick it up quickly, is (in my eyes) a bonus. You should make a point of R being a statistical programming language - this helps show that you are familiar with the domain as well.
In short - if you **don't** currently have the requisite knowledge, ensure your cover letter makes it an much of a non-issue as possible. | >
> Should I include the above or not mention it at all?
>
>
>
Your cover letter should emphasize the positives and ignore the negatives in your background. Thus, you should **not** mention anything that is missing.
Something like this emphasizes the positives:
>
> Currently, my primary programming languages are R, Python and Matlab.
> Over the years, I have been able to pick up other languages very
> quickly.
>
>
> |
13,712 | If a position requires programming language "A", but I only know a different one, is it recommended to mention that in the cover letter?
Such as when an employer prefers someone knowing [SAS](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAS_%28software%29) over other similar statistical programming languages (such as [R](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_%28programming_language%29)), but I only know R. Is it good to say the following?
>
> Currently, my primary programming languages are R, Python and MATLAB, and I am able to quickly pick up SAS or STATA as needed.
>
>
>
**Should I include the above or not mention it at all?** | 2013/08/08 | [
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/13712",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/users/32543/"
] | If the language is a requirement, then it not showing up in your cover letter / CV at all would be a negative.
The way you have phrased it - that you can pick it up quickly, is (in my eyes) a bonus. You should make a point of R being a statistical programming language - this helps show that you are familiar with the domain as well.
In short - if you **don't** currently have the requisite knowledge, ensure your cover letter makes it an much of a non-issue as possible. | This just depends on the company. If the technologies requested are at least related to work you have done in the past, I would play up my domain knowledge and ability to learn new languages quickly (which it would appear you are already doing).
However, some companies are looking for someone that can fill an immediate need. They want someone who has knowledge and experience in the specific technologies they are using such that they require little or no training and can be productive on day one. These sorts of companies tend to stick to widely adopted technologies (Java, etc.) so that they can find replacements quickly. These companies will generally prefer someone of average talent who has X years experience with the right technologies over a genius with experience in other areas. If you don't have the skills, you won't even get an interview. No great loss, you probably wouldn't want to work at such a place anyway.
Other companies (usually the smaller ones, but not always) tend to seek out talented software engineers first and consider experience with the right technologies to be a bonus. Usually you'll be able to tell which sort of employer you're dealing with early on in the application process (if the job posting itself doesn't give it away).
If they don't care what language you use to solve problems during the interview process (either pre-screening homework or 'whiteboard' questions during the interview itself), that's a good sign. I have been known to satisfactorily complete such an 'interview homework' assignment in an unfamiliar language only to be rejected later on when the interviewer(s) learned that my experience in language X was basically limited to said homework assignment :/
Alas, I have had to develop better filters on my side of the interview process, and a lot of it comes down to gut feelings (based on experience) that lead me to say "Sorry, no longer interested" :) |
13,712 | If a position requires programming language "A", but I only know a different one, is it recommended to mention that in the cover letter?
Such as when an employer prefers someone knowing [SAS](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAS_%28software%29) over other similar statistical programming languages (such as [R](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_%28programming_language%29)), but I only know R. Is it good to say the following?
>
> Currently, my primary programming languages are R, Python and MATLAB, and I am able to quickly pick up SAS or STATA as needed.
>
>
>
**Should I include the above or not mention it at all?** | 2013/08/08 | [
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/13712",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/users/32543/"
] | >
> Should I include the above or not mention it at all?
>
>
>
Your cover letter should emphasize the positives and ignore the negatives in your background. Thus, you should **not** mention anything that is missing.
Something like this emphasizes the positives:
>
> Currently, my primary programming languages are R, Python and Matlab.
> Over the years, I have been able to pick up other languages very
> quickly.
>
>
> | Usually you will find two sets of "requirements" in a job posting.
* Those the applicant must have.
* Those they desire that the applicant have.
If the particular language or technology you are missing is from the must have list that is harder to overcome. You risk that the initial filtering by either the computer or HR will reject the application/resume. They want to see those words. It is easier if you have some experience but not as many years as they describe.
If a skill they desire but don't require is missing from your resume that is much more easily overcome. They realize that applicants resume and experience is shaped by the jobs that they have had. If you worked for a company that only used R you might not have the expertise in SAS. They will usually list a bunch of statistical packages to allow as many applicants to qualify. They expect that every applicant is missing some of the list. The more items of the list you do have the better candidate on paper you are.
The new company will generally give you time to come up to speed on the desired items. They might train you or send you to training. On the other hand items on the required skill list you are expected to know before you walk in the door.
Use your cover letter to overcome the deficiencies, by expanding on the related experience. Though realize that the more you are missing from the required list the more likely your application will be rejected long before the interview.
Most of this concern is moot if you can get a recommendation from somebody on the project, they can more personally vouch that your long experience in the field will overcome some minor deficiencies in the specific technology. |
13,712 | If a position requires programming language "A", but I only know a different one, is it recommended to mention that in the cover letter?
Such as when an employer prefers someone knowing [SAS](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAS_%28software%29) over other similar statistical programming languages (such as [R](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_%28programming_language%29)), but I only know R. Is it good to say the following?
>
> Currently, my primary programming languages are R, Python and MATLAB, and I am able to quickly pick up SAS or STATA as needed.
>
>
>
**Should I include the above or not mention it at all?** | 2013/08/08 | [
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/13712",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/users/32543/"
] | Usually you will find two sets of "requirements" in a job posting.
* Those the applicant must have.
* Those they desire that the applicant have.
If the particular language or technology you are missing is from the must have list that is harder to overcome. You risk that the initial filtering by either the computer or HR will reject the application/resume. They want to see those words. It is easier if you have some experience but not as many years as they describe.
If a skill they desire but don't require is missing from your resume that is much more easily overcome. They realize that applicants resume and experience is shaped by the jobs that they have had. If you worked for a company that only used R you might not have the expertise in SAS. They will usually list a bunch of statistical packages to allow as many applicants to qualify. They expect that every applicant is missing some of the list. The more items of the list you do have the better candidate on paper you are.
The new company will generally give you time to come up to speed on the desired items. They might train you or send you to training. On the other hand items on the required skill list you are expected to know before you walk in the door.
Use your cover letter to overcome the deficiencies, by expanding on the related experience. Though realize that the more you are missing from the required list the more likely your application will be rejected long before the interview.
Most of this concern is moot if you can get a recommendation from somebody on the project, they can more personally vouch that your long experience in the field will overcome some minor deficiencies in the specific technology. | This just depends on the company. If the technologies requested are at least related to work you have done in the past, I would play up my domain knowledge and ability to learn new languages quickly (which it would appear you are already doing).
However, some companies are looking for someone that can fill an immediate need. They want someone who has knowledge and experience in the specific technologies they are using such that they require little or no training and can be productive on day one. These sorts of companies tend to stick to widely adopted technologies (Java, etc.) so that they can find replacements quickly. These companies will generally prefer someone of average talent who has X years experience with the right technologies over a genius with experience in other areas. If you don't have the skills, you won't even get an interview. No great loss, you probably wouldn't want to work at such a place anyway.
Other companies (usually the smaller ones, but not always) tend to seek out talented software engineers first and consider experience with the right technologies to be a bonus. Usually you'll be able to tell which sort of employer you're dealing with early on in the application process (if the job posting itself doesn't give it away).
If they don't care what language you use to solve problems during the interview process (either pre-screening homework or 'whiteboard' questions during the interview itself), that's a good sign. I have been known to satisfactorily complete such an 'interview homework' assignment in an unfamiliar language only to be rejected later on when the interviewer(s) learned that my experience in language X was basically limited to said homework assignment :/
Alas, I have had to develop better filters on my side of the interview process, and a lot of it comes down to gut feelings (based on experience) that lead me to say "Sorry, no longer interested" :) |
13,712 | If a position requires programming language "A", but I only know a different one, is it recommended to mention that in the cover letter?
Such as when an employer prefers someone knowing [SAS](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAS_%28software%29) over other similar statistical programming languages (such as [R](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_%28programming_language%29)), but I only know R. Is it good to say the following?
>
> Currently, my primary programming languages are R, Python and MATLAB, and I am able to quickly pick up SAS or STATA as needed.
>
>
>
**Should I include the above or not mention it at all?** | 2013/08/08 | [
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/13712",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/users/32543/"
] | >
> Should I include the above or not mention it at all?
>
>
>
Your cover letter should emphasize the positives and ignore the negatives in your background. Thus, you should **not** mention anything that is missing.
Something like this emphasizes the positives:
>
> Currently, my primary programming languages are R, Python and Matlab.
> Over the years, I have been able to pick up other languages very
> quickly.
>
>
> | This just depends on the company. If the technologies requested are at least related to work you have done in the past, I would play up my domain knowledge and ability to learn new languages quickly (which it would appear you are already doing).
However, some companies are looking for someone that can fill an immediate need. They want someone who has knowledge and experience in the specific technologies they are using such that they require little or no training and can be productive on day one. These sorts of companies tend to stick to widely adopted technologies (Java, etc.) so that they can find replacements quickly. These companies will generally prefer someone of average talent who has X years experience with the right technologies over a genius with experience in other areas. If you don't have the skills, you won't even get an interview. No great loss, you probably wouldn't want to work at such a place anyway.
Other companies (usually the smaller ones, but not always) tend to seek out talented software engineers first and consider experience with the right technologies to be a bonus. Usually you'll be able to tell which sort of employer you're dealing with early on in the application process (if the job posting itself doesn't give it away).
If they don't care what language you use to solve problems during the interview process (either pre-screening homework or 'whiteboard' questions during the interview itself), that's a good sign. I have been known to satisfactorily complete such an 'interview homework' assignment in an unfamiliar language only to be rejected later on when the interviewer(s) learned that my experience in language X was basically limited to said homework assignment :/
Alas, I have had to develop better filters on my side of the interview process, and a lot of it comes down to gut feelings (based on experience) that lead me to say "Sorry, no longer interested" :) |
48,043 | What would it mean to answer metaphysics and what might a solution look like?
How could the contention that there is an answer be defended?
What would be the implications for society if it were done?
I would only add that an answer is best understood as a framework for understanding which leads to solutions where solutions are bespoke (custom) and lead to actionable certainty. | 2017/12/27 | [
"https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/48043",
"https://philosophy.stackexchange.com",
"https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/users/26914/"
] | 1 It could mean to solve every problem recognised or recognisable as metaphysical. The idea of metaphysics here meaning the most fundamental and pervasive features of reality - causation, change, identity, essence, existence, possibility, necessity, universal and particular, the mind/ body distinction or whatever list another philosopher prefers.
2.It would mean to remove the root of metaphysics, the attitude and ways of thinking about thngs that sees certain problems as metaphysical. There is more than a hint of this in the later work of Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (1953). Wittgenstein had the idea that problems we regard as metaphysical are the result of the misuse or misunderstanding of language : 'Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of our language'(PI,§109).
To create an example : we (or some folk) talk of the mind/ body problem as if the mind were a thing like the body in the sense that it is a continuing object about which statements can be made and which can have certain features. X has a sharp mind just as Y has a fit body. We treat 'mind' as a noun just as 'body' is a noun.
But while 'body' does indeed refer to a continuing object, persisting at least through a period of time, 'mind' doesn't refer to an object at all. To talk of someone's mind is to talk of a set of capacities and dispositions which that person has - to calculate, to imagine, to infer, to suspect or expect, to work out means towards ends and apply rules of cases. To say that X has a sharp mind is not to say that there is some object that constitutes X's mind and is sharp; it is just to say that X can take in information quickly, can make accurate deductions, can suggest how to deal effectively with problems.
Point is, if Wittgenstein is right then the mind/ body problem is bogus, a product of the misleading use of language. Plenty of people will disagree with this; and I am only setting out a quick sketch of a contentious position. But can you see that on Wittgenstein's approach it might be possible, by a logically clear view of language, to remove the metaphysical impulse - and 'solve' metaphysics by dissolving it.
Press questions if I haven't put things across clearly enough. The implications for society take us into sociology and might be better addressed on another site of the Stack Exchange.
[Apologies to Wittgensteinian scholars. This is meant only to give a rough first view - all that's possible here - of the kind of approach with which Wittgenstein was associated.] | I would pose that perhaps to answer that question, it could be put into another frame of understanding, i.e., how does one solve the meaning of life, from a metaphysical standpoint?
This different frame of understanding explores more of the spiritual/mental frames of approach; (1) to envelope the physical into those frames, (2) to see an elevated understanding of this period of existence/experience, (3) to perhaps open one's mind to more potentials of understanding and epiphanies, and (4) to perhaps evolve into greater awareness, whether personal or collective, which can bring about a final and fulfilling resolution; that is, until the next level of existence/experience presents queries requiring further understanding. |
48,043 | What would it mean to answer metaphysics and what might a solution look like?
How could the contention that there is an answer be defended?
What would be the implications for society if it were done?
I would only add that an answer is best understood as a framework for understanding which leads to solutions where solutions are bespoke (custom) and lead to actionable certainty. | 2017/12/27 | [
"https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/48043",
"https://philosophy.stackexchange.com",
"https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/users/26914/"
] | 1 It could mean to solve every problem recognised or recognisable as metaphysical. The idea of metaphysics here meaning the most fundamental and pervasive features of reality - causation, change, identity, essence, existence, possibility, necessity, universal and particular, the mind/ body distinction or whatever list another philosopher prefers.
2.It would mean to remove the root of metaphysics, the attitude and ways of thinking about thngs that sees certain problems as metaphysical. There is more than a hint of this in the later work of Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (1953). Wittgenstein had the idea that problems we regard as metaphysical are the result of the misuse or misunderstanding of language : 'Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of our language'(PI,§109).
To create an example : we (or some folk) talk of the mind/ body problem as if the mind were a thing like the body in the sense that it is a continuing object about which statements can be made and which can have certain features. X has a sharp mind just as Y has a fit body. We treat 'mind' as a noun just as 'body' is a noun.
But while 'body' does indeed refer to a continuing object, persisting at least through a period of time, 'mind' doesn't refer to an object at all. To talk of someone's mind is to talk of a set of capacities and dispositions which that person has - to calculate, to imagine, to infer, to suspect or expect, to work out means towards ends and apply rules of cases. To say that X has a sharp mind is not to say that there is some object that constitutes X's mind and is sharp; it is just to say that X can take in information quickly, can make accurate deductions, can suggest how to deal effectively with problems.
Point is, if Wittgenstein is right then the mind/ body problem is bogus, a product of the misleading use of language. Plenty of people will disagree with this; and I am only setting out a quick sketch of a contentious position. But can you see that on Wittgenstein's approach it might be possible, by a logically clear view of language, to remove the metaphysical impulse - and 'solve' metaphysics by dissolving it.
Press questions if I haven't put things across clearly enough. The implications for society take us into sociology and might be better addressed on another site of the Stack Exchange.
[Apologies to Wittgensteinian scholars. This is meant only to give a rough first view - all that's possible here - of the kind of approach with which Wittgenstein was associated.] | A position could be defended by appeals to common history of consciousness. For example, and despite Kant's claims to the contrary, solving the issue of GOD would create a basis for a true metaphysics. Indeed, there is a definitive answer to the question, so it is odd this omission by modern philosophy.
Also, a metaphysics would answer WHY the laws of physics are the way that they are.
A real metaphysics would answer how mathematical domains relate to one another and to logic and the physical world itself. It may also answer questions related to other realms, such as consciousness, astral planes, and transcendental states of consciousness.
The implications would allow the formulation of knew predicates of Truth, to build a larger, sounder structure of reason, and to know our place within the Cosmos, rather than the current state of near *groundlessness* we have today -- particularly with modern medicine which has no account of consciousness though it medicates it. |
48,043 | What would it mean to answer metaphysics and what might a solution look like?
How could the contention that there is an answer be defended?
What would be the implications for society if it were done?
I would only add that an answer is best understood as a framework for understanding which leads to solutions where solutions are bespoke (custom) and lead to actionable certainty. | 2017/12/27 | [
"https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/48043",
"https://philosophy.stackexchange.com",
"https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/users/26914/"
] | Great question!
To solve metaphysics is to construct a global theory that solves all metaphysical problems at the level of principles. This theory will be a formal axiomatic system, resting on an axiom-set from which the remainder of the theory may be derived. The theory will predict the answer to all metaphysical questions.
There is no such theory in Western thought. The only known theory that meets the specification is the neutral or 'non-dual' metaphysical scheme of the Perennial philosophy.
The implications of such a theory for society may be observed from societies where this metaphysical theory is endorsed and known. The Buddhist sangha would be a case study. But in our society the effects are unknowable since almost everybody rejects this theory and so ends up utterly confused by metaphysics. This is deliberate policy instituted by the philosophy department and is drilled into students over generations, so few people have a clue that metaphysics was solved and explained long ago.
Metaphysics is actually quite easy to solve at the level of principles or, at least, it is easy to find a workable solution, but as it would imply the truth of the non-dual doctrine of the mystics most people prefer to look the other way. Indeed, one entire tradition of philosophy chooses to look the other way, preferring to argue that metaphysics is intractable and incomprehensible and being content to merely add footnotes to Plato. This is Kant's 'arena for mock fights'. The consequence is a metaphysics that is impossibly complicated, incomprehensible and which groans under the weight of centuries of ineffective sophistry.
The question deserves a much longer answer but I'll stop before settling into 'rant' mode. The state of metaphysics in the West is truly pathetic and a damning indictment of the scholarship and insight of its practitioners. The current 'Blackwell Guide to Metaphysics' begins with a preface that carefully explains that metaphysics is a complete waste of time, thus the whole of philosophy, and so it is if we do it the way our university professors do it.
Perhaps over time forums such as this will break the hold of the professors and allow philosophy to move on. Meanwhile we go on studying people like Wittgenstein, Russell, Carnap, Ayer, Plato, Democritus and long list of other thinkers who would happily admit they did not understand metaphysics.
In short, metaphysics can be solved and if this was taught to students the effect on our society would be transformative. I happen to believe that better teaching of metaphysics would be one way to 'save the world' so significant would the effect of this knowledge be on our shared belief system. But first we'll have to wait for one of Kuhn's generational paradigm shifts. | I would pose that perhaps to answer that question, it could be put into another frame of understanding, i.e., how does one solve the meaning of life, from a metaphysical standpoint?
This different frame of understanding explores more of the spiritual/mental frames of approach; (1) to envelope the physical into those frames, (2) to see an elevated understanding of this period of existence/experience, (3) to perhaps open one's mind to more potentials of understanding and epiphanies, and (4) to perhaps evolve into greater awareness, whether personal or collective, which can bring about a final and fulfilling resolution; that is, until the next level of existence/experience presents queries requiring further understanding. |
48,043 | What would it mean to answer metaphysics and what might a solution look like?
How could the contention that there is an answer be defended?
What would be the implications for society if it were done?
I would only add that an answer is best understood as a framework for understanding which leads to solutions where solutions are bespoke (custom) and lead to actionable certainty. | 2017/12/27 | [
"https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/48043",
"https://philosophy.stackexchange.com",
"https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/users/26914/"
] | Great question!
To solve metaphysics is to construct a global theory that solves all metaphysical problems at the level of principles. This theory will be a formal axiomatic system, resting on an axiom-set from which the remainder of the theory may be derived. The theory will predict the answer to all metaphysical questions.
There is no such theory in Western thought. The only known theory that meets the specification is the neutral or 'non-dual' metaphysical scheme of the Perennial philosophy.
The implications of such a theory for society may be observed from societies where this metaphysical theory is endorsed and known. The Buddhist sangha would be a case study. But in our society the effects are unknowable since almost everybody rejects this theory and so ends up utterly confused by metaphysics. This is deliberate policy instituted by the philosophy department and is drilled into students over generations, so few people have a clue that metaphysics was solved and explained long ago.
Metaphysics is actually quite easy to solve at the level of principles or, at least, it is easy to find a workable solution, but as it would imply the truth of the non-dual doctrine of the mystics most people prefer to look the other way. Indeed, one entire tradition of philosophy chooses to look the other way, preferring to argue that metaphysics is intractable and incomprehensible and being content to merely add footnotes to Plato. This is Kant's 'arena for mock fights'. The consequence is a metaphysics that is impossibly complicated, incomprehensible and which groans under the weight of centuries of ineffective sophistry.
The question deserves a much longer answer but I'll stop before settling into 'rant' mode. The state of metaphysics in the West is truly pathetic and a damning indictment of the scholarship and insight of its practitioners. The current 'Blackwell Guide to Metaphysics' begins with a preface that carefully explains that metaphysics is a complete waste of time, thus the whole of philosophy, and so it is if we do it the way our university professors do it.
Perhaps over time forums such as this will break the hold of the professors and allow philosophy to move on. Meanwhile we go on studying people like Wittgenstein, Russell, Carnap, Ayer, Plato, Democritus and long list of other thinkers who would happily admit they did not understand metaphysics.
In short, metaphysics can be solved and if this was taught to students the effect on our society would be transformative. I happen to believe that better teaching of metaphysics would be one way to 'save the world' so significant would the effect of this knowledge be on our shared belief system. But first we'll have to wait for one of Kuhn's generational paradigm shifts. | A position could be defended by appeals to common history of consciousness. For example, and despite Kant's claims to the contrary, solving the issue of GOD would create a basis for a true metaphysics. Indeed, there is a definitive answer to the question, so it is odd this omission by modern philosophy.
Also, a metaphysics would answer WHY the laws of physics are the way that they are.
A real metaphysics would answer how mathematical domains relate to one another and to logic and the physical world itself. It may also answer questions related to other realms, such as consciousness, astral planes, and transcendental states of consciousness.
The implications would allow the formulation of knew predicates of Truth, to build a larger, sounder structure of reason, and to know our place within the Cosmos, rather than the current state of near *groundlessness* we have today -- particularly with modern medicine which has no account of consciousness though it medicates it. |
172,487 | I got a used air compressor rated at 15A (120V). When plugging it in to either of two 15A circuits I have in my basement, it will work for 8-10 minutes, then the breaker will trip. You'd think the most common time to trip might be when the compressor motor cuts in, but it actually trips mid-way through the 2nd or 3rd cycle. To my ear, it sounds absolutely normal and then just quits when the breaker trips.
There is nothing else on the circuits in question. The breakers are clearly 15A. One of the circuits is only about 10'/3m (wire distance) from the panel. My clamp multimeter is terrible (updates very slowly), so I can't see transients very well, but the compressor does appear to draw around 14.5A when the motor is running. The breakers were installed before I bought this house, and have seen minimal use (previous occupant was a renter who had a small fridge plugged in to one circuit, and probably never used the other. The guy sure as hell never used a vacuum cleaner, anyway). Finally, I am not doing anything dumb like using an extension cord--the 6'/2m cord and NEMA 5-15 plug are clearly factory and in good condition. I've cleaned both the outlet and compressor plug, and ensured they make a good connection.
Do I need to run a new circuit and 20A breaker? It'd only be 10'/3m of 12AWG and there's space in the panel. Or do I need to look for a fault in the compressor? Better yet, is this a good time to convince my wife I need a better clamp meter? | 2019/08/31 | [
"https://diy.stackexchange.com/questions/172487",
"https://diy.stackexchange.com",
"https://diy.stackexchange.com/users/46405/"
] | I think you need a bit of “headroom” so a new circuit with the 20A breaker should do it.
For both breakers to run the same amount of time seems to suggest both are functioning correctly. The regs I usually consult gives times for breakers to act if the load is close to the rated value so it sounds like those two 15A breakers are just being run close to the edge and tripping due to an extended time.
I would definitely test it with a 20A breaker - safely though... | I've seen this occur before. Breakers can do this when you put them "on edge" for extended periods of time. An Amp probe would definitely let you know what's going on... But I know you don't have one, know what it is or how to use it.
If your *wiring* is #14 going to this air compressor, you can not put any larger breaker on this circuit than a 15 amp. Otherwise, youre heating the wire due to the amount of current that's traveling through it, as compared to what the equipment *needs* to run properly and safely.
If by chance your wiring from the breaker to this air compressor is #12, you *can* replace the 15 amp with a 20 amp...
The other *thing* that this could be is there's a problem at the motor connection junction box, on the motor itself, informally known as the " pecker head ". Open it up ( with the power off ) and take a look at the connections and also see if it looks or smells " charred ".
Good luck sir |
172,487 | I got a used air compressor rated at 15A (120V). When plugging it in to either of two 15A circuits I have in my basement, it will work for 8-10 minutes, then the breaker will trip. You'd think the most common time to trip might be when the compressor motor cuts in, but it actually trips mid-way through the 2nd or 3rd cycle. To my ear, it sounds absolutely normal and then just quits when the breaker trips.
There is nothing else on the circuits in question. The breakers are clearly 15A. One of the circuits is only about 10'/3m (wire distance) from the panel. My clamp multimeter is terrible (updates very slowly), so I can't see transients very well, but the compressor does appear to draw around 14.5A when the motor is running. The breakers were installed before I bought this house, and have seen minimal use (previous occupant was a renter who had a small fridge plugged in to one circuit, and probably never used the other. The guy sure as hell never used a vacuum cleaner, anyway). Finally, I am not doing anything dumb like using an extension cord--the 6'/2m cord and NEMA 5-15 plug are clearly factory and in good condition. I've cleaned both the outlet and compressor plug, and ensured they make a good connection.
Do I need to run a new circuit and 20A breaker? It'd only be 10'/3m of 12AWG and there's space in the panel. Or do I need to look for a fault in the compressor? Better yet, is this a good time to convince my wife I need a better clamp meter? | 2019/08/31 | [
"https://diy.stackexchange.com/questions/172487",
"https://diy.stackexchange.com",
"https://diy.stackexchange.com/users/46405/"
] | I think you need a bit of “headroom” so a new circuit with the 20A breaker should do it.
For both breakers to run the same amount of time seems to suggest both are functioning correctly. The regs I usually consult gives times for breakers to act if the load is close to the rated value so it sounds like those two 15A breakers are just being run close to the edge and tripping due to an extended time.
I would definitely test it with a 20A breaker - safely though... | 14.5 amps is a little high for an appliance that shipped with a NEMA 5-15 plug. I would expect less than 12. Is this item a cheap Chinese, or did the previous owner hack on this plug, is it actually sold retail in the US or Canada and has a UL, CSA, ETL etc. endorsement?
If it is the latter, then look at the capacitor, especially if the unit is >5 years old.
A delayed trip on a slight overload (or near overload) is perfectly normal. You're not supposed to run breakers at limit. |
172,487 | I got a used air compressor rated at 15A (120V). When plugging it in to either of two 15A circuits I have in my basement, it will work for 8-10 minutes, then the breaker will trip. You'd think the most common time to trip might be when the compressor motor cuts in, but it actually trips mid-way through the 2nd or 3rd cycle. To my ear, it sounds absolutely normal and then just quits when the breaker trips.
There is nothing else on the circuits in question. The breakers are clearly 15A. One of the circuits is only about 10'/3m (wire distance) from the panel. My clamp multimeter is terrible (updates very slowly), so I can't see transients very well, but the compressor does appear to draw around 14.5A when the motor is running. The breakers were installed before I bought this house, and have seen minimal use (previous occupant was a renter who had a small fridge plugged in to one circuit, and probably never used the other. The guy sure as hell never used a vacuum cleaner, anyway). Finally, I am not doing anything dumb like using an extension cord--the 6'/2m cord and NEMA 5-15 plug are clearly factory and in good condition. I've cleaned both the outlet and compressor plug, and ensured they make a good connection.
Do I need to run a new circuit and 20A breaker? It'd only be 10'/3m of 12AWG and there's space in the panel. Or do I need to look for a fault in the compressor? Better yet, is this a good time to convince my wife I need a better clamp meter? | 2019/08/31 | [
"https://diy.stackexchange.com/questions/172487",
"https://diy.stackexchange.com",
"https://diy.stackexchange.com/users/46405/"
] | 14.5 amps is a little high for an appliance that shipped with a NEMA 5-15 plug. I would expect less than 12. Is this item a cheap Chinese, or did the previous owner hack on this plug, is it actually sold retail in the US or Canada and has a UL, CSA, ETL etc. endorsement?
If it is the latter, then look at the capacitor, especially if the unit is >5 years old.
A delayed trip on a slight overload (or near overload) is perfectly normal. You're not supposed to run breakers at limit. | I've seen this occur before. Breakers can do this when you put them "on edge" for extended periods of time. An Amp probe would definitely let you know what's going on... But I know you don't have one, know what it is or how to use it.
If your *wiring* is #14 going to this air compressor, you can not put any larger breaker on this circuit than a 15 amp. Otherwise, youre heating the wire due to the amount of current that's traveling through it, as compared to what the equipment *needs* to run properly and safely.
If by chance your wiring from the breaker to this air compressor is #12, you *can* replace the 15 amp with a 20 amp...
The other *thing* that this could be is there's a problem at the motor connection junction box, on the motor itself, informally known as the " pecker head ". Open it up ( with the power off ) and take a look at the connections and also see if it looks or smells " charred ".
Good luck sir |
20,352,400 | I have read [here](http://fusesource.com/docs/esb/4.4/esb_deploy_osgi/BestPractices-BuildBundles.html#BestPractices-BuildBundles-UOIWC) to use the optional resolution within the "Import-Package" directive carefully, but don't really understand why. Also what is the difference between optional and not specifying a dependency at all? | 2013/12/03 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/20352400",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/504956/"
] | If you fail to specify an Import-Package at all, then your bundle cannot access the package *even if it available and exported by some other bundle*.
If you import the package optionally, then your bundle can use it if available, but that package not being available does not prevent resolution of your bundle.
You should avoid optional dependencies at the package level. Either you depend on a package or you don't. Normally a need for optional dependencies indicates that your bundle has poor coherency, i.e. it's doing too many unrelated things within one module. | If you say it is optional, than it might occur if it is exported from some other bundle. If you do not import it at all, it will be never available for the bundle.
So, for what do you need it?
If you really have an optional part in your bundle, you can import the optional dependencies. However, you have to check if they are there when you use it.
OSGi will not complain if an optional import can not be found, but the JVM will complain if you bundles uses something which is not imported at all. |
268,077 | I'm looking for a word which means "leaving space around", as an antonym of overlap.
Specific example case:
>
> The server's service stops between 23:00 and 00:00 UTC, therefore to avoid generating exceptions during predicted maintenance windows, any clients should stop communicating with the service between 22:45 and 00:15 UTC (i.e. additional 15 minutes either side of the window to ensure no overlap)
>
>
> | 2015/08/20 | [
"https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/268077",
"https://english.stackexchange.com",
"https://english.stackexchange.com/users/60075/"
] | You're creating a metaphorical...
>
> **buffer zone** *- any area serving to mitigate or neutralize potential conflict.* [(thefreedictionary)](http://www.thefreedictionary.com/buffer+zone)
>
>
> | How about one of these?
* separation
* ample time clearance
* non-interference
* to avoid overlap
* to avoid possible conflict
(just suggestions... you'll want the term(s) to be familiar and meaningful to IT culture specifically) |
268,077 | I'm looking for a word which means "leaving space around", as an antonym of overlap.
Specific example case:
>
> The server's service stops between 23:00 and 00:00 UTC, therefore to avoid generating exceptions during predicted maintenance windows, any clients should stop communicating with the service between 22:45 and 00:15 UTC (i.e. additional 15 minutes either side of the window to ensure no overlap)
>
>
> | 2015/08/20 | [
"https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/268077",
"https://english.stackexchange.com",
"https://english.stackexchange.com/users/60075/"
] | In a mechanical sense "clearance" or simply "gap" would be used. In this case I would be tempted to expand a little and go with something like "to ensure no requests are received in the downtime even if clocks disagree". (I tend to think that if you're telling users not to do something you have more hope of getting what you want and not annoying them by saying why). Alternatively you could simply use "time" as in "time to allow all queries to complete" | The words that I have used to describe separate, non-overlapping items would be:
>
> * *silo*, as in "..to ensure the systems are safe in silo..."
> * *sequester*, as in "either side of the window to sequester systems..."
>
>
>
If I had the reputation, I would upvote *hedge* and *margin*. |
268,077 | I'm looking for a word which means "leaving space around", as an antonym of overlap.
Specific example case:
>
> The server's service stops between 23:00 and 00:00 UTC, therefore to avoid generating exceptions during predicted maintenance windows, any clients should stop communicating with the service between 22:45 and 00:15 UTC (i.e. additional 15 minutes either side of the window to ensure no overlap)
>
>
> | 2015/08/20 | [
"https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/268077",
"https://english.stackexchange.com",
"https://english.stackexchange.com/users/60075/"
] | It's not exactly an antonym but what you want is ***[separation](http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/separation)*** to avoid interference.
>
> 2 The division of something into constituent or distinct elements:
>
> *'prose structured into short sentences with meaningful separation into paragraphs'*
>
>
>
Reference:
<http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/separation> | In business communication, I would suggest 'blackout period' or 'safety margin'. If you feel whimsical, 'no fly zone' is apt as well, but less clear. |
268,077 | I'm looking for a word which means "leaving space around", as an antonym of overlap.
Specific example case:
>
> The server's service stops between 23:00 and 00:00 UTC, therefore to avoid generating exceptions during predicted maintenance windows, any clients should stop communicating with the service between 22:45 and 00:15 UTC (i.e. additional 15 minutes either side of the window to ensure no overlap)
>
>
> | 2015/08/20 | [
"https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/268077",
"https://english.stackexchange.com",
"https://english.stackexchange.com/users/60075/"
] | In a mechanical sense "clearance" or simply "gap" would be used. In this case I would be tempted to expand a little and go with something like "to ensure no requests are received in the downtime even if clocks disagree". (I tend to think that if you're telling users not to do something you have more hope of getting what you want and not annoying them by saying why). Alternatively you could simply use "time" as in "time to allow all queries to complete" | How about one of these?
* separation
* ample time clearance
* non-interference
* to avoid overlap
* to avoid possible conflict
(just suggestions... you'll want the term(s) to be familiar and meaningful to IT culture specifically) |
268,077 | I'm looking for a word which means "leaving space around", as an antonym of overlap.
Specific example case:
>
> The server's service stops between 23:00 and 00:00 UTC, therefore to avoid generating exceptions during predicted maintenance windows, any clients should stop communicating with the service between 22:45 and 00:15 UTC (i.e. additional 15 minutes either side of the window to ensure no overlap)
>
>
> | 2015/08/20 | [
"https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/268077",
"https://english.stackexchange.com",
"https://english.stackexchange.com/users/60075/"
] | In a mechanical sense "clearance" or simply "gap" would be used. In this case I would be tempted to expand a little and go with something like "to ensure no requests are received in the downtime even if clocks disagree". (I tend to think that if you're telling users not to do something you have more hope of getting what you want and not annoying them by saying why). Alternatively you could simply use "time" as in "time to allow all queries to complete" | "Wiggle room." If it doesn't seem too colloquial for the overall context, its inherent informality might strike a nice note. |
268,077 | I'm looking for a word which means "leaving space around", as an antonym of overlap.
Specific example case:
>
> The server's service stops between 23:00 and 00:00 UTC, therefore to avoid generating exceptions during predicted maintenance windows, any clients should stop communicating with the service between 22:45 and 00:15 UTC (i.e. additional 15 minutes either side of the window to ensure no overlap)
>
>
> | 2015/08/20 | [
"https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/268077",
"https://english.stackexchange.com",
"https://english.stackexchange.com/users/60075/"
] | You're creating a metaphorical...
>
> **buffer zone** *- any area serving to mitigate or neutralize potential conflict.* [(thefreedictionary)](http://www.thefreedictionary.com/buffer+zone)
>
>
> | In business communication, I would suggest 'blackout period' or 'safety margin'. If you feel whimsical, 'no fly zone' is apt as well, but less clear. |
268,077 | I'm looking for a word which means "leaving space around", as an antonym of overlap.
Specific example case:
>
> The server's service stops between 23:00 and 00:00 UTC, therefore to avoid generating exceptions during predicted maintenance windows, any clients should stop communicating with the service between 22:45 and 00:15 UTC (i.e. additional 15 minutes either side of the window to ensure no overlap)
>
>
> | 2015/08/20 | [
"https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/268077",
"https://english.stackexchange.com",
"https://english.stackexchange.com/users/60075/"
] | In a mechanical sense "clearance" or simply "gap" would be used. In this case I would be tempted to expand a little and go with something like "to ensure no requests are received in the downtime even if clocks disagree". (I tend to think that if you're telling users not to do something you have more hope of getting what you want and not annoying them by saying why). Alternatively you could simply use "time" as in "time to allow all queries to complete" | In business communication, I would suggest 'blackout period' or 'safety margin'. If you feel whimsical, 'no fly zone' is apt as well, but less clear. |
268,077 | I'm looking for a word which means "leaving space around", as an antonym of overlap.
Specific example case:
>
> The server's service stops between 23:00 and 00:00 UTC, therefore to avoid generating exceptions during predicted maintenance windows, any clients should stop communicating with the service between 22:45 and 00:15 UTC (i.e. additional 15 minutes either side of the window to ensure no overlap)
>
>
> | 2015/08/20 | [
"https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/268077",
"https://english.stackexchange.com",
"https://english.stackexchange.com/users/60075/"
] | You're creating a metaphorical...
>
> **buffer zone** *- any area serving to mitigate or neutralize potential conflict.* [(thefreedictionary)](http://www.thefreedictionary.com/buffer+zone)
>
>
> | In a mechanical sense "clearance" or simply "gap" would be used. In this case I would be tempted to expand a little and go with something like "to ensure no requests are received in the downtime even if clocks disagree". (I tend to think that if you're telling users not to do something you have more hope of getting what you want and not annoying them by saying why). Alternatively you could simply use "time" as in "time to allow all queries to complete" |
268,077 | I'm looking for a word which means "leaving space around", as an antonym of overlap.
Specific example case:
>
> The server's service stops between 23:00 and 00:00 UTC, therefore to avoid generating exceptions during predicted maintenance windows, any clients should stop communicating with the service between 22:45 and 00:15 UTC (i.e. additional 15 minutes either side of the window to ensure no overlap)
>
>
> | 2015/08/20 | [
"https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/268077",
"https://english.stackexchange.com",
"https://english.stackexchange.com/users/60075/"
] | How about one of these?
* separation
* ample time clearance
* non-interference
* to avoid overlap
* to avoid possible conflict
(just suggestions... you'll want the term(s) to be familiar and meaningful to IT culture specifically) | In business communication, I would suggest 'blackout period' or 'safety margin'. If you feel whimsical, 'no fly zone' is apt as well, but less clear. |
43,761 | I want to give someone permission to host some simple files on my Ubuntu webserver. This is for an IRC logging bot. I'd like to give them passwordless ssh/scp/rsync/sftp access. However I want to be able to restrict what they can do, I don't want to give them a full ssh shell in otherwords. I'd also like to be able to limit the amount of disk space they can take up, so they can't use more than (say) 200MB of my disk in total.
Bonus options that aren't required but might be nice: Limit what sort of files they can upload? (Mime type maybe?) Log when they upload a file? Limit their bandwidth?
What are my options? | 2009/07/21 | [
"https://serverfault.com/questions/43761",
"https://serverfault.com",
"https://serverfault.com/users/8950/"
] | A possible solution is to chroot-jail them, using an ssh dummy shell.
<http://www.ssh.com/support/documentation/online/ssh/adminguide-zos/53/ssh-dummy-shell.html>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chroot_jail>
I have seen this successfully implemented before in this context, although I haven't done it myself. | I couldn't get the bash script to work and sanitise an rsync input properly, maybe i missed something, instead i discovered a perl program called [authprogs](http://www.hackinglinuxexposed.com/tools/authprogs/src/)
This does the same in a more complex way, but it goes a lot further and allows you to also harden it against IP. |
43,761 | I want to give someone permission to host some simple files on my Ubuntu webserver. This is for an IRC logging bot. I'd like to give them passwordless ssh/scp/rsync/sftp access. However I want to be able to restrict what they can do, I don't want to give them a full ssh shell in otherwords. I'd also like to be able to limit the amount of disk space they can take up, so they can't use more than (say) 200MB of my disk in total.
Bonus options that aren't required but might be nice: Limit what sort of files they can upload? (Mime type maybe?) Log when they upload a file? Limit their bandwidth?
What are my options? | 2009/07/21 | [
"https://serverfault.com/questions/43761",
"https://serverfault.com",
"https://serverfault.com/users/8950/"
] | A possible solution is to chroot-jail them, using an ssh dummy shell.
<http://www.ssh.com/support/documentation/online/ssh/adminguide-zos/53/ssh-dummy-shell.html>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chroot_jail>
I have seen this successfully implemented before in this context, although I haven't done it myself. | SSH provides a mechanism for creating key pairs that can be limited to a single command or set of commands. Refer to this article on [linuxjournal](http://www.linuxjournal.com) website for a [good article](http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8257) that goes over how to create dedicated ssh keys for use in scripts and for cron jobs for example. This can also be applied to giving a user the ability to passwordlessly access a server and run a specific command remotely.
This [stackoverflow question](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/402615/how-to-restrict-ssh-users-to-a-predefined-set-of-commands-after-login) also has some good examples of how to do the same thing that is discussed in the lj article. Specifically you're using the authorized\_keys file to add keys that are allowed to access but restricting these keys my including the commands in one of the fields in the authorized\_keys file. |
43,761 | I want to give someone permission to host some simple files on my Ubuntu webserver. This is for an IRC logging bot. I'd like to give them passwordless ssh/scp/rsync/sftp access. However I want to be able to restrict what they can do, I don't want to give them a full ssh shell in otherwords. I'd also like to be able to limit the amount of disk space they can take up, so they can't use more than (say) 200MB of my disk in total.
Bonus options that aren't required but might be nice: Limit what sort of files they can upload? (Mime type maybe?) Log when they upload a file? Limit their bandwidth?
What are my options? | 2009/07/21 | [
"https://serverfault.com/questions/43761",
"https://serverfault.com",
"https://serverfault.com/users/8950/"
] | SSH provides a mechanism for creating key pairs that can be limited to a single command or set of commands. Refer to this article on [linuxjournal](http://www.linuxjournal.com) website for a [good article](http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8257) that goes over how to create dedicated ssh keys for use in scripts and for cron jobs for example. This can also be applied to giving a user the ability to passwordlessly access a server and run a specific command remotely.
This [stackoverflow question](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/402615/how-to-restrict-ssh-users-to-a-predefined-set-of-commands-after-login) also has some good examples of how to do the same thing that is discussed in the lj article. Specifically you're using the authorized\_keys file to add keys that are allowed to access but restricting these keys my including the commands in one of the fields in the authorized\_keys file. | I couldn't get the bash script to work and sanitise an rsync input properly, maybe i missed something, instead i discovered a perl program called [authprogs](http://www.hackinglinuxexposed.com/tools/authprogs/src/)
This does the same in a more complex way, but it goes a lot further and allows you to also harden it against IP. |
252,542 | I know that color comes from things not absorbing a certain wavelength of light, but what property gives something color? Like what property of copper atoms makes copper as a whole brown, or cobalt blue? Is there a solid states physics explanation for where color arises from microscopically in different materials? | 2016/04/28 | [
"https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/252542",
"https://physics.stackexchange.com",
"https://physics.stackexchange.com/users/93711/"
] | Every Element/atom has a different electron configuration. This gives the valence electrons unique energy levels and arrangements. When electrons absorb energy they are excited to certain and again unique energy levels. When The energy is released it gives a photon a certain frequency which we perceive as a certain color. | A lot of things can affect the color of an object. As you've mentioned, absorption plays an important role in determining what part of the visible spectrum gets subtracted from the color your eyes perceive. Optical bandgap arising from the microstructure of materials determines what portion of the spectrum is absorbed. It is closely related to the electronic bandgap, electronic density of states, and E-k dispersion relation of crystalline materials. In addition, crystallinity and size of crystallites can also affect a material's electronic characteristics. For example, crystalline silicon has an indirect bandgap of ~1.1eV, whereas amorphous silicon has a direct bandgap of >1.5eV but with many defect states within the gap. The larger bandgap of amorphous silicon means thin film amorphous silicon can appear to be pink-ish when compared to its crystalline counterpart.
On the other hand, emission of light via black body radiation, and photoluminescence can also change the appearance of an object.
For black body radiation, think of the sun. A hotter object appears to be brighter, and whiter compared to a colder object. That's because the peak of radiation spectrum shifts to higher energies when a piece of material is heated. Then, the appearance of an object depends also on external conditions.
Photoluminescence is the ability a material has to emit photons at the same or different energies after absorbing light. Take a look at your highlighter pens, and you'll get an idea of how the ink in a highlighter pen absorbs light at higher energies, and emits light at a relatively fixed energy. For example, a yellow highlighter pen has ink that emits light that appears yellow.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/6f5EY.jpg) |
252,542 | I know that color comes from things not absorbing a certain wavelength of light, but what property gives something color? Like what property of copper atoms makes copper as a whole brown, or cobalt blue? Is there a solid states physics explanation for where color arises from microscopically in different materials? | 2016/04/28 | [
"https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/252542",
"https://physics.stackexchange.com",
"https://physics.stackexchange.com/users/93711/"
] | A lot of things can affect the color of an object. As you've mentioned, absorption plays an important role in determining what part of the visible spectrum gets subtracted from the color your eyes perceive. Optical bandgap arising from the microstructure of materials determines what portion of the spectrum is absorbed. It is closely related to the electronic bandgap, electronic density of states, and E-k dispersion relation of crystalline materials. In addition, crystallinity and size of crystallites can also affect a material's electronic characteristics. For example, crystalline silicon has an indirect bandgap of ~1.1eV, whereas amorphous silicon has a direct bandgap of >1.5eV but with many defect states within the gap. The larger bandgap of amorphous silicon means thin film amorphous silicon can appear to be pink-ish when compared to its crystalline counterpart.
On the other hand, emission of light via black body radiation, and photoluminescence can also change the appearance of an object.
For black body radiation, think of the sun. A hotter object appears to be brighter, and whiter compared to a colder object. That's because the peak of radiation spectrum shifts to higher energies when a piece of material is heated. Then, the appearance of an object depends also on external conditions.
Photoluminescence is the ability a material has to emit photons at the same or different energies after absorbing light. Take a look at your highlighter pens, and you'll get an idea of how the ink in a highlighter pen absorbs light at higher energies, and emits light at a relatively fixed energy. For example, a yellow highlighter pen has ink that emits light that appears yellow.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/6f5EY.jpg) | Things don't really have "colour". Colour is a perception that we have of light entering our eyes.
We use our eyes to perceive the world, and in our eyes are a series of receptors (photoreceptors). These are the rod, and cone-shaped cells which exist in your retina. These cells send electrical signals to our brain, via the optic nerve, and it is a combination of these three components which do the perceiving. This model can be used to explain why people who have differing numbers of these photoreceptors can perceive the world differently.
However to answer the question as you meant it you should consider light as just another part of the electromagnetic spectrum. We developed to sense things in the region of the e/m spectrum which was most abundant to us. The largest source of radiation throughout our evolution has been the sun. The Suns peak energy output is in the visible light range, most living things have adapted mechanisms to use this radiation in a positive fashion, Animals through our eyes, and plants through photosynthesis.
Conversely, this region of the electromagnetic spectrum which has shaped the way we have developed is also very useful as it interacts with matter in some interesting ways. The first way is the excitation and relaxation of matter emits radiation in a close band to the visible spectrum. This gives rise to light sources such as halogen, and inert gas lights as well as lasers. Secondly, light also interacts with electrons which are free to move along molecular sized pathways in the movement of molecules (bending and stretching of bonds). |
252,542 | I know that color comes from things not absorbing a certain wavelength of light, but what property gives something color? Like what property of copper atoms makes copper as a whole brown, or cobalt blue? Is there a solid states physics explanation for where color arises from microscopically in different materials? | 2016/04/28 | [
"https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/252542",
"https://physics.stackexchange.com",
"https://physics.stackexchange.com/users/93711/"
] | Every Element/atom has a different electron configuration. This gives the valence electrons unique energy levels and arrangements. When electrons absorb energy they are excited to certain and again unique energy levels. When The energy is released it gives a photon a certain frequency which we perceive as a certain color. | Things don't really have "colour". Colour is a perception that we have of light entering our eyes.
We use our eyes to perceive the world, and in our eyes are a series of receptors (photoreceptors). These are the rod, and cone-shaped cells which exist in your retina. These cells send electrical signals to our brain, via the optic nerve, and it is a combination of these three components which do the perceiving. This model can be used to explain why people who have differing numbers of these photoreceptors can perceive the world differently.
However to answer the question as you meant it you should consider light as just another part of the electromagnetic spectrum. We developed to sense things in the region of the e/m spectrum which was most abundant to us. The largest source of radiation throughout our evolution has been the sun. The Suns peak energy output is in the visible light range, most living things have adapted mechanisms to use this radiation in a positive fashion, Animals through our eyes, and plants through photosynthesis.
Conversely, this region of the electromagnetic spectrum which has shaped the way we have developed is also very useful as it interacts with matter in some interesting ways. The first way is the excitation and relaxation of matter emits radiation in a close band to the visible spectrum. This gives rise to light sources such as halogen, and inert gas lights as well as lasers. Secondly, light also interacts with electrons which are free to move along molecular sized pathways in the movement of molecules (bending and stretching of bonds). |
76,494 | 20 year old vehicle, my windshield wiper arms are all faded and paint is starting to wear off. We live in a pretty wet climate (Pacific Northwest).
Considering that when painting, the prep is 90% of the work, I would really prefer to use a high quality paint that will actually last so I don't have to redo it in 1-2 years! Trying to figure out what that might be... So many cheap-ass paints on the market, I've been scarred too many times.
Disclaimer: I don't have an air spray gun, so looking for a spray can. I've heard that you can get 2K style paint in a spray can these days (pop mix switch, shake, and spray). These are really high quality, but can't seem to get those in Canada :(
Any advice on paint *type* (as far as spray can varieties go)? I'm assuming oil-based enamels are best? I've heard that Acrylic Lacquers are weak and should be avoided?
**Process wise:**
I'm assuming my best bet is to wire wheel any loose paint/rust, then wash a good paint prep wash that will remove all oil/grime/wax, then prep any bare surfaces with zinc (phosphating, sacrificial zinc coating to prevent rust from forming under paint), THEN prime, then paint. Would an oil based enamel be my best bet? I need a flat black color. | 2020/04/20 | [
"https://mechanics.stackexchange.com/questions/76494",
"https://mechanics.stackexchange.com",
"https://mechanics.stackexchange.com/users/40598/"
] | "Green" coolant is usually considered a typical coolant. It should get changed out about every two years. "Orange" coolant implies Dexcool, which is the stuff used in GM vehicles and is a long life coolant. It should be replaced about every five years or 150k miles. If you mix the two together, there's no real issue, but you shorten the life of the coolant to that of the green coolant, which means it would need to get changed sooner. While you cannot mix all coolants together, these two (if typical) can be mixed without issue.
Mixing coolant is not a death sentence for you engine or car. You should, however, get it changed out to the coolant which should be in there as soon as possible just to alleviate any long term issues. It is pretty common to have your coolant flushed which will solve your issue.
There's two things you can do:
1. You can flush it yourself. There are kits you can use to do this. The only thing about this is you have to have a way to catch and recycle the coolant which comes out. You don't want this stuff in the drain system as it is toxic to animals (including humans).
2. Take it to a reputable mechanic or service shop and have them flush it for you. They'll actually have the means to recycle the coolant properly. Yes, it costs a bit more than doing it yourself, but is probably worth your time in the long run.
The expense of either solution is dependent upon where you go and where you live. It would be too broad of an answer to try and give you a real response to this.
Something to consider which got you here in the first place is, *why was it low on coolant?* Once you get the system flushed, you may want to be looking at whether the system is leaking. Look for obvious things, like spots in the garage or driveway where the vehicle is parked overnight. | They can do a cooling system flush and it'll be fine. It takes a while for mixed coolant to do damage. You should be fine with a monday flush. Flushes run less tha $200. |
76,494 | 20 year old vehicle, my windshield wiper arms are all faded and paint is starting to wear off. We live in a pretty wet climate (Pacific Northwest).
Considering that when painting, the prep is 90% of the work, I would really prefer to use a high quality paint that will actually last so I don't have to redo it in 1-2 years! Trying to figure out what that might be... So many cheap-ass paints on the market, I've been scarred too many times.
Disclaimer: I don't have an air spray gun, so looking for a spray can. I've heard that you can get 2K style paint in a spray can these days (pop mix switch, shake, and spray). These are really high quality, but can't seem to get those in Canada :(
Any advice on paint *type* (as far as spray can varieties go)? I'm assuming oil-based enamels are best? I've heard that Acrylic Lacquers are weak and should be avoided?
**Process wise:**
I'm assuming my best bet is to wire wheel any loose paint/rust, then wash a good paint prep wash that will remove all oil/grime/wax, then prep any bare surfaces with zinc (phosphating, sacrificial zinc coating to prevent rust from forming under paint), THEN prime, then paint. Would an oil based enamel be my best bet? I need a flat black color. | 2020/04/20 | [
"https://mechanics.stackexchange.com/questions/76494",
"https://mechanics.stackexchange.com",
"https://mechanics.stackexchange.com/users/40598/"
] | Early on when coolants changed to different types you could not mix types, they would gel. These days all coolants can intermix without issue as coolant manufacturers made coolants compatible with any other type of coolant, so you are safe with mixing these days.
But as Paul stated doing a cooling system flush is part of regular maintenance as coolant breaks down after 100-150K miles or so.
Here is one radiator I replaced back in the day, pulled the radiator tank to show you what happens when coolant gels. Destroyed many engines due to gel plugging radiator cooling tubes and causing overheating of the engine.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/0T01r.jpg) | They can do a cooling system flush and it'll be fine. It takes a while for mixed coolant to do damage. You should be fine with a monday flush. Flushes run less tha $200. |
76,494 | 20 year old vehicle, my windshield wiper arms are all faded and paint is starting to wear off. We live in a pretty wet climate (Pacific Northwest).
Considering that when painting, the prep is 90% of the work, I would really prefer to use a high quality paint that will actually last so I don't have to redo it in 1-2 years! Trying to figure out what that might be... So many cheap-ass paints on the market, I've been scarred too many times.
Disclaimer: I don't have an air spray gun, so looking for a spray can. I've heard that you can get 2K style paint in a spray can these days (pop mix switch, shake, and spray). These are really high quality, but can't seem to get those in Canada :(
Any advice on paint *type* (as far as spray can varieties go)? I'm assuming oil-based enamels are best? I've heard that Acrylic Lacquers are weak and should be avoided?
**Process wise:**
I'm assuming my best bet is to wire wheel any loose paint/rust, then wash a good paint prep wash that will remove all oil/grime/wax, then prep any bare surfaces with zinc (phosphating, sacrificial zinc coating to prevent rust from forming under paint), THEN prime, then paint. Would an oil based enamel be my best bet? I need a flat black color. | 2020/04/20 | [
"https://mechanics.stackexchange.com/questions/76494",
"https://mechanics.stackexchange.com",
"https://mechanics.stackexchange.com/users/40598/"
] | "Green" coolant is usually considered a typical coolant. It should get changed out about every two years. "Orange" coolant implies Dexcool, which is the stuff used in GM vehicles and is a long life coolant. It should be replaced about every five years or 150k miles. If you mix the two together, there's no real issue, but you shorten the life of the coolant to that of the green coolant, which means it would need to get changed sooner. While you cannot mix all coolants together, these two (if typical) can be mixed without issue.
Mixing coolant is not a death sentence for you engine or car. You should, however, get it changed out to the coolant which should be in there as soon as possible just to alleviate any long term issues. It is pretty common to have your coolant flushed which will solve your issue.
There's two things you can do:
1. You can flush it yourself. There are kits you can use to do this. The only thing about this is you have to have a way to catch and recycle the coolant which comes out. You don't want this stuff in the drain system as it is toxic to animals (including humans).
2. Take it to a reputable mechanic or service shop and have them flush it for you. They'll actually have the means to recycle the coolant properly. Yes, it costs a bit more than doing it yourself, but is probably worth your time in the long run.
The expense of either solution is dependent upon where you go and where you live. It would be too broad of an answer to try and give you a real response to this.
Something to consider which got you here in the first place is, *why was it low on coolant?* Once you get the system flushed, you may want to be looking at whether the system is leaking. Look for obvious things, like spots in the garage or driveway where the vehicle is parked overnight. | Early on when coolants changed to different types you could not mix types, they would gel. These days all coolants can intermix without issue as coolant manufacturers made coolants compatible with any other type of coolant, so you are safe with mixing these days.
But as Paul stated doing a cooling system flush is part of regular maintenance as coolant breaks down after 100-150K miles or so.
Here is one radiator I replaced back in the day, pulled the radiator tank to show you what happens when coolant gels. Destroyed many engines due to gel plugging radiator cooling tubes and causing overheating of the engine.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/0T01r.jpg) |
48,422 | I am curious about something; let's say someone randomly added me to Skype and tried to initiate a chat with me and I want to know more about them but I am worried if they can do some damage.
My question is, how dangerous would it be to have a voice call with someone you don't know on Skype ?
What can a potential attacker do?
If anything, how far can they go? | 2014/01/10 | [
"https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/48422",
"https://security.stackexchange.com",
"https://security.stackexchange.com/users/15498/"
] | They may be able to gather some details about your connection since I believe that Skype at least used to go direct from one user to the other when in a voice call, so they could potentially identify your IP address, however they would be limited to what Skype allows them to do or any bugs in Skype allow for. If Skype is bug free, they shouldn't be able to do much of anything, but if someone found an exploit in Skype, then it could be anything. It's probably not super likely that someone has an exploit for Skype that is being used in the wild a lot that hasn't been detected yet, but it's always a possibility. | >
> If anything, how far can they go?
>
>
>
So far, that they can get your IP address. And that they can get without being so suspicious. I don't know if it still exists, but Skype had a bug which allowed revealing users IP just by knowing his skype username.
I don't think there is any other possible exploit that would allow him some access. |
526,547 | I have apache running on a fw machine that reverse proxies different folders to different back end servers, and also wraps the connection in SSL. ...a fairly common setup.
Predictably, the backend mediawiki instance believes all access is coming from 1 IP, that of the reverse proxy. Since it's a significant part of mediawiki functionality that is lost, is it possible to pass the correct IP address for mediawiki to reference and use for user management and logging i.e. IP assertion? HTTP headers would make sense. | 2013/07/26 | [
"https://serverfault.com/questions/526547",
"https://serverfault.com",
"https://serverfault.com/users/123045/"
] | Check your hosts' hardware clocks in the BIOS...
This is a common issue, so I set the hardware clock to UTC on my systems or have the OS update the hardware clock once synced with NTP in the build process. | The hosts do not have the same time. Configure NTP on all hosts correctly and consistently. |
74,303 | Upon reading the "Navigation" chapter of **Don't Make Me Think**, I saw the point 'The name needs to match what I clicked.'
Obviously, this is a book of guidelines and is not law, but I'm confused about the situation when using a Call-To-Action button as a form of navigation to a new page. The CTA should normally be an imperative verb phrase, but having a title of a page being a verb doesn't make much sense. The page title should be a noun.
Would one just use a noun form of the verb phrase for the page title?
**Example:**
*Button Text*: "Map Streams"
*Page Title*: "Stream Mapping"
Edit: I feel the difference is obvious enough to be warranted, but I'd like to have the opinions of others. | 2015/03/02 | [
"https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/74303",
"https://ux.stackexchange.com",
"https://ux.stackexchange.com/users/40159/"
] | I don't necessarily see an issue with a page title being a verb phrase, if it accurately describes what's happening. The example given in the question ("Map Streams") seems perfectly valid to me.
That said, I can think of other examples where it would not be logical for the page title to match the referring call-to-action. If I press a "Go to checkout" button, I would expect the resulting page title to be "Checkout" and not "Go to checkout".
The spirit of the guideline is simply that the title of a page should provide reassuring feedback that the user has arrived at the right place. | Link labels that match page titles are a clear navigation cue for users. However, page titles are often longer than what can be used in a navigation set. In that case, I try to use at least one of the key words from the page title in the link label. You have a bit more space in buttons and CTAs to be descriptive, but you should always tell the user what to expect when she follows a link. NNG goes into a bit more detail in [A Link is a Promise](http://www.nngroup.com/articles/link-promise/). |
6,022,396 | I am building a one page webapp and it's starting to get pretty big. There are several components to the app, each one meticulously styled. On average the app has a DOM element count of 1200+. I have been warned by my YSlow scan that this is too many, and that I should have no more than 700 DOM elements.
I am usually quite strict and efficient with my markup and I doubt I would be able to trim much off. I tend to use a lot of DOM elements to get the styling exactly right and working cross browser.
**How can I dramatically cut the number of DOM elements?
Will I have to load more of the content on demand (ajax) instead on all on page load?
Does a large amount of DOM elements have a big impact on performance?**
I would love to hear people's experience with this and any solutions you may have... | 2011/05/16 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/6022396",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/516629/"
] | The number of dom elements would only enter into the picture if you're doing a lot of DOM and/or CSS manipulation on the page via Javascript. Scanning for an ID in a page with 50,000 elements is always going to be slower than a page with only 500. Changing a CSS style which is inherited by most of the page will most likely lead to more redrawing/reflowing than it would on a simpler page, etc...
The only way to cut element count is to simplify the page. | We've built a single page web app. Initially Yslow worried me as we had 2,000+ DOM objects in the page.
After some work we got all the other Yslow items to green. And we ended up living with it(around 1,800 right now) as the app is very fast in various browsers.
But we don't support IE6 and IE7, and it could be different for these browsers. |
6,022,396 | I am building a one page webapp and it's starting to get pretty big. There are several components to the app, each one meticulously styled. On average the app has a DOM element count of 1200+. I have been warned by my YSlow scan that this is too many, and that I should have no more than 700 DOM elements.
I am usually quite strict and efficient with my markup and I doubt I would be able to trim much off. I tend to use a lot of DOM elements to get the styling exactly right and working cross browser.
**How can I dramatically cut the number of DOM elements?
Will I have to load more of the content on demand (ajax) instead on all on page load?
Does a large amount of DOM elements have a big impact on performance?**
I would love to hear people's experience with this and any solutions you may have... | 2011/05/16 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/6022396",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/516629/"
] | The number of dom elements would only enter into the picture if you're doing a lot of DOM and/or CSS manipulation on the page via Javascript. Scanning for an ID in a page with 50,000 elements is always going to be slower than a page with only 500. Changing a CSS style which is inherited by most of the page will most likely lead to more redrawing/reflowing than it would on a simpler page, etc...
The only way to cut element count is to simplify the page. | >
> **How can I dramatically cut the number of DOM elements?**
>
>
>
By using only those elements that are necessary. If you want an more elaborate advice, post your code.
>
> **Will I have to load more of the content on demand (ajax) instead on all on page load?**
>
>
>
If you want your page to perform better on start-up, you can do that.
>
> **Does a large amount of DOM elements have a big impact on performance?**
>
>
>
Not necessarily. |
6,022,396 | I am building a one page webapp and it's starting to get pretty big. There are several components to the app, each one meticulously styled. On average the app has a DOM element count of 1200+. I have been warned by my YSlow scan that this is too many, and that I should have no more than 700 DOM elements.
I am usually quite strict and efficient with my markup and I doubt I would be able to trim much off. I tend to use a lot of DOM elements to get the styling exactly right and working cross browser.
**How can I dramatically cut the number of DOM elements?
Will I have to load more of the content on demand (ajax) instead on all on page load?
Does a large amount of DOM elements have a big impact on performance?**
I would love to hear people's experience with this and any solutions you may have... | 2011/05/16 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/6022396",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/516629/"
] | The number of dom elements would only enter into the picture if you're doing a lot of DOM and/or CSS manipulation on the page via Javascript. Scanning for an ID in a page with 50,000 elements is always going to be slower than a page with only 500. Changing a CSS style which is inherited by most of the page will most likely lead to more redrawing/reflowing than it would on a simpler page, etc...
The only way to cut element count is to simplify the page. | You can render elements on demand when user click a button or can use lazy loading like Twitter. |
6,022,396 | I am building a one page webapp and it's starting to get pretty big. There are several components to the app, each one meticulously styled. On average the app has a DOM element count of 1200+. I have been warned by my YSlow scan that this is too many, and that I should have no more than 700 DOM elements.
I am usually quite strict and efficient with my markup and I doubt I would be able to trim much off. I tend to use a lot of DOM elements to get the styling exactly right and working cross browser.
**How can I dramatically cut the number of DOM elements?
Will I have to load more of the content on demand (ajax) instead on all on page load?
Does a large amount of DOM elements have a big impact on performance?**
I would love to hear people's experience with this and any solutions you may have... | 2011/05/16 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/6022396",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/516629/"
] | We've built a single page web app. Initially Yslow worried me as we had 2,000+ DOM objects in the page.
After some work we got all the other Yslow items to green. And we ended up living with it(around 1,800 right now) as the app is very fast in various browsers.
But we don't support IE6 and IE7, and it could be different for these browsers. | You can render elements on demand when user click a button or can use lazy loading like Twitter. |
6,022,396 | I am building a one page webapp and it's starting to get pretty big. There are several components to the app, each one meticulously styled. On average the app has a DOM element count of 1200+. I have been warned by my YSlow scan that this is too many, and that I should have no more than 700 DOM elements.
I am usually quite strict and efficient with my markup and I doubt I would be able to trim much off. I tend to use a lot of DOM elements to get the styling exactly right and working cross browser.
**How can I dramatically cut the number of DOM elements?
Will I have to load more of the content on demand (ajax) instead on all on page load?
Does a large amount of DOM elements have a big impact on performance?**
I would love to hear people's experience with this and any solutions you may have... | 2011/05/16 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/6022396",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/516629/"
] | >
> **How can I dramatically cut the number of DOM elements?**
>
>
>
By using only those elements that are necessary. If you want an more elaborate advice, post your code.
>
> **Will I have to load more of the content on demand (ajax) instead on all on page load?**
>
>
>
If you want your page to perform better on start-up, you can do that.
>
> **Does a large amount of DOM elements have a big impact on performance?**
>
>
>
Not necessarily. | You can render elements on demand when user click a button or can use lazy loading like Twitter. |
205,619 | I'm very new to email, so I have decided to use PostFix for outgoing email only, and then use gmail for incoming email.
I realize this will be a big learning experience for me, but what tutorials should I be looking at? Since I am using it for outgoing only, is there anything I should skip or focus on? | 2010/11/24 | [
"https://serverfault.com/questions/205619",
"https://serverfault.com",
"https://serverfault.com/users/9900/"
] | If it's new to you I'd consider blocking inbound port 25 using a firewall.
It removes the possibility of you being used as an open relay if you configure it incorrectly.
We used Postfix for several years and it's not that difficult to configure, but there's much less emphasis on "right first time" if you don't have it exposed to the internet as you have time to experiment and test. | Postfix is very flexible and can be configured in different ways. For example, it can be configured with mysql, postgresql, or ldap.
First, you need to decide how you want to configure your email server.
You can start from [postfix documentation](http://www.postfix.org/documentation.html). Of course, you can search for other howtos and tutorials. To narrow your search use something like: "postfix+mysql" if you want to configure it with mysql and so on. |
205,619 | I'm very new to email, so I have decided to use PostFix for outgoing email only, and then use gmail for incoming email.
I realize this will be a big learning experience for me, but what tutorials should I be looking at? Since I am using it for outgoing only, is there anything I should skip or focus on? | 2010/11/24 | [
"https://serverfault.com/questions/205619",
"https://serverfault.com",
"https://serverfault.com/users/9900/"
] | You can look at: <http://www.hypexr.org/linux_mail_server.php>
It's a tutorial for postfix and a complete mail system, but it's kind of pretty well divided and explained for the different parts of the system, so you may only ommit the parts about outgoing email...
I followed it and the first thing I could do was to receive emails, and then to send them, so I can assume that a similar process may help you for your needs... | Postfix is very flexible and can be configured in different ways. For example, it can be configured with mysql, postgresql, or ldap.
First, you need to decide how you want to configure your email server.
You can start from [postfix documentation](http://www.postfix.org/documentation.html). Of course, you can search for other howtos and tutorials. To narrow your search use something like: "postfix+mysql" if you want to configure it with mysql and so on. |
205,619 | I'm very new to email, so I have decided to use PostFix for outgoing email only, and then use gmail for incoming email.
I realize this will be a big learning experience for me, but what tutorials should I be looking at? Since I am using it for outgoing only, is there anything I should skip or focus on? | 2010/11/24 | [
"https://serverfault.com/questions/205619",
"https://serverfault.com",
"https://serverfault.com/users/9900/"
] | You want to set up postfix as a [null client](http://www.postfix.org/STANDARD_CONFIGURATION_README.html#null_client). | Postfix is very flexible and can be configured in different ways. For example, it can be configured with mysql, postgresql, or ldap.
First, you need to decide how you want to configure your email server.
You can start from [postfix documentation](http://www.postfix.org/documentation.html). Of course, you can search for other howtos and tutorials. To narrow your search use something like: "postfix+mysql" if you want to configure it with mysql and so on. |
205,619 | I'm very new to email, so I have decided to use PostFix for outgoing email only, and then use gmail for incoming email.
I realize this will be a big learning experience for me, but what tutorials should I be looking at? Since I am using it for outgoing only, is there anything I should skip or focus on? | 2010/11/24 | [
"https://serverfault.com/questions/205619",
"https://serverfault.com",
"https://serverfault.com/users/9900/"
] | You can look at: <http://www.hypexr.org/linux_mail_server.php>
It's a tutorial for postfix and a complete mail system, but it's kind of pretty well divided and explained for the different parts of the system, so you may only ommit the parts about outgoing email...
I followed it and the first thing I could do was to receive emails, and then to send them, so I can assume that a similar process may help you for your needs... | If it's new to you I'd consider blocking inbound port 25 using a firewall.
It removes the possibility of you being used as an open relay if you configure it incorrectly.
We used Postfix for several years and it's not that difficult to configure, but there's much less emphasis on "right first time" if you don't have it exposed to the internet as you have time to experiment and test. |
205,619 | I'm very new to email, so I have decided to use PostFix for outgoing email only, and then use gmail for incoming email.
I realize this will be a big learning experience for me, but what tutorials should I be looking at? Since I am using it for outgoing only, is there anything I should skip or focus on? | 2010/11/24 | [
"https://serverfault.com/questions/205619",
"https://serverfault.com",
"https://serverfault.com/users/9900/"
] | You want to set up postfix as a [null client](http://www.postfix.org/STANDARD_CONFIGURATION_README.html#null_client). | If it's new to you I'd consider blocking inbound port 25 using a firewall.
It removes the possibility of you being used as an open relay if you configure it incorrectly.
We used Postfix for several years and it's not that difficult to configure, but there's much less emphasis on "right first time" if you don't have it exposed to the internet as you have time to experiment and test. |
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