qid int64 1 74.7M | question stringlengths 12 33.8k | date stringlengths 10 10 | metadata list | response_j stringlengths 0 115k | response_k stringlengths 2 98.3k |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
723 | I would find it more interesting/organized if there was a theme to follow for the featured images each week. For example, this week post only pictures of cars, flowers, landscape or whatever and change the theme every week. | 2011/02/04 | [
"https://photo.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/723",
"https://photo.meta.stackexchange.com",
"https://photo.meta.stackexchange.com/users/-1/"
] | Yes! This is a good idea. It would add some interest and focus to the pictures of the week contest. | Can I suggest a sports theme soon? I have not seen one yet, and have searched in the suggestiions.
I am fairly new to this site so do excuse if there has been a few already as I have searched but I do not want to manualy go through the archives of every week. |
723 | I would find it more interesting/organized if there was a theme to follow for the featured images each week. For example, this week post only pictures of cars, flowers, landscape or whatever and change the theme every week. | 2011/02/04 | [
"https://photo.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/723",
"https://photo.meta.stackexchange.com",
"https://photo.meta.stackexchange.com/users/-1/"
] | Hmmmm... It seems like that could be something to consider doing when our group is larger, but right now it's not as though we're getting so many entries that it is overwhelming. My concern in adding a theme is that we'd cut the number of entries in half if a theme were introduced.
There's also the notion of who comes up with the themes? Would the mods be in charge of coming up with something, or would someone need to maintain a weekly thread for voting on the theme like we already do for the picture? Sounds like adding quite a bit more admin work to something that really works fine as it is... | The contest idea, this is similar to many photo sites I am familiar with in the past.
Personally I don't typically have time to go out and shoot the theme every week, so I would likely participate less if ever.
It does have some merit to expand your portfolio or challenge one, but it's just not my favorite way to shoot or think about shooting. |
723 | I would find it more interesting/organized if there was a theme to follow for the featured images each week. For example, this week post only pictures of cars, flowers, landscape or whatever and change the theme every week. | 2011/02/04 | [
"https://photo.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/723",
"https://photo.meta.stackexchange.com",
"https://photo.meta.stackexchange.com/users/-1/"
] | If we ever did end up using a theme week, I'd like to suggest that we have a "un-edited" week, so the challenge would be to get the best photo out of your camera. Many of the photos seem to have a lot of post-processing. I'm not suggesting this is bad - the photos are stunning - but I bet there are a lot of excellent photographers out there who are not necessarily photo-editing gurus (or is that now a required skill to be a good photographer?). | Yes! This is a good idea. It would add some interest and focus to the pictures of the week contest. |
723 | I would find it more interesting/organized if there was a theme to follow for the featured images each week. For example, this week post only pictures of cars, flowers, landscape or whatever and change the theme every week. | 2011/02/04 | [
"https://photo.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/723",
"https://photo.meta.stackexchange.com",
"https://photo.meta.stackexchange.com/users/-1/"
] | Yes! This is a good idea. It would add some interest and focus to the pictures of the week contest. | The contest idea, this is similar to many photo sites I am familiar with in the past.
Personally I don't typically have time to go out and shoot the theme every week, so I would likely participate less if ever.
It does have some merit to expand your portfolio or challenge one, but it's just not my favorite way to shoot or think about shooting. |
723 | I would find it more interesting/organized if there was a theme to follow for the featured images each week. For example, this week post only pictures of cars, flowers, landscape or whatever and change the theme every week. | 2011/02/04 | [
"https://photo.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/723",
"https://photo.meta.stackexchange.com",
"https://photo.meta.stackexchange.com/users/-1/"
] | Hmmmm... It seems like that could be something to consider doing when our group is larger, but right now it's not as though we're getting so many entries that it is overwhelming. My concern in adding a theme is that we'd cut the number of entries in half if a theme were introduced.
There's also the notion of who comes up with the themes? Would the mods be in charge of coming up with something, or would someone need to maintain a weekly thread for voting on the theme like we already do for the picture? Sounds like adding quite a bit more admin work to something that really works fine as it is... | Yes! This is a good idea. It would add some interest and focus to the pictures of the week contest. |
723 | I would find it more interesting/organized if there was a theme to follow for the featured images each week. For example, this week post only pictures of cars, flowers, landscape or whatever and change the theme every week. | 2011/02/04 | [
"https://photo.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/723",
"https://photo.meta.stackexchange.com",
"https://photo.meta.stackexchange.com/users/-1/"
] | I think this is a good idea too. I think @Jay brings up a good point about managing the which weeks have themes and what the themes are. I figure interested parties can hash out a system if we do choose to go with themes.
Here are a few random ideas (one stolen from @seanmc):
* Unedited (strait from the camera, make it as perfect as you can with nothing but physical equipment)
* Photomanipulated (do something unconventional, add photographic elements and blend together a new reality...or surreality, or something completely unreal!)
* Brilliant Sunsets
* Monstrous Mountains
* Micro Macros
* Pure Portraiture
* Dripples (closeup water shots...ripples, drips, droplets, etc.)
* Birds of a Feather (any shot of birds)
* Wild Life (wildlife..duh!)
* City Life
* Nuanced Night (any shot from nighttime)
* Astrophotography
As an added thought, from a management perspective, it might be good to have a "Theme Announcement" thread a week ahead of time to give people time to go out and get a shot for the upcoming theme (if the next week IS a theme...to @dpollitt's point it might be best not to have every single week be a theme week.) | Can I suggest a sports theme soon? I have not seen one yet, and have searched in the suggestiions.
I am fairly new to this site so do excuse if there has been a few already as I have searched but I do not want to manualy go through the archives of every week. |
43,519 | I'm reading KM Weiland's [Creating Character Arcs](https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/B01M6VC68U). In it, she lists:
>
> **Questions to Ask About the Thing the Character Wants and the Thing the Character Needs**
>
>
> 1. How is the Lie holding your character back?
> 2. How is the Lie making your character unhappy or unfulfilled?
> 3. What Truth does your character Need to disprove the Lie?
> 4. How will he learn this Truth?
> 5. What does your character Want more than anything?
>
>
> *Weiland, K.M. Creating Character Arcs: The Masterful Author's Guide to Uniting Story Structure, Plot, and Character Development (Helping Writers Become Authors Book 7) (p. 37). PenForASword Publishing. Kindle Edition.*
>
>
>
In my character's case I know she's a mother that **wants to** *keep her family together by helping the husband expand his land and wealth*, and she **needs to** *accept that people need independence and her kids may choose their path regardless of her efforts.*
Now, my problem is that I have no clue what is the lie is or how is it holding her back, before reading that I thought I would find out as I write, now I fear I might compromise the story because of missing a foundational piece of information about my character. How deeply should I understand my character before writing her?
**Update:** To further clarify my main character to the reader:
* She's 42
* She loves her husband deeply and he loves her back, but he's older than her (10 ~ 15 years).
* She has three children: one stepson, and two biological children (a son and a daughter).
* Her husband is self-made, and she was there from the beginning.
* In their backstory, she had a relationship with someone of her age, but that didn't manifest as conflict before the story proper.
* **Want:** her children to pursue futures of her choosing that will help advance the family legacy (but, think Eastern mothers in the US pushing for doctors and engineers).
* **Need:** to allow her children (and, to an extent, her husband) their free will and independence. | 2019/03/14 | [
"https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/43519",
"https://writers.stackexchange.com",
"https://writers.stackexchange.com/users/37111/"
] | The "lie" can be just an untruth that she accepts.
Here, the untruth can be that she knows the way to happiness. She thinks that by expanding her husbands land and wealth, this will keep her family together. But that might not truly be what her husband wants, or even if it is, it may not be what her children want or need. They may want a father that isn't working all the time, that isn't at war with his neighbors (whose children are their friends) over land rights, or water rights, or passage rights, or whatever.
Another falsehood can be that she thinks that by controlling her kids and their lives she may make them unhappy for now, but she will increase their happiness in the long run, by making them "successful." In fact it seems like the lie can be, for her, that she thinks "financial success and wealth" are **synonymous** with happiness, and in your story world, believing in this lie leads to utter disaster.
Say, one of her children commits suicide, or becomes a drug addict, or goes into horrific debt trying to get wealthy gambling. Her husband, by her pushing, becomes successful -- And successfully begins a love affair with another woman, much the opposite of her, and then divorces her.
**How is the Lie holding your character back?** It prevents her from seeing the red flags in her life, about her unhappy children and unhappy husband. They rack up the accomplishments, and her assumption that "awards + money" = "happiness" makes her blind to the unhappiness they feel.
**How is the Lie making your character unhappy or unfulfilled?** She doesn't understand why they don't appreciate her prodding. She is only trying to make them better, or make their future better. Can't they see that by forcing them to produce now, she is guaranteeing their happiness later? Yet all she gets is resentment, resignation, and tears.
**What Truth does your character Need to disprove the Lie?** That people really can be happy with "enough" money and property. That life is finite, that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. That all work leaves no time for romance, or laughter, or just being glad to be alive. And some people, if they feel doomed to slavery for life, would rather be dead and get it over with; there would be less net misery.
**How will she learn this Truth?** That is up to the author.
**What does your character Want more than anything?** In a twisted sense, the happiness she doesn't have, and has probably never had. The happiness she thinks her children and husband lack (although a big source of their unhappiness is her slave-driving). She wants happiness more than anything, she is just suffering under the obsessive delusion that somehow wealth IS happiness. | Caveat: I have not read the book but I've thought about wants and needs in the past, and I typically see *wants* as external (e.g. money) and *needs* as internal (e.g. love).
You said:
>
> In my character's case I know she's a mother that **wants to keep her
> family together by helping the husband expand his land and wealth**
>
>
>
I think this means she wants to take action to expand his land and wealth. Those actions might include facilitating the sorts of meetings he needs, managing the household finances more frugally, finding opportunities for him to make more money. As I see it, her want is to facilitate his need. This might be the agency she shows as a main character. She sets up meetings at the home, she searches out land sales, she puts their items on eBay to bring in more income. Et cetera. Maybe she nags him.
You said:
>
> and **she needs to accept that people need independence** and her kids may
> choose their path regardless of her efforts.
>
>
>
It seems to me that if she *needs* to accept that people need independence, then she has an immediate conflict. Because she isn't allowing her husband the *independence* to fail on his own. She is trying to force her version of success on him, because she wants him wealthy (as a means of keeping her family together.)
If she needs to allow independence in others, then she needs to allow her family to fall apart.
**Answer: The lie is that she thinks she *can* help people find independence. They must find it for themselves.** |
43,519 | I'm reading KM Weiland's [Creating Character Arcs](https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/B01M6VC68U). In it, she lists:
>
> **Questions to Ask About the Thing the Character Wants and the Thing the Character Needs**
>
>
> 1. How is the Lie holding your character back?
> 2. How is the Lie making your character unhappy or unfulfilled?
> 3. What Truth does your character Need to disprove the Lie?
> 4. How will he learn this Truth?
> 5. What does your character Want more than anything?
>
>
> *Weiland, K.M. Creating Character Arcs: The Masterful Author's Guide to Uniting Story Structure, Plot, and Character Development (Helping Writers Become Authors Book 7) (p. 37). PenForASword Publishing. Kindle Edition.*
>
>
>
In my character's case I know she's a mother that **wants to** *keep her family together by helping the husband expand his land and wealth*, and she **needs to** *accept that people need independence and her kids may choose their path regardless of her efforts.*
Now, my problem is that I have no clue what is the lie is or how is it holding her back, before reading that I thought I would find out as I write, now I fear I might compromise the story because of missing a foundational piece of information about my character. How deeply should I understand my character before writing her?
**Update:** To further clarify my main character to the reader:
* She's 42
* She loves her husband deeply and he loves her back, but he's older than her (10 ~ 15 years).
* She has three children: one stepson, and two biological children (a son and a daughter).
* Her husband is self-made, and she was there from the beginning.
* In their backstory, she had a relationship with someone of her age, but that didn't manifest as conflict before the story proper.
* **Want:** her children to pursue futures of her choosing that will help advance the family legacy (but, think Eastern mothers in the US pushing for doctors and engineers).
* **Need:** to allow her children (and, to an extent, her husband) their free will and independence. | 2019/03/14 | [
"https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/43519",
"https://writers.stackexchange.com",
"https://writers.stackexchange.com/users/37111/"
] | The "lie" can be just an untruth that she accepts.
Here, the untruth can be that she knows the way to happiness. She thinks that by expanding her husbands land and wealth, this will keep her family together. But that might not truly be what her husband wants, or even if it is, it may not be what her children want or need. They may want a father that isn't working all the time, that isn't at war with his neighbors (whose children are their friends) over land rights, or water rights, or passage rights, or whatever.
Another falsehood can be that she thinks that by controlling her kids and their lives she may make them unhappy for now, but she will increase their happiness in the long run, by making them "successful." In fact it seems like the lie can be, for her, that she thinks "financial success and wealth" are **synonymous** with happiness, and in your story world, believing in this lie leads to utter disaster.
Say, one of her children commits suicide, or becomes a drug addict, or goes into horrific debt trying to get wealthy gambling. Her husband, by her pushing, becomes successful -- And successfully begins a love affair with another woman, much the opposite of her, and then divorces her.
**How is the Lie holding your character back?** It prevents her from seeing the red flags in her life, about her unhappy children and unhappy husband. They rack up the accomplishments, and her assumption that "awards + money" = "happiness" makes her blind to the unhappiness they feel.
**How is the Lie making your character unhappy or unfulfilled?** She doesn't understand why they don't appreciate her prodding. She is only trying to make them better, or make their future better. Can't they see that by forcing them to produce now, she is guaranteeing their happiness later? Yet all she gets is resentment, resignation, and tears.
**What Truth does your character Need to disprove the Lie?** That people really can be happy with "enough" money and property. That life is finite, that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. That all work leaves no time for romance, or laughter, or just being glad to be alive. And some people, if they feel doomed to slavery for life, would rather be dead and get it over with; there would be less net misery.
**How will she learn this Truth?** That is up to the author.
**What does your character Want more than anything?** In a twisted sense, the happiness she doesn't have, and has probably never had. The happiness she thinks her children and husband lack (although a big source of their unhappiness is her slave-driving). She wants happiness more than anything, she is just suffering under the obsessive delusion that somehow wealth IS happiness. | "She needs to accept that people need independence" - that includes her. Right now whatever wealth, power and prestige she has comes from other people. But is she satisfied with that, or does she secretly long to become a power in her own right?
Her lie is that she's content to just support her husband and children. What does she really want for herself? Does she want to go back to school, finish her degree, and have a career of her own? Start her own business? Or even just escape for a while and see the world by herself? |
43,519 | I'm reading KM Weiland's [Creating Character Arcs](https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/B01M6VC68U). In it, she lists:
>
> **Questions to Ask About the Thing the Character Wants and the Thing the Character Needs**
>
>
> 1. How is the Lie holding your character back?
> 2. How is the Lie making your character unhappy or unfulfilled?
> 3. What Truth does your character Need to disprove the Lie?
> 4. How will he learn this Truth?
> 5. What does your character Want more than anything?
>
>
> *Weiland, K.M. Creating Character Arcs: The Masterful Author's Guide to Uniting Story Structure, Plot, and Character Development (Helping Writers Become Authors Book 7) (p. 37). PenForASword Publishing. Kindle Edition.*
>
>
>
In my character's case I know she's a mother that **wants to** *keep her family together by helping the husband expand his land and wealth*, and she **needs to** *accept that people need independence and her kids may choose their path regardless of her efforts.*
Now, my problem is that I have no clue what is the lie is or how is it holding her back, before reading that I thought I would find out as I write, now I fear I might compromise the story because of missing a foundational piece of information about my character. How deeply should I understand my character before writing her?
**Update:** To further clarify my main character to the reader:
* She's 42
* She loves her husband deeply and he loves her back, but he's older than her (10 ~ 15 years).
* She has three children: one stepson, and two biological children (a son and a daughter).
* Her husband is self-made, and she was there from the beginning.
* In their backstory, she had a relationship with someone of her age, but that didn't manifest as conflict before the story proper.
* **Want:** her children to pursue futures of her choosing that will help advance the family legacy (but, think Eastern mothers in the US pushing for doctors and engineers).
* **Need:** to allow her children (and, to an extent, her husband) their free will and independence. | 2019/03/14 | [
"https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/43519",
"https://writers.stackexchange.com",
"https://writers.stackexchange.com/users/37111/"
] | The "lie" can be just an untruth that she accepts.
Here, the untruth can be that she knows the way to happiness. She thinks that by expanding her husbands land and wealth, this will keep her family together. But that might not truly be what her husband wants, or even if it is, it may not be what her children want or need. They may want a father that isn't working all the time, that isn't at war with his neighbors (whose children are their friends) over land rights, or water rights, or passage rights, or whatever.
Another falsehood can be that she thinks that by controlling her kids and their lives she may make them unhappy for now, but she will increase their happiness in the long run, by making them "successful." In fact it seems like the lie can be, for her, that she thinks "financial success and wealth" are **synonymous** with happiness, and in your story world, believing in this lie leads to utter disaster.
Say, one of her children commits suicide, or becomes a drug addict, or goes into horrific debt trying to get wealthy gambling. Her husband, by her pushing, becomes successful -- And successfully begins a love affair with another woman, much the opposite of her, and then divorces her.
**How is the Lie holding your character back?** It prevents her from seeing the red flags in her life, about her unhappy children and unhappy husband. They rack up the accomplishments, and her assumption that "awards + money" = "happiness" makes her blind to the unhappiness they feel.
**How is the Lie making your character unhappy or unfulfilled?** She doesn't understand why they don't appreciate her prodding. She is only trying to make them better, or make their future better. Can't they see that by forcing them to produce now, she is guaranteeing their happiness later? Yet all she gets is resentment, resignation, and tears.
**What Truth does your character Need to disprove the Lie?** That people really can be happy with "enough" money and property. That life is finite, that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. That all work leaves no time for romance, or laughter, or just being glad to be alive. And some people, if they feel doomed to slavery for life, would rather be dead and get it over with; there would be less net misery.
**How will she learn this Truth?** That is up to the author.
**What does your character Want more than anything?** In a twisted sense, the happiness she doesn't have, and has probably never had. The happiness she thinks her children and husband lack (although a big source of their unhappiness is her slave-driving). She wants happiness more than anything, she is just suffering under the obsessive delusion that somehow wealth IS happiness. | I sometimes find things that my mind goes up against like a solid wall. It seems that you are having a similar problem with the questions that you listed. After some thought I agree with those who have answered so far. There are a lot of options in this character already. The question is, where do you want to go with it? What sort of story do you want to tell?
It sounds -as you have described it- like the story of a woman who works hard to help her family succeed, but does not seem to realize that there is such a thing as being so helpful that you're in the way. Enablers are one example of this. Enablers are some of the nicest people you will ever meet. They don't want to hurt people's feelings, and they want to make sure that everything goes perfectly for those that they love. Enablers are also the ones who would 'give a drunk a drink' and think that they were being nice by doing it. Their lie is that fixing everything for those that they love -or making it so that they have whatever they want- is right and good, and to deny them of these things is selfish and bad. The truth that is needed to break this lie is that tough love is sometimes needed. You have to sometimes look past what an immediate want/need is and determine what this will do to the one who receives the 'help'.
The Enabler might not match your character's problem exactly, but you can see how there was a lie in it. Make a list of possible lies and truths that relate to your character, and choose the one that makes the most sense for her and your story.
Now, if after this you find that the best one -the one you are most excited to tell, and find the most interesting- completely contradicts the story, then perhaps this story is not the one you should be telling right now. Maybe you really need to tell her story, the way she revealed it to you. Some of the best stories have grown in this way, as they are living things. |
2,272,404 | Using a Visual FoxPro 9 executable file, (EXE), I need to be able to place data into the system keyboard buffer which is then to be picked up by another program, (non-FoxPro). I've already tried using the KEYBOARD command, however, that only seems to work with fields and controls within the FoxPro application! Does anyone have any ideas on how this can be accomplished? | 2010/02/16 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/2272404",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/230239/"
] | You'll need to call into the Win32 API - [keybd\_event](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms646304%28VS.85%29.aspx) is probably the call you want as [SendInput](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms646310%28VS.85%29.aspx) uses structs, which are a pain in VFP. There's sample code [here](http://www.tech-archive.net/Archive/Fox/microsoft.public.fox.programmer.exchange/2005-05/msg00504.html). | Do you mean to copy to the clipboard? If so, here are two ways. The first example copies a string to the clipboard. The second example copies a table/cursor to the clipboard.
\_cliptext = "test"
\_vfp.DataToClip(SELECT(ALIAS()), RECCOUNT() + 1, 3) |
256,901 | >
> **Possible Duplicate:**
>
> [I need a central photo management solution for my home network](https://superuser.com/questions/251857/i-need-a-central-photo-management-solution-for-my-home-network)
>
>
>
My wife has a laptop with reasonably little hard drive space. I have a laptop with plenty. We have a desktop machine on Wifi that has plenty as well. We have a couple of different cameras which may be connected to my and/or my wife's laptops in no particular order. My laptop runs Ubuntu, my wife's runs Windows 7, and the desktop machine is Windows 7 as well.
I'd like some way to give everyone access to the photo library, including the ability to add photos (with duplicate import detection), tag photos, rename photos, etc. I'd rather run locally than rely on a web service if at all possible.
Any ideas? I'd lean towards some kind of shared drive on my desktop machine, which gets backed up regularly off-site. I could get Windows and Linux compatibility with Samba/windows file sharing. I'm just not sure if there's some program we can put on everyone's computer that will handle tagging and reorganization well with multiple users. | 2011/03/13 | [
"https://superuser.com/questions/256901",
"https://superuser.com",
"https://superuser.com/users/71354/"
] | My recommendation, try using [DropBox](http://www.dropbox.com/).
Best way to share files and stay synchronized. | You could try [Coppermine](http://coppermine-gallery.net) free web gallery. At BitNami you can find mac, linux and windows [installers](http://bitnami.org/stack/coppermine) for it. (so, adressing well those compatibility issues) I think it would support all which you mention. |
7,506 | In an interesting vignette, it turns out that the [Druze emir of Lebanon, Fakhr-al-Din](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fakhr-al-Din_II), had traveled in the early 17th century to Florence and tried to conclude a military alliance with the [Grand Duchy of Tuscany](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Duchy_of_Tuscany). Why, of all places, Tuscany? This raises some questions and conjectures:
1. Presumably this was based on previous contact between Fakhr-al-Din and Tuscan traders. Are there records of Tuscan traders in Lebanon in the 17th century?
2. This (abortive) alliance seems to me to be a pale mirror image of the earlier, much more significant [Franco-Ottoman alliance](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Ottoman_alliance). Was the Franco-Ottoman alliance still in operation in Fakhr's time? If yes, then was perhaps Fakhr trying to use Tuscany as a conduit to get in touch with the King of Spain or the Emperor, the Sultan's enemies? (wikipedia says he got so far as the [Duke of Osuna](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_of_Osuna) - good for Fakhr, but hardly enough). | 2013/02/02 | [
"https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/7506",
"https://history.stackexchange.com",
"https://history.stackexchange.com/users/1569/"
] | Tuscany had a military alliance and [family](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archduchess_Maria_Maddalena_of_Austria) ties with the Habsburg empire - at the time, Fakhr-al-Din was plotting to break free of Ottoman rule, and the Ottoman Empire was a longstanding enemy of the Austrians. He had hoped to enlist the aid of European powers like Austria and Spain, and was ready to hand over concessions in the holy land to get it - he was trying to light off a new crusade, in essence, and planned to play the two sides against each other to secure his rule.
Unfortunately for his plans, the political, cultural and financial situation in Europe at the time was not favorable for a new crusade.
Another part of his plan of independence was seeking to modernize Lebanon with science and technology from Europe, thereby strengthening trade relations - and Tuscany under [Cosimo II](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosimo_II_de%27_Medici,_Grand_Duke_of_Tuscany) was the place to be if you were into renaissance science and technology. The Ottoman Empire came down on him pretty hard for his troubles, tho. | Why Tuscaky of all places?
In 1608 in Aleppo Fakhr-al-Din had signed a treaty with the Medici's Tuscany envoyees in Aleppo, so it was the Medici who seeked him first.
In 1613 he had already started to struggle for independance from the Ottoman empire and he was at great risk.
So he fled to Tuscany where he was welcome in Florence by Cosimo II who hosted him with greaty honours fro two years. There are number of publications on the subject, but of course most of them are in Italian , if anyone searchs for them bear in mind that his name was italianized in Faccardino. One important one (1787) is on books.google.it
with free ebook download:Istoria di Faccardino Grand Emir dei Drusin.
A bedly infomed storigraphy mantains that Cosimo and Fakhr-al-Din wanted to steal the Holy Sepukchre fron Jerusalem to take it to Florence ex:The Cornhill Magazine. Vol. XIX. January to June, 1869
Marina |
12,398,153 | I learnt that C gets translated to assembly and then assembly gets translated to machine code. And I learnt how to translate basic C constructs such as pointers and loops to 32-bit MIPS assembly. But I didn't learn how to translate regexes in for instance C to assembly, is there a recipe? | 2012/09/13 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/12398153",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/108207/"
] | C does not support regexes. Neither does assembly. You have to write some algorithmic code for pattern matching, and then, if it's not already in assembly/machine code, translate/compile into it. No magic. | Generally, it depends on how you implement regular expressions. You can, for example:
* Use something like PCRE or the POSIX regular expressions. In this case then the function calls to that API are simply translated to machine (assembly) code by making the proper calls using the calling convention specific to your architecture / ABI.
* Use a tool like `flex`. In this case, the tool will generate a large amount of C code, typically in the form of tables and a state machine, and this code will be translated using the compiler.
If you implement some kind of ad hoc regular expression parsing scheme, it will simply be whatever the compiler generates for your code. |
12,398,153 | I learnt that C gets translated to assembly and then assembly gets translated to machine code. And I learnt how to translate basic C constructs such as pointers and loops to 32-bit MIPS assembly. But I didn't learn how to translate regexes in for instance C to assembly, is there a recipe? | 2012/09/13 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/12398153",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/108207/"
] | Translating regular expressions to assembly language seems to have gone out of style a couple decades ago. Instead, these days they're usually compiled to deterministic finite automata (DFA), often with an intermediate step as a non-deterministic finite automaton (NFA). If you're unfamiliar with these terms, see:
* <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deterministic_finite_automaton>
* <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nondeterministic_finite_automaton>
The NFA corresponding to a regex is pretty easily constructed; just consider each point in the regex as a state, and the set of characters that can match and move you to the next point in the regex as the transitions from that state to the next state.
Other popular regex engines, including PCRE, don't compile the regex at all but use a backtracking matcher, which is simple to write, but has pathologically bad memory usage (many recursive call frames, leading to stack overflow, if implemented as actual function calls) and pathologically bad big-O performance (can be exponential time). | Generally, it depends on how you implement regular expressions. You can, for example:
* Use something like PCRE or the POSIX regular expressions. In this case then the function calls to that API are simply translated to machine (assembly) code by making the proper calls using the calling convention specific to your architecture / ABI.
* Use a tool like `flex`. In this case, the tool will generate a large amount of C code, typically in the form of tables and a state machine, and this code will be translated using the compiler.
If you implement some kind of ad hoc regular expression parsing scheme, it will simply be whatever the compiler generates for your code. |
40,395,934 | I have a security group assigned to an RDS instance which allows port 5432 traffic from our EC2 instances.
However, this security group has all outbound traffic enabled for all traffic for all IP's.
Is this a security risk? What should be the ideal outbound security rule?
In my perspective, the outbound traffic for the RDS security group should be limited to port 5432 to our EC2 instances, is this right? | 2016/11/03 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/40395934",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/1799210/"
] | By default, all Amazon EC2 security groups:
* Deny all **inbound** traffic
* Allow all **outbound** traffic
You must configure the security group to permit **inbound traffic**. Such configuration should be limited to the minimal possible scope. That is, the fewest protocols necessary and smallest IP address ranges necessary.
**Outbound access**, however, is traditionally kept open. The reason for this is that you would normally "trust" your own systems. If they wish to access external resources, let them do so.
You are always welcome to restrict Outbound access, especially for sensitive systems. However, determining which ports to keep open may be a challenge. For example, instances may want to download Operating System updates, access Amazon S3 or send emails. | When using **Security Goups** (as opposed to **ACL rules**) all inbound traffic is automatically allowed in outbound traffic so outbound rules may be empty in your case.
>
> Is this a security risk? What should be the ideal outbound security
> rule? In my perspective, the outbound traffic for the RDS security
> group should be limited to port 5432 to our EC2 instances, is this
> right?
>
>
>
It's a risk only if you RDS is in a **public** subnet inside your VPC.
Best practices recommend in your scenario to have a public subnet within your web server and a private subnet for all private resources (RDS, other private services, etc).
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/A8Wny.png)
As you can see in the image, hosting your RDS inside a **private** subnet there is no way to access it from outside your VPC |
40,395,934 | I have a security group assigned to an RDS instance which allows port 5432 traffic from our EC2 instances.
However, this security group has all outbound traffic enabled for all traffic for all IP's.
Is this a security risk? What should be the ideal outbound security rule?
In my perspective, the outbound traffic for the RDS security group should be limited to port 5432 to our EC2 instances, is this right? | 2016/11/03 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/40395934",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/1799210/"
] | >
> What should be the ideal outbound security rule? In my perspective, the outbound traffic for the RDS security group should be limited to port 5432 to our EC2 instances, is this right?
>
>
>
It is a good idea to have a clear control over outbound connections as well.
In your RDS group: delete all outbound rules (by default, there is rule that allows outbound connections to all ports and IP's -> just delete this "all-anywhere" rule).
Your DB will receive inbound requests through port 5432 from your EC2 instance, and RDS will respond back to your EC2 instance through the very same connection, no outbound rules need to be defined in this case at all. | When using **Security Goups** (as opposed to **ACL rules**) all inbound traffic is automatically allowed in outbound traffic so outbound rules may be empty in your case.
>
> Is this a security risk? What should be the ideal outbound security
> rule? In my perspective, the outbound traffic for the RDS security
> group should be limited to port 5432 to our EC2 instances, is this
> right?
>
>
>
It's a risk only if you RDS is in a **public** subnet inside your VPC.
Best practices recommend in your scenario to have a public subnet within your web server and a private subnet for all private resources (RDS, other private services, etc).
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/A8Wny.png)
As you can see in the image, hosting your RDS inside a **private** subnet there is no way to access it from outside your VPC |
40,395,934 | I have a security group assigned to an RDS instance which allows port 5432 traffic from our EC2 instances.
However, this security group has all outbound traffic enabled for all traffic for all IP's.
Is this a security risk? What should be the ideal outbound security rule?
In my perspective, the outbound traffic for the RDS security group should be limited to port 5432 to our EC2 instances, is this right? | 2016/11/03 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/40395934",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/1799210/"
] | >
> What should be the ideal outbound security rule? In my perspective, the outbound traffic for the RDS security group should be limited to port 5432 to our EC2 instances, is this right?
>
>
>
It is a good idea to have a clear control over outbound connections as well.
In your RDS group: delete all outbound rules (by default, there is rule that allows outbound connections to all ports and IP's -> just delete this "all-anywhere" rule).
Your DB will receive inbound requests through port 5432 from your EC2 instance, and RDS will respond back to your EC2 instance through the very same connection, no outbound rules need to be defined in this case at all. | By default, all Amazon EC2 security groups:
* Deny all **inbound** traffic
* Allow all **outbound** traffic
You must configure the security group to permit **inbound traffic**. Such configuration should be limited to the minimal possible scope. That is, the fewest protocols necessary and smallest IP address ranges necessary.
**Outbound access**, however, is traditionally kept open. The reason for this is that you would normally "trust" your own systems. If they wish to access external resources, let them do so.
You are always welcome to restrict Outbound access, especially for sensitive systems. However, determining which ports to keep open may be a challenge. For example, instances may want to download Operating System updates, access Amazon S3 or send emails. |
8,709,329 | Is there a way to display so called badges in Flex elements?
With badges I mean the little red circles with a number in it which are used to display the amount of new items in a inbox by example.
I want to display badges in a flex list or tabbed item.
Is this core functionality of Flex? | 2012/01/03 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/8709329",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/627035/"
] | You can definitely do this in Flex, but it will likely (without seeing your designs, etc) require implementing a custom item renderer for the list. For an example of doing this for a Flex-based web or AIR app, look [here](http://help.adobe.com/en_US/flex/using/WS03d33b8076db57b9-23c04461124bbeca597-8000.html). Also, you will likely want to read up on Flex 4 [skinning](http://help.adobe.com/en_US/flex/using/WS53116913-F952-4b21-831F-9DE85B647C8A.html) for writing a custom skin for your list item renderers, as well as perhaps the list itself. Additionally, if you are, as implied by your tags, writing a flex mobile app, you'll want to read up on [building mobile item renderers](https://www.flextras.com/blog/index.cfm/2011/6/24/Building-a-Mobile-ItemRenderer-in-Flex) as they differ in subtle, but important ways from standard web-based Flex or desktop AIR apps.
The short answer, then, is yes, but you will likely need to write some custom code to get things exactly the way you want them, styling-wise and behaviorally. | How did you do? I use the next snippet for a badge in a tabbed item. <http://blog.aboutme.be/2011/10/28/flex-mobile-tabbed-view-navigator-button-badge/>
I hope it helps you. |
35,502 | Salve! Having created a web-application under the Sharepoint (2010) Site's directory in iis7, I now need to use the assemble microsoft.sharepoint in my web-application. How can I reference that?
I can confirm that the reference is being inherited from the parent's (sp) web.config, because if I add the reference, asp.net complains that there is a duplicate entry.
What can I do? | 2012/05/04 | [
"https://sharepoint.stackexchange.com/questions/35502",
"https://sharepoint.stackexchange.com",
"https://sharepoint.stackexchange.com/users/7452/"
] | My recommendation would be that you shouldn't.
You should start from scratch again and develop your Web-Application to be deployed below the \_layouts folder in SharePoint using a WSP package and all of your code should be in code behind which is compiled into a dll deployed to the GAC.
You can technically get your solution to work, but it's a hack, that won't work when an extra server is added. | Add the SharePoint.dll as a reference in your project:
\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\ISAPI\Microsoft.SharePoint.dll
I assume this is SharePoint 2010. |
10,368,622 | I'm trying to achieve an effect similar to this:
Notice how France is brighter than the other countries. It has the 'focus'. I've been exploring the API and it looks like I'm supposed use `kmlLayers` to achieve this effect. Is this correct? If so, how do I leverage or even find kml to do this? How else could I do this?
Thanks | 2012/04/29 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/10368622",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/1946/"
] | I found this can be done with polygons and 'holes'. Google has [this pentagon example](http://gmaps-samples-v3.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/poly/pentagon.html)
The only down side is the polygon needs to be drawn by hand (maybe there's a database of country outlines?) I used [this tool](http://www.birdtheme.org/useful/v3tool.html) to assist with the manual drawing for now. | this demo shows you how: <https://google-developers.appspot.com/maps/documentation/javascript/examples/layer-kml>
aight, got kml for france; working demo: <http://dev.bowdenweb.com/maps/gmaps/layer-kml-02.html> |
10,368,622 | I'm trying to achieve an effect similar to this:
Notice how France is brighter than the other countries. It has the 'focus'. I've been exploring the API and it looks like I'm supposed use `kmlLayers` to achieve this effect. Is this correct? If so, how do I leverage or even find kml to do this? How else could I do this?
Thanks | 2012/04/29 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/10368622",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/1946/"
] | The information at these links will help you, I think:
1. KML of the [World Countries](https://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/forum/?fromgroups#!msg/gec-tools/rNjNRYbaWSI/5x5vfgxc0w0J) as created by Valery Hronusov
2. KML of the [World Capitals](https://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/forum/?fromgroups#!msg/gec-tools/wYh3esMW6XM/XNcwYwlTuB0J) as created by Filipumme | this demo shows you how: <https://google-developers.appspot.com/maps/documentation/javascript/examples/layer-kml>
aight, got kml for france; working demo: <http://dev.bowdenweb.com/maps/gmaps/layer-kml-02.html> |
168,459 | I recently look at a question on this site that questioned if a “world tree” is feasible, [Would a 'World Tree' be feasible in real life?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/48435/would-a-world-tree-be-feasible-in-real-life). If i remember correctly, it stated that one way to distribute and transport nutrients and other valuable needs equally would be the use of a heart and circulatory system. From my understanding, I would guess that the entirety of a tree would look similar, but would work extremely differently.
**why would a tree need or evolve a circulatory system, and what environmental pressures would lead up to such a tree?**
Also, this isn’t necessary and you do t need to answer this but if you could answer what the tree would look like with said circulatory system, then that would be greatly appreciated | 2020/02/14 | [
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/168459",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/70683/"
] | Trees actually **do** have a circulatory system already. It's called the [Vascular System](https://www.britannica.com/science/vascular-system). It works rather well too because it can support trees much larger than we are and get nutrients up through the roots all the way out to the leaves to support new growth, and oxygen from the leaves all the way down to the roots to keep the entire organism alive.
In point of fact, even scaling up may not be so much of an issue as a 'world tree' is still going to have lots of leaves all over it, meaning that (unlike animals) it has a decentralised oxygen generation model so it can get oxygen throughout itself with less of a distribution network than animals, particularly those animals with lungs, need.
Nutrients are a bigger issue but the beauty of a tree is that the photosynthesis means that it's producing both food and oxygen over a very large percentage of its surface area (the leaves) so what needs to be distributed is both less in terms of variety, but also has to travel (on average) less of a percentage of the body length to get there. Also, trees don't have specialised internal organs to support, especially brains, that in their own right consume a large amount of the nutrients and energy collected. So, that means that more of the tree (again as a percentage) is dedicated to energy generation, again making it more efficient meaning that the circulatory system doesn't need to be as advanced as it does in animals, kilogram for kilogram.
Put simply, unlike humans that need systems for distributing oxygen, energy and wastes in and out of all parts of a body, a tree has a far more efficient distribution system that meets the simpler needs of such an organism. | As stated in other remarks, plants already possess [vascular systems](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vascular_plant). They also possess mechanisms for responding to stimuli and for cellular communication ([like this, for example](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/09/plants-communicate-distress-using-their-own-kind-nervous-system)). But that's a long ways off from the sort of circulatory system found in animals involving muscles and a nervous system.
So, why might plant life evolve like that? Perhaps to combat the physical limits plants presently face in regards to gravity vs. size, or to combat harsh environmental conditions where the usual passive nutrient distribution isn't adequate. But it would cease to be a "plant" as we know it anymore. I imagine instead it'd be something between a tree and [sea anemone](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_anemone). But it could very well still appear as treelike as you want it to. |
24,229 | A lot of torrent search engines have the ability to provide an RSS feed of matches, allowing you to set up torrent programs to download items which are published on the feed. This is useful for watching releases of things.
The problem with doing this through a random search engine for Ubuntu is that you usually get too many torrents as it picks up different custom versions, and other software with the name in the title/description. See: <http://www.mininova.org/rss/ubuntu>
So I was wondering if there was an RSS feed somewhere that only loads up the official torrent files for releases?
So from the responses, there doesn't appear to be an existing RSS feed that does what I am after. | 2011/02/01 | [
"https://askubuntu.com/questions/24229",
"https://askubuntu.com",
"https://askubuntu.com/users/176/"
] | I am answering this simply so it can have an answer...
No, there is currently no RSS feed of releases. | If you bookmark the Ubuntu.com ( <http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/>) you will see it in seconds. This is what I do with google chromes bookmark and the 24 links ( you will have to drag from page to page. ) on the page. instant access. Or you can get a igoogle page from your gmail account. I hope this is helpful to you. |
24,229 | A lot of torrent search engines have the ability to provide an RSS feed of matches, allowing you to set up torrent programs to download items which are published on the feed. This is useful for watching releases of things.
The problem with doing this through a random search engine for Ubuntu is that you usually get too many torrents as it picks up different custom versions, and other software with the name in the title/description. See: <http://www.mininova.org/rss/ubuntu>
So I was wondering if there was an RSS feed somewhere that only loads up the official torrent files for releases?
So from the responses, there doesn't appear to be an existing RSS feed that does what I am after. | 2011/02/01 | [
"https://askubuntu.com/questions/24229",
"https://askubuntu.com",
"https://askubuntu.com/users/176/"
] | I am answering this simply so it can have an answer...
No, there is currently no RSS feed of releases. | Linux Tracker
=============
[LinuxTracker.org](http://linuxtracker.org/index.php?page=torrents&category=563) has been around since 2004:
* [Register](http://linuxtracker.org/index.php?page=signup) and [Get RSS](http://linuxtracker.org/index.php?page=modules&module=getrss)
* Or use the Anonymous Ubuntu Feed: <http://linuxtracker.org/rss_torrents.php?feed=dl&cat[]=563&pid=00000000000000000000000000000000>
DistroWatch
===========
[DistroWatch.com](https://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=bittorrent) has been around since 2001:
* <https://distrowatch.com/news/torrents.xml> |
24,229 | A lot of torrent search engines have the ability to provide an RSS feed of matches, allowing you to set up torrent programs to download items which are published on the feed. This is useful for watching releases of things.
The problem with doing this through a random search engine for Ubuntu is that you usually get too many torrents as it picks up different custom versions, and other software with the name in the title/description. See: <http://www.mininova.org/rss/ubuntu>
So I was wondering if there was an RSS feed somewhere that only loads up the official torrent files for releases?
So from the responses, there doesn't appear to be an existing RSS feed that does what I am after. | 2011/02/01 | [
"https://askubuntu.com/questions/24229",
"https://askubuntu.com",
"https://askubuntu.com/users/176/"
] | Linux Tracker
=============
[LinuxTracker.org](http://linuxtracker.org/index.php?page=torrents&category=563) has been around since 2004:
* [Register](http://linuxtracker.org/index.php?page=signup) and [Get RSS](http://linuxtracker.org/index.php?page=modules&module=getrss)
* Or use the Anonymous Ubuntu Feed: <http://linuxtracker.org/rss_torrents.php?feed=dl&cat[]=563&pid=00000000000000000000000000000000>
DistroWatch
===========
[DistroWatch.com](https://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=bittorrent) has been around since 2001:
* <https://distrowatch.com/news/torrents.xml> | If you bookmark the Ubuntu.com ( <http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/>) you will see it in seconds. This is what I do with google chromes bookmark and the 24 links ( you will have to drag from page to page. ) on the page. instant access. Or you can get a igoogle page from your gmail account. I hope this is helpful to you. |
52,814 | I've always thought that the use of the preposition 'to' with the verb 'convince' is correct. But I recently learned from a reliable source that 'to' shouldn't be used with 'convince' but rather with 'persuade'. So instead of saying for instance 'I should try to convince him to work harder', I'd rather say 'I should try to convince him of his ability to work harder' or 'I should try to convince him that he can work harder' or 'I should persuade him to work harder.'
Honestly, I'm still perplexed. Could anyone shed some light? | 2011/12/26 | [
"https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/52814",
"https://english.stackexchange.com",
"https://english.stackexchange.com/users/-1/"
] | In "convince him to" or "persuade him to", "to" is not a preposition — it's part of the infinitive verb that follows. "Convince him to (verb)" is a legitimate construction. The "of" form takes a noun — "convince him of (some fact/position/etc)". | Examples taken from [merrian-webster](http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/convince) defition of *convince* include both the use of *of* and *to*:
>
> He convinced me that the story was true.
>
> They convinced us of their innocence.
>
> I managed to convince myself that I was doing the right thing.
>
> We convinced them to go along with our scheme.
>
> I was unable to convince her to stay.
>
>
>
However, according to [thesaurus](http://www.thefreedictionary.com/convince):
>
> The use of convince to talk about persuading someone to do something
> is considered by many British speakers to be wrong or unacceptable. It
> would be preferable to use an alternative such as persuade or talk
> into.
>
>
> So it would seem to be just another BrE/AmE usage issue.
>
>
> The definition in the [Collins English Dictionary](http://www.thefreedictionary.com/convince) also points in
> that direction:
>
>
> 1. (may take a clause as object) to make (someone) agree, understand, or realize the truth or validity of something; persuade
> 2. **Chiefly US** to persuade (someone) to do something
>
>
>
Besides this usage issue, there is also, as JohnJamesSmith said, a difference in meaning.
Here is an interesting discussion at WordReference, which gives a very good example, concluding that there are cases where the replacement of *convince* for *persuade* just for the sake of *correctness*, can eventually have an actual degradation in meaning. Let me quote the [post](http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=1885931):
>
> I actually feel like there's a meaningful difference between convince
> someone to do something and persuade someone to do something, at least
> in certain contexts.
>
>
> Since convince, as you say, geostan, involves changing someone's
> beliefs or opinions, I feel like that semantic property holds even for
> the convince someone to construction. Let me give you an example:
>
>
> Two friends, Bob and George, get caught stealing from a store. Bob is
> always getting into trouble, whereas George is generally a nice boy.
> When questioned by his parents, George says, "I know it was wrong to
> steal, but Bob convinced me to!"
>
>
> In this context, convinced implies, at least to me, that George
> changed his beliefs, at least temporarily, in order to steal. That is,
> for that brief moment, Bob managed to make George believe that it was
> okay to steal, or that he could ignore his conscience/beliefs.
>
>
> Persuaded, on the other hand, would imply that George stole knowing
> (and still believing) full well that it was wrong.
>
>
> It may not be a great example, but if you consider the adjectives
> convincing and persuasive, I think the difference is there. We could
> say that "Bob was convincing" means that Bob was able to convince
> George that stealing was okay, whereas "Bob was persuasive" simply
> means Bob was able to get George to steal, without having him change
> his beliefs.
>
>
>
So, I would conclude that in most cases it is a matter of BrE or AmE use, but you should always bear in mind that you can not *always* replace *convince* with *persuade*, because both verbs have slightly different meanings. |
52,814 | I've always thought that the use of the preposition 'to' with the verb 'convince' is correct. But I recently learned from a reliable source that 'to' shouldn't be used with 'convince' but rather with 'persuade'. So instead of saying for instance 'I should try to convince him to work harder', I'd rather say 'I should try to convince him of his ability to work harder' or 'I should try to convince him that he can work harder' or 'I should persuade him to work harder.'
Honestly, I'm still perplexed. Could anyone shed some light? | 2011/12/26 | [
"https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/52814",
"https://english.stackexchange.com",
"https://english.stackexchange.com/users/-1/"
] | **Short answer:** they're both fine, and you clearly already understand when to use which.
Use *of* with a noun phrase, *to* with a predicate, and *that* for a clause. You gave very good examples of all three in your question. The original reason the *to* usage was frowned upon is that *convince* was supposedly only for thoughts and ideas; if something someone said resulted in you actually doing something, then you were *persuaded* rather than *convinced*. This rule is rather old. Here's what *Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage* has to say:
>
> To sum up: long ago *persuade* became established in a use connoting mental acceptance without following action -- a sense Richard Grant White thought should be reserved for *convince*. *Persuade* still has this use, often with the same *of* and *that* constructions regularly found with *convince*. Sometime around the middle of this century, *convince* began to be used to connote mental acceptance followed by action, usually in a construction in which an infinitive phrase follows the verb [that is, with *to*]. This construction is now a fully established idiom. The earlier usage writers who tried to fence off *persuade* from *convince* and the later ones who tried to fence off *convince* from *persuade* have failed alike. And in another generation perhaps no one will care.
>
>
>
You can read the rest of the entry on page 297 [on Google Books](http://books.google.com/books?id=2yJusP0vrdgC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false). They also give attested usages from the New York Times, etc.
Eduardo may have a point about the British/American thing. Just a quick search of the [BYU-BNC British National Corpus](https://www.english-corpora.org/bnc/) and the [Corpus of Contemporary American English](https://www.english-corpora.org/coca/), which contain millions of words from published material gave this for the BNC:
* 7 hits for *convince him to*
* 12 hits for *convince him of*
* 39 hits for *convince him that*
and this for the COCA:
* 140 hits for *convince him to*
* 29 hits for *convince him of*
* 131 hits for *convince him that*
Keep in mind that each of these usages differs also in *meaning*, so be careful what conclusions you draw from these numbers.
You may also be interested in the [Google Ngram Viewer](http://books.google.com/ngrams). | Examples taken from [merrian-webster](http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/convince) defition of *convince* include both the use of *of* and *to*:
>
> He convinced me that the story was true.
>
> They convinced us of their innocence.
>
> I managed to convince myself that I was doing the right thing.
>
> We convinced them to go along with our scheme.
>
> I was unable to convince her to stay.
>
>
>
However, according to [thesaurus](http://www.thefreedictionary.com/convince):
>
> The use of convince to talk about persuading someone to do something
> is considered by many British speakers to be wrong or unacceptable. It
> would be preferable to use an alternative such as persuade or talk
> into.
>
>
> So it would seem to be just another BrE/AmE usage issue.
>
>
> The definition in the [Collins English Dictionary](http://www.thefreedictionary.com/convince) also points in
> that direction:
>
>
> 1. (may take a clause as object) to make (someone) agree, understand, or realize the truth or validity of something; persuade
> 2. **Chiefly US** to persuade (someone) to do something
>
>
>
Besides this usage issue, there is also, as JohnJamesSmith said, a difference in meaning.
Here is an interesting discussion at WordReference, which gives a very good example, concluding that there are cases where the replacement of *convince* for *persuade* just for the sake of *correctness*, can eventually have an actual degradation in meaning. Let me quote the [post](http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=1885931):
>
> I actually feel like there's a meaningful difference between convince
> someone to do something and persuade someone to do something, at least
> in certain contexts.
>
>
> Since convince, as you say, geostan, involves changing someone's
> beliefs or opinions, I feel like that semantic property holds even for
> the convince someone to construction. Let me give you an example:
>
>
> Two friends, Bob and George, get caught stealing from a store. Bob is
> always getting into trouble, whereas George is generally a nice boy.
> When questioned by his parents, George says, "I know it was wrong to
> steal, but Bob convinced me to!"
>
>
> In this context, convinced implies, at least to me, that George
> changed his beliefs, at least temporarily, in order to steal. That is,
> for that brief moment, Bob managed to make George believe that it was
> okay to steal, or that he could ignore his conscience/beliefs.
>
>
> Persuaded, on the other hand, would imply that George stole knowing
> (and still believing) full well that it was wrong.
>
>
> It may not be a great example, but if you consider the adjectives
> convincing and persuasive, I think the difference is there. We could
> say that "Bob was convincing" means that Bob was able to convince
> George that stealing was okay, whereas "Bob was persuasive" simply
> means Bob was able to get George to steal, without having him change
> his beliefs.
>
>
>
So, I would conclude that in most cases it is a matter of BrE or AmE use, but you should always bear in mind that you can not *always* replace *convince* with *persuade*, because both verbs have slightly different meanings. |
6,164,678 | This seems like it should be really obvious, but how can I put a DateTime object into an MSSQL database? When I convert it to a string, it keeps adding "-7:00" at the end for the time zone offset and so the query isn't accepted. How can I fix this? | 2011/05/28 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/6164678",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/707111/"
] | Its likely your DB is becoming corrupt somehow. There's no command that does that (I hope). | Do yourself a favor and alter each and every one of your tables so they use the [InnoDB engine](http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/innodb-storage-engine.html) instead of MyISAM. It's still be MySQL, but it'll be a lot less prone to data corruption.
And if changing DB altogether is an option, look into using [PostgreSQL](http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.0/static/index.html) instead. |
240,025 | Yesterday in lab, we were asked why all of our green LED had large forward voltage than expected. We expected for the forward voltage to be at around 2.1V as according to hf=Egap=eV. Yet, we experienced forward voltages of 2.6-2.7 for our LEDs in the lab. Professor said that there is a reason, but I cannot seem to figure it out. Can I get help?
Could it be that the Green LED had some different composition as expected, allowing it to emit green light while having high forward voltage?
I searched through the internet, and a lot of sources say that Green LED forward voltage is 2.1V whereas other sources say that Green LED forward voltage is like 3.0V. Why the discrepancy? | 2016/06/09 | [
"https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/240025",
"https://electronics.stackexchange.com",
"https://electronics.stackexchange.com/users/113213/"
] | There's green and then there's other green. This is why in engineering we use numbers instead of vague words. It is best to specify the actual wavelength.
Most common "green" LEDs are on the yellow end of what most people consider green. These do have about 2.1 V drop at reasonable currents. This type is the cheap and common "green" variety. This wavelength of green corresponds well to the peak sensitivity of our eyes.
There are other "green" LEDs that use different semiconductor substances and are more toward the bluish end of what most people would call green. These of course have a higher forward drop due to the physics you seem to understand correctly. These are much less common and typically more expensive. Their lumen specs also don't look as good, in part because this wavelength is a bit shorter than the peak sensitivity of human eyes.
My guess is that your professor deliberately gave you the unusual green type of LED to make you think a bit, learn not to take things for granted, and impress on you the need for real numbers as opposed to vague words like "green". | Wikipedia [lists](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-emitting_diode#Colors_and_materials) green LEDs with a forward voltage between 1.9 and 4 V, so the excessive voltage drop you observed is related to technological imperfections in the LEDs you have tested. A few factors come to mind:
* electrical resistance. Any conductor introduces some voltage drop proportional to the current. You could have eliminated this factor by testing your LEDs at two different currents, and extrapolating the V/A curve to 0A.
* [crystallographic defects](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystallographic_defect) in the die would cause electrons to lose extra energy during recombination. In the ideal lattice electrons and holes would have the same [momentum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_momentum), so all recombination energy would go to the photon. Defects result in a difference in momentum, and since photons cannot carry it, part of the energy is lost to [crystal lattice vibration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonon). To get rid of this effect, you'd need to test a high-grade LED with as little lattice defects as possible (I guess you got consumer-grade devices).
* there's also a potential energy loss to the [Fermi level](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_level), which is defined as "the work required to add an electron to [a body], or equally the work obtained by removing an electron". The difference you observe (2.6 - 2.1 = 0.5eV) seem like a typical value. Though my knowledge of physics is not sufficient to tell whenever this phenomenon applies to electron-hole recombination in LEDs. Wikipedia [seem to suggest](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d7/PnJunction-LED-E.svg) it does. |
87,470 | My kitchen has been built with bricks, but external rendering has not been placed. Now it has been 17 years but nothing has happened, but I want to know if I need to externally render the wall? Could anything have happened to the brick wall since the rainy whether? | 2016/03/26 | [
"https://diy.stackexchange.com/questions/87470",
"https://diy.stackexchange.com",
"https://diy.stackexchange.com/users/51621/"
] | No, brick & its mortar will be fine for 100-years in the weather. You can absolutely Stucco it as well & that will last almost the same amount of time. But, unless the Stucco would be done to match the rest of the exterior, then don't bother. It's just another potential future problem.
However, you can treat the brickwork with a clear Masonry Sealer, only if the brick appears to be wet a day after being rained upon. I say that because the sealer would need to be re-painted every 5-years & you really don't want to add that constant maintenance unless & until you need to. | NO u dont have to plaster the wall.You can get sealer for brick and block. You can get this at home depot or lowes.If you prefer to plaster ask the person at the hardware store for plaster wire it comes in 4ft by 6ft sheets .Screw it to the brick wall .In the mortor joints.and plaster away.thank you .Master Mason.Harlan |
1,627 | Is it possible to manage IT maintenance operations like a project, with typical project management mechanisms including scope, time, and cost planning? In our project we experience difficulties in such a management of our IT infrastructure support department. We don't know how to define their scope, how to control it, and how to make sure that the work is done. They are not developing any software but organizing our server space. Sometimes (and very often) their mistakes severely affect the entire project. I'm interested in finding some formal or semi-formal instruments on IT department management and coordination with the rest of the business. | 2011/04/10 | [
"https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1627",
"https://pm.stackexchange.com",
"https://pm.stackexchange.com/users/882/"
] | There is a danger in trying to use PM methodology to manage an operational process. PM methodology - waterfall, agile, Prince2, whatever - is designed to deal with temporary endeavors.
I suggest you build the processes you need to make thinks happen in the support department.
If you are unfamiliar with process development, you can find all kinds of resources on line. The basic steps are;
1. make a list of everything your department needs to do
2. organize it into process groups
3. document the steps for each process
4. start improving the processes | The main problem with maintenance and support teams is that it's usually really hard to plan their work in reasonable way in any longer time span.
If we define maintenance team as one which reacts either to problems within project (bugs, issues, inquiries) or to requests submitted by others (client, other teams) it's more like dealing with constant priority changes. If there's critical bug submitted we likely deal with it in the first place before moving to regular stuff. If there are other (major or minor) bugs which have solution deadline they also go up through priority list as the deadline approaches.
However even though it's hard to plan team work in any detailed way as the plan is going to change a number of times, you still can organize process in a way which just takes such situation as given. A very good method to try here is [Kanban](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban) as it doesn't force the team to plan work up front but allows to react to priority changes in a neat way. See <http://blog.brodzinski.com/2010/11/beauty-of-kanban.html> as example of how Kanban in terms of reacting for frequent priority changes.
Kanban also does a very good job in terms of visualizing what the team is doing now, what they're going to do next, any problems they might have, individual responsibilities for tasks etc. In given situation not only may it help you to track their work but also help them to see what they're really have on the plate.
Also with Kanban it doesn't really matter what kind of tasks the team deals with as it wasn't designed with a purpose of applying it to software development only, so it can be perfectly used for the team dealing with infrastructure. |
1,627 | Is it possible to manage IT maintenance operations like a project, with typical project management mechanisms including scope, time, and cost planning? In our project we experience difficulties in such a management of our IT infrastructure support department. We don't know how to define their scope, how to control it, and how to make sure that the work is done. They are not developing any software but organizing our server space. Sometimes (and very often) their mistakes severely affect the entire project. I'm interested in finding some formal or semi-formal instruments on IT department management and coordination with the rest of the business. | 2011/04/10 | [
"https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1627",
"https://pm.stackexchange.com",
"https://pm.stackexchange.com/users/882/"
] | [ITIL](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Technology_Infrastructure_Library) may help you. | The main problem with maintenance and support teams is that it's usually really hard to plan their work in reasonable way in any longer time span.
If we define maintenance team as one which reacts either to problems within project (bugs, issues, inquiries) or to requests submitted by others (client, other teams) it's more like dealing with constant priority changes. If there's critical bug submitted we likely deal with it in the first place before moving to regular stuff. If there are other (major or minor) bugs which have solution deadline they also go up through priority list as the deadline approaches.
However even though it's hard to plan team work in any detailed way as the plan is going to change a number of times, you still can organize process in a way which just takes such situation as given. A very good method to try here is [Kanban](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban) as it doesn't force the team to plan work up front but allows to react to priority changes in a neat way. See <http://blog.brodzinski.com/2010/11/beauty-of-kanban.html> as example of how Kanban in terms of reacting for frequent priority changes.
Kanban also does a very good job in terms of visualizing what the team is doing now, what they're going to do next, any problems they might have, individual responsibilities for tasks etc. In given situation not only may it help you to track their work but also help them to see what they're really have on the plate.
Also with Kanban it doesn't really matter what kind of tasks the team deals with as it wasn't designed with a purpose of applying it to software development only, so it can be perfectly used for the team dealing with infrastructure. |
1,627 | Is it possible to manage IT maintenance operations like a project, with typical project management mechanisms including scope, time, and cost planning? In our project we experience difficulties in such a management of our IT infrastructure support department. We don't know how to define their scope, how to control it, and how to make sure that the work is done. They are not developing any software but organizing our server space. Sometimes (and very often) their mistakes severely affect the entire project. I'm interested in finding some formal or semi-formal instruments on IT department management and coordination with the rest of the business. | 2011/04/10 | [
"https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1627",
"https://pm.stackexchange.com",
"https://pm.stackexchange.com/users/882/"
] | The main problem with maintenance and support teams is that it's usually really hard to plan their work in reasonable way in any longer time span.
If we define maintenance team as one which reacts either to problems within project (bugs, issues, inquiries) or to requests submitted by others (client, other teams) it's more like dealing with constant priority changes. If there's critical bug submitted we likely deal with it in the first place before moving to regular stuff. If there are other (major or minor) bugs which have solution deadline they also go up through priority list as the deadline approaches.
However even though it's hard to plan team work in any detailed way as the plan is going to change a number of times, you still can organize process in a way which just takes such situation as given. A very good method to try here is [Kanban](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban) as it doesn't force the team to plan work up front but allows to react to priority changes in a neat way. See <http://blog.brodzinski.com/2010/11/beauty-of-kanban.html> as example of how Kanban in terms of reacting for frequent priority changes.
Kanban also does a very good job in terms of visualizing what the team is doing now, what they're going to do next, any problems they might have, individual responsibilities for tasks etc. In given situation not only may it help you to track their work but also help them to see what they're really have on the plate.
Also with Kanban it doesn't really matter what kind of tasks the team deals with as it wasn't designed with a purpose of applying it to software development only, so it can be perfectly used for the team dealing with infrastructure. | When I have had support responsibilities I found it was a very successful week if I got the planned work done on two days. A lot of support time may be taken up responding to problem reports. Even if the problem is out of your control you still need to determine that it isn't in your control. You may then need to manage the response to the problem.
There are projects (usually on the small side) within the work that the support group will be handling. Setting up a process to make those happen could be worthwhile.
The one area ITIL is reported to be best suited to is managing support groups. I would consider implementing that area of ITIL. |
1,627 | Is it possible to manage IT maintenance operations like a project, with typical project management mechanisms including scope, time, and cost planning? In our project we experience difficulties in such a management of our IT infrastructure support department. We don't know how to define their scope, how to control it, and how to make sure that the work is done. They are not developing any software but organizing our server space. Sometimes (and very often) their mistakes severely affect the entire project. I'm interested in finding some formal or semi-formal instruments on IT department management and coordination with the rest of the business. | 2011/04/10 | [
"https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1627",
"https://pm.stackexchange.com",
"https://pm.stackexchange.com/users/882/"
] | The main problem with maintenance and support teams is that it's usually really hard to plan their work in reasonable way in any longer time span.
If we define maintenance team as one which reacts either to problems within project (bugs, issues, inquiries) or to requests submitted by others (client, other teams) it's more like dealing with constant priority changes. If there's critical bug submitted we likely deal with it in the first place before moving to regular stuff. If there are other (major or minor) bugs which have solution deadline they also go up through priority list as the deadline approaches.
However even though it's hard to plan team work in any detailed way as the plan is going to change a number of times, you still can organize process in a way which just takes such situation as given. A very good method to try here is [Kanban](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban) as it doesn't force the team to plan work up front but allows to react to priority changes in a neat way. See <http://blog.brodzinski.com/2010/11/beauty-of-kanban.html> as example of how Kanban in terms of reacting for frequent priority changes.
Kanban also does a very good job in terms of visualizing what the team is doing now, what they're going to do next, any problems they might have, individual responsibilities for tasks etc. In given situation not only may it help you to track their work but also help them to see what they're really have on the plate.
Also with Kanban it doesn't really matter what kind of tasks the team deals with as it wasn't designed with a purpose of applying it to software development only, so it can be perfectly used for the team dealing with infrastructure. | This may be considered as a project itself " **IT Operations Alignment**".
In order to manage the service delivered by the IT Support Team you will need liaise with the Team Lead to understand the following:
* Current ***Process Logic for IT Operations*** (planning, approval requirements, etc...)
* Current ***Service Level of Agreement*** ([SLA](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_level_agreement)) to deliver solutions
* ***Resource Availability*** (remote teams, on-site testers, etc...)
Once you have gathered all relevant information regarding their processes try to match these with your own ones and identify any gaps or areas of improvement.
1. **Document Agreed Business Process and Operations/Projects** - defining the scope of your business/project and where their support must imply.
2. **Agree a Service Level of Agreement** - for an estimated timing of resolution according to the severity of the issue/requirement.
3. **Define and classify the defects or incidents** according to the timing agreed on the SLA; *e.g. Critical issues to be resolved in less than 24h, Critical incidents can be unavailability of the system or servers down. Moderate issues to be resolved within 72h, and so forth...*
Finally, I would also recommend building a **robust defect reporting mechanism** which interfaces with IT. A good example could be eTracker, Jira, or SharePoint. By using these tools you can raise items according to the agreed scope and track the progress, flag concerns, escalate unresolved issues to senior management, and so on.
On a separate note, I would also consider that depending on the complexity of the teams and/or the business the maintenance of this relationship between IT Support and Operations may need to be managed by a separate role. |
1,627 | Is it possible to manage IT maintenance operations like a project, with typical project management mechanisms including scope, time, and cost planning? In our project we experience difficulties in such a management of our IT infrastructure support department. We don't know how to define their scope, how to control it, and how to make sure that the work is done. They are not developing any software but organizing our server space. Sometimes (and very often) their mistakes severely affect the entire project. I'm interested in finding some formal or semi-formal instruments on IT department management and coordination with the rest of the business. | 2011/04/10 | [
"https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1627",
"https://pm.stackexchange.com",
"https://pm.stackexchange.com/users/882/"
] | There is a danger in trying to use PM methodology to manage an operational process. PM methodology - waterfall, agile, Prince2, whatever - is designed to deal with temporary endeavors.
I suggest you build the processes you need to make thinks happen in the support department.
If you are unfamiliar with process development, you can find all kinds of resources on line. The basic steps are;
1. make a list of everything your department needs to do
2. organize it into process groups
3. document the steps for each process
4. start improving the processes | When I have had support responsibilities I found it was a very successful week if I got the planned work done on two days. A lot of support time may be taken up responding to problem reports. Even if the problem is out of your control you still need to determine that it isn't in your control. You may then need to manage the response to the problem.
There are projects (usually on the small side) within the work that the support group will be handling. Setting up a process to make those happen could be worthwhile.
The one area ITIL is reported to be best suited to is managing support groups. I would consider implementing that area of ITIL. |
1,627 | Is it possible to manage IT maintenance operations like a project, with typical project management mechanisms including scope, time, and cost planning? In our project we experience difficulties in such a management of our IT infrastructure support department. We don't know how to define their scope, how to control it, and how to make sure that the work is done. They are not developing any software but organizing our server space. Sometimes (and very often) their mistakes severely affect the entire project. I'm interested in finding some formal or semi-formal instruments on IT department management and coordination with the rest of the business. | 2011/04/10 | [
"https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1627",
"https://pm.stackexchange.com",
"https://pm.stackexchange.com/users/882/"
] | There is a danger in trying to use PM methodology to manage an operational process. PM methodology - waterfall, agile, Prince2, whatever - is designed to deal with temporary endeavors.
I suggest you build the processes you need to make thinks happen in the support department.
If you are unfamiliar with process development, you can find all kinds of resources on line. The basic steps are;
1. make a list of everything your department needs to do
2. organize it into process groups
3. document the steps for each process
4. start improving the processes | This may be considered as a project itself " **IT Operations Alignment**".
In order to manage the service delivered by the IT Support Team you will need liaise with the Team Lead to understand the following:
* Current ***Process Logic for IT Operations*** (planning, approval requirements, etc...)
* Current ***Service Level of Agreement*** ([SLA](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_level_agreement)) to deliver solutions
* ***Resource Availability*** (remote teams, on-site testers, etc...)
Once you have gathered all relevant information regarding their processes try to match these with your own ones and identify any gaps or areas of improvement.
1. **Document Agreed Business Process and Operations/Projects** - defining the scope of your business/project and where their support must imply.
2. **Agree a Service Level of Agreement** - for an estimated timing of resolution according to the severity of the issue/requirement.
3. **Define and classify the defects or incidents** according to the timing agreed on the SLA; *e.g. Critical issues to be resolved in less than 24h, Critical incidents can be unavailability of the system or servers down. Moderate issues to be resolved within 72h, and so forth...*
Finally, I would also recommend building a **robust defect reporting mechanism** which interfaces with IT. A good example could be eTracker, Jira, or SharePoint. By using these tools you can raise items according to the agreed scope and track the progress, flag concerns, escalate unresolved issues to senior management, and so on.
On a separate note, I would also consider that depending on the complexity of the teams and/or the business the maintenance of this relationship between IT Support and Operations may need to be managed by a separate role. |
1,627 | Is it possible to manage IT maintenance operations like a project, with typical project management mechanisms including scope, time, and cost planning? In our project we experience difficulties in such a management of our IT infrastructure support department. We don't know how to define their scope, how to control it, and how to make sure that the work is done. They are not developing any software but organizing our server space. Sometimes (and very often) their mistakes severely affect the entire project. I'm interested in finding some formal or semi-formal instruments on IT department management and coordination with the rest of the business. | 2011/04/10 | [
"https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1627",
"https://pm.stackexchange.com",
"https://pm.stackexchange.com/users/882/"
] | [ITIL](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Technology_Infrastructure_Library) may help you. | When I have had support responsibilities I found it was a very successful week if I got the planned work done on two days. A lot of support time may be taken up responding to problem reports. Even if the problem is out of your control you still need to determine that it isn't in your control. You may then need to manage the response to the problem.
There are projects (usually on the small side) within the work that the support group will be handling. Setting up a process to make those happen could be worthwhile.
The one area ITIL is reported to be best suited to is managing support groups. I would consider implementing that area of ITIL. |
1,627 | Is it possible to manage IT maintenance operations like a project, with typical project management mechanisms including scope, time, and cost planning? In our project we experience difficulties in such a management of our IT infrastructure support department. We don't know how to define their scope, how to control it, and how to make sure that the work is done. They are not developing any software but organizing our server space. Sometimes (and very often) their mistakes severely affect the entire project. I'm interested in finding some formal or semi-formal instruments on IT department management and coordination with the rest of the business. | 2011/04/10 | [
"https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1627",
"https://pm.stackexchange.com",
"https://pm.stackexchange.com/users/882/"
] | [ITIL](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Technology_Infrastructure_Library) may help you. | This may be considered as a project itself " **IT Operations Alignment**".
In order to manage the service delivered by the IT Support Team you will need liaise with the Team Lead to understand the following:
* Current ***Process Logic for IT Operations*** (planning, approval requirements, etc...)
* Current ***Service Level of Agreement*** ([SLA](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_level_agreement)) to deliver solutions
* ***Resource Availability*** (remote teams, on-site testers, etc...)
Once you have gathered all relevant information regarding their processes try to match these with your own ones and identify any gaps or areas of improvement.
1. **Document Agreed Business Process and Operations/Projects** - defining the scope of your business/project and where their support must imply.
2. **Agree a Service Level of Agreement** - for an estimated timing of resolution according to the severity of the issue/requirement.
3. **Define and classify the defects or incidents** according to the timing agreed on the SLA; *e.g. Critical issues to be resolved in less than 24h, Critical incidents can be unavailability of the system or servers down. Moderate issues to be resolved within 72h, and so forth...*
Finally, I would also recommend building a **robust defect reporting mechanism** which interfaces with IT. A good example could be eTracker, Jira, or SharePoint. By using these tools you can raise items according to the agreed scope and track the progress, flag concerns, escalate unresolved issues to senior management, and so on.
On a separate note, I would also consider that depending on the complexity of the teams and/or the business the maintenance of this relationship between IT Support and Operations may need to be managed by a separate role. |
1,627 | Is it possible to manage IT maintenance operations like a project, with typical project management mechanisms including scope, time, and cost planning? In our project we experience difficulties in such a management of our IT infrastructure support department. We don't know how to define their scope, how to control it, and how to make sure that the work is done. They are not developing any software but organizing our server space. Sometimes (and very often) their mistakes severely affect the entire project. I'm interested in finding some formal or semi-formal instruments on IT department management and coordination with the rest of the business. | 2011/04/10 | [
"https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1627",
"https://pm.stackexchange.com",
"https://pm.stackexchange.com/users/882/"
] | This may be considered as a project itself " **IT Operations Alignment**".
In order to manage the service delivered by the IT Support Team you will need liaise with the Team Lead to understand the following:
* Current ***Process Logic for IT Operations*** (planning, approval requirements, etc...)
* Current ***Service Level of Agreement*** ([SLA](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_level_agreement)) to deliver solutions
* ***Resource Availability*** (remote teams, on-site testers, etc...)
Once you have gathered all relevant information regarding their processes try to match these with your own ones and identify any gaps or areas of improvement.
1. **Document Agreed Business Process and Operations/Projects** - defining the scope of your business/project and where their support must imply.
2. **Agree a Service Level of Agreement** - for an estimated timing of resolution according to the severity of the issue/requirement.
3. **Define and classify the defects or incidents** according to the timing agreed on the SLA; *e.g. Critical issues to be resolved in less than 24h, Critical incidents can be unavailability of the system or servers down. Moderate issues to be resolved within 72h, and so forth...*
Finally, I would also recommend building a **robust defect reporting mechanism** which interfaces with IT. A good example could be eTracker, Jira, or SharePoint. By using these tools you can raise items according to the agreed scope and track the progress, flag concerns, escalate unresolved issues to senior management, and so on.
On a separate note, I would also consider that depending on the complexity of the teams and/or the business the maintenance of this relationship between IT Support and Operations may need to be managed by a separate role. | When I have had support responsibilities I found it was a very successful week if I got the planned work done on two days. A lot of support time may be taken up responding to problem reports. Even if the problem is out of your control you still need to determine that it isn't in your control. You may then need to manage the response to the problem.
There are projects (usually on the small side) within the work that the support group will be handling. Setting up a process to make those happen could be worthwhile.
The one area ITIL is reported to be best suited to is managing support groups. I would consider implementing that area of ITIL. |
177,066 | I have this section of the wall just above my bed, recently it became a bit dirty so I used a sponge to clean it. Unfortunately now I'm left with a a big green mark on the wall and it wont go away.
I think the only way it to paint over it . is there any other option ?
If I paint that half a meter squared section I donx't want it to much noticeable from the rest of the room
What should I do ?
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/p2Q1H.jpg) | 2019/10/24 | [
"https://diy.stackexchange.com/questions/177066",
"https://diy.stackexchange.com",
"https://diy.stackexchange.com/users/108413/"
] | It looks like you scrubbed away the top layer of paint. There's no way to scrub it back on.
If you have the paint, you can easily blend it in, though fading due to age may result in it being slightly conspicuous.
If not, get a paint match (for both color and sheen) and paint the entire wall. | Looks like the sponge got dissolved or the old paint shines through. I would prime that area and paint the complete wall from corner to corner. I never had much success in fixing a small area. On the other hand, I have a hard time ignoring imperfections exspecially when I caused them. Also, patching takes usually as long as doing the complete wall.
It comes down to if you can ignore something shining through after fixing? |
241,841 | What is the best term to replace the word 'needs' in the sentence quoted below?
>
> I feel obligated to apprise you of some problems between students and their needs
>
>
>
Nothing I found on Google seems to suit here, but the bare word 'needs' doesn't seem to do either.
Could you help, please? | 2015/04/26 | [
"https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/241841",
"https://english.stackexchange.com",
"https://english.stackexchange.com/users/67247/"
] | [Necessities](http://www.thefreedictionary.com/necessity) :
>
> * The conditions or qualities of being necessary. (AHD)
>
>
> | "Requirements" could be a good substitution. |
241,841 | What is the best term to replace the word 'needs' in the sentence quoted below?
>
> I feel obligated to apprise you of some problems between students and their needs
>
>
>
Nothing I found on Google seems to suit here, but the bare word 'needs' doesn't seem to do either.
Could you help, please? | 2015/04/26 | [
"https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/241841",
"https://english.stackexchange.com",
"https://english.stackexchange.com/users/67247/"
] | "Requirements" could be a good substitution. | If you really want to aim high you could use ***[desiderata](http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/desiderata)*** which is defined at that link as "things wanted or needed". Synonyms there include " essentials, necessities, requisites, sine qua nons" |
241,841 | What is the best term to replace the word 'needs' in the sentence quoted below?
>
> I feel obligated to apprise you of some problems between students and their needs
>
>
>
Nothing I found on Google seems to suit here, but the bare word 'needs' doesn't seem to do either.
Could you help, please? | 2015/04/26 | [
"https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/241841",
"https://english.stackexchange.com",
"https://english.stackexchange.com/users/67247/"
] | [Necessities](http://www.thefreedictionary.com/necessity) :
>
> * The conditions or qualities of being necessary. (AHD)
>
>
> | If you really want to aim high you could use ***[desiderata](http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/desiderata)*** which is defined at that link as "things wanted or needed". Synonyms there include " essentials, necessities, requisites, sine qua nons" |
14,260 | This has been in my mind for a while, so I am breaking the ice on the politics site.
I am living in Romania (Eastern European country within the European Union), so this question might be too localized, although I have heard about similar problems in other European countries as well.
Recently, we had a tremendous debate about the vaccination / immunization. This was especially relevant after some vaccine target diseases made some victims. E.g. [Measles outbreak makes victims](http://www.vaccinestoday.eu/stories/romania-measles-outbreak-kills-two-children/)
I am wondering **why it is so hard to make vaccination mandatory by law?** There are so many arguments for it, that I do not see any serious debate (except for political will)
**1. Clinical studies** - check [here](https://www.healthychildren.org/English/safety-prevention/immunizations/Pages/Vaccine-Studies-Examine-the-Evidence.aspx) for reference - have shown high safety of the vaccines
**2. Herd immunity** - ([definition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity)) - the most tricky effect is that immunization must high enough at the population level to be effective. By not vaccinating your kid, you are actually exposing other children (or even adults in some cases).
**3. Efficacy** - has been proven by many studies and be confirmed directly by either asking grandparents about how many used to die in the old days or by checking how easy is to die from various infectious diseases in countries that cannot offer vaccination for the people
**4. Possible denial of education** - some institutions (especially private ones) do not allow non-vaccinated kids to attend classes. This however is against the right for an education
Ex-Health Minister (a technocrat) managed to impose participation at some short course about vaccination awareness to all parents, before being legally allowed to not vaccinate their children, but he was unable to go further.
Also, another issue is that, under the protection of [expression right](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Convention_on_Human_Rights#Article_10_-_expression) (free speech), anyone can virtually express him/herself against vaccination without any scientific proof. However, I see this as an abuse since the European Convention on Human Rights clearly states that:
>
> Article 10 provides the right to freedom of expression, subject to
> certain restrictions that are "in accordance with law" and "necessary
> in a democratic society". This right includes the freedom to hold
> opinions, and to receive and impart information and ideas, but allows
> restrictions for:
>
>
> territorial integrity or **public safety**
>
>
> **protection of health** or morals
>
>
> | 2017/01/07 | [
"https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/14260",
"https://politics.stackexchange.com",
"https://politics.stackexchange.com/users/11278/"
] | The chief reason is because **patient autonomy** is considered a key value in modern medical ethics, and that forcing people to get vaccinated violates this. Patient autonomy states that a patient should be able to make their own decisions relating to health care given to them (and, by extension, make decisions health care providers disagree with).
Patient autonomy is not an *absolute* rule. For example it is generally agreed upon that it's acceptable to violate patient autonomy in cases where the patient is not considered to be sound of mind and unfit to make rational decisions (think mental illnesses).
When *exactly* patient autonomy should be overruled and to which degree is a debate that has been going on for centuries, but it generally doesn't apply to cases where a person is of sound mind and makes a decision which violates the best available scientific evidence (or more crudely put, is being stupid).
---
A second reason is that **modern government usually don't take a stance on "truth" unless there's a pressing need to**. There are some philosophical reasons for this; how do we know who is right? In other words, what is truth? Can we know what is true? How do we know something is false?
These questions are not easy. There are real limits to what we can know, and some things can be considered *unknowable*. Specifically, I can't *prove* that vaccines don't cause autism. I can *only* show there is *no credible evidence* for that claim discovered thus far, but that's not the same as *disproving* the claim. [This James Randi lecture](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWJTUAezxAI) explains the concept in some more depth.
Some might say that this distinction is somewhat philosophical, and that *in practice* we can prove that vaccines don't cause autism (this is what Randi argues), and this might be true for matters of *science*, but in this context it's not a scientific question, but rather a question on ethics and how to organize society.
The current prevalent attitude is that personal beliefs – no matter how irrational or contrary to evidence – are "sacred", and not something that the government (or society) should directly interfere with.
This is why we have free speech, freedom of religion, and all the rest of it. Much of this is just a rephrasing of "freedom to believe in your own reality". And "freedom to believe" is worth very little without the freedom to actually *act* on those beliefs. Which, in this case, means not vaccinating.
Arguments in favour of mandatory vaccinations
=============================================
None of the above is absolute though – very little is – and there are some arguments in favour of mandatory vaccination programs, which I'll briefly outline below.
Other people may be disadvantaged by a patient's decision
---------------------------------------------------------
*The* foundational rule of medical ethics is **do no harm** (Hippocratic oath). But *do no harm* to whom, exactly? A single person? Or a population? Vaccines are typically not especially beneficial to a single individual, but *are* to the entire population due to [herd immunity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity).
Some people view vaccinations *so* beneficial to the population as a whole that it may override autonomy in some cases. There is some historical precedent for this. Opposition to vaccines is not new, and during the 18th and 19th centuries a number of countries made the smallpox vaccine mandatory. For example in 1902 the United States Supreme Court declared that a state has the right to order vaccinations to protect the people from a devastating disease, while also recognizing that individual liberty was important (*Jacobson v. Massachusetts*).
Since then a few things have changed though. Medical ethics standards have become more codified, and individualism has significantly gained influence in Western society, so autonomy is typically given much greater weight. In addition, the medical crisis of the 18th, and 19th century were considerably more acute. The measles outbreak you cite is terrible, but on the other hand it has killed "only" two children, whereas the smallpox outbreaks of the 18th and 19th century typically killed hundreds or more, and presumably would have killed many more if there had been no compulsory vaccination.
All of this is part of a larger discussion when exactly the *general good* will override the *individual rights*. There are no clear answers here, and there probably never will be. It's a personal value judgement, and if you ask 100 people you will likely get 100 subtly different answers.
However, we must consider that the effects of not vaccinating children are comparatively mild in "the grand scheme of things". The risk of actually getting ill is very small, and the total number of people who have gotten ill (or even died) is very small as well. Especially if we compare this to other preventable diseases such as smoking or obesity.
The affected are typically children
-----------------------------------
Relating to *patient autonomy* mentioned earlier is **informed consent**, which is exactly what the name suggests it is: a patient must be *informed* of the health care action, and she must give *consent* before the care giver can perform the health care action.
Children are usually considered to lack the decision making ability to give informed consent for medical procedures. It's acceptable for a care-giver to give an four-year old an injection even though it's screaming "I don't want to, it's going to hurt!" as the child cannot be *informed* and cannot give *consent*, so the child's parents (or legal guardians) have to give **informed consent by proxy**.
It's generally accepted that a third party (usually the government in some form) should intervene if the parent's decision or actions counter the child's best interests in such a way that the child is seriously harmed.
But where do we draw the line? Intervening on *every* possible thing that might cause harm is impractical and undesirable (it would be a absolute dictatorship) while never intervening would lead to abject abuse (paedophilia, child labour, etc.)
This, like the previous section, is a personal value judgement. *In general* however, it is considered that not vaccinating a child doesn't harm the child *enough* to overrule this. As mentioned in the previous section, chances are that the unvaccinated will live their lives happily without getting measles or any other vaccine-preventable disease.
Besides, what's next? Will parents of obese children get in trouble? That's probably a lot more of a pressing problem than vaccinations.
Concluding remarks
------------------
Opposition to vaccination is not new, but it has seen a large surge in the last twenty years after Andrew Wakefield's (now retracted) 1998 paper published in *The Lancet* where he fraudulently claimed that vaccines cause autism. Even so, the practical effects have been fairly limited. Yes, there have been outbreaks, and yes, people have died, but the scope of it has been small and [most children still get vacinated](http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/02/vaccine-exemptions-states-pertussis-map). So the pressure to *actually do something* has been fairly limited.
This may change in the future, though. As the effects of non-vaccinated people may become greater. And some countries (such as Slovenia) *do* have mandatory vaccination programs, while some other countries (like many U.S. states) have some limited mandatory vaccination program with various opt-out clauses. Some politicians have also offered their support for stricter mandatory vaccination programs, such as Hillary Clinton and Ben Carson during the Presidential campaign.
It's also possible that a new lethal disease will rear its ugly head in the future, like the Black Death did in the middle ages. Should such an epidemic arise, vaccines almost certainly *will* be made mandatory, but this is not what we're talking about here.
### Caveats
This answer comes with some caveats:
1. There are a lot of subtleties and exception that are not covered. You can write a book in response to your question, so I've had to choose between brevity and, well, writing a book :-)
2. I've *generalized* a lot, which is why I used the words *generally* and *typically* so often. There are a lot of differences and subtleties in attitudes to this topic, but I think – hope – I've captured the essence of it.
3. This applies to *Western culture*. I have no idea what the prevalent attitudes are in China or India. You mentioned Romania in your question, I also don't know anything about the on-going debate there, but in general, these are the most important considerations in the debate.
### Links
Some interesting links, some of which were used as a source for this answer.
* [Autonomy, The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy](http://www.iep.utm.edu/autonomy/)
* [historyofvaccines.org](http://www.historyofvaccines.org/)
* [Towards a twenty-first-century Jacobson v. Massachusetts](http://cdn.harvardlawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/pdfs/a_twenty-first-century_jacobson_v_massachusetts.pdf)
* [How The 'Pox' Epidemic Changed Vaccination Rules](http://www.npr.org/2011/04/05/135121451/how-the-pox-epidemic-changed-vaccination-rules)
* [Truth, The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy](http://www.iep.utm.edu/truth/) | A key design principle of modern democracies is that all power must come with limitations to prevent its misuse, because government officials consistently demonstrate a propensity to abuse whatever power they have.
If the government has the power to dictate that someone be subject to medical treatments against their will, how could this power be abused? Well, how has it been abused in the past?
The [Soviets abused psychiatry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_abuse_of_psychiatry_in_the_Soviet_Union) as a way to control dissidents. The [United States allowed forced sterlization for eugenics purposes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_v._Bell) for many years. That case is particularly interesting, because it was based on a lie: the family lied about the girl's character in court, to cover up the fact she had been raped by a family member. Adrian Schoolcraft was [involuntarily committed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Schoolcraft) by police to attempt to thwart him from exposing their corruption. A similar thing happened to [Gustl Mollath](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustl_Mollath) in Germany; his 'paranoid delusions' of a conspiracy of tax evasion turned out to be... a real conspiracy of tax evasion.
Also in the United States, things like [this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Connor_v._Donaldson) happened:
>
> In 1956 Donaldson travelled to Florida to visit his elderly parents. While there, Donaldson reported that he believed one of his neighbors in Philadelphia might be poisoning his food. His father, worried that his son suffered from paranoid delusions, petitioned the court for a sanity hearing. Donaldson was evaluated, diagnosed with "paranoid schizophrenia," and civilly committed to the Florida State mental health system. At his commitment trial, Donaldson did not have legal counsel present to represent his case. Once he entered the Florida hospital, Donaldson was placed with dangerous criminals, even though he had never been proved to be dangerous to himself or others. His ward was understaffed, with only one doctor (who happened to be an obstetrician) for over 1,000 male patients. There were no psychiatrists or counsellors, and the only nurse on site worked in the infirmary.[5](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Connor_v._Donaldson)
>
>
>
This is horrible. Imprisoning someone for twenty years because of a "trial" where they couldn't even effectively defend themselves (no lawyer), in facilities woefully inadequate to treat him if he actually suffered from what he was diagnosed with, is an outrage. One doctor cannot treat more than a thousand people. It simply cannot be done. That's eight hours per person per year assuming the doctor never sleeps and spends literally every moment of every day treating patients.
It's a sick mockery of treatment. It's prison by another name, keeping these individuals from causing trouble by locking them up. They got away with it for a long time because they slapped the word 'treatment' on it and had a doctor instead of a prison warden.
So. How can the ability to force people to get vaccinated be used against them? It might be used as a pretext to take their children away ("opposing vaccination by definition makes you guilty of the crime of endangering the safety of a child"). It would make a convenient pretext to round up the homeless. Just declare them a public health hazard and ordering their detention for "vaccination shots" (never mind that this particular person is vaccinated, the group as a whole is known not to vaccinate, so some collateral damage is the whole point. I mean, is unavoidable, your honor). If it's easy to force someone to get vaccinated, it could even mean that if you piss off the wrong bureaucrat, or don't vote the way you're supposed to, the paperwork proving you're vaccinated "gets lost", and that's all they would need to conveniently have a judge sign an order that same day directing the police to involuntarily check you into a hospital.
If any of that sounds far-fetched or crazy, check my citations. It isn't very far removed from the kinds of things mentioned there. To keep these fears hypothetical, the rules are structured in such a way that it is very difficult for the government to force someone to undergo medical treatment over their express objections. One of the consequences of this is unfortunately the ability of vaccine hoax believers to endanger the rest of us. This is the price that we have to pay, because we have seen what happens when the government's power is not constrained.
A similar line of reasoning establishes why the vaccine hoaxers are allowed to spread their ideas. It wouldn't be hard to stamp this out if we could simply arrest people and fine or imprison them for spreading these ideas. The harm done by allowing this silliness to spread is nothing compared to the harms done when the government tells people what they can and can't say. |
15,235,750 | I have installed the CRM 2011 SDK addin for visual studio 2012 (ultimate) and am trying to create a XAML Workflow Activity
I have added the CRM Workflow items to the toolbox using these instructions [Add Microsoft Dynamics CRM Workflow Activities to the Toolbox](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/fb513e3f-3ed8-44fe-8d4c-e1a8aef29870#add_to_toolbox)
When I try and drop a Workflow on the design surface it say in red text "Could not generate view for Workflow"
Hovering over the text reveals a System.IOException that says "Cannot locate resource workflowdesigner.xaml"
How do I fix this? | 2013/03/05 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/15235750",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/402941/"
] | I fixed this by dumping the contents of my CRM SDK bin directory (about 24 assemblies) into C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\Common7\IDE\PublicAssemblies
Not elegant but obviously there was a dependency in there somewhere. | OK, I also hit this problem and made it work with your hints, I reached this result:
1. Changing VisualStudio version had no effect.
2. Changing the SDK version actually worked!
I am using SDK for CRM 2015 with version of 7.0.0.43 with visual studio 2015 and 2017. You can download it directly or use Nuget For "Microsoft.CrmSdk.Workflow" and "Microsoft.CrmSdk.CoreAssemblies"
SDK for 2018 (8.0.0) and Dynamics 365 (8.2.0.49) did not work. |
15,235,750 | I have installed the CRM 2011 SDK addin for visual studio 2012 (ultimate) and am trying to create a XAML Workflow Activity
I have added the CRM Workflow items to the toolbox using these instructions [Add Microsoft Dynamics CRM Workflow Activities to the Toolbox](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/fb513e3f-3ed8-44fe-8d4c-e1a8aef29870#add_to_toolbox)
When I try and drop a Workflow on the design surface it say in red text "Could not generate view for Workflow"
Hovering over the text reveals a System.IOException that says "Cannot locate resource workflowdesigner.xaml"
How do I fix this? | 2013/03/05 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/15235750",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/402941/"
] | You probably need to refer to the assemblies from VS. It's a bit of pain but a healthy conduct. In VS12 it's made a bit easier (finally, after a decade) to copy references from another project and (really, really finally) to refer to several DLLs at the same time.
It's the best practice and prefer conduct. :) | Also Visual Studio 2012 Update 2 fix this problem |
15,235,750 | I have installed the CRM 2011 SDK addin for visual studio 2012 (ultimate) and am trying to create a XAML Workflow Activity
I have added the CRM Workflow items to the toolbox using these instructions [Add Microsoft Dynamics CRM Workflow Activities to the Toolbox](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/fb513e3f-3ed8-44fe-8d4c-e1a8aef29870#add_to_toolbox)
When I try and drop a Workflow on the design surface it say in red text "Could not generate view for Workflow"
Hovering over the text reveals a System.IOException that says "Cannot locate resource workflowdesigner.xaml"
How do I fix this? | 2013/03/05 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/15235750",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/402941/"
] | You probably need to refer to the assemblies from VS. It's a bit of pain but a healthy conduct. In VS12 it's made a bit easier (finally, after a decade) to copy references from another project and (really, really finally) to refer to several DLLs at the same time.
It's the best practice and prefer conduct. :) | OK, I also hit this problem and made it work with your hints, I reached this result:
1. Changing VisualStudio version had no effect.
2. Changing the SDK version actually worked!
I am using SDK for CRM 2015 with version of 7.0.0.43 with visual studio 2015 and 2017. You can download it directly or use Nuget For "Microsoft.CrmSdk.Workflow" and "Microsoft.CrmSdk.CoreAssemblies"
SDK for 2018 (8.0.0) and Dynamics 365 (8.2.0.49) did not work. |
15,235,750 | I have installed the CRM 2011 SDK addin for visual studio 2012 (ultimate) and am trying to create a XAML Workflow Activity
I have added the CRM Workflow items to the toolbox using these instructions [Add Microsoft Dynamics CRM Workflow Activities to the Toolbox](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/fb513e3f-3ed8-44fe-8d4c-e1a8aef29870#add_to_toolbox)
When I try and drop a Workflow on the design surface it say in red text "Could not generate view for Workflow"
Hovering over the text reveals a System.IOException that says "Cannot locate resource workflowdesigner.xaml"
How do I fix this? | 2013/03/05 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/15235750",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/402941/"
] | Ondra is correct, this is a problem with the latest version of the SDK. Version 5.0.9690.3448 of the microsoft.xrm.sdk.workflow.dll does not work, whereas version 5.0.9688.1533 does not present the issue.
I had this issue occur on a XAML workflow that I previously had no problems with, and the issue turned out to be the upgrade of the SDK file.
Visual Studio 2012 Update 2 does not have any effect on this issue. | OK, I also hit this problem and made it work with your hints, I reached this result:
1. Changing VisualStudio version had no effect.
2. Changing the SDK version actually worked!
I am using SDK for CRM 2015 with version of 7.0.0.43 with visual studio 2015 and 2017. You can download it directly or use Nuget For "Microsoft.CrmSdk.Workflow" and "Microsoft.CrmSdk.CoreAssemblies"
SDK for 2018 (8.0.0) and Dynamics 365 (8.2.0.49) did not work. |
15,235,750 | I have installed the CRM 2011 SDK addin for visual studio 2012 (ultimate) and am trying to create a XAML Workflow Activity
I have added the CRM Workflow items to the toolbox using these instructions [Add Microsoft Dynamics CRM Workflow Activities to the Toolbox](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/fb513e3f-3ed8-44fe-8d4c-e1a8aef29870#add_to_toolbox)
When I try and drop a Workflow on the design surface it say in red text "Could not generate view for Workflow"
Hovering over the text reveals a System.IOException that says "Cannot locate resource workflowdesigner.xaml"
How do I fix this? | 2013/03/05 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/15235750",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/402941/"
] | OK, I also hit this problem and made it work with your hints, I reached this result:
1. Changing VisualStudio version had no effect.
2. Changing the SDK version actually worked!
I am using SDK for CRM 2015 with version of 7.0.0.43 with visual studio 2015 and 2017. You can download it directly or use Nuget For "Microsoft.CrmSdk.Workflow" and "Microsoft.CrmSdk.CoreAssemblies"
SDK for 2018 (8.0.0) and Dynamics 365 (8.2.0.49) did not work. | Also Visual Studio 2012 Update 2 fix this problem |
15,235,750 | I have installed the CRM 2011 SDK addin for visual studio 2012 (ultimate) and am trying to create a XAML Workflow Activity
I have added the CRM Workflow items to the toolbox using these instructions [Add Microsoft Dynamics CRM Workflow Activities to the Toolbox](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/fb513e3f-3ed8-44fe-8d4c-e1a8aef29870#add_to_toolbox)
When I try and drop a Workflow on the design surface it say in red text "Could not generate view for Workflow"
Hovering over the text reveals a System.IOException that says "Cannot locate resource workflowdesigner.xaml"
How do I fix this? | 2013/03/05 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/15235750",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/402941/"
] | I fixed this by dumping the contents of my CRM SDK bin directory (about 24 assemblies) into C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\Common7\IDE\PublicAssemblies
Not elegant but obviously there was a dependency in there somewhere. | Also Visual Studio 2012 Update 2 fix this problem |
15,235,750 | I have installed the CRM 2011 SDK addin for visual studio 2012 (ultimate) and am trying to create a XAML Workflow Activity
I have added the CRM Workflow items to the toolbox using these instructions [Add Microsoft Dynamics CRM Workflow Activities to the Toolbox](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/fb513e3f-3ed8-44fe-8d4c-e1a8aef29870#add_to_toolbox)
When I try and drop a Workflow on the design surface it say in red text "Could not generate view for Workflow"
Hovering over the text reveals a System.IOException that says "Cannot locate resource workflowdesigner.xaml"
How do I fix this? | 2013/03/05 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/15235750",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/402941/"
] | I fixed this by dumping the contents of my CRM SDK bin directory (about 24 assemblies) into C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\Common7\IDE\PublicAssemblies
Not elegant but obviously there was a dependency in there somewhere. | This example (and whole CRM workflow) under VS works properly only with CRM SDK version 1.0 - latest version 1.1 and version for VS 2012 causes described problem. |
15,235,750 | I have installed the CRM 2011 SDK addin for visual studio 2012 (ultimate) and am trying to create a XAML Workflow Activity
I have added the CRM Workflow items to the toolbox using these instructions [Add Microsoft Dynamics CRM Workflow Activities to the Toolbox](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/fb513e3f-3ed8-44fe-8d4c-e1a8aef29870#add_to_toolbox)
When I try and drop a Workflow on the design surface it say in red text "Could not generate view for Workflow"
Hovering over the text reveals a System.IOException that says "Cannot locate resource workflowdesigner.xaml"
How do I fix this? | 2013/03/05 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/15235750",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/402941/"
] | This example (and whole CRM workflow) under VS works properly only with CRM SDK version 1.0 - latest version 1.1 and version for VS 2012 causes described problem. | Also Visual Studio 2012 Update 2 fix this problem |
15,235,750 | I have installed the CRM 2011 SDK addin for visual studio 2012 (ultimate) and am trying to create a XAML Workflow Activity
I have added the CRM Workflow items to the toolbox using these instructions [Add Microsoft Dynamics CRM Workflow Activities to the Toolbox](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/fb513e3f-3ed8-44fe-8d4c-e1a8aef29870#add_to_toolbox)
When I try and drop a Workflow on the design surface it say in red text "Could not generate view for Workflow"
Hovering over the text reveals a System.IOException that says "Cannot locate resource workflowdesigner.xaml"
How do I fix this? | 2013/03/05 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/15235750",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/402941/"
] | Ondra is correct, this is a problem with the latest version of the SDK. Version 5.0.9690.3448 of the microsoft.xrm.sdk.workflow.dll does not work, whereas version 5.0.9688.1533 does not present the issue.
I had this issue occur on a XAML workflow that I previously had no problems with, and the issue turned out to be the upgrade of the SDK file.
Visual Studio 2012 Update 2 does not have any effect on this issue. | Also Visual Studio 2012 Update 2 fix this problem |
15,235,750 | I have installed the CRM 2011 SDK addin for visual studio 2012 (ultimate) and am trying to create a XAML Workflow Activity
I have added the CRM Workflow items to the toolbox using these instructions [Add Microsoft Dynamics CRM Workflow Activities to the Toolbox](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/fb513e3f-3ed8-44fe-8d4c-e1a8aef29870#add_to_toolbox)
When I try and drop a Workflow on the design surface it say in red text "Could not generate view for Workflow"
Hovering over the text reveals a System.IOException that says "Cannot locate resource workflowdesigner.xaml"
How do I fix this? | 2013/03/05 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/15235750",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/402941/"
] | You probably need to refer to the assemblies from VS. It's a bit of pain but a healthy conduct. In VS12 it's made a bit easier (finally, after a decade) to copy references from another project and (really, really finally) to refer to several DLLs at the same time.
It's the best practice and prefer conduct. :) | This example (and whole CRM workflow) under VS works properly only with CRM SDK version 1.0 - latest version 1.1 and version for VS 2012 causes described problem. |
1,943 | The CEO of our small company (14) asked me to introduce some elements of Scrum into the working process of our development team.
Problem is: the piece he would like to see introduced is not really the main part. It mainly the daily scrum meeting.
The problem is that to introduce Scrum completly would force him to change his own work (constitue backlog, define content of sprints, and so on), and he obviously doesn't want that...
I can see the benefits of introducing these small bits of Scrum. Better communication of the team, mainly, as we have no CTO, it's rather a self-organizing team anyway.
I have also some hopes that ones we have begun with Scrum, we could further integrate the method.
Do you have seen something like this yet? How does it turn out? | 2011/04/28 | [
"https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1943",
"https://pm.stackexchange.com",
"https://pm.stackexchange.com/users/152/"
] | Contrary to Bartosz, **I believe that short, daily meetings are something which actually can perfectly work in many different environments, even when it is virtually the only practice taken from Scrum.**
What more I know teams, and quite a few of them, which tried Scrum, then abandoned it, and the only practice they still exercise is daily meetings. And they even point it as the best thing from Scrum -- no surprise since they dropped every other.
Anyway, daily meetings are all about exchanging information within the team and they aim to make it in a very light-weight way. This means chances are good people will actually see the value. So I'd definitely try this one out.
**However I don't have much hope it is a good starting point to introduce Scrum as a whole.** Starting with Scrum is a revolution for vast majority of teams. Different team model, different process and a bunch of new practices to follow. It's often hard to make transition to Scrum sustainable as people naturally oppose revolutions and that will be the force which would be hard to overcome with step-by-step Scrum implementation.
**If you think about incremental changes of the team Kanban seems as if it's a better tool to support such ongoing change.** Actually Kanban is often dubbed change management approach and, if I understand correctly, that's what you want to do. Kanban also assumes nothing really changes on the day 1, but then unveils issues and incentivize people to improve the way they work. | Yes. Been there, seen that.
Scrum daily meeting makes sense in Scrum because:
* all the team members are interested in making taks done so they track progress and impediments
* there is often a possibility of switching (one person finishes what other started) so they need to track progress and impediments
* they need to use "resources" wisely, so they usually meet more than once a day to switch around tasks and help each other and share knowledge, so they need to know what is going on in team
Without Scrum it sucked (in case I've seen) because:
* each developer was working on his own tasks and could live without knowing what others do (I will do my part)
* they had no reason to speak about impediments as others wasn't interested in helping (they did THEIR tasks), so all the stories was succesfull ones
* they saw no reason in doing daily standups (nobody consulted the situation with them) so most of the time they was saying "I am doing the same I was doing yesterday and I will do it probably for the next two weeks, thank you".
I am not saying standups will not work for you. But have you (I mean managers) asked yourself a questions:
* **why do we want to do it**?
* **what do we expect to get**?
* **is it the right choice to get what we want**?
* **did we spoke with the team about it**?
* **what are the team's suggestions?**
It is probably wise to know the patient's illness before administering drug-which-should-work. |
1,943 | The CEO of our small company (14) asked me to introduce some elements of Scrum into the working process of our development team.
Problem is: the piece he would like to see introduced is not really the main part. It mainly the daily scrum meeting.
The problem is that to introduce Scrum completly would force him to change his own work (constitue backlog, define content of sprints, and so on), and he obviously doesn't want that...
I can see the benefits of introducing these small bits of Scrum. Better communication of the team, mainly, as we have no CTO, it's rather a self-organizing team anyway.
I have also some hopes that ones we have begun with Scrum, we could further integrate the method.
Do you have seen something like this yet? How does it turn out? | 2011/04/28 | [
"https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1943",
"https://pm.stackexchange.com",
"https://pm.stackexchange.com/users/152/"
] | Yes. Been there, seen that.
Scrum daily meeting makes sense in Scrum because:
* all the team members are interested in making taks done so they track progress and impediments
* there is often a possibility of switching (one person finishes what other started) so they need to track progress and impediments
* they need to use "resources" wisely, so they usually meet more than once a day to switch around tasks and help each other and share knowledge, so they need to know what is going on in team
Without Scrum it sucked (in case I've seen) because:
* each developer was working on his own tasks and could live without knowing what others do (I will do my part)
* they had no reason to speak about impediments as others wasn't interested in helping (they did THEIR tasks), so all the stories was succesfull ones
* they saw no reason in doing daily standups (nobody consulted the situation with them) so most of the time they was saying "I am doing the same I was doing yesterday and I will do it probably for the next two weeks, thank you".
I am not saying standups will not work for you. But have you (I mean managers) asked yourself a questions:
* **why do we want to do it**?
* **what do we expect to get**?
* **is it the right choice to get what we want**?
* **did we spoke with the team about it**?
* **what are the team's suggestions?**
It is probably wise to know the patient's illness before administering drug-which-should-work. | Seems like he's really missing the point of Scrum. Just the Daily Scrum is like having just the foam of a cappuccino. Granted it is an integral part of Scrum and it is a great litmus test for how well the team is working together but on it's own it just doesn't make sense. Maybe a communication problem. I wonder if you could go back to your CEO and ask him some open-ended questions about what it is about Scrum that he finds appealing. |
1,943 | The CEO of our small company (14) asked me to introduce some elements of Scrum into the working process of our development team.
Problem is: the piece he would like to see introduced is not really the main part. It mainly the daily scrum meeting.
The problem is that to introduce Scrum completly would force him to change his own work (constitue backlog, define content of sprints, and so on), and he obviously doesn't want that...
I can see the benefits of introducing these small bits of Scrum. Better communication of the team, mainly, as we have no CTO, it's rather a self-organizing team anyway.
I have also some hopes that ones we have begun with Scrum, we could further integrate the method.
Do you have seen something like this yet? How does it turn out? | 2011/04/28 | [
"https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1943",
"https://pm.stackexchange.com",
"https://pm.stackexchange.com/users/152/"
] | Yes. Been there, seen that.
Scrum daily meeting makes sense in Scrum because:
* all the team members are interested in making taks done so they track progress and impediments
* there is often a possibility of switching (one person finishes what other started) so they need to track progress and impediments
* they need to use "resources" wisely, so they usually meet more than once a day to switch around tasks and help each other and share knowledge, so they need to know what is going on in team
Without Scrum it sucked (in case I've seen) because:
* each developer was working on his own tasks and could live without knowing what others do (I will do my part)
* they had no reason to speak about impediments as others wasn't interested in helping (they did THEIR tasks), so all the stories was succesfull ones
* they saw no reason in doing daily standups (nobody consulted the situation with them) so most of the time they was saying "I am doing the same I was doing yesterday and I will do it probably for the next two weeks, thank you".
I am not saying standups will not work for you. But have you (I mean managers) asked yourself a questions:
* **why do we want to do it**?
* **what do we expect to get**?
* **is it the right choice to get what we want**?
* **did we spoke with the team about it**?
* **what are the team's suggestions?**
It is probably wise to know the patient's illness before administering drug-which-should-work. | As they say, every journey begins with a single step.
Look at this as a start and make it a successful proof of concept. |
1,943 | The CEO of our small company (14) asked me to introduce some elements of Scrum into the working process of our development team.
Problem is: the piece he would like to see introduced is not really the main part. It mainly the daily scrum meeting.
The problem is that to introduce Scrum completly would force him to change his own work (constitue backlog, define content of sprints, and so on), and he obviously doesn't want that...
I can see the benefits of introducing these small bits of Scrum. Better communication of the team, mainly, as we have no CTO, it's rather a self-organizing team anyway.
I have also some hopes that ones we have begun with Scrum, we could further integrate the method.
Do you have seen something like this yet? How does it turn out? | 2011/04/28 | [
"https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1943",
"https://pm.stackexchange.com",
"https://pm.stackexchange.com/users/152/"
] | Contrary to Bartosz, **I believe that short, daily meetings are something which actually can perfectly work in many different environments, even when it is virtually the only practice taken from Scrum.**
What more I know teams, and quite a few of them, which tried Scrum, then abandoned it, and the only practice they still exercise is daily meetings. And they even point it as the best thing from Scrum -- no surprise since they dropped every other.
Anyway, daily meetings are all about exchanging information within the team and they aim to make it in a very light-weight way. This means chances are good people will actually see the value. So I'd definitely try this one out.
**However I don't have much hope it is a good starting point to introduce Scrum as a whole.** Starting with Scrum is a revolution for vast majority of teams. Different team model, different process and a bunch of new practices to follow. It's often hard to make transition to Scrum sustainable as people naturally oppose revolutions and that will be the force which would be hard to overcome with step-by-step Scrum implementation.
**If you think about incremental changes of the team Kanban seems as if it's a better tool to support such ongoing change.** Actually Kanban is often dubbed change management approach and, if I understand correctly, that's what you want to do. Kanban also assumes nothing really changes on the day 1, but then unveils issues and incentivize people to improve the way they work. | Seems like he's really missing the point of Scrum. Just the Daily Scrum is like having just the foam of a cappuccino. Granted it is an integral part of Scrum and it is a great litmus test for how well the team is working together but on it's own it just doesn't make sense. Maybe a communication problem. I wonder if you could go back to your CEO and ask him some open-ended questions about what it is about Scrum that he finds appealing. |
1,943 | The CEO of our small company (14) asked me to introduce some elements of Scrum into the working process of our development team.
Problem is: the piece he would like to see introduced is not really the main part. It mainly the daily scrum meeting.
The problem is that to introduce Scrum completly would force him to change his own work (constitue backlog, define content of sprints, and so on), and he obviously doesn't want that...
I can see the benefits of introducing these small bits of Scrum. Better communication of the team, mainly, as we have no CTO, it's rather a self-organizing team anyway.
I have also some hopes that ones we have begun with Scrum, we could further integrate the method.
Do you have seen something like this yet? How does it turn out? | 2011/04/28 | [
"https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/1943",
"https://pm.stackexchange.com",
"https://pm.stackexchange.com/users/152/"
] | Contrary to Bartosz, **I believe that short, daily meetings are something which actually can perfectly work in many different environments, even when it is virtually the only practice taken from Scrum.**
What more I know teams, and quite a few of them, which tried Scrum, then abandoned it, and the only practice they still exercise is daily meetings. And they even point it as the best thing from Scrum -- no surprise since they dropped every other.
Anyway, daily meetings are all about exchanging information within the team and they aim to make it in a very light-weight way. This means chances are good people will actually see the value. So I'd definitely try this one out.
**However I don't have much hope it is a good starting point to introduce Scrum as a whole.** Starting with Scrum is a revolution for vast majority of teams. Different team model, different process and a bunch of new practices to follow. It's often hard to make transition to Scrum sustainable as people naturally oppose revolutions and that will be the force which would be hard to overcome with step-by-step Scrum implementation.
**If you think about incremental changes of the team Kanban seems as if it's a better tool to support such ongoing change.** Actually Kanban is often dubbed change management approach and, if I understand correctly, that's what you want to do. Kanban also assumes nothing really changes on the day 1, but then unveils issues and incentivize people to improve the way they work. | As they say, every journey begins with a single step.
Look at this as a start and make it a successful proof of concept. |
60,611 | I am an amateur bass guitar player. At some point I decided to do something about my lack of theory knowledge.
Now I know a few basic scales and can read sheet music in simple keys (from zero to one to two flats/sharps). I understand in general how chords are built on degrees of the scale and know some basic ones. I understand what V/vii etc chord means. I know where notes on the fretboard are located.
But when it comes to real practice with a band, I'm completely lost. I can't seem to apply this knowledge in the process and reduce to catching roots by ear and playing cliches which often don't match the key and chord, and as I discover it I start alternating them nearly randomly (with the scale in mind if I'm happy enough to see it on the fretboard) until it sounds OK.
**How do I bridge the gap between the theory and practice and start using the knowledge**? | 2017/07/30 | [
"https://music.stackexchange.com/questions/60611",
"https://music.stackexchange.com",
"https://music.stackexchange.com/users/20350/"
] | @GeneralNuisance gets right to the point: music theory is a set of tools to describe music. But, would suggest a different emphasis on how to apply the theory in practice.
I say **first analyze the music you play and listen to**, and become skilled at identifying musical elements. Analyze the connection between the musical elements you can identify and the expressive effect they have. Be cautious about using theory to support the creative process to avoid theory becoming 'the rules of music.' The worst would be misapplying the theory you learn using isolated theory concepts in the wrong context. You might find something innovative... but you might also botch things up. I think it's better to take inspiration from your analysis of real music.
Also, don't mistake theory books for performance method or songwriting books. Theory books will tell **what** to name things. Theory will also explain **why** things work. Ex: the resolution of dissonance/tension gives a forward impulse to music. Method books will show you **how** to do things. Ex: play the chord root on the first beat of a bar in a walking bass line. Theory doesn't tell me to do that. A method book describing the style tells me. But, notice how we can only get the sentence in the method, by understanding the theory terms: chord, root, first beat, and bar.
Theory can illuminate the **why?** in the walking bass example. The root is played on beat one, because it most clearly identifies the chord and helps reinforce the meter. An approach tone is often played on beat 4 (4/4 meter) because a non-chord tone resolving by step to beat one of the next bar give the music forward momentum. Now that we have some musical context we can try to get creative with the application of theory: if the root on beat one is stable, maybe a rest on beat one and hitting the root on beat two an agitated or crazy feel. Try it and then analyze the result. | The funny thing is, it's a lot easier to understand music theory than it is to understand how music theory will help your playing. It follows that spending time understanding the theory is time better spent than time trying to understand how it's helping.
When you're with the band, just put theory out of your mind completely. If you have to think about it, then you're not ready to use it anyway, and it just clogs up what should be an enjoyable an creative endeavour.
Remember that music theory comes from how music is practised, not the other way round. It's far more valuable to notice that C, E and G sound great over C major chords, and that adding a B to that sounds markedly different to adding a Bb, even though they both work (depending on the context). The fact that you're then using C Ionian or C Mixolydian (which differ by one note, namely B/Bb) is only a way to describe what your ears have worked out already.
Play when you're playing, study theory when you're studying, and trust that they will indeed converge and enrich each other. |
60,611 | I am an amateur bass guitar player. At some point I decided to do something about my lack of theory knowledge.
Now I know a few basic scales and can read sheet music in simple keys (from zero to one to two flats/sharps). I understand in general how chords are built on degrees of the scale and know some basic ones. I understand what V/vii etc chord means. I know where notes on the fretboard are located.
But when it comes to real practice with a band, I'm completely lost. I can't seem to apply this knowledge in the process and reduce to catching roots by ear and playing cliches which often don't match the key and chord, and as I discover it I start alternating them nearly randomly (with the scale in mind if I'm happy enough to see it on the fretboard) until it sounds OK.
**How do I bridge the gap between the theory and practice and start using the knowledge**? | 2017/07/30 | [
"https://music.stackexchange.com/questions/60611",
"https://music.stackexchange.com",
"https://music.stackexchange.com/users/20350/"
] | I'm a big fan of Ariane Cap's book "Music Theory for the Bass Player".
[https://www.amazon.com/Music-Theory-Bass-Player-Hands/dp/0996727604](http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0996727604)
She has a full course for it as well (which you can find on her website). But for self-study, the book is excellent. | The funny thing is, it's a lot easier to understand music theory than it is to understand how music theory will help your playing. It follows that spending time understanding the theory is time better spent than time trying to understand how it's helping.
When you're with the band, just put theory out of your mind completely. If you have to think about it, then you're not ready to use it anyway, and it just clogs up what should be an enjoyable an creative endeavour.
Remember that music theory comes from how music is practised, not the other way round. It's far more valuable to notice that C, E and G sound great over C major chords, and that adding a B to that sounds markedly different to adding a Bb, even though they both work (depending on the context). The fact that you're then using C Ionian or C Mixolydian (which differ by one note, namely B/Bb) is only a way to describe what your ears have worked out already.
Play when you're playing, study theory when you're studying, and trust that they will indeed converge and enrich each other. |
60,611 | I am an amateur bass guitar player. At some point I decided to do something about my lack of theory knowledge.
Now I know a few basic scales and can read sheet music in simple keys (from zero to one to two flats/sharps). I understand in general how chords are built on degrees of the scale and know some basic ones. I understand what V/vii etc chord means. I know where notes on the fretboard are located.
But when it comes to real practice with a band, I'm completely lost. I can't seem to apply this knowledge in the process and reduce to catching roots by ear and playing cliches which often don't match the key and chord, and as I discover it I start alternating them nearly randomly (with the scale in mind if I'm happy enough to see it on the fretboard) until it sounds OK.
**How do I bridge the gap between the theory and practice and start using the knowledge**? | 2017/07/30 | [
"https://music.stackexchange.com/questions/60611",
"https://music.stackexchange.com",
"https://music.stackexchange.com/users/20350/"
] | The first, and most important thing:
**Music theory is a set of tools to describe music.**
Theory does not dictate music, music dictates theory.
For example, a time signature on paper does not dictate how the tune will sound, the way the tune sounds will dictate how the time signature is written.
With this understanding comes the ability to apply music theory in a practical way. Music theory is not usually something you use while improvising, and it's not something you think about while performing, it's a language that you can use to describe what you did and to help understand *why* something sounds the way it does.
Instead of trying to learn music theory in a text book, I would learn it by use. Try stuff out. If it sounds good, find out why. It's all fine and good to know what a V/vii chord is, but you'll only use that knowledge practically if you need it for something.
Think of it like a box of tools. If you learn what they're called, what they do, it still won't be practical until you try to build a chest of drawers and you realize you need a way to cut wood, or hammer nails.
Of course, all of this is really easy to type up but harder for you to go out and do. As you go, try to identify different musical concepts that you see/hear. Almost as an aside, having access to a piano or keyboard will absolutely increase your understanding by leaps and bounds.
When you learn a new music theory concept, make sure you learn the "because" of it. *Why* does putting a Bb in a key signature make it F major? Why does slapping a capo on a guitar change its key? This is when connections start forming.
So in short, to make music theory "practical," you must have a use for it first. Learn music theory to solve problems that you encounter. See some of the answers here: [How do we teach music theory well?](https://music.stackexchange.com/questions/50757/how-do-we-teach-music-theory-well) | The funny thing is, it's a lot easier to understand music theory than it is to understand how music theory will help your playing. It follows that spending time understanding the theory is time better spent than time trying to understand how it's helping.
When you're with the band, just put theory out of your mind completely. If you have to think about it, then you're not ready to use it anyway, and it just clogs up what should be an enjoyable an creative endeavour.
Remember that music theory comes from how music is practised, not the other way round. It's far more valuable to notice that C, E and G sound great over C major chords, and that adding a B to that sounds markedly different to adding a Bb, even though they both work (depending on the context). The fact that you're then using C Ionian or C Mixolydian (which differ by one note, namely B/Bb) is only a way to describe what your ears have worked out already.
Play when you're playing, study theory when you're studying, and trust that they will indeed converge and enrich each other. |
60,611 | I am an amateur bass guitar player. At some point I decided to do something about my lack of theory knowledge.
Now I know a few basic scales and can read sheet music in simple keys (from zero to one to two flats/sharps). I understand in general how chords are built on degrees of the scale and know some basic ones. I understand what V/vii etc chord means. I know where notes on the fretboard are located.
But when it comes to real practice with a band, I'm completely lost. I can't seem to apply this knowledge in the process and reduce to catching roots by ear and playing cliches which often don't match the key and chord, and as I discover it I start alternating them nearly randomly (with the scale in mind if I'm happy enough to see it on the fretboard) until it sounds OK.
**How do I bridge the gap between the theory and practice and start using the knowledge**? | 2017/07/30 | [
"https://music.stackexchange.com/questions/60611",
"https://music.stackexchange.com",
"https://music.stackexchange.com/users/20350/"
] | The first, and most important thing:
**Music theory is a set of tools to describe music.**
Theory does not dictate music, music dictates theory.
For example, a time signature on paper does not dictate how the tune will sound, the way the tune sounds will dictate how the time signature is written.
With this understanding comes the ability to apply music theory in a practical way. Music theory is not usually something you use while improvising, and it's not something you think about while performing, it's a language that you can use to describe what you did and to help understand *why* something sounds the way it does.
Instead of trying to learn music theory in a text book, I would learn it by use. Try stuff out. If it sounds good, find out why. It's all fine and good to know what a V/vii chord is, but you'll only use that knowledge practically if you need it for something.
Think of it like a box of tools. If you learn what they're called, what they do, it still won't be practical until you try to build a chest of drawers and you realize you need a way to cut wood, or hammer nails.
Of course, all of this is really easy to type up but harder for you to go out and do. As you go, try to identify different musical concepts that you see/hear. Almost as an aside, having access to a piano or keyboard will absolutely increase your understanding by leaps and bounds.
When you learn a new music theory concept, make sure you learn the "because" of it. *Why* does putting a Bb in a key signature make it F major? Why does slapping a capo on a guitar change its key? This is when connections start forming.
So in short, to make music theory "practical," you must have a use for it first. Learn music theory to solve problems that you encounter. See some of the answers here: [How do we teach music theory well?](https://music.stackexchange.com/questions/50757/how-do-we-teach-music-theory-well) | I'm a big fan of Ariane Cap's book "Music Theory for the Bass Player".
[https://www.amazon.com/Music-Theory-Bass-Player-Hands/dp/0996727604](http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0996727604)
She has a full course for it as well (which you can find on her website). But for self-study, the book is excellent. |
60,611 | I am an amateur bass guitar player. At some point I decided to do something about my lack of theory knowledge.
Now I know a few basic scales and can read sheet music in simple keys (from zero to one to two flats/sharps). I understand in general how chords are built on degrees of the scale and know some basic ones. I understand what V/vii etc chord means. I know where notes on the fretboard are located.
But when it comes to real practice with a band, I'm completely lost. I can't seem to apply this knowledge in the process and reduce to catching roots by ear and playing cliches which often don't match the key and chord, and as I discover it I start alternating them nearly randomly (with the scale in mind if I'm happy enough to see it on the fretboard) until it sounds OK.
**How do I bridge the gap between the theory and practice and start using the knowledge**? | 2017/07/30 | [
"https://music.stackexchange.com/questions/60611",
"https://music.stackexchange.com",
"https://music.stackexchange.com/users/20350/"
] | @GeneralNuisance gets right to the point: music theory is a set of tools to describe music. But, would suggest a different emphasis on how to apply the theory in practice.
I say **first analyze the music you play and listen to**, and become skilled at identifying musical elements. Analyze the connection between the musical elements you can identify and the expressive effect they have. Be cautious about using theory to support the creative process to avoid theory becoming 'the rules of music.' The worst would be misapplying the theory you learn using isolated theory concepts in the wrong context. You might find something innovative... but you might also botch things up. I think it's better to take inspiration from your analysis of real music.
Also, don't mistake theory books for performance method or songwriting books. Theory books will tell **what** to name things. Theory will also explain **why** things work. Ex: the resolution of dissonance/tension gives a forward impulse to music. Method books will show you **how** to do things. Ex: play the chord root on the first beat of a bar in a walking bass line. Theory doesn't tell me to do that. A method book describing the style tells me. But, notice how we can only get the sentence in the method, by understanding the theory terms: chord, root, first beat, and bar.
Theory can illuminate the **why?** in the walking bass example. The root is played on beat one, because it most clearly identifies the chord and helps reinforce the meter. An approach tone is often played on beat 4 (4/4 meter) because a non-chord tone resolving by step to beat one of the next bar give the music forward momentum. Now that we have some musical context we can try to get creative with the application of theory: if the root on beat one is stable, maybe a rest on beat one and hitting the root on beat two an agitated or crazy feel. Try it and then analyze the result. | I'm a big fan of Ariane Cap's book "Music Theory for the Bass Player".
[https://www.amazon.com/Music-Theory-Bass-Player-Hands/dp/0996727604](http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0996727604)
She has a full course for it as well (which you can find on her website). But for self-study, the book is excellent. |
60,611 | I am an amateur bass guitar player. At some point I decided to do something about my lack of theory knowledge.
Now I know a few basic scales and can read sheet music in simple keys (from zero to one to two flats/sharps). I understand in general how chords are built on degrees of the scale and know some basic ones. I understand what V/vii etc chord means. I know where notes on the fretboard are located.
But when it comes to real practice with a band, I'm completely lost. I can't seem to apply this knowledge in the process and reduce to catching roots by ear and playing cliches which often don't match the key and chord, and as I discover it I start alternating them nearly randomly (with the scale in mind if I'm happy enough to see it on the fretboard) until it sounds OK.
**How do I bridge the gap between the theory and practice and start using the knowledge**? | 2017/07/30 | [
"https://music.stackexchange.com/questions/60611",
"https://music.stackexchange.com",
"https://music.stackexchange.com/users/20350/"
] | write musical analysis of your favorite bass lines, many bass players play Bach and other classical music which have plenty of writings of musical theory explaining them, train your ears to develop stable relative and absolute pitch and clear sense of harmonies, play a fretless contrabass, however it is an expensive and loud toy... | The funny thing is, it's a lot easier to understand music theory than it is to understand how music theory will help your playing. It follows that spending time understanding the theory is time better spent than time trying to understand how it's helping.
When you're with the band, just put theory out of your mind completely. If you have to think about it, then you're not ready to use it anyway, and it just clogs up what should be an enjoyable an creative endeavour.
Remember that music theory comes from how music is practised, not the other way round. It's far more valuable to notice that C, E and G sound great over C major chords, and that adding a B to that sounds markedly different to adding a Bb, even though they both work (depending on the context). The fact that you're then using C Ionian or C Mixolydian (which differ by one note, namely B/Bb) is only a way to describe what your ears have worked out already.
Play when you're playing, study theory when you're studying, and trust that they will indeed converge and enrich each other. |
6,281 | I am working from home this weekend. I am a developer and I have created a program that purges records at the click of a button. The entire process take after clicking about 12 hours to complete. I need to check in on the progress from time to time just in case there are any unexpected errors thrown. So in the beginning stages of the program there were several starts and stops fix something start over again.
But, now I don't think there will be anymore errors and this weekend I expect the program to run without issue from end to end. I am still monitoring the program and have kept it on a second monitor running for 6+ hours.
How would I bill for this time although I am not physically writing code I am technically working ?
I would feel guilty to bill for the entire 12 hours while I watch a movie on one screen and monitoring the program in the other.
Also, note that I will need to run this program 7 more times which would be a total 96 approx hours. | 2016/11/26 | [
"https://freelancing.stackexchange.com/questions/6281",
"https://freelancing.stackexchange.com",
"https://freelancing.stackexchange.com/users/15524/"
] | Test actions in developments states is also a developer job in order to release or apply for approval, I wouldn't feel guilty at all, you did the code before (I suppose) and now you're at test phase. If you still think it doesn't worth huge bill then just do some simple math:
bill = (hours\_of\_work \* min\_payrate\_you\_willing\_to\_acept) + taxes\_if\_any;
Hope it was helpful. | Got cable? A phone (without a "minute" plan). You pay for *availability*. The phone company and cable company really don't care if you use the service or not, and they're not charging a fraction of the monthly fee if you don't utilize the service.
Likewise: if you have to be **available** for the process to run from start to finish, charge for the entire time span. That's business. |
246,534 | I used the "rolling eyes" emoji available in my iOS keyboard in a social media post, but was dismayed to find that it isn't available on my Chrome on windows 7 computer. While I could install fonts/extensions/etc to "fix" the problem on my computer's end, I actually want all my social media audience (such as it is) to enjoy all of my posts.
Is there a list or resource that shows which iOS emoji's are available broadly on windows 7+ and osx with IE, Chrome, and Firefox, and on iOS 5+ and Android 4+?
If not, can we make one here in a single wiki style answer? | 2016/07/19 | [
"https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/246534",
"https://apple.stackexchange.com",
"https://apple.stackexchange.com/users/219/"
] | You can see a full comparison of most current platforms at <https://emojipedia.org>
but only as far back as [Windows 8.0](https://emojipedia.org/microsoft/windows-8.0/)
For Windows 7: <http://classic.getemoji.com> | I'd be surprised to find anyone compiling such info for the nearly 2000 emoji for old os's. In any case, display depends primarily on the local font installed, so if fonts can be added, more emoji can normally be displayed on any OS. See this chart for some info:
<http://unicode.org/emoji/charts/full-emoji-list.html> |
30,098 | I find it very difficult to make strong research proposals, where I am trying to convince the audience that my proposal is important (possibly *more important* than the other applicants'). I write "grant applications" in quotes, because that is the most straightforward example: In these, it is typically expected that you not only describe your idea in a way that the reviewer will easily understand and comprehend, but also convince them that the research is important and worth funding (especially with grants where the majority of applications are rejected). This feature is not limited to only grants: I think fellowship applications, PhD applications (whether they require a research proposal explicitly, or implicitly through statements of purpose with concrete research plans embedded in them being more effective), postdoc job applications and perhaps even junior faculty member applications are very similar in that one must propose a research project, and make it sound important besides merely communicating clearly.
Whenever I need to write such a proposal, I inevitably feel stuck. I immediately become anxious that my research is not all that interesting, I'm not really all that great a scientist, and feel that I must work very hard to make my proposal sound like it is more important than it is if I am to have a fighting chance. This is scary, and I end up procrastinating for many days on the writing. I tell myself that I am "waiting to be in the right sort of creative, inventive, intellectual, scientific mental state", but I secretly know this is nonsense. There are 3 very strong antitheses:
1. All the creative persons across the spectrum of fields (from artists to writers to inventors and engineers to mathematicians and scientists) appear in unanimous agreement that it is "1% inspiration and 99% perspiration". I have never heard anyone worth mention claim that "waiting for inspiration to come" is an effective strategy.
2. The inspiration that I supposedly await has an uncanny habit of materializing exactly on the night before the proposal deadline, at 3 AM in the morning, such that if it came just a little later I would not have been able to make it to the deadline.
3. When I do finish the proposal, I am almost universally satisfied that the result doesn't sound unimportant, and could have been brilliant if only I had started a bit earlier and made more rewrites.
I think the more realistic explanation is that at some point the fear of missing the deadline becomes so great that it overpowers my anxiety. However, I think it would be better if I could do away with the anxiety, so I could start work way before the deadline, and have time to make many revisions and avoid having to pull all-nighters.
How can I get over this anxiety? By way of showing *what I have tried*:
* Gaming antithesis #2 above: Setting an early deadline, so that it forces me to get started, then obtaining an extension on the deadline in which time I can make revisions, now that I have gotten over the most difficult initial step. Unfortunately, the moment I obtain the extension, the anxiety comes back and saps my motivation. This happens even if the extension happens as a surprise.
* "Just start by writing *anything*, and rewrite later" - this is very hard to force myself to do, because I feel like my ideas are hopelessly irrelevant and there's no point in even trying. Even if I do force myself to jot down a very rough outline, it is just as hard to motivate myself to keep refining it, because I feel that no matter how much I refine it, it will still be irrelevant.
* Ask friends and colleagues for feedback - very effective for making a mediocre proposal good, but useless for starting out: I get even more anxious because I worry about embarrassing myself to other people.
* Build up tolerance by repeated attempts - I have gone through the proposal writing process quite a few times, but the experience doesn't appear to have made it any easier. I feel like even if I had been awarded a thousand grants, I would still say to myself, "Man, you may have had a good run in your day, but this time you've lost it - this is the stupidest idea you've ever had".
* [How do I overcome fear of rejection when writing academic papers?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/3242/244) - the suggestion to follow the example of good papers is hard to apply, because proposals are often confidential. The remark about "reaching a certain level of maturity" also seems to not apply, because surely a project that is only at the idea stage is anything but mature?
* [What is expected when "novel" and "innovative" ideas are requested as part of a research grant application?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/16198) - very related, but there are many grant schemes which emphasize impact and importance (often without defining them) over innovation.
Oddly enough, I **don't** feel insecure about other aspects of science. I don't hesitate to do research because of self-doubt, I'm not shy about telling other people about my research (so long as the only requirement is that they understand it, and it doesn't matter if they don't think it's important), I think I do a decent job of communicating my ideas clearly and I sincerely believe that given my level of competence I have a good chance of solving the problems I am working on. Obviously, I think my research is worth doing - otherwise I wouldn't be doing it.
It is only when convincing someone else that my research is important that I stumble. I tend to imagine a grant reviewer saying to me, "Okay, this is all very nice and good, but applicant X over there wants the same grant so he can cure cancer and end world hunger. Why should we fund you and not him?" Of course, this is like saying "why should we fund NASA when we could be feeding the poor" - these aren't mutually exclusive pursuits, and just because you aim high doesn't mean you'll go high. But still, there are millions of scientists out there, and just statistically some of them are probably much smarter and more knowledgeable than me. Honestly, it seems very likely that many of them work on more important things than me. Probably some of them apply for the same grant. So how can I sit there and write a proposal, pretending that I seriously think I should be the one to get funded instead of all these other people?
Sorry if this sounds like more of a request for moral support than a question. In my defense, I think that the difficulty of "selling your ideas" is a common problem for at least a non-trivial subset of scientists (captured quite well by "impostor syndrome") and discussing strategies to overcome it would be a good addition to the site. | 2014/10/17 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30098",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/244/"
] | My solution is to work with collaborators.
If you're writing a proposal together with others then you can workshop ideas together, pick each others' spirits up when you go down, have somebody who you "owe" progress to as an external motivator, and make writing schedules that you have to keep. You can also aim for much more interesting and ambitious projects when you combine complementary skills and capabilities. | I suspect any answer will be highly specific to individual psychology.
There have been four things I found useful. The first was to do a good project plan for a grant and to convince myself that *everything* needed to be done to a high standard. Once I have a list of every piece of nigh-meaningless paperwork that needs doing, panic/inspiration tends to flow several months before the due date. And, in practice, it helps cope with writers block because putting together random patient-related boilerplate and laboratory descriptions lets my mind wander while still progressing towards grant completion. Anxiety (or even consciousness) is nigh-impossible while working on a human subjects section.
The second was to read a few granted proposals in my field. There are an awful lot of funded studies that just don't appear at all promising. And the feeling of 'well, I suck', but less than the people who put together grant XYZ is strangely empowering.
The third was to acquire a book describing recommended formats for grant proposals and approach grant writing in a very formulaic way. Okay, a paragraph describing prior work....blah blah blah. Okay, hypothesis... For me, it reduces anxiety by transforming the writing process from promoting my research to filling in the blanks on a long and frustrating form.
The last was to just kind of divorce myself from the whole project and gamify it a bit. Think of writing the grant as preparing a presentation to convince people that something should be done without worrying about whether or not it is actually worthwhile. And pretend you're doing it for someone else. Things also go faster if I reward myself with bathroom breaks upon section completion. Perhaps this is TMI, but it really works. |
30,098 | I find it very difficult to make strong research proposals, where I am trying to convince the audience that my proposal is important (possibly *more important* than the other applicants'). I write "grant applications" in quotes, because that is the most straightforward example: In these, it is typically expected that you not only describe your idea in a way that the reviewer will easily understand and comprehend, but also convince them that the research is important and worth funding (especially with grants where the majority of applications are rejected). This feature is not limited to only grants: I think fellowship applications, PhD applications (whether they require a research proposal explicitly, or implicitly through statements of purpose with concrete research plans embedded in them being more effective), postdoc job applications and perhaps even junior faculty member applications are very similar in that one must propose a research project, and make it sound important besides merely communicating clearly.
Whenever I need to write such a proposal, I inevitably feel stuck. I immediately become anxious that my research is not all that interesting, I'm not really all that great a scientist, and feel that I must work very hard to make my proposal sound like it is more important than it is if I am to have a fighting chance. This is scary, and I end up procrastinating for many days on the writing. I tell myself that I am "waiting to be in the right sort of creative, inventive, intellectual, scientific mental state", but I secretly know this is nonsense. There are 3 very strong antitheses:
1. All the creative persons across the spectrum of fields (from artists to writers to inventors and engineers to mathematicians and scientists) appear in unanimous agreement that it is "1% inspiration and 99% perspiration". I have never heard anyone worth mention claim that "waiting for inspiration to come" is an effective strategy.
2. The inspiration that I supposedly await has an uncanny habit of materializing exactly on the night before the proposal deadline, at 3 AM in the morning, such that if it came just a little later I would not have been able to make it to the deadline.
3. When I do finish the proposal, I am almost universally satisfied that the result doesn't sound unimportant, and could have been brilliant if only I had started a bit earlier and made more rewrites.
I think the more realistic explanation is that at some point the fear of missing the deadline becomes so great that it overpowers my anxiety. However, I think it would be better if I could do away with the anxiety, so I could start work way before the deadline, and have time to make many revisions and avoid having to pull all-nighters.
How can I get over this anxiety? By way of showing *what I have tried*:
* Gaming antithesis #2 above: Setting an early deadline, so that it forces me to get started, then obtaining an extension on the deadline in which time I can make revisions, now that I have gotten over the most difficult initial step. Unfortunately, the moment I obtain the extension, the anxiety comes back and saps my motivation. This happens even if the extension happens as a surprise.
* "Just start by writing *anything*, and rewrite later" - this is very hard to force myself to do, because I feel like my ideas are hopelessly irrelevant and there's no point in even trying. Even if I do force myself to jot down a very rough outline, it is just as hard to motivate myself to keep refining it, because I feel that no matter how much I refine it, it will still be irrelevant.
* Ask friends and colleagues for feedback - very effective for making a mediocre proposal good, but useless for starting out: I get even more anxious because I worry about embarrassing myself to other people.
* Build up tolerance by repeated attempts - I have gone through the proposal writing process quite a few times, but the experience doesn't appear to have made it any easier. I feel like even if I had been awarded a thousand grants, I would still say to myself, "Man, you may have had a good run in your day, but this time you've lost it - this is the stupidest idea you've ever had".
* [How do I overcome fear of rejection when writing academic papers?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/3242/244) - the suggestion to follow the example of good papers is hard to apply, because proposals are often confidential. The remark about "reaching a certain level of maturity" also seems to not apply, because surely a project that is only at the idea stage is anything but mature?
* [What is expected when "novel" and "innovative" ideas are requested as part of a research grant application?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/16198) - very related, but there are many grant schemes which emphasize impact and importance (often without defining them) over innovation.
Oddly enough, I **don't** feel insecure about other aspects of science. I don't hesitate to do research because of self-doubt, I'm not shy about telling other people about my research (so long as the only requirement is that they understand it, and it doesn't matter if they don't think it's important), I think I do a decent job of communicating my ideas clearly and I sincerely believe that given my level of competence I have a good chance of solving the problems I am working on. Obviously, I think my research is worth doing - otherwise I wouldn't be doing it.
It is only when convincing someone else that my research is important that I stumble. I tend to imagine a grant reviewer saying to me, "Okay, this is all very nice and good, but applicant X over there wants the same grant so he can cure cancer and end world hunger. Why should we fund you and not him?" Of course, this is like saying "why should we fund NASA when we could be feeding the poor" - these aren't mutually exclusive pursuits, and just because you aim high doesn't mean you'll go high. But still, there are millions of scientists out there, and just statistically some of them are probably much smarter and more knowledgeable than me. Honestly, it seems very likely that many of them work on more important things than me. Probably some of them apply for the same grant. So how can I sit there and write a proposal, pretending that I seriously think I should be the one to get funded instead of all these other people?
Sorry if this sounds like more of a request for moral support than a question. In my defense, I think that the difficulty of "selling your ideas" is a common problem for at least a non-trivial subset of scientists (captured quite well by "impostor syndrome") and discussing strategies to overcome it would be a good addition to the site. | 2014/10/17 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30098",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/244/"
] | My solution is to work with collaborators.
If you're writing a proposal together with others then you can workshop ideas together, pick each others' spirits up when you go down, have somebody who you "owe" progress to as an external motivator, and make writing schedules that you have to keep. You can also aim for much more interesting and ambitious projects when you combine complementary skills and capabilities. | TLDR;
In the end, I [highly recommend the book](http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0738211702), and the following
1. Be kinder to yourself in your own head - if someone else said to you "they do important work and you do nothing important" you'd probably be inclined to smack them in the mouth. Yet if you say it to yourself, you probably accept it.
2. Accept that this is a complex and real problem, and instant success is not reasonable - so don't beat yourself up when you run into the problem again.
3. Try to shift your view of yourself to be based upon your resilience, creativity, and persistence - which are in your control - rather than factors like "grant approved" that are much less in your control.
4. Realize that you can do better in the future, but only by making adjustments that address your own personal real issue and not merely distract from it.
5. Your importance, intelligence, and abilities were established and verified a long time ago, and are not up for debate or re-interpretation. Problems you face now aren't because of any of these traits or behaviors.
6. Like any good experiment, let results dictate whether or not a method is effective for you, not preconceived notions or rapidly changing feelings.
---
There is no one easy trick that will solve your procrastination - but that doesn't mean it is an insolvable problem. I personally have found that thinking there is some trick actually made the problem worse, because it trivialized the problem.
"This isn't so hard, I just need to do X", I would tell myself. When actually doing X was hard, or didn't solve the problem, then I felt even worse than before - because if I can't even do X, I must an even bigger mess than I thought! This is a terribly cruel thing to do to ourselves - please try not to punish yourself in this way.
Procrastination is not a simple thing, nor is it a sign of stupidity, laziness, moral decline, unfitness, or any other such thing. If this is a problem for you, then I strongly recommend this book: [Procrastination: Why You Do It, What To Do About It Now](http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0738211702). I owe much of what I have learned to this excellent tome, and to my own struggles with the practice - it is written by two PhDs who've worked specifically in the area of academic and professional procrastination, and there's a vanishingly small amount of pop-nonsense in the book (I have very little tolerance for such things).
---
You have already hit upon a very important realization, which is that the core of most procrastination activity is fear - fear we aren't good enough, smart enough, worthy enough. But this isn't the only kind of fear a person can have, such as fear of success, fear of being judged, fear of competition, etc. Everyone has their own unique sets of fears.
It is important to understand that procrastination is a sometimes useful, and sometimes mal-adaptive strategy to get what we want. Sometimes we get what we want in the short-term, but not the-long term, and this sort of procrastination is a perfect example - and we need to understand both why it works and why it doesn't work.
One thing that really drew my attention is this phrase:
>
> ...could have been brilliant if only I had started a bit earlier...
>
>
>
This is called "self-handicapping", and ultimately it allows us to protect ourselves from fear. If we wait until the last minute and don't succeed, then we don't need to take that personally- if only we had started sooner, we'd have succeeded! It's not us, it's the delay. On the other hand if we succeed, then we are double great, because we practically phoned that one in and still won - we must really be something! Waiting until the last minute increases the perceived reward AND lowers the perceived risk - no wander it's such a compelling strategy!
But ultimately both reasonings serve to do one thing: protect ourselves from a reality that is frightening. What if we do our absolute best, and still fail?
One way of dealing with this is attacking the fear directly - what if you do your best to write a great grant app, and they still reject you? Go ahead and explain this in a way that is non-threatening - they get a lot of great grant requests, the program directors are morons, they probably just pick grants by throwing darts at a board, budget cutbacks (politicians/administrators/taxpayers are morons)...go ahead and explain the rejection now, in way you believe that doesn't include ripping yourself to shreds.
Or you can accept responsability, but do so in a fair way - you may have failed to communicate the nature of your proposed work in a way they understood, but that doesn't mean you aren't good at your job or smart - you just need to persevere at an inherently difficult task. You can also point out to yourself that you aren't just writing one single grant request (you aren't, right?), and so while the individual chance of each one succeeding might not be great you have a far higher chance of one of your many requests being approved.
In this way you can reduce the fear that this specific grant request is do or die, and so it isn't so bad because it's not scary and you do non-scary things all the time, right? For some people and in some cases, this works nicely, but it's not your only strategy.
---
Another mutually-helpful approach is hit on in your own realization:
>
> I have never heard anyone worth mention claim that "waiting for
> inspiration to come" is an effective strategy
>
>
>
This is a great observation, and I've heard this called "the motivation fairy". The belief is that we just need to lie in wait for the motivation fairy, and it will appear and grant us the motivation we need to work!
The problem is that, as you noticed, this isn't how motivation really works. It turns out that motivation is not really something that comes before the work - **motivation is produced by working!** This seemed crazy to me, but the more I thought about it the more it fit my experience. I never feel the most motivated before I start something, but rather it's while I'm in the middle of doing something and making progress and feeling good about the work I'm actually doing! Motivation fundamentally is not forward-looking thing like "hope", but rather it is like the flames of a camp fire - people gather around it to warm up, but it was created initially by working hard in the cold! First comes the work, then come the flames.
The third and most useful tactic I've personally used is this: realize that how you feel about doing something does not particularly control the quality of output of your work, nor whether or not you should do it.
Much like the previous issue with motivation, I thought I should feel a certain way about my work before I started. This is a version of perfectionism - the feeling that everything should be "just so" before you do something. I mean, I've read that brilliant people eat a balanced breakfast and take an afternoon nap, and I ate beef jerky for breakfast and had to work all afternoon - so surely I should just skip this and try to have a better day tomorrow so I can do this work, right? I mean, I don't even want to do it, and surely the work will be terrible with this attitude.
The truth is that work is more like a game of American Football (or Rugby for everyone else in the world) or a broadway show - it doesn't really matter what the weather is or how you feel that day, the game/show must go on regardless.
With much effort I have begun to realize that I really suck at predicting the output of my own work based upon my feelings, desires, and emotions. Sometimes I produce an A+ paper with a fever and a stomach full of Pepto-Bismal, and sometimes everything is going my way and I churn out 10 pages that had nothing to do with what I was actually supposed to be doing. Sometimes I'm super-excited about a subject and just can't "get it", and sometimes I breeze through material I couldn't care less about.
I was amazed to find that some people hear such an explanation and think, "yeah, that's how life works - how did you think it works?" Well, I thought work was something people got all worked up and excited about, looked forward to, then jumped into and made continual progress on up until a conclusion they were terribly satisfied with.
Apparently people laugh at such a fanciful world-view, but that's how many of us still think work is supposed to go, and we get mad at ourselves and feel doomed or like failures when the reality is all messy and we feel grumpy but we are still supposed to work on something we just don't feel like doing today (or this week, month...).
Decoupling "what I feel like doing" from "what I should do" from "what I am going to do now" is really hard, but over the last decade I think I've gotten better at it. But jeeze, I put in a lot of effort and I often flounder around in my chair and say, "gahhh, I don't wannnnaaaaa!" for a while. Sometimes I get over it and get work done, and then I'm amazed at how quickly I forget about the whole episode and my work output seems to have little relation whatsoever to my feelings at the time.
---
Before wrapping up I want to hit on one more time-honored way we punish ourselves: false disadvantageous comparisons
>
> "Okay, this is all very nice and good, but applicant X over there
> wants the same grant so he can cure cancer and end world hunger. Why
> should we fund you and not him?"
>
>
>
These sorts of comparisons are very common, and notice how incredibly unfair they are? But notice also how they are thrown out there and left unquestioned, as if they are obviously true and we should feel like failures in comparison for our puny efforts.
But that's just it - one of our greatest enemies is unquestioned assumptions, and so we should apply our argumentative skills against these things too.
First, of all, are you in fact competing directly with people who aim to cure cancer and/or end world hunger? If you aren't competing with these people, then that's silly - you're winning doesn't take money away from them, because the grant you want can't possibly take money away from them.
But let's say you are competing with them. Obviously they should win, right? But wait, if a grant request that's competing with you will win, then you have nothing to fear by writing a great request because even an idiot would know they have the better request and they'd get funded anyway. And come to think of it, haven't people been trying to cure cancer and end world hunger for a long time - so why haven't they? Is it because people like me want grants for something else?
It turns out that world hunger is a great example, because without our realizing people did already solve the problem we thought we had. We now have more food in the world than we need, but some people go without - why? Because it turns out that the world is complicated, and things like war, social justice, economic systems, and corruption mean that solving world hunger isn't so clearly solvable. It's going to take a lot of work in more fields than we ever imagined to make more progress, from psychology, sociology, economics, engineering, political science, and probably a lot of more fields than that.
Cancer, too, it turns out is complex and is caused by many things, and we can't cure it because there is a lot about the human body and chemistry we just don't understand. If it was an easy problem, we'd have solved it already. If we spent 100% of our yearly grant money only on cancer research, it's not clear that we could cure any form of it because we might not know enough about basic processes to be able to solve the problem yet.
This is also true of war, social justice, poverty, space exploration/colonization, and any other such major problem. They exist because they are hard problems, and it seems the webs of the world are very twisted indeed. And so we spread out our search for knowledge and advancement over many fields, in the hopes that one day the web will expand far enough to allow us to solve a previously insolvable problem - though we have no idea how long it might take or what field or what person will be responsible for the key insight.
So, with this said, who are you actually competing with - based on successful grant requests - and based on last years winners (when this data is available) surely some will seem amazing to you, and some will seem stupid and unimportant. Grants aren't noble prizes, and some people get money for stuff you couldn't care less about. Some are important, some will turn out to be outright failures, some good things will get funded and some bad ones will too.
And at the end of the day, this might make you feel better or not, but it might not matter because these are often just excuses we tell ourselves to rationalize our aversions to fear and our habits of waiting for the right moment.
---
The book mentioned previously has about 200-300 pages of very useful and helpful tips and information beyond anything I could possibly summarize here, so please consider making it a part of your daily reading routine if quick-fixes prove ineffective or short-lived (they almost always are). It's a process of developing tools, retraining yourself, and building up psyche-muscles.
Procrastination behaviors, anxiety, and fears all have their appropriate place in life, and can get out of hand and become hurtful to our well-being; they can also be put back into their rightful place, and that requires diligent effort over a significant period of time.
Good luck, and fight the good fight! |
30,098 | I find it very difficult to make strong research proposals, where I am trying to convince the audience that my proposal is important (possibly *more important* than the other applicants'). I write "grant applications" in quotes, because that is the most straightforward example: In these, it is typically expected that you not only describe your idea in a way that the reviewer will easily understand and comprehend, but also convince them that the research is important and worth funding (especially with grants where the majority of applications are rejected). This feature is not limited to only grants: I think fellowship applications, PhD applications (whether they require a research proposal explicitly, or implicitly through statements of purpose with concrete research plans embedded in them being more effective), postdoc job applications and perhaps even junior faculty member applications are very similar in that one must propose a research project, and make it sound important besides merely communicating clearly.
Whenever I need to write such a proposal, I inevitably feel stuck. I immediately become anxious that my research is not all that interesting, I'm not really all that great a scientist, and feel that I must work very hard to make my proposal sound like it is more important than it is if I am to have a fighting chance. This is scary, and I end up procrastinating for many days on the writing. I tell myself that I am "waiting to be in the right sort of creative, inventive, intellectual, scientific mental state", but I secretly know this is nonsense. There are 3 very strong antitheses:
1. All the creative persons across the spectrum of fields (from artists to writers to inventors and engineers to mathematicians and scientists) appear in unanimous agreement that it is "1% inspiration and 99% perspiration". I have never heard anyone worth mention claim that "waiting for inspiration to come" is an effective strategy.
2. The inspiration that I supposedly await has an uncanny habit of materializing exactly on the night before the proposal deadline, at 3 AM in the morning, such that if it came just a little later I would not have been able to make it to the deadline.
3. When I do finish the proposal, I am almost universally satisfied that the result doesn't sound unimportant, and could have been brilliant if only I had started a bit earlier and made more rewrites.
I think the more realistic explanation is that at some point the fear of missing the deadline becomes so great that it overpowers my anxiety. However, I think it would be better if I could do away with the anxiety, so I could start work way before the deadline, and have time to make many revisions and avoid having to pull all-nighters.
How can I get over this anxiety? By way of showing *what I have tried*:
* Gaming antithesis #2 above: Setting an early deadline, so that it forces me to get started, then obtaining an extension on the deadline in which time I can make revisions, now that I have gotten over the most difficult initial step. Unfortunately, the moment I obtain the extension, the anxiety comes back and saps my motivation. This happens even if the extension happens as a surprise.
* "Just start by writing *anything*, and rewrite later" - this is very hard to force myself to do, because I feel like my ideas are hopelessly irrelevant and there's no point in even trying. Even if I do force myself to jot down a very rough outline, it is just as hard to motivate myself to keep refining it, because I feel that no matter how much I refine it, it will still be irrelevant.
* Ask friends and colleagues for feedback - very effective for making a mediocre proposal good, but useless for starting out: I get even more anxious because I worry about embarrassing myself to other people.
* Build up tolerance by repeated attempts - I have gone through the proposal writing process quite a few times, but the experience doesn't appear to have made it any easier. I feel like even if I had been awarded a thousand grants, I would still say to myself, "Man, you may have had a good run in your day, but this time you've lost it - this is the stupidest idea you've ever had".
* [How do I overcome fear of rejection when writing academic papers?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/3242/244) - the suggestion to follow the example of good papers is hard to apply, because proposals are often confidential. The remark about "reaching a certain level of maturity" also seems to not apply, because surely a project that is only at the idea stage is anything but mature?
* [What is expected when "novel" and "innovative" ideas are requested as part of a research grant application?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/16198) - very related, but there are many grant schemes which emphasize impact and importance (often without defining them) over innovation.
Oddly enough, I **don't** feel insecure about other aspects of science. I don't hesitate to do research because of self-doubt, I'm not shy about telling other people about my research (so long as the only requirement is that they understand it, and it doesn't matter if they don't think it's important), I think I do a decent job of communicating my ideas clearly and I sincerely believe that given my level of competence I have a good chance of solving the problems I am working on. Obviously, I think my research is worth doing - otherwise I wouldn't be doing it.
It is only when convincing someone else that my research is important that I stumble. I tend to imagine a grant reviewer saying to me, "Okay, this is all very nice and good, but applicant X over there wants the same grant so he can cure cancer and end world hunger. Why should we fund you and not him?" Of course, this is like saying "why should we fund NASA when we could be feeding the poor" - these aren't mutually exclusive pursuits, and just because you aim high doesn't mean you'll go high. But still, there are millions of scientists out there, and just statistically some of them are probably much smarter and more knowledgeable than me. Honestly, it seems very likely that many of them work on more important things than me. Probably some of them apply for the same grant. So how can I sit there and write a proposal, pretending that I seriously think I should be the one to get funded instead of all these other people?
Sorry if this sounds like more of a request for moral support than a question. In my defense, I think that the difficulty of "selling your ideas" is a common problem for at least a non-trivial subset of scientists (captured quite well by "impostor syndrome") and discussing strategies to overcome it would be a good addition to the site. | 2014/10/17 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30098",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/244/"
] | My solution is to work with collaborators.
If you're writing a proposal together with others then you can workshop ideas together, pick each others' spirits up when you go down, have somebody who you "owe" progress to as an external motivator, and make writing schedules that you have to keep. You can also aim for much more interesting and ambitious projects when you combine complementary skills and capabilities. | Wow, great ideas here. Here's a small suggestion. It is sometimes easier for me to get a project off my desk if I use it as a way to procrastinate about some *other* project. Perhaps you could harness that idea and cook up some project that you *really should be doing*, but which does not appeal to you -- and then you might feel tempted to work on the research proposal as a way of avoiding the other thing.
My main contribution has to do with how OCD is treated. There are two steps:
1. Name the fear -- preferably something that will help you laugh at it.
2. Talk back to it.
There is a very nice segment on a This American Life podcast that illustrates #2, done in a novel way, as a DIY project, without a therapist. If you don't want to listen to it, you can read the transcript here: <http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/545/transcript>
(Scroll down to Act Four. Mailer Demon.) |
30,098 | I find it very difficult to make strong research proposals, where I am trying to convince the audience that my proposal is important (possibly *more important* than the other applicants'). I write "grant applications" in quotes, because that is the most straightforward example: In these, it is typically expected that you not only describe your idea in a way that the reviewer will easily understand and comprehend, but also convince them that the research is important and worth funding (especially with grants where the majority of applications are rejected). This feature is not limited to only grants: I think fellowship applications, PhD applications (whether they require a research proposal explicitly, or implicitly through statements of purpose with concrete research plans embedded in them being more effective), postdoc job applications and perhaps even junior faculty member applications are very similar in that one must propose a research project, and make it sound important besides merely communicating clearly.
Whenever I need to write such a proposal, I inevitably feel stuck. I immediately become anxious that my research is not all that interesting, I'm not really all that great a scientist, and feel that I must work very hard to make my proposal sound like it is more important than it is if I am to have a fighting chance. This is scary, and I end up procrastinating for many days on the writing. I tell myself that I am "waiting to be in the right sort of creative, inventive, intellectual, scientific mental state", but I secretly know this is nonsense. There are 3 very strong antitheses:
1. All the creative persons across the spectrum of fields (from artists to writers to inventors and engineers to mathematicians and scientists) appear in unanimous agreement that it is "1% inspiration and 99% perspiration". I have never heard anyone worth mention claim that "waiting for inspiration to come" is an effective strategy.
2. The inspiration that I supposedly await has an uncanny habit of materializing exactly on the night before the proposal deadline, at 3 AM in the morning, such that if it came just a little later I would not have been able to make it to the deadline.
3. When I do finish the proposal, I am almost universally satisfied that the result doesn't sound unimportant, and could have been brilliant if only I had started a bit earlier and made more rewrites.
I think the more realistic explanation is that at some point the fear of missing the deadline becomes so great that it overpowers my anxiety. However, I think it would be better if I could do away with the anxiety, so I could start work way before the deadline, and have time to make many revisions and avoid having to pull all-nighters.
How can I get over this anxiety? By way of showing *what I have tried*:
* Gaming antithesis #2 above: Setting an early deadline, so that it forces me to get started, then obtaining an extension on the deadline in which time I can make revisions, now that I have gotten over the most difficult initial step. Unfortunately, the moment I obtain the extension, the anxiety comes back and saps my motivation. This happens even if the extension happens as a surprise.
* "Just start by writing *anything*, and rewrite later" - this is very hard to force myself to do, because I feel like my ideas are hopelessly irrelevant and there's no point in even trying. Even if I do force myself to jot down a very rough outline, it is just as hard to motivate myself to keep refining it, because I feel that no matter how much I refine it, it will still be irrelevant.
* Ask friends and colleagues for feedback - very effective for making a mediocre proposal good, but useless for starting out: I get even more anxious because I worry about embarrassing myself to other people.
* Build up tolerance by repeated attempts - I have gone through the proposal writing process quite a few times, but the experience doesn't appear to have made it any easier. I feel like even if I had been awarded a thousand grants, I would still say to myself, "Man, you may have had a good run in your day, but this time you've lost it - this is the stupidest idea you've ever had".
* [How do I overcome fear of rejection when writing academic papers?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/3242/244) - the suggestion to follow the example of good papers is hard to apply, because proposals are often confidential. The remark about "reaching a certain level of maturity" also seems to not apply, because surely a project that is only at the idea stage is anything but mature?
* [What is expected when "novel" and "innovative" ideas are requested as part of a research grant application?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/16198) - very related, but there are many grant schemes which emphasize impact and importance (often without defining them) over innovation.
Oddly enough, I **don't** feel insecure about other aspects of science. I don't hesitate to do research because of self-doubt, I'm not shy about telling other people about my research (so long as the only requirement is that they understand it, and it doesn't matter if they don't think it's important), I think I do a decent job of communicating my ideas clearly and I sincerely believe that given my level of competence I have a good chance of solving the problems I am working on. Obviously, I think my research is worth doing - otherwise I wouldn't be doing it.
It is only when convincing someone else that my research is important that I stumble. I tend to imagine a grant reviewer saying to me, "Okay, this is all very nice and good, but applicant X over there wants the same grant so he can cure cancer and end world hunger. Why should we fund you and not him?" Of course, this is like saying "why should we fund NASA when we could be feeding the poor" - these aren't mutually exclusive pursuits, and just because you aim high doesn't mean you'll go high. But still, there are millions of scientists out there, and just statistically some of them are probably much smarter and more knowledgeable than me. Honestly, it seems very likely that many of them work on more important things than me. Probably some of them apply for the same grant. So how can I sit there and write a proposal, pretending that I seriously think I should be the one to get funded instead of all these other people?
Sorry if this sounds like more of a request for moral support than a question. In my defense, I think that the difficulty of "selling your ideas" is a common problem for at least a non-trivial subset of scientists (captured quite well by "impostor syndrome") and discussing strategies to overcome it would be a good addition to the site. | 2014/10/17 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30098",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/244/"
] | My solution is to work with collaborators.
If you're writing a proposal together with others then you can workshop ideas together, pick each others' spirits up when you go down, have somebody who you "owe" progress to as an external motivator, and make writing schedules that you have to keep. You can also aim for much more interesting and ambitious projects when you combine complementary skills and capabilities. | Purely personal top, from someone who had to break through a near-total writing block: Write one to throw away. If you're stuck for a first paragraph, scribble a note about what ideas belong there and move on. If you're having trouble with phrasing, just day it however it's easiest and move on. If you can't find the citation you need, leave yourself a (foot)note with a key phrase like "to be determined" or "Fixme!" and move on. Don't worry about making it elegant, just get it down on paper.
After finishing that rough draft, srt it aside for a few days if possible.
Then come back to it, read it through, and decide what needs to be improved. Remember, the base assumption is that the first pass was just to start organizing your thoughts... bit you may find that very little polishing is needed. On the other hand, even if it's a complete train wreck, editing it into acceptable form is often less stressful than trying to write a perfect document the first time |
30,098 | I find it very difficult to make strong research proposals, where I am trying to convince the audience that my proposal is important (possibly *more important* than the other applicants'). I write "grant applications" in quotes, because that is the most straightforward example: In these, it is typically expected that you not only describe your idea in a way that the reviewer will easily understand and comprehend, but also convince them that the research is important and worth funding (especially with grants where the majority of applications are rejected). This feature is not limited to only grants: I think fellowship applications, PhD applications (whether they require a research proposal explicitly, or implicitly through statements of purpose with concrete research plans embedded in them being more effective), postdoc job applications and perhaps even junior faculty member applications are very similar in that one must propose a research project, and make it sound important besides merely communicating clearly.
Whenever I need to write such a proposal, I inevitably feel stuck. I immediately become anxious that my research is not all that interesting, I'm not really all that great a scientist, and feel that I must work very hard to make my proposal sound like it is more important than it is if I am to have a fighting chance. This is scary, and I end up procrastinating for many days on the writing. I tell myself that I am "waiting to be in the right sort of creative, inventive, intellectual, scientific mental state", but I secretly know this is nonsense. There are 3 very strong antitheses:
1. All the creative persons across the spectrum of fields (from artists to writers to inventors and engineers to mathematicians and scientists) appear in unanimous agreement that it is "1% inspiration and 99% perspiration". I have never heard anyone worth mention claim that "waiting for inspiration to come" is an effective strategy.
2. The inspiration that I supposedly await has an uncanny habit of materializing exactly on the night before the proposal deadline, at 3 AM in the morning, such that if it came just a little later I would not have been able to make it to the deadline.
3. When I do finish the proposal, I am almost universally satisfied that the result doesn't sound unimportant, and could have been brilliant if only I had started a bit earlier and made more rewrites.
I think the more realistic explanation is that at some point the fear of missing the deadline becomes so great that it overpowers my anxiety. However, I think it would be better if I could do away with the anxiety, so I could start work way before the deadline, and have time to make many revisions and avoid having to pull all-nighters.
How can I get over this anxiety? By way of showing *what I have tried*:
* Gaming antithesis #2 above: Setting an early deadline, so that it forces me to get started, then obtaining an extension on the deadline in which time I can make revisions, now that I have gotten over the most difficult initial step. Unfortunately, the moment I obtain the extension, the anxiety comes back and saps my motivation. This happens even if the extension happens as a surprise.
* "Just start by writing *anything*, and rewrite later" - this is very hard to force myself to do, because I feel like my ideas are hopelessly irrelevant and there's no point in even trying. Even if I do force myself to jot down a very rough outline, it is just as hard to motivate myself to keep refining it, because I feel that no matter how much I refine it, it will still be irrelevant.
* Ask friends and colleagues for feedback - very effective for making a mediocre proposal good, but useless for starting out: I get even more anxious because I worry about embarrassing myself to other people.
* Build up tolerance by repeated attempts - I have gone through the proposal writing process quite a few times, but the experience doesn't appear to have made it any easier. I feel like even if I had been awarded a thousand grants, I would still say to myself, "Man, you may have had a good run in your day, but this time you've lost it - this is the stupidest idea you've ever had".
* [How do I overcome fear of rejection when writing academic papers?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/3242/244) - the suggestion to follow the example of good papers is hard to apply, because proposals are often confidential. The remark about "reaching a certain level of maturity" also seems to not apply, because surely a project that is only at the idea stage is anything but mature?
* [What is expected when "novel" and "innovative" ideas are requested as part of a research grant application?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/16198) - very related, but there are many grant schemes which emphasize impact and importance (often without defining them) over innovation.
Oddly enough, I **don't** feel insecure about other aspects of science. I don't hesitate to do research because of self-doubt, I'm not shy about telling other people about my research (so long as the only requirement is that they understand it, and it doesn't matter if they don't think it's important), I think I do a decent job of communicating my ideas clearly and I sincerely believe that given my level of competence I have a good chance of solving the problems I am working on. Obviously, I think my research is worth doing - otherwise I wouldn't be doing it.
It is only when convincing someone else that my research is important that I stumble. I tend to imagine a grant reviewer saying to me, "Okay, this is all very nice and good, but applicant X over there wants the same grant so he can cure cancer and end world hunger. Why should we fund you and not him?" Of course, this is like saying "why should we fund NASA when we could be feeding the poor" - these aren't mutually exclusive pursuits, and just because you aim high doesn't mean you'll go high. But still, there are millions of scientists out there, and just statistically some of them are probably much smarter and more knowledgeable than me. Honestly, it seems very likely that many of them work on more important things than me. Probably some of them apply for the same grant. So how can I sit there and write a proposal, pretending that I seriously think I should be the one to get funded instead of all these other people?
Sorry if this sounds like more of a request for moral support than a question. In my defense, I think that the difficulty of "selling your ideas" is a common problem for at least a non-trivial subset of scientists (captured quite well by "impostor syndrome") and discussing strategies to overcome it would be a good addition to the site. | 2014/10/17 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30098",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/244/"
] | I suspect any answer will be highly specific to individual psychology.
There have been four things I found useful. The first was to do a good project plan for a grant and to convince myself that *everything* needed to be done to a high standard. Once I have a list of every piece of nigh-meaningless paperwork that needs doing, panic/inspiration tends to flow several months before the due date. And, in practice, it helps cope with writers block because putting together random patient-related boilerplate and laboratory descriptions lets my mind wander while still progressing towards grant completion. Anxiety (or even consciousness) is nigh-impossible while working on a human subjects section.
The second was to read a few granted proposals in my field. There are an awful lot of funded studies that just don't appear at all promising. And the feeling of 'well, I suck', but less than the people who put together grant XYZ is strangely empowering.
The third was to acquire a book describing recommended formats for grant proposals and approach grant writing in a very formulaic way. Okay, a paragraph describing prior work....blah blah blah. Okay, hypothesis... For me, it reduces anxiety by transforming the writing process from promoting my research to filling in the blanks on a long and frustrating form.
The last was to just kind of divorce myself from the whole project and gamify it a bit. Think of writing the grant as preparing a presentation to convince people that something should be done without worrying about whether or not it is actually worthwhile. And pretend you're doing it for someone else. Things also go faster if I reward myself with bathroom breaks upon section completion. Perhaps this is TMI, but it really works. | Wow, great ideas here. Here's a small suggestion. It is sometimes easier for me to get a project off my desk if I use it as a way to procrastinate about some *other* project. Perhaps you could harness that idea and cook up some project that you *really should be doing*, but which does not appeal to you -- and then you might feel tempted to work on the research proposal as a way of avoiding the other thing.
My main contribution has to do with how OCD is treated. There are two steps:
1. Name the fear -- preferably something that will help you laugh at it.
2. Talk back to it.
There is a very nice segment on a This American Life podcast that illustrates #2, done in a novel way, as a DIY project, without a therapist. If you don't want to listen to it, you can read the transcript here: <http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/545/transcript>
(Scroll down to Act Four. Mailer Demon.) |
30,098 | I find it very difficult to make strong research proposals, where I am trying to convince the audience that my proposal is important (possibly *more important* than the other applicants'). I write "grant applications" in quotes, because that is the most straightforward example: In these, it is typically expected that you not only describe your idea in a way that the reviewer will easily understand and comprehend, but also convince them that the research is important and worth funding (especially with grants where the majority of applications are rejected). This feature is not limited to only grants: I think fellowship applications, PhD applications (whether they require a research proposal explicitly, or implicitly through statements of purpose with concrete research plans embedded in them being more effective), postdoc job applications and perhaps even junior faculty member applications are very similar in that one must propose a research project, and make it sound important besides merely communicating clearly.
Whenever I need to write such a proposal, I inevitably feel stuck. I immediately become anxious that my research is not all that interesting, I'm not really all that great a scientist, and feel that I must work very hard to make my proposal sound like it is more important than it is if I am to have a fighting chance. This is scary, and I end up procrastinating for many days on the writing. I tell myself that I am "waiting to be in the right sort of creative, inventive, intellectual, scientific mental state", but I secretly know this is nonsense. There are 3 very strong antitheses:
1. All the creative persons across the spectrum of fields (from artists to writers to inventors and engineers to mathematicians and scientists) appear in unanimous agreement that it is "1% inspiration and 99% perspiration". I have never heard anyone worth mention claim that "waiting for inspiration to come" is an effective strategy.
2. The inspiration that I supposedly await has an uncanny habit of materializing exactly on the night before the proposal deadline, at 3 AM in the morning, such that if it came just a little later I would not have been able to make it to the deadline.
3. When I do finish the proposal, I am almost universally satisfied that the result doesn't sound unimportant, and could have been brilliant if only I had started a bit earlier and made more rewrites.
I think the more realistic explanation is that at some point the fear of missing the deadline becomes so great that it overpowers my anxiety. However, I think it would be better if I could do away with the anxiety, so I could start work way before the deadline, and have time to make many revisions and avoid having to pull all-nighters.
How can I get over this anxiety? By way of showing *what I have tried*:
* Gaming antithesis #2 above: Setting an early deadline, so that it forces me to get started, then obtaining an extension on the deadline in which time I can make revisions, now that I have gotten over the most difficult initial step. Unfortunately, the moment I obtain the extension, the anxiety comes back and saps my motivation. This happens even if the extension happens as a surprise.
* "Just start by writing *anything*, and rewrite later" - this is very hard to force myself to do, because I feel like my ideas are hopelessly irrelevant and there's no point in even trying. Even if I do force myself to jot down a very rough outline, it is just as hard to motivate myself to keep refining it, because I feel that no matter how much I refine it, it will still be irrelevant.
* Ask friends and colleagues for feedback - very effective for making a mediocre proposal good, but useless for starting out: I get even more anxious because I worry about embarrassing myself to other people.
* Build up tolerance by repeated attempts - I have gone through the proposal writing process quite a few times, but the experience doesn't appear to have made it any easier. I feel like even if I had been awarded a thousand grants, I would still say to myself, "Man, you may have had a good run in your day, but this time you've lost it - this is the stupidest idea you've ever had".
* [How do I overcome fear of rejection when writing academic papers?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/3242/244) - the suggestion to follow the example of good papers is hard to apply, because proposals are often confidential. The remark about "reaching a certain level of maturity" also seems to not apply, because surely a project that is only at the idea stage is anything but mature?
* [What is expected when "novel" and "innovative" ideas are requested as part of a research grant application?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/16198) - very related, but there are many grant schemes which emphasize impact and importance (often without defining them) over innovation.
Oddly enough, I **don't** feel insecure about other aspects of science. I don't hesitate to do research because of self-doubt, I'm not shy about telling other people about my research (so long as the only requirement is that they understand it, and it doesn't matter if they don't think it's important), I think I do a decent job of communicating my ideas clearly and I sincerely believe that given my level of competence I have a good chance of solving the problems I am working on. Obviously, I think my research is worth doing - otherwise I wouldn't be doing it.
It is only when convincing someone else that my research is important that I stumble. I tend to imagine a grant reviewer saying to me, "Okay, this is all very nice and good, but applicant X over there wants the same grant so he can cure cancer and end world hunger. Why should we fund you and not him?" Of course, this is like saying "why should we fund NASA when we could be feeding the poor" - these aren't mutually exclusive pursuits, and just because you aim high doesn't mean you'll go high. But still, there are millions of scientists out there, and just statistically some of them are probably much smarter and more knowledgeable than me. Honestly, it seems very likely that many of them work on more important things than me. Probably some of them apply for the same grant. So how can I sit there and write a proposal, pretending that I seriously think I should be the one to get funded instead of all these other people?
Sorry if this sounds like more of a request for moral support than a question. In my defense, I think that the difficulty of "selling your ideas" is a common problem for at least a non-trivial subset of scientists (captured quite well by "impostor syndrome") and discussing strategies to overcome it would be a good addition to the site. | 2014/10/17 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30098",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/244/"
] | I suspect any answer will be highly specific to individual psychology.
There have been four things I found useful. The first was to do a good project plan for a grant and to convince myself that *everything* needed to be done to a high standard. Once I have a list of every piece of nigh-meaningless paperwork that needs doing, panic/inspiration tends to flow several months before the due date. And, in practice, it helps cope with writers block because putting together random patient-related boilerplate and laboratory descriptions lets my mind wander while still progressing towards grant completion. Anxiety (or even consciousness) is nigh-impossible while working on a human subjects section.
The second was to read a few granted proposals in my field. There are an awful lot of funded studies that just don't appear at all promising. And the feeling of 'well, I suck', but less than the people who put together grant XYZ is strangely empowering.
The third was to acquire a book describing recommended formats for grant proposals and approach grant writing in a very formulaic way. Okay, a paragraph describing prior work....blah blah blah. Okay, hypothesis... For me, it reduces anxiety by transforming the writing process from promoting my research to filling in the blanks on a long and frustrating form.
The last was to just kind of divorce myself from the whole project and gamify it a bit. Think of writing the grant as preparing a presentation to convince people that something should be done without worrying about whether or not it is actually worthwhile. And pretend you're doing it for someone else. Things also go faster if I reward myself with bathroom breaks upon section completion. Perhaps this is TMI, but it really works. | Purely personal top, from someone who had to break through a near-total writing block: Write one to throw away. If you're stuck for a first paragraph, scribble a note about what ideas belong there and move on. If you're having trouble with phrasing, just day it however it's easiest and move on. If you can't find the citation you need, leave yourself a (foot)note with a key phrase like "to be determined" or "Fixme!" and move on. Don't worry about making it elegant, just get it down on paper.
After finishing that rough draft, srt it aside for a few days if possible.
Then come back to it, read it through, and decide what needs to be improved. Remember, the base assumption is that the first pass was just to start organizing your thoughts... bit you may find that very little polishing is needed. On the other hand, even if it's a complete train wreck, editing it into acceptable form is often less stressful than trying to write a perfect document the first time |
30,098 | I find it very difficult to make strong research proposals, where I am trying to convince the audience that my proposal is important (possibly *more important* than the other applicants'). I write "grant applications" in quotes, because that is the most straightforward example: In these, it is typically expected that you not only describe your idea in a way that the reviewer will easily understand and comprehend, but also convince them that the research is important and worth funding (especially with grants where the majority of applications are rejected). This feature is not limited to only grants: I think fellowship applications, PhD applications (whether they require a research proposal explicitly, or implicitly through statements of purpose with concrete research plans embedded in them being more effective), postdoc job applications and perhaps even junior faculty member applications are very similar in that one must propose a research project, and make it sound important besides merely communicating clearly.
Whenever I need to write such a proposal, I inevitably feel stuck. I immediately become anxious that my research is not all that interesting, I'm not really all that great a scientist, and feel that I must work very hard to make my proposal sound like it is more important than it is if I am to have a fighting chance. This is scary, and I end up procrastinating for many days on the writing. I tell myself that I am "waiting to be in the right sort of creative, inventive, intellectual, scientific mental state", but I secretly know this is nonsense. There are 3 very strong antitheses:
1. All the creative persons across the spectrum of fields (from artists to writers to inventors and engineers to mathematicians and scientists) appear in unanimous agreement that it is "1% inspiration and 99% perspiration". I have never heard anyone worth mention claim that "waiting for inspiration to come" is an effective strategy.
2. The inspiration that I supposedly await has an uncanny habit of materializing exactly on the night before the proposal deadline, at 3 AM in the morning, such that if it came just a little later I would not have been able to make it to the deadline.
3. When I do finish the proposal, I am almost universally satisfied that the result doesn't sound unimportant, and could have been brilliant if only I had started a bit earlier and made more rewrites.
I think the more realistic explanation is that at some point the fear of missing the deadline becomes so great that it overpowers my anxiety. However, I think it would be better if I could do away with the anxiety, so I could start work way before the deadline, and have time to make many revisions and avoid having to pull all-nighters.
How can I get over this anxiety? By way of showing *what I have tried*:
* Gaming antithesis #2 above: Setting an early deadline, so that it forces me to get started, then obtaining an extension on the deadline in which time I can make revisions, now that I have gotten over the most difficult initial step. Unfortunately, the moment I obtain the extension, the anxiety comes back and saps my motivation. This happens even if the extension happens as a surprise.
* "Just start by writing *anything*, and rewrite later" - this is very hard to force myself to do, because I feel like my ideas are hopelessly irrelevant and there's no point in even trying. Even if I do force myself to jot down a very rough outline, it is just as hard to motivate myself to keep refining it, because I feel that no matter how much I refine it, it will still be irrelevant.
* Ask friends and colleagues for feedback - very effective for making a mediocre proposal good, but useless for starting out: I get even more anxious because I worry about embarrassing myself to other people.
* Build up tolerance by repeated attempts - I have gone through the proposal writing process quite a few times, but the experience doesn't appear to have made it any easier. I feel like even if I had been awarded a thousand grants, I would still say to myself, "Man, you may have had a good run in your day, but this time you've lost it - this is the stupidest idea you've ever had".
* [How do I overcome fear of rejection when writing academic papers?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/3242/244) - the suggestion to follow the example of good papers is hard to apply, because proposals are often confidential. The remark about "reaching a certain level of maturity" also seems to not apply, because surely a project that is only at the idea stage is anything but mature?
* [What is expected when "novel" and "innovative" ideas are requested as part of a research grant application?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/16198) - very related, but there are many grant schemes which emphasize impact and importance (often without defining them) over innovation.
Oddly enough, I **don't** feel insecure about other aspects of science. I don't hesitate to do research because of self-doubt, I'm not shy about telling other people about my research (so long as the only requirement is that they understand it, and it doesn't matter if they don't think it's important), I think I do a decent job of communicating my ideas clearly and I sincerely believe that given my level of competence I have a good chance of solving the problems I am working on. Obviously, I think my research is worth doing - otherwise I wouldn't be doing it.
It is only when convincing someone else that my research is important that I stumble. I tend to imagine a grant reviewer saying to me, "Okay, this is all very nice and good, but applicant X over there wants the same grant so he can cure cancer and end world hunger. Why should we fund you and not him?" Of course, this is like saying "why should we fund NASA when we could be feeding the poor" - these aren't mutually exclusive pursuits, and just because you aim high doesn't mean you'll go high. But still, there are millions of scientists out there, and just statistically some of them are probably much smarter and more knowledgeable than me. Honestly, it seems very likely that many of them work on more important things than me. Probably some of them apply for the same grant. So how can I sit there and write a proposal, pretending that I seriously think I should be the one to get funded instead of all these other people?
Sorry if this sounds like more of a request for moral support than a question. In my defense, I think that the difficulty of "selling your ideas" is a common problem for at least a non-trivial subset of scientists (captured quite well by "impostor syndrome") and discussing strategies to overcome it would be a good addition to the site. | 2014/10/17 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30098",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/244/"
] | TLDR;
In the end, I [highly recommend the book](http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0738211702), and the following
1. Be kinder to yourself in your own head - if someone else said to you "they do important work and you do nothing important" you'd probably be inclined to smack them in the mouth. Yet if you say it to yourself, you probably accept it.
2. Accept that this is a complex and real problem, and instant success is not reasonable - so don't beat yourself up when you run into the problem again.
3. Try to shift your view of yourself to be based upon your resilience, creativity, and persistence - which are in your control - rather than factors like "grant approved" that are much less in your control.
4. Realize that you can do better in the future, but only by making adjustments that address your own personal real issue and not merely distract from it.
5. Your importance, intelligence, and abilities were established and verified a long time ago, and are not up for debate or re-interpretation. Problems you face now aren't because of any of these traits or behaviors.
6. Like any good experiment, let results dictate whether or not a method is effective for you, not preconceived notions or rapidly changing feelings.
---
There is no one easy trick that will solve your procrastination - but that doesn't mean it is an insolvable problem. I personally have found that thinking there is some trick actually made the problem worse, because it trivialized the problem.
"This isn't so hard, I just need to do X", I would tell myself. When actually doing X was hard, or didn't solve the problem, then I felt even worse than before - because if I can't even do X, I must an even bigger mess than I thought! This is a terribly cruel thing to do to ourselves - please try not to punish yourself in this way.
Procrastination is not a simple thing, nor is it a sign of stupidity, laziness, moral decline, unfitness, or any other such thing. If this is a problem for you, then I strongly recommend this book: [Procrastination: Why You Do It, What To Do About It Now](http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0738211702). I owe much of what I have learned to this excellent tome, and to my own struggles with the practice - it is written by two PhDs who've worked specifically in the area of academic and professional procrastination, and there's a vanishingly small amount of pop-nonsense in the book (I have very little tolerance for such things).
---
You have already hit upon a very important realization, which is that the core of most procrastination activity is fear - fear we aren't good enough, smart enough, worthy enough. But this isn't the only kind of fear a person can have, such as fear of success, fear of being judged, fear of competition, etc. Everyone has their own unique sets of fears.
It is important to understand that procrastination is a sometimes useful, and sometimes mal-adaptive strategy to get what we want. Sometimes we get what we want in the short-term, but not the-long term, and this sort of procrastination is a perfect example - and we need to understand both why it works and why it doesn't work.
One thing that really drew my attention is this phrase:
>
> ...could have been brilliant if only I had started a bit earlier...
>
>
>
This is called "self-handicapping", and ultimately it allows us to protect ourselves from fear. If we wait until the last minute and don't succeed, then we don't need to take that personally- if only we had started sooner, we'd have succeeded! It's not us, it's the delay. On the other hand if we succeed, then we are double great, because we practically phoned that one in and still won - we must really be something! Waiting until the last minute increases the perceived reward AND lowers the perceived risk - no wander it's such a compelling strategy!
But ultimately both reasonings serve to do one thing: protect ourselves from a reality that is frightening. What if we do our absolute best, and still fail?
One way of dealing with this is attacking the fear directly - what if you do your best to write a great grant app, and they still reject you? Go ahead and explain this in a way that is non-threatening - they get a lot of great grant requests, the program directors are morons, they probably just pick grants by throwing darts at a board, budget cutbacks (politicians/administrators/taxpayers are morons)...go ahead and explain the rejection now, in way you believe that doesn't include ripping yourself to shreds.
Or you can accept responsability, but do so in a fair way - you may have failed to communicate the nature of your proposed work in a way they understood, but that doesn't mean you aren't good at your job or smart - you just need to persevere at an inherently difficult task. You can also point out to yourself that you aren't just writing one single grant request (you aren't, right?), and so while the individual chance of each one succeeding might not be great you have a far higher chance of one of your many requests being approved.
In this way you can reduce the fear that this specific grant request is do or die, and so it isn't so bad because it's not scary and you do non-scary things all the time, right? For some people and in some cases, this works nicely, but it's not your only strategy.
---
Another mutually-helpful approach is hit on in your own realization:
>
> I have never heard anyone worth mention claim that "waiting for
> inspiration to come" is an effective strategy
>
>
>
This is a great observation, and I've heard this called "the motivation fairy". The belief is that we just need to lie in wait for the motivation fairy, and it will appear and grant us the motivation we need to work!
The problem is that, as you noticed, this isn't how motivation really works. It turns out that motivation is not really something that comes before the work - **motivation is produced by working!** This seemed crazy to me, but the more I thought about it the more it fit my experience. I never feel the most motivated before I start something, but rather it's while I'm in the middle of doing something and making progress and feeling good about the work I'm actually doing! Motivation fundamentally is not forward-looking thing like "hope", but rather it is like the flames of a camp fire - people gather around it to warm up, but it was created initially by working hard in the cold! First comes the work, then come the flames.
The third and most useful tactic I've personally used is this: realize that how you feel about doing something does not particularly control the quality of output of your work, nor whether or not you should do it.
Much like the previous issue with motivation, I thought I should feel a certain way about my work before I started. This is a version of perfectionism - the feeling that everything should be "just so" before you do something. I mean, I've read that brilliant people eat a balanced breakfast and take an afternoon nap, and I ate beef jerky for breakfast and had to work all afternoon - so surely I should just skip this and try to have a better day tomorrow so I can do this work, right? I mean, I don't even want to do it, and surely the work will be terrible with this attitude.
The truth is that work is more like a game of American Football (or Rugby for everyone else in the world) or a broadway show - it doesn't really matter what the weather is or how you feel that day, the game/show must go on regardless.
With much effort I have begun to realize that I really suck at predicting the output of my own work based upon my feelings, desires, and emotions. Sometimes I produce an A+ paper with a fever and a stomach full of Pepto-Bismal, and sometimes everything is going my way and I churn out 10 pages that had nothing to do with what I was actually supposed to be doing. Sometimes I'm super-excited about a subject and just can't "get it", and sometimes I breeze through material I couldn't care less about.
I was amazed to find that some people hear such an explanation and think, "yeah, that's how life works - how did you think it works?" Well, I thought work was something people got all worked up and excited about, looked forward to, then jumped into and made continual progress on up until a conclusion they were terribly satisfied with.
Apparently people laugh at such a fanciful world-view, but that's how many of us still think work is supposed to go, and we get mad at ourselves and feel doomed or like failures when the reality is all messy and we feel grumpy but we are still supposed to work on something we just don't feel like doing today (or this week, month...).
Decoupling "what I feel like doing" from "what I should do" from "what I am going to do now" is really hard, but over the last decade I think I've gotten better at it. But jeeze, I put in a lot of effort and I often flounder around in my chair and say, "gahhh, I don't wannnnaaaaa!" for a while. Sometimes I get over it and get work done, and then I'm amazed at how quickly I forget about the whole episode and my work output seems to have little relation whatsoever to my feelings at the time.
---
Before wrapping up I want to hit on one more time-honored way we punish ourselves: false disadvantageous comparisons
>
> "Okay, this is all very nice and good, but applicant X over there
> wants the same grant so he can cure cancer and end world hunger. Why
> should we fund you and not him?"
>
>
>
These sorts of comparisons are very common, and notice how incredibly unfair they are? But notice also how they are thrown out there and left unquestioned, as if they are obviously true and we should feel like failures in comparison for our puny efforts.
But that's just it - one of our greatest enemies is unquestioned assumptions, and so we should apply our argumentative skills against these things too.
First, of all, are you in fact competing directly with people who aim to cure cancer and/or end world hunger? If you aren't competing with these people, then that's silly - you're winning doesn't take money away from them, because the grant you want can't possibly take money away from them.
But let's say you are competing with them. Obviously they should win, right? But wait, if a grant request that's competing with you will win, then you have nothing to fear by writing a great request because even an idiot would know they have the better request and they'd get funded anyway. And come to think of it, haven't people been trying to cure cancer and end world hunger for a long time - so why haven't they? Is it because people like me want grants for something else?
It turns out that world hunger is a great example, because without our realizing people did already solve the problem we thought we had. We now have more food in the world than we need, but some people go without - why? Because it turns out that the world is complicated, and things like war, social justice, economic systems, and corruption mean that solving world hunger isn't so clearly solvable. It's going to take a lot of work in more fields than we ever imagined to make more progress, from psychology, sociology, economics, engineering, political science, and probably a lot of more fields than that.
Cancer, too, it turns out is complex and is caused by many things, and we can't cure it because there is a lot about the human body and chemistry we just don't understand. If it was an easy problem, we'd have solved it already. If we spent 100% of our yearly grant money only on cancer research, it's not clear that we could cure any form of it because we might not know enough about basic processes to be able to solve the problem yet.
This is also true of war, social justice, poverty, space exploration/colonization, and any other such major problem. They exist because they are hard problems, and it seems the webs of the world are very twisted indeed. And so we spread out our search for knowledge and advancement over many fields, in the hopes that one day the web will expand far enough to allow us to solve a previously insolvable problem - though we have no idea how long it might take or what field or what person will be responsible for the key insight.
So, with this said, who are you actually competing with - based on successful grant requests - and based on last years winners (when this data is available) surely some will seem amazing to you, and some will seem stupid and unimportant. Grants aren't noble prizes, and some people get money for stuff you couldn't care less about. Some are important, some will turn out to be outright failures, some good things will get funded and some bad ones will too.
And at the end of the day, this might make you feel better or not, but it might not matter because these are often just excuses we tell ourselves to rationalize our aversions to fear and our habits of waiting for the right moment.
---
The book mentioned previously has about 200-300 pages of very useful and helpful tips and information beyond anything I could possibly summarize here, so please consider making it a part of your daily reading routine if quick-fixes prove ineffective or short-lived (they almost always are). It's a process of developing tools, retraining yourself, and building up psyche-muscles.
Procrastination behaviors, anxiety, and fears all have their appropriate place in life, and can get out of hand and become hurtful to our well-being; they can also be put back into their rightful place, and that requires diligent effort over a significant period of time.
Good luck, and fight the good fight! | Wow, great ideas here. Here's a small suggestion. It is sometimes easier for me to get a project off my desk if I use it as a way to procrastinate about some *other* project. Perhaps you could harness that idea and cook up some project that you *really should be doing*, but which does not appeal to you -- and then you might feel tempted to work on the research proposal as a way of avoiding the other thing.
My main contribution has to do with how OCD is treated. There are two steps:
1. Name the fear -- preferably something that will help you laugh at it.
2. Talk back to it.
There is a very nice segment on a This American Life podcast that illustrates #2, done in a novel way, as a DIY project, without a therapist. If you don't want to listen to it, you can read the transcript here: <http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/545/transcript>
(Scroll down to Act Four. Mailer Demon.) |
30,098 | I find it very difficult to make strong research proposals, where I am trying to convince the audience that my proposal is important (possibly *more important* than the other applicants'). I write "grant applications" in quotes, because that is the most straightforward example: In these, it is typically expected that you not only describe your idea in a way that the reviewer will easily understand and comprehend, but also convince them that the research is important and worth funding (especially with grants where the majority of applications are rejected). This feature is not limited to only grants: I think fellowship applications, PhD applications (whether they require a research proposal explicitly, or implicitly through statements of purpose with concrete research plans embedded in them being more effective), postdoc job applications and perhaps even junior faculty member applications are very similar in that one must propose a research project, and make it sound important besides merely communicating clearly.
Whenever I need to write such a proposal, I inevitably feel stuck. I immediately become anxious that my research is not all that interesting, I'm not really all that great a scientist, and feel that I must work very hard to make my proposal sound like it is more important than it is if I am to have a fighting chance. This is scary, and I end up procrastinating for many days on the writing. I tell myself that I am "waiting to be in the right sort of creative, inventive, intellectual, scientific mental state", but I secretly know this is nonsense. There are 3 very strong antitheses:
1. All the creative persons across the spectrum of fields (from artists to writers to inventors and engineers to mathematicians and scientists) appear in unanimous agreement that it is "1% inspiration and 99% perspiration". I have never heard anyone worth mention claim that "waiting for inspiration to come" is an effective strategy.
2. The inspiration that I supposedly await has an uncanny habit of materializing exactly on the night before the proposal deadline, at 3 AM in the morning, such that if it came just a little later I would not have been able to make it to the deadline.
3. When I do finish the proposal, I am almost universally satisfied that the result doesn't sound unimportant, and could have been brilliant if only I had started a bit earlier and made more rewrites.
I think the more realistic explanation is that at some point the fear of missing the deadline becomes so great that it overpowers my anxiety. However, I think it would be better if I could do away with the anxiety, so I could start work way before the deadline, and have time to make many revisions and avoid having to pull all-nighters.
How can I get over this anxiety? By way of showing *what I have tried*:
* Gaming antithesis #2 above: Setting an early deadline, so that it forces me to get started, then obtaining an extension on the deadline in which time I can make revisions, now that I have gotten over the most difficult initial step. Unfortunately, the moment I obtain the extension, the anxiety comes back and saps my motivation. This happens even if the extension happens as a surprise.
* "Just start by writing *anything*, and rewrite later" - this is very hard to force myself to do, because I feel like my ideas are hopelessly irrelevant and there's no point in even trying. Even if I do force myself to jot down a very rough outline, it is just as hard to motivate myself to keep refining it, because I feel that no matter how much I refine it, it will still be irrelevant.
* Ask friends and colleagues for feedback - very effective for making a mediocre proposal good, but useless for starting out: I get even more anxious because I worry about embarrassing myself to other people.
* Build up tolerance by repeated attempts - I have gone through the proposal writing process quite a few times, but the experience doesn't appear to have made it any easier. I feel like even if I had been awarded a thousand grants, I would still say to myself, "Man, you may have had a good run in your day, but this time you've lost it - this is the stupidest idea you've ever had".
* [How do I overcome fear of rejection when writing academic papers?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/3242/244) - the suggestion to follow the example of good papers is hard to apply, because proposals are often confidential. The remark about "reaching a certain level of maturity" also seems to not apply, because surely a project that is only at the idea stage is anything but mature?
* [What is expected when "novel" and "innovative" ideas are requested as part of a research grant application?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/16198) - very related, but there are many grant schemes which emphasize impact and importance (often without defining them) over innovation.
Oddly enough, I **don't** feel insecure about other aspects of science. I don't hesitate to do research because of self-doubt, I'm not shy about telling other people about my research (so long as the only requirement is that they understand it, and it doesn't matter if they don't think it's important), I think I do a decent job of communicating my ideas clearly and I sincerely believe that given my level of competence I have a good chance of solving the problems I am working on. Obviously, I think my research is worth doing - otherwise I wouldn't be doing it.
It is only when convincing someone else that my research is important that I stumble. I tend to imagine a grant reviewer saying to me, "Okay, this is all very nice and good, but applicant X over there wants the same grant so he can cure cancer and end world hunger. Why should we fund you and not him?" Of course, this is like saying "why should we fund NASA when we could be feeding the poor" - these aren't mutually exclusive pursuits, and just because you aim high doesn't mean you'll go high. But still, there are millions of scientists out there, and just statistically some of them are probably much smarter and more knowledgeable than me. Honestly, it seems very likely that many of them work on more important things than me. Probably some of them apply for the same grant. So how can I sit there and write a proposal, pretending that I seriously think I should be the one to get funded instead of all these other people?
Sorry if this sounds like more of a request for moral support than a question. In my defense, I think that the difficulty of "selling your ideas" is a common problem for at least a non-trivial subset of scientists (captured quite well by "impostor syndrome") and discussing strategies to overcome it would be a good addition to the site. | 2014/10/17 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30098",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/244/"
] | TLDR;
In the end, I [highly recommend the book](http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0738211702), and the following
1. Be kinder to yourself in your own head - if someone else said to you "they do important work and you do nothing important" you'd probably be inclined to smack them in the mouth. Yet if you say it to yourself, you probably accept it.
2. Accept that this is a complex and real problem, and instant success is not reasonable - so don't beat yourself up when you run into the problem again.
3. Try to shift your view of yourself to be based upon your resilience, creativity, and persistence - which are in your control - rather than factors like "grant approved" that are much less in your control.
4. Realize that you can do better in the future, but only by making adjustments that address your own personal real issue and not merely distract from it.
5. Your importance, intelligence, and abilities were established and verified a long time ago, and are not up for debate or re-interpretation. Problems you face now aren't because of any of these traits or behaviors.
6. Like any good experiment, let results dictate whether or not a method is effective for you, not preconceived notions or rapidly changing feelings.
---
There is no one easy trick that will solve your procrastination - but that doesn't mean it is an insolvable problem. I personally have found that thinking there is some trick actually made the problem worse, because it trivialized the problem.
"This isn't so hard, I just need to do X", I would tell myself. When actually doing X was hard, or didn't solve the problem, then I felt even worse than before - because if I can't even do X, I must an even bigger mess than I thought! This is a terribly cruel thing to do to ourselves - please try not to punish yourself in this way.
Procrastination is not a simple thing, nor is it a sign of stupidity, laziness, moral decline, unfitness, or any other such thing. If this is a problem for you, then I strongly recommend this book: [Procrastination: Why You Do It, What To Do About It Now](http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0738211702). I owe much of what I have learned to this excellent tome, and to my own struggles with the practice - it is written by two PhDs who've worked specifically in the area of academic and professional procrastination, and there's a vanishingly small amount of pop-nonsense in the book (I have very little tolerance for such things).
---
You have already hit upon a very important realization, which is that the core of most procrastination activity is fear - fear we aren't good enough, smart enough, worthy enough. But this isn't the only kind of fear a person can have, such as fear of success, fear of being judged, fear of competition, etc. Everyone has their own unique sets of fears.
It is important to understand that procrastination is a sometimes useful, and sometimes mal-adaptive strategy to get what we want. Sometimes we get what we want in the short-term, but not the-long term, and this sort of procrastination is a perfect example - and we need to understand both why it works and why it doesn't work.
One thing that really drew my attention is this phrase:
>
> ...could have been brilliant if only I had started a bit earlier...
>
>
>
This is called "self-handicapping", and ultimately it allows us to protect ourselves from fear. If we wait until the last minute and don't succeed, then we don't need to take that personally- if only we had started sooner, we'd have succeeded! It's not us, it's the delay. On the other hand if we succeed, then we are double great, because we practically phoned that one in and still won - we must really be something! Waiting until the last minute increases the perceived reward AND lowers the perceived risk - no wander it's such a compelling strategy!
But ultimately both reasonings serve to do one thing: protect ourselves from a reality that is frightening. What if we do our absolute best, and still fail?
One way of dealing with this is attacking the fear directly - what if you do your best to write a great grant app, and they still reject you? Go ahead and explain this in a way that is non-threatening - they get a lot of great grant requests, the program directors are morons, they probably just pick grants by throwing darts at a board, budget cutbacks (politicians/administrators/taxpayers are morons)...go ahead and explain the rejection now, in way you believe that doesn't include ripping yourself to shreds.
Or you can accept responsability, but do so in a fair way - you may have failed to communicate the nature of your proposed work in a way they understood, but that doesn't mean you aren't good at your job or smart - you just need to persevere at an inherently difficult task. You can also point out to yourself that you aren't just writing one single grant request (you aren't, right?), and so while the individual chance of each one succeeding might not be great you have a far higher chance of one of your many requests being approved.
In this way you can reduce the fear that this specific grant request is do or die, and so it isn't so bad because it's not scary and you do non-scary things all the time, right? For some people and in some cases, this works nicely, but it's not your only strategy.
---
Another mutually-helpful approach is hit on in your own realization:
>
> I have never heard anyone worth mention claim that "waiting for
> inspiration to come" is an effective strategy
>
>
>
This is a great observation, and I've heard this called "the motivation fairy". The belief is that we just need to lie in wait for the motivation fairy, and it will appear and grant us the motivation we need to work!
The problem is that, as you noticed, this isn't how motivation really works. It turns out that motivation is not really something that comes before the work - **motivation is produced by working!** This seemed crazy to me, but the more I thought about it the more it fit my experience. I never feel the most motivated before I start something, but rather it's while I'm in the middle of doing something and making progress and feeling good about the work I'm actually doing! Motivation fundamentally is not forward-looking thing like "hope", but rather it is like the flames of a camp fire - people gather around it to warm up, but it was created initially by working hard in the cold! First comes the work, then come the flames.
The third and most useful tactic I've personally used is this: realize that how you feel about doing something does not particularly control the quality of output of your work, nor whether or not you should do it.
Much like the previous issue with motivation, I thought I should feel a certain way about my work before I started. This is a version of perfectionism - the feeling that everything should be "just so" before you do something. I mean, I've read that brilliant people eat a balanced breakfast and take an afternoon nap, and I ate beef jerky for breakfast and had to work all afternoon - so surely I should just skip this and try to have a better day tomorrow so I can do this work, right? I mean, I don't even want to do it, and surely the work will be terrible with this attitude.
The truth is that work is more like a game of American Football (or Rugby for everyone else in the world) or a broadway show - it doesn't really matter what the weather is or how you feel that day, the game/show must go on regardless.
With much effort I have begun to realize that I really suck at predicting the output of my own work based upon my feelings, desires, and emotions. Sometimes I produce an A+ paper with a fever and a stomach full of Pepto-Bismal, and sometimes everything is going my way and I churn out 10 pages that had nothing to do with what I was actually supposed to be doing. Sometimes I'm super-excited about a subject and just can't "get it", and sometimes I breeze through material I couldn't care less about.
I was amazed to find that some people hear such an explanation and think, "yeah, that's how life works - how did you think it works?" Well, I thought work was something people got all worked up and excited about, looked forward to, then jumped into and made continual progress on up until a conclusion they were terribly satisfied with.
Apparently people laugh at such a fanciful world-view, but that's how many of us still think work is supposed to go, and we get mad at ourselves and feel doomed or like failures when the reality is all messy and we feel grumpy but we are still supposed to work on something we just don't feel like doing today (or this week, month...).
Decoupling "what I feel like doing" from "what I should do" from "what I am going to do now" is really hard, but over the last decade I think I've gotten better at it. But jeeze, I put in a lot of effort and I often flounder around in my chair and say, "gahhh, I don't wannnnaaaaa!" for a while. Sometimes I get over it and get work done, and then I'm amazed at how quickly I forget about the whole episode and my work output seems to have little relation whatsoever to my feelings at the time.
---
Before wrapping up I want to hit on one more time-honored way we punish ourselves: false disadvantageous comparisons
>
> "Okay, this is all very nice and good, but applicant X over there
> wants the same grant so he can cure cancer and end world hunger. Why
> should we fund you and not him?"
>
>
>
These sorts of comparisons are very common, and notice how incredibly unfair they are? But notice also how they are thrown out there and left unquestioned, as if they are obviously true and we should feel like failures in comparison for our puny efforts.
But that's just it - one of our greatest enemies is unquestioned assumptions, and so we should apply our argumentative skills against these things too.
First, of all, are you in fact competing directly with people who aim to cure cancer and/or end world hunger? If you aren't competing with these people, then that's silly - you're winning doesn't take money away from them, because the grant you want can't possibly take money away from them.
But let's say you are competing with them. Obviously they should win, right? But wait, if a grant request that's competing with you will win, then you have nothing to fear by writing a great request because even an idiot would know they have the better request and they'd get funded anyway. And come to think of it, haven't people been trying to cure cancer and end world hunger for a long time - so why haven't they? Is it because people like me want grants for something else?
It turns out that world hunger is a great example, because without our realizing people did already solve the problem we thought we had. We now have more food in the world than we need, but some people go without - why? Because it turns out that the world is complicated, and things like war, social justice, economic systems, and corruption mean that solving world hunger isn't so clearly solvable. It's going to take a lot of work in more fields than we ever imagined to make more progress, from psychology, sociology, economics, engineering, political science, and probably a lot of more fields than that.
Cancer, too, it turns out is complex and is caused by many things, and we can't cure it because there is a lot about the human body and chemistry we just don't understand. If it was an easy problem, we'd have solved it already. If we spent 100% of our yearly grant money only on cancer research, it's not clear that we could cure any form of it because we might not know enough about basic processes to be able to solve the problem yet.
This is also true of war, social justice, poverty, space exploration/colonization, and any other such major problem. They exist because they are hard problems, and it seems the webs of the world are very twisted indeed. And so we spread out our search for knowledge and advancement over many fields, in the hopes that one day the web will expand far enough to allow us to solve a previously insolvable problem - though we have no idea how long it might take or what field or what person will be responsible for the key insight.
So, with this said, who are you actually competing with - based on successful grant requests - and based on last years winners (when this data is available) surely some will seem amazing to you, and some will seem stupid and unimportant. Grants aren't noble prizes, and some people get money for stuff you couldn't care less about. Some are important, some will turn out to be outright failures, some good things will get funded and some bad ones will too.
And at the end of the day, this might make you feel better or not, but it might not matter because these are often just excuses we tell ourselves to rationalize our aversions to fear and our habits of waiting for the right moment.
---
The book mentioned previously has about 200-300 pages of very useful and helpful tips and information beyond anything I could possibly summarize here, so please consider making it a part of your daily reading routine if quick-fixes prove ineffective or short-lived (they almost always are). It's a process of developing tools, retraining yourself, and building up psyche-muscles.
Procrastination behaviors, anxiety, and fears all have their appropriate place in life, and can get out of hand and become hurtful to our well-being; they can also be put back into their rightful place, and that requires diligent effort over a significant period of time.
Good luck, and fight the good fight! | Purely personal top, from someone who had to break through a near-total writing block: Write one to throw away. If you're stuck for a first paragraph, scribble a note about what ideas belong there and move on. If you're having trouble with phrasing, just day it however it's easiest and move on. If you can't find the citation you need, leave yourself a (foot)note with a key phrase like "to be determined" or "Fixme!" and move on. Don't worry about making it elegant, just get it down on paper.
After finishing that rough draft, srt it aside for a few days if possible.
Then come back to it, read it through, and decide what needs to be improved. Remember, the base assumption is that the first pass was just to start organizing your thoughts... bit you may find that very little polishing is needed. On the other hand, even if it's a complete train wreck, editing it into acceptable form is often less stressful than trying to write a perfect document the first time |
30,098 | I find it very difficult to make strong research proposals, where I am trying to convince the audience that my proposal is important (possibly *more important* than the other applicants'). I write "grant applications" in quotes, because that is the most straightforward example: In these, it is typically expected that you not only describe your idea in a way that the reviewer will easily understand and comprehend, but also convince them that the research is important and worth funding (especially with grants where the majority of applications are rejected). This feature is not limited to only grants: I think fellowship applications, PhD applications (whether they require a research proposal explicitly, or implicitly through statements of purpose with concrete research plans embedded in them being more effective), postdoc job applications and perhaps even junior faculty member applications are very similar in that one must propose a research project, and make it sound important besides merely communicating clearly.
Whenever I need to write such a proposal, I inevitably feel stuck. I immediately become anxious that my research is not all that interesting, I'm not really all that great a scientist, and feel that I must work very hard to make my proposal sound like it is more important than it is if I am to have a fighting chance. This is scary, and I end up procrastinating for many days on the writing. I tell myself that I am "waiting to be in the right sort of creative, inventive, intellectual, scientific mental state", but I secretly know this is nonsense. There are 3 very strong antitheses:
1. All the creative persons across the spectrum of fields (from artists to writers to inventors and engineers to mathematicians and scientists) appear in unanimous agreement that it is "1% inspiration and 99% perspiration". I have never heard anyone worth mention claim that "waiting for inspiration to come" is an effective strategy.
2. The inspiration that I supposedly await has an uncanny habit of materializing exactly on the night before the proposal deadline, at 3 AM in the morning, such that if it came just a little later I would not have been able to make it to the deadline.
3. When I do finish the proposal, I am almost universally satisfied that the result doesn't sound unimportant, and could have been brilliant if only I had started a bit earlier and made more rewrites.
I think the more realistic explanation is that at some point the fear of missing the deadline becomes so great that it overpowers my anxiety. However, I think it would be better if I could do away with the anxiety, so I could start work way before the deadline, and have time to make many revisions and avoid having to pull all-nighters.
How can I get over this anxiety? By way of showing *what I have tried*:
* Gaming antithesis #2 above: Setting an early deadline, so that it forces me to get started, then obtaining an extension on the deadline in which time I can make revisions, now that I have gotten over the most difficult initial step. Unfortunately, the moment I obtain the extension, the anxiety comes back and saps my motivation. This happens even if the extension happens as a surprise.
* "Just start by writing *anything*, and rewrite later" - this is very hard to force myself to do, because I feel like my ideas are hopelessly irrelevant and there's no point in even trying. Even if I do force myself to jot down a very rough outline, it is just as hard to motivate myself to keep refining it, because I feel that no matter how much I refine it, it will still be irrelevant.
* Ask friends and colleagues for feedback - very effective for making a mediocre proposal good, but useless for starting out: I get even more anxious because I worry about embarrassing myself to other people.
* Build up tolerance by repeated attempts - I have gone through the proposal writing process quite a few times, but the experience doesn't appear to have made it any easier. I feel like even if I had been awarded a thousand grants, I would still say to myself, "Man, you may have had a good run in your day, but this time you've lost it - this is the stupidest idea you've ever had".
* [How do I overcome fear of rejection when writing academic papers?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/3242/244) - the suggestion to follow the example of good papers is hard to apply, because proposals are often confidential. The remark about "reaching a certain level of maturity" also seems to not apply, because surely a project that is only at the idea stage is anything but mature?
* [What is expected when "novel" and "innovative" ideas are requested as part of a research grant application?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/16198) - very related, but there are many grant schemes which emphasize impact and importance (often without defining them) over innovation.
Oddly enough, I **don't** feel insecure about other aspects of science. I don't hesitate to do research because of self-doubt, I'm not shy about telling other people about my research (so long as the only requirement is that they understand it, and it doesn't matter if they don't think it's important), I think I do a decent job of communicating my ideas clearly and I sincerely believe that given my level of competence I have a good chance of solving the problems I am working on. Obviously, I think my research is worth doing - otherwise I wouldn't be doing it.
It is only when convincing someone else that my research is important that I stumble. I tend to imagine a grant reviewer saying to me, "Okay, this is all very nice and good, but applicant X over there wants the same grant so he can cure cancer and end world hunger. Why should we fund you and not him?" Of course, this is like saying "why should we fund NASA when we could be feeding the poor" - these aren't mutually exclusive pursuits, and just because you aim high doesn't mean you'll go high. But still, there are millions of scientists out there, and just statistically some of them are probably much smarter and more knowledgeable than me. Honestly, it seems very likely that many of them work on more important things than me. Probably some of them apply for the same grant. So how can I sit there and write a proposal, pretending that I seriously think I should be the one to get funded instead of all these other people?
Sorry if this sounds like more of a request for moral support than a question. In my defense, I think that the difficulty of "selling your ideas" is a common problem for at least a non-trivial subset of scientists (captured quite well by "impostor syndrome") and discussing strategies to overcome it would be a good addition to the site. | 2014/10/17 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30098",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/244/"
] | Wow, great ideas here. Here's a small suggestion. It is sometimes easier for me to get a project off my desk if I use it as a way to procrastinate about some *other* project. Perhaps you could harness that idea and cook up some project that you *really should be doing*, but which does not appeal to you -- and then you might feel tempted to work on the research proposal as a way of avoiding the other thing.
My main contribution has to do with how OCD is treated. There are two steps:
1. Name the fear -- preferably something that will help you laugh at it.
2. Talk back to it.
There is a very nice segment on a This American Life podcast that illustrates #2, done in a novel way, as a DIY project, without a therapist. If you don't want to listen to it, you can read the transcript here: <http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/545/transcript>
(Scroll down to Act Four. Mailer Demon.) | Purely personal top, from someone who had to break through a near-total writing block: Write one to throw away. If you're stuck for a first paragraph, scribble a note about what ideas belong there and move on. If you're having trouble with phrasing, just day it however it's easiest and move on. If you can't find the citation you need, leave yourself a (foot)note with a key phrase like "to be determined" or "Fixme!" and move on. Don't worry about making it elegant, just get it down on paper.
After finishing that rough draft, srt it aside for a few days if possible.
Then come back to it, read it through, and decide what needs to be improved. Remember, the base assumption is that the first pass was just to start organizing your thoughts... bit you may find that very little polishing is needed. On the other hand, even if it's a complete train wreck, editing it into acceptable form is often less stressful than trying to write a perfect document the first time |
7,988,901 | This is the first time for me asking a question. Hope you'll be able to help me.
Problem: my chef wants our enterprise application to have a module which allows customers to upload very large files to our server.
Infrastructure: php 5.x / mysql client-server app
Well known problems:
-HTTP session time out
-Upload limit in terms of number of files and file size
Rules:
-The solution mustn't use any applet (java, flash, ...), neither any browser plugin.
-The solution should allow users to upload any type of files, from simple images to very large files of any other type.
-For security reasons, we don't want to change the settings in the php.ini file, neither in any .htaccess file to allow the app uploading larger files.
-If a pre-backed solution exists, it should be opensource and possibly free of charges.
-Integration with AJAX functionalities and progress bar visualisation are heavily welcome.
Possible solutions (tell me if it's possible, and if it isn't, why?):
-Access by FTP using some javascript library in the browser
-Access by WebDAV using some javascript library in the browser
**Any other solutions that respect the above given rules is also welcome**
I know, I'm asking for a very hard thing to find. | 2011/11/03 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/7988901",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/1026727/"
] | What you're asking for isn't currently possible. The only technology for uploading files which is currently available in all widely used browsers is standard HTTP form uploads, which you've already rejected as a solution. All other solutions available require Java or Flash, or use browser JavaScript capabilities (local file access) which are not fully standardized, nor universally available.
You'll need to relax some of your requirements. | Create an iframe or frame, or browser-window that offers access to the server via FTP. Allows users to drop files there for those browsers at least who support FTP. |
6,900 | Many times a client asks that the content delivered should be his/her Property and me ( the original writer) won't have any right on that written material once I deliver it and get paid.
So my question is about the,
1. Ability of a person (writer or programer) to reproduce the same content (written article or software) again and again and getting paid each time for hard work of each project and still not indulge in any Intellectual Property Confusion.
2. How does the intellectual property works here? Cause in case of computer program you can repetitively use the same logic, same programming languages, same programming libraries. You can reuse nearly everything.
3. Also in writing once I write a sentence say , 'My country is great' then I can never use the same sentence in same context in same way again in any other articles. Because that will violate the originality of that new article plus violate Intellectual property of the old article.
4. How do I generate a real 'new and original' content each time?
5. When its explicitly not specified, who owns the right to the written material. | 2012/12/26 | [
"https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/6900",
"https://writers.stackexchange.com",
"https://writers.stackexchange.com/users/4521/"
] | Usual disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. Please do not construe this as legal advice. Etc.
But my understanding from my research and past experience is this. Oh, another disclaimer: I'm an American so my experience is with U.S. copyright law, but I think most of this is pretty much the same in all countries because copyright is controlled by a couple of big international treaties. There may well be some differences in the details, though.
1. If you are paid by someone else to write something for them, it is considered a "work for hire" and they normally own the copyright. It would be a very very good idea to have a contract that specifies who owns the copyright to avoid any legal or ethical ambiguity. If you as the author are retaining the copyright, clearly state what rights you are giving them. Can they print it once or an unlimited number of times? Are they licensed to publish only in their own country or anywhere in the world? Etc.
2. But I understand that you're saying that you sold them the copyright. Okay fine. So legally, you now have exactly the same rights to this work as someone who had nothing to do with writing it. That is, you have a limited "fair use" right to quote small sections of it, and that's it.
But regarding your discussion about program logic: A copyright gives ownership of the exact words used. It does not give ownership of the research, facts, or ideas. So if, say, you sold an article in which you explained why 2+2=4, if you sold the rights, you could not sell those exact same words again somewhere else. But you could write other articles giving the exact same explanation of why 2+2=4, using the same logic and research. You just can't use the same words.
There have been many court cases where someone took, for example, an article from a newspaper, rewrote it in their own words, and published it. The courts have routinely ruled that this did not violate copyright because they did not copy the exact words.
The courts have routinely ruled that you do not have a copyright to a fact, only to the words used to describe a fact. So when you sold your calculator program, you are not selling the rights to the fact that 2+2=4. Even if you were the first person to discover that 2+2=4, you do not own a copyright on that fact. You cannot legally prevent other people from adding 2 and 2 just because you discovered it first. The copyright covers the exact text of the program, not the underlying mathematical facts or the techniques used. (You might be able to get a PATENT for the techniques, but that's a different subject.)
In one fairly recent case, a phone company copied all the phone numbers from another phone company's directory. The first company had deliberately included some fake names in their directory to catch someone doing this, and so they sued. The courts ruled that you can't copyright the phone book. They said that the individual names and phone numbers are "facts", and so can't be copyrighted. (If they could, then it would be illegal to dial anyone's number.) One can own a copyright to a particular selection and arrangement of facts, but the court said that in this case, the idea of including all the phone numbers in a specific geographical area and arranging them in alphabetical order is so obvious that it does not rise to the level of "creative work".
RE Can you re-use the sentence, "My country is great." Here we get to an issue where the courts routinely wrestle. The fair use doctrine says that you can take quotes of reasonable length from someone else's work. But what is a "reasonable length"? The extremes are obvious: If someone wrote a 300 page book, and you copied 299 pages of it word for word and changed one page, the original writer will easily win a copyright lawsuit against you. (Every now and then someone reads about copyright law and says, "So if I change one word, then I'm not copying the original author exactly, and he can't sue me!" No. Our courts can be pretty stupid, but they're not that stupid. If that was the rule, copyrights would be worthless: you could always just tack "Copied by Bob" at the end now it's "different".) At the other end, if someone tried to sue you because he wrote a book that had the word "tomato" in it and you wrote a totally different book that also used the word "tomato" and he claims that you stole this word from his book, he will lose.
You can quote a few sentences or a paragraph or two pretty freely. So I think the short answer is, no, the person you sold rights to would not own the sentence "My country is great." You could re-use that all you like. Frankly a sentence like that is generic enough that there are probably many people in the world who have written it without having copied it from someone else, but maybe that's just a bad example. Even if the sentence was quite distinctive so it was very unlikely someone else would come up with the exact same sentence, you're still allowed to copy a sentence.
If you copy several pages, you're likely on thin ice. This all gets into judgement calls. If, say, you are critiquing another author's book, and so you print a paragraph from his book, then your rebuttal, then another paragraph, then your rebuttal, etc, so that in total you copy many pages, you'd probably get away with it as long as the amount you copy isn't a significant percentage of the whole book. But if you just copy twenty pages straight out of someone else's book, you probably would lose a copyright suit.
So all that said, my short answer is: Whatever research or brainstorming you did to write an article that you sold to someone else, you can freely re-use that. Just don't use the exact same words. Take the same information, and write a new article using the same information but different words. I'd be very careful to avoid using similar phrasing.
Sorry for the long answer, but it was a long question! | When you undertake a commission to produce an original piece of work (whether this be writing, design, painting, drawing or whatever) you (as the originator) decide on the contractual copyright with the commissioner or purchaser of the original work.
When I say *contractual* I mean under what terms of contract that original piece of work is produced.
As an originator of an original work you are by right the copyright holder of that work *unless* you sell the copyright of that work to someone else.
If you wish to retain copyright of your work then you must make it clear to whoever is paying you to produce it that you retain copyright but give unrestricted rights to *use* and *reproduction* of that work for the fee they are paying.
You must make it clear to whoever is buying your work, precisely what they are paying for - for the copyright or for the use of that work only. |
6,900 | Many times a client asks that the content delivered should be his/her Property and me ( the original writer) won't have any right on that written material once I deliver it and get paid.
So my question is about the,
1. Ability of a person (writer or programer) to reproduce the same content (written article or software) again and again and getting paid each time for hard work of each project and still not indulge in any Intellectual Property Confusion.
2. How does the intellectual property works here? Cause in case of computer program you can repetitively use the same logic, same programming languages, same programming libraries. You can reuse nearly everything.
3. Also in writing once I write a sentence say , 'My country is great' then I can never use the same sentence in same context in same way again in any other articles. Because that will violate the originality of that new article plus violate Intellectual property of the old article.
4. How do I generate a real 'new and original' content each time?
5. When its explicitly not specified, who owns the right to the written material. | 2012/12/26 | [
"https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/6900",
"https://writers.stackexchange.com",
"https://writers.stackexchange.com/users/4521/"
] | Usual disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. Please do not construe this as legal advice. Etc.
But my understanding from my research and past experience is this. Oh, another disclaimer: I'm an American so my experience is with U.S. copyright law, but I think most of this is pretty much the same in all countries because copyright is controlled by a couple of big international treaties. There may well be some differences in the details, though.
1. If you are paid by someone else to write something for them, it is considered a "work for hire" and they normally own the copyright. It would be a very very good idea to have a contract that specifies who owns the copyright to avoid any legal or ethical ambiguity. If you as the author are retaining the copyright, clearly state what rights you are giving them. Can they print it once or an unlimited number of times? Are they licensed to publish only in their own country or anywhere in the world? Etc.
2. But I understand that you're saying that you sold them the copyright. Okay fine. So legally, you now have exactly the same rights to this work as someone who had nothing to do with writing it. That is, you have a limited "fair use" right to quote small sections of it, and that's it.
But regarding your discussion about program logic: A copyright gives ownership of the exact words used. It does not give ownership of the research, facts, or ideas. So if, say, you sold an article in which you explained why 2+2=4, if you sold the rights, you could not sell those exact same words again somewhere else. But you could write other articles giving the exact same explanation of why 2+2=4, using the same logic and research. You just can't use the same words.
There have been many court cases where someone took, for example, an article from a newspaper, rewrote it in their own words, and published it. The courts have routinely ruled that this did not violate copyright because they did not copy the exact words.
The courts have routinely ruled that you do not have a copyright to a fact, only to the words used to describe a fact. So when you sold your calculator program, you are not selling the rights to the fact that 2+2=4. Even if you were the first person to discover that 2+2=4, you do not own a copyright on that fact. You cannot legally prevent other people from adding 2 and 2 just because you discovered it first. The copyright covers the exact text of the program, not the underlying mathematical facts or the techniques used. (You might be able to get a PATENT for the techniques, but that's a different subject.)
In one fairly recent case, a phone company copied all the phone numbers from another phone company's directory. The first company had deliberately included some fake names in their directory to catch someone doing this, and so they sued. The courts ruled that you can't copyright the phone book. They said that the individual names and phone numbers are "facts", and so can't be copyrighted. (If they could, then it would be illegal to dial anyone's number.) One can own a copyright to a particular selection and arrangement of facts, but the court said that in this case, the idea of including all the phone numbers in a specific geographical area and arranging them in alphabetical order is so obvious that it does not rise to the level of "creative work".
RE Can you re-use the sentence, "My country is great." Here we get to an issue where the courts routinely wrestle. The fair use doctrine says that you can take quotes of reasonable length from someone else's work. But what is a "reasonable length"? The extremes are obvious: If someone wrote a 300 page book, and you copied 299 pages of it word for word and changed one page, the original writer will easily win a copyright lawsuit against you. (Every now and then someone reads about copyright law and says, "So if I change one word, then I'm not copying the original author exactly, and he can't sue me!" No. Our courts can be pretty stupid, but they're not that stupid. If that was the rule, copyrights would be worthless: you could always just tack "Copied by Bob" at the end now it's "different".) At the other end, if someone tried to sue you because he wrote a book that had the word "tomato" in it and you wrote a totally different book that also used the word "tomato" and he claims that you stole this word from his book, he will lose.
You can quote a few sentences or a paragraph or two pretty freely. So I think the short answer is, no, the person you sold rights to would not own the sentence "My country is great." You could re-use that all you like. Frankly a sentence like that is generic enough that there are probably many people in the world who have written it without having copied it from someone else, but maybe that's just a bad example. Even if the sentence was quite distinctive so it was very unlikely someone else would come up with the exact same sentence, you're still allowed to copy a sentence.
If you copy several pages, you're likely on thin ice. This all gets into judgement calls. If, say, you are critiquing another author's book, and so you print a paragraph from his book, then your rebuttal, then another paragraph, then your rebuttal, etc, so that in total you copy many pages, you'd probably get away with it as long as the amount you copy isn't a significant percentage of the whole book. But if you just copy twenty pages straight out of someone else's book, you probably would lose a copyright suit.
So all that said, my short answer is: Whatever research or brainstorming you did to write an article that you sold to someone else, you can freely re-use that. Just don't use the exact same words. Take the same information, and write a new article using the same information but different words. I'd be very careful to avoid using similar phrasing.
Sorry for the long answer, but it was a long question! | In principle, the author is copyright holder of a work, but this principle is often deviated from. When the work is commissioned by another party, some countries automatically transfer copyright, some leave it with the author. Some countries do not even allow copyright to be transfered voluntarily. International treaties such as the Berne Convention and the WIPO Copyright Treaty offer very little clarification on the subject.
The fine details of these arrangements are usually complex and often up for debate. It is therefore advisable to explicate who shall hold the copyright on a commissioned work. It is not uncommon for a writer to merely provide an irrevokable, non-exclusive license for publication. Of course, as copyright holder, you are free to reuse your own work, as long as you abide by any contractual obligations. The following will assume someone else now holds exclusive rights to the writings.
*"But you write a sentence, 'two plus two is four' then you cannot reuse this sentence in same context in same way again. That will be considered as copy paste and reusing old content. In writing you can not use exact same sentences again."*
This, I suspect, is the heart of your problem. You're in luck; it's false. Generally, the entire work is protected by copyright. Parts of a work, for example several pages from a book, are still protected, but some exceptions may apply, most notably fair use and the more restrictive quotation rights. Sufficiently small parts no longer qualify as original expressions and do not meet the criteria for protection under copyright law.
A single sentence, such as this, carefully crafted in a deliberate attempt to be eligable for my monopolisation, may more than meet the minimum. On the other hand, a more factual news article may contain entire unprotected paragraphs. The distinction is unclear.
The events, facts, ideas and opinions you have described are not protected themselves; their expression is. When writing another piece on the same subject, I would advise making an effort to rephrase. That should be fairly simple. If at any point it proves too difficult to express a thought differently, the wording you used in the first place probably was not original enough and can freely be reused. |
6,900 | Many times a client asks that the content delivered should be his/her Property and me ( the original writer) won't have any right on that written material once I deliver it and get paid.
So my question is about the,
1. Ability of a person (writer or programer) to reproduce the same content (written article or software) again and again and getting paid each time for hard work of each project and still not indulge in any Intellectual Property Confusion.
2. How does the intellectual property works here? Cause in case of computer program you can repetitively use the same logic, same programming languages, same programming libraries. You can reuse nearly everything.
3. Also in writing once I write a sentence say , 'My country is great' then I can never use the same sentence in same context in same way again in any other articles. Because that will violate the originality of that new article plus violate Intellectual property of the old article.
4. How do I generate a real 'new and original' content each time?
5. When its explicitly not specified, who owns the right to the written material. | 2012/12/26 | [
"https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/6900",
"https://writers.stackexchange.com",
"https://writers.stackexchange.com/users/4521/"
] | Usual disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. Please do not construe this as legal advice. Etc.
But my understanding from my research and past experience is this. Oh, another disclaimer: I'm an American so my experience is with U.S. copyright law, but I think most of this is pretty much the same in all countries because copyright is controlled by a couple of big international treaties. There may well be some differences in the details, though.
1. If you are paid by someone else to write something for them, it is considered a "work for hire" and they normally own the copyright. It would be a very very good idea to have a contract that specifies who owns the copyright to avoid any legal or ethical ambiguity. If you as the author are retaining the copyright, clearly state what rights you are giving them. Can they print it once or an unlimited number of times? Are they licensed to publish only in their own country or anywhere in the world? Etc.
2. But I understand that you're saying that you sold them the copyright. Okay fine. So legally, you now have exactly the same rights to this work as someone who had nothing to do with writing it. That is, you have a limited "fair use" right to quote small sections of it, and that's it.
But regarding your discussion about program logic: A copyright gives ownership of the exact words used. It does not give ownership of the research, facts, or ideas. So if, say, you sold an article in which you explained why 2+2=4, if you sold the rights, you could not sell those exact same words again somewhere else. But you could write other articles giving the exact same explanation of why 2+2=4, using the same logic and research. You just can't use the same words.
There have been many court cases where someone took, for example, an article from a newspaper, rewrote it in their own words, and published it. The courts have routinely ruled that this did not violate copyright because they did not copy the exact words.
The courts have routinely ruled that you do not have a copyright to a fact, only to the words used to describe a fact. So when you sold your calculator program, you are not selling the rights to the fact that 2+2=4. Even if you were the first person to discover that 2+2=4, you do not own a copyright on that fact. You cannot legally prevent other people from adding 2 and 2 just because you discovered it first. The copyright covers the exact text of the program, not the underlying mathematical facts or the techniques used. (You might be able to get a PATENT for the techniques, but that's a different subject.)
In one fairly recent case, a phone company copied all the phone numbers from another phone company's directory. The first company had deliberately included some fake names in their directory to catch someone doing this, and so they sued. The courts ruled that you can't copyright the phone book. They said that the individual names and phone numbers are "facts", and so can't be copyrighted. (If they could, then it would be illegal to dial anyone's number.) One can own a copyright to a particular selection and arrangement of facts, but the court said that in this case, the idea of including all the phone numbers in a specific geographical area and arranging them in alphabetical order is so obvious that it does not rise to the level of "creative work".
RE Can you re-use the sentence, "My country is great." Here we get to an issue where the courts routinely wrestle. The fair use doctrine says that you can take quotes of reasonable length from someone else's work. But what is a "reasonable length"? The extremes are obvious: If someone wrote a 300 page book, and you copied 299 pages of it word for word and changed one page, the original writer will easily win a copyright lawsuit against you. (Every now and then someone reads about copyright law and says, "So if I change one word, then I'm not copying the original author exactly, and he can't sue me!" No. Our courts can be pretty stupid, but they're not that stupid. If that was the rule, copyrights would be worthless: you could always just tack "Copied by Bob" at the end now it's "different".) At the other end, if someone tried to sue you because he wrote a book that had the word "tomato" in it and you wrote a totally different book that also used the word "tomato" and he claims that you stole this word from his book, he will lose.
You can quote a few sentences or a paragraph or two pretty freely. So I think the short answer is, no, the person you sold rights to would not own the sentence "My country is great." You could re-use that all you like. Frankly a sentence like that is generic enough that there are probably many people in the world who have written it without having copied it from someone else, but maybe that's just a bad example. Even if the sentence was quite distinctive so it was very unlikely someone else would come up with the exact same sentence, you're still allowed to copy a sentence.
If you copy several pages, you're likely on thin ice. This all gets into judgement calls. If, say, you are critiquing another author's book, and so you print a paragraph from his book, then your rebuttal, then another paragraph, then your rebuttal, etc, so that in total you copy many pages, you'd probably get away with it as long as the amount you copy isn't a significant percentage of the whole book. But if you just copy twenty pages straight out of someone else's book, you probably would lose a copyright suit.
So all that said, my short answer is: Whatever research or brainstorming you did to write an article that you sold to someone else, you can freely re-use that. Just don't use the exact same words. Take the same information, and write a new article using the same information but different words. I'd be very careful to avoid using similar phrasing.
Sorry for the long answer, but it was a long question! | As a programmer I must state that you have made an error in your assumption. You can't reuse the code you have 'sold' to your employer/client, if you have sold the material and intellectual rights to the code. Freelancers usually aren't selling that rights, only the final product, so the situation is different. In your case it would be selling the rights to publish your article only.
Of course you can write something else **inspired by** the original, but inspiration is writing from scratch and not copying, the result will be similar but not the same.
Or, something more dubious, modification of original article by word changing, changing of word order etc. I would not recommend it but this is already done in SEO world you know - black SEO techniques based on copying the whole content from sites such as Wikipedia, with strong synonimization and word order changes. I haven't heard of process for such misuse, it's not trivial to prove.
You are selling the unique articles to your customers, and I think (though you haven't written it directly) for those customers the google uniqueness is the only think that matters. If you simply copy the article or some paragraphs, the google algorithm could mark the page of your customer as copy and remove it from search list, so they are protecting against it. They contain no original research, so you are free to paraphrase them, but **not to copy** even a sentence literally!
If they would be articles for some printed press, there could be also the copying of essence involved. If the article was based of your research, copying those research results and writing this article once again would be probably against the contract between you and your customer (but this would be AFAIK directly written in contract). Own research is for example, the results of the polls etc., not writing based on books from library. |
49,278 | Is it legal to own and operate a website that would host database leaks, accounts lists, Anarchist's Cookbook (guides on making bombs etc, drugs and more), and guides on stealing credit card info and other things such as DOXing? | 2020/02/21 | [
"https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/49278",
"https://law.stackexchange.com",
"https://law.stackexchange.com/users/30068/"
] | It depends on the jurisdiction and information.
A guide to making bombs would be *prima facie* illegal in the UK per s58 Terrorism Act 2000 <http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/11/section/58>, for example. | You ask about a number of different types of material:
* The Anachist's Cookbook would be considered to be material helpful for terrorism, and hence illegal to possess, never mind distribute.
* Other how-to guides for crimes would probably be considered to be [encouraging or assisting a crime](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encouraging_or_assisting_a_crime_in_English_law), which is an offence in English law.
* Having a database of leaked information is not illegal in itself, but if it contains credit card data or passwords and there is an intent to use these fraudulently then it would be "[an article for use in fraud](https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/fraud-act-2006)" and hence illegal under the Fraud Act 2006. Providing information from the database in a form that could be used for fraud, especially in conjunction with guides on how to do so, would be "encouraging or assisting a crime". The operator might also be charged with conspiracy if there is evidence of a specific relationship between the operator and another criminal, such as selling access. There may also be copyright issues with distributing it. |
150,808 | I thought there was a way to manage ActiveX extensions on Google Chrome, specifically one that manages how Chrome handles Excel workbooks when you click on the hyperlinked title in SharePoint. Is there a way for Chrome to open Excel workbooks directly in Excel client?
Thanks | 2015/07/29 | [
"https://sharepoint.stackexchange.com/questions/150808",
"https://sharepoint.stackexchange.com",
"https://sharepoint.stackexchange.com/users/41032/"
] | The [IETab](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ie-tab/hehijbfgiekmjfkfjpbkbammjbdenadd?hl=en) plugin runs IE in a Chrome Tab so can execute ActiveX controls. | 1. Open Chrome
2. Put "chrome://flags/#enable-npapi" into the address bar
3. Find the "Enable NPAPI" plug-in and enable it
4. Select "relaunch now" at the bottom of the page
This enables the NPAPI plugins in chrome. This helped me to show Lync status in Newsfeed in Chrome, hope this works for your case too :-) |
19,202 | I have used snap package manager to install several applications on elementary OS. But when I want to start any app it may take a long time (up to several minutes). Sometimes app does not start and I need to click on app icon and wait again.
There is no same problem with default elementary OS AppCenter. These apps open quickly enough. | 2019/06/19 | [
"https://elementaryos.stackexchange.com/questions/19202",
"https://elementaryos.stackexchange.com",
"https://elementaryos.stackexchange.com/users/18301/"
] | I've heard of similar issues with Snap apps off and on. One easy alternative is to use Flatpak apps from Flathub when apps exist in both places.
To install an app from Flathub:
1. Visit the app's page on [Flathub](https://flathub.org/apps)
2. Click the **Install** button on the web page
3. Depending on your browser, Sideload may open automatically. If not, choose to open the downloaded file with **Sideload**.
4. Read and agree to the implications of installing an untrusted app from Flatpak.
If this is the first Flatpak app you've installed, it might not show up in the Applications Menu until you log out and back in—future Flatpak apps will show up instantly. You can then uninstall the snap version.
It's typically recommended to use Flatpak apps on elementary OS instead of snap because elementary has [officially backed Flatpak](https://blog.elementary.io/elementary-appcenter-flatpak/), elementary OS supports Flatpak out of the box, and elementary developers have put [significant work into](https://blog.elementary.io/updates-for-october-2019/) making sure it's easy to install and update Flatpak apps without having to use a Terminal. | If your snapd version is older than 2.36.2, it might be a font-caching issue, as written [here](https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2019/03/the-cause-of-slow-snap-app-startup-times-has-been-identified). |
252,417 | I am teaching myself to program in C and have been for a few months. I recently took a one month break and came back a week ago, and it's all gone. I had to look up some things that I really put effort into understanding (see: pointers) and some others just stuck with me. Now learning about `malloc` and dynamically allocated memory is also getting a bit tough.
What do you suggest for keeping it all retained? Will it just come with time and experience? | 2014/08/06 | [
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/252417",
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com",
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/145310/"
] | Practice, practice, practice. You'll still forget things that you haven't used for a while, but the more you practice, the faster they'll come back to you. Also, (in line with @Telastyn's comment), emphasize understanding things, not memorizing them. | Typically, the ways in which people learn are:
1. Read about the concepts
2. Read the available source code
3. Implement the given source code and exercises
This works very well for short-term memorization and learning. However, there are a few factors which help the transition from "**memorization**" to "**gut-feel**".
First, have a simple but clear-cut objective, for example, "I want to develop a replacement for Notepad". Everything you learn should be driven by the needs of this app. When you say, "Now how do I show this white area on the screen", look it up, learn it, implement it.
The next time you reach for the same concept, you will remember that context and trigger your memory. You'll think: "I remember that place where I had to use those pesky pointers because of {xyz}." That's how the brain learns and remembers!
Don't stop at one program, try a variety of different ones. You will eventually touch most of the common concepts of your selected language.
You'll slowly gain confidence and try more advanced programs as you go along. Keep it practical and driven by real goals. Keep it simple, and keep it fun.
---
This sermon brought to you by the SE network. Thank you for listening! :) |
252,417 | I am teaching myself to program in C and have been for a few months. I recently took a one month break and came back a week ago, and it's all gone. I had to look up some things that I really put effort into understanding (see: pointers) and some others just stuck with me. Now learning about `malloc` and dynamically allocated memory is also getting a bit tough.
What do you suggest for keeping it all retained? Will it just come with time and experience? | 2014/08/06 | [
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/252417",
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com",
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/145310/"
] | Practice, practice, practice. You'll still forget things that you haven't used for a while, but the more you practice, the faster they'll come back to you. Also, (in line with @Telastyn's comment), emphasize understanding things, not memorizing them. | Another Great way is to TEACH, I know it may seem strange,But As soon as you learn teach that stuff to some one, Because while teaching the brain works different, you have to think how the person in front of you is thinking, he will ask you many doubts and you always have to Say the same thing again and again but with different angles.This will make you understand and remember concepts permanently. |
1,228,273 | I read someplace that (I guess for security reasons) the new Windows 10 S will only run programs that are from the Windows Store. I like to write my own programs. Will they not run unless I put them in the Store first? If I give my programs to family and friends, will they likewise not run? | 2017/07/09 | [
"https://superuser.com/questions/1228273",
"https://superuser.com",
"https://superuser.com/users/748030/"
] | ### Will they not run unless I put them in the Store first?
They won't run if you don't put them in the Store. See below.
>
> If I give my programs to family and friends, will they likewise not run?
>
>
>
They won't run. See below.
>
> **Which apps and hardware work with Windows 10 S?**
>
>
> Windows 10 S works exclusively with compatible apps from the Windows
> Store. The vast majority of apps available in the Windows Store will
> work on Windows 10 S the same way they will work on Windows 10 Pro and
> Windows 10 Home. Note that some developer tools will not be supported
> for use on Windows 10 S and a small number of apps with known
> compatibility issues will have notice of the issue included in the
> app’s product detail page in the Windows Store.
>
>
> **What happens if I need to use an app that is not compatible with Windows 10 S?**
>
>
> If you try to use an app that is not available in the Windows Store,
> you will see a reminder that apps used with Windows 10 S must come
> from the Windows Store. In some instances, you may also see a
> suggestion for a category of similar apps or a specific app that is
> already available in the Windows Store. Note that some developer
> tools will not be supported for use on Windows 10 S and a small number
> of apps with known compatibility issues will have notice of the issue
> included in the app’s product detail page in the Windows Store.
> Ultimately, if you want to download an application that is not in the
> Windows Store or has compatibility issues, you can choose to switch
> out of Windows 10 S configuration to Windows 10 Pro.
>
>
>
Source [Windows 10 S FAQ](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4020089/windows-10-s-faq) | I've since found out that Windows 10 S will have a "developer mode". This allows you to develop an app without constantly uploading and downloading it. Once it is finished you'll hae to upload it to Windows Store for other people to use. On the store you can specify that you only want it to be downloadable by certain people. So, apps you develop for yourself (and possibly family members and friends) will be downloadable then. |
319,496 | MacBook Pro Retina mid 2012. The error "No connected camera" could be "solved" by "sudo killall VDCAssistant" years ago.
Today the error comes again but VDCAssistant cannot be killed. I have restarted the MBP several times but no luck.
The camera works if I login High Sierra with another (admin) account.
Question: how to make it work for my daily account? | 2018/03/17 | [
"https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/319496",
"https://apple.stackexchange.com",
"https://apple.stackexchange.com/users/24245/"
] | Sounds like a conflict with something that is running in your personal account.
Try logging into your account holding down the shift key. Hold it until everything has settled, it can take a minute or two. This will prevent login apps from running.
See if the problem remains. | If it works in other user spaces, just not in yours, it may be tied to the parental controls which includes a camera exclusion. I would check the System Preferences / Parental Controls and see if there is an anomalous toggle on "Allow use of camera". |
4,200,313 | is there any similar syntax to this in mysql:
insert into database2.table1 (column1, column2) select column4, column5 from database2.table1; | 2010/11/17 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/4200313",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/341806/"
] | I've researched all the above mentioned options and found significant limitations in all of them. Looks like all vendors that dominated this space years ago are running out of steam and not investing enough in touch experience.
But I found a new product that looks promising: <http://www.starplugins.com/starzoom>
I tested their demos on iOS, Android and a few PC browsers and found that they work fine, touch friendly, and very lightweight. If anybody here used StarZoom please share your experience. | I don't think there is one. I've looked too. [OpenLayers](http://openlayers.org/) is pure JavaScript and is pretty slick. It comes pretty close to the Zoomify functionality. You can even use [images prepared with Zoomify](http://ttp://oldmapsonline.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/openlayers/examples/zoomify.html) with OpenLayers.
There's also [openzoom](http://openzoom.org/), but it lacks the nice UI controls that Zoomify and OpenLayers have. |
4,200,313 | is there any similar syntax to this in mysql:
insert into database2.table1 (column1, column2) select column4, column5 from database2.table1; | 2010/11/17 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/4200313",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/341806/"
] | I've researched all the above mentioned options and found significant limitations in all of them. Looks like all vendors that dominated this space years ago are running out of steam and not investing enough in touch experience.
But I found a new product that looks promising: <http://www.starplugins.com/starzoom>
I tested their demos on iOS, Android and a few PC browsers and found that they work fine, touch friendly, and very lightweight. If anybody here used StarZoom please share your experience. | The interface of AjaxZoom can be disabled or adjusted, see this example:
<http://www.ajax-zoom.com/examples/example16.php> |
68,032 | p1 posted his bank account info and was excited to announce that he has paid off his mortgage. He is asking others to post their bank accounts as well.
p2 "I have more than that but I have enough tact not to rub it in your face." | 2012/05/17 | [
"https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/68032",
"https://english.stackexchange.com",
"https://english.stackexchange.com/users/21210/"
] | It means to inform someone or remind someone that you are superior to him or more fortunate than him in a way that is excessive to the point of rudeness. That is, you are not just pointing out your advantage, but emphasizing it in a way calculated to embarass the other person or build yourself up. | It means to keep reminding somebody of what they have done wrong. The reference is to training a puppy by rubbing its nose in whatever it has deposited on the floor. |
68,032 | p1 posted his bank account info and was excited to announce that he has paid off his mortgage. He is asking others to post their bank accounts as well.
p2 "I have more than that but I have enough tact not to rub it in your face." | 2012/05/17 | [
"https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/68032",
"https://english.stackexchange.com",
"https://english.stackexchange.com/users/21210/"
] | It means to inform someone or remind someone that you are superior to him or more fortunate than him in a way that is excessive to the point of rudeness. That is, you are not just pointing out your advantage, but emphasizing it in a way calculated to embarass the other person or build yourself up. | "Rub your face in it" does come from dog training but it has more do to with pointing out others mistakes and failures than it does flaunting one's own achievements.
I know this was a while back but I thought Jay really misled you on the meaning. No offense intended. |
28,042 | [This answer](https://space.stackexchange.com/a/27968/6836) says:
>
> We do not have a human-rated rocket which can send a sizable payload to Mars. The Falcon Heavy is certainly capable of sending a payload there, but the rocket would need to be human-rated, which basically means tested far more extensively than it has been now.
>
>
>
And that got me thinking - for a vehicle to launch from the surface of the Earth it needs to be pretty substantial. But you can avoid a lot of the requirements of the stresses of launch by becoming a payload (e.g. satellites wouldn't survive a launch if they weren't inside of a rocket. And if it were economical to build satellites that could be self-launching, they'd already exist, right?).
So would it be better to just build a ship in pieces and just send it up on a (couple) of Falcon Heavy Rocket(s)? | 2018/06/22 | [
"https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/28042",
"https://space.stackexchange.com",
"https://space.stackexchange.com/users/6836/"
] | Better by what criteria? It's a tradeoff. Assembly from parts makes less efficient use of mass, due to the need for mating structures and a larger area of hull wrapped around smaller bits of volume, and greater complexity due to the need to design all the separate parts and assemble them in orbit.
A modular spacecraft is also unlikely to be able to withstand reentry and landing on Mars. This means that it will need enough propulsion to brake into Mars orbit on its own power, and then send a separate lander/return vehicle, which itself will have to operate as an independent spacecraft. SpaceX's BFR instead uses a direct entry and lands the entire spacecraft after using the atmosphere to remove almost all of the kinetic energy of the spacecraft:
<http://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/making_life_multiplanetary-2017.pdf>
The modular approach is inefficient and complex, but it can be done with existing launch vehicles. SpaceX initially proposed the even larger ITS, but could not fund the development of a system that would find little use outside of Mars missions. BFR is that system scaled down to be useful as a commercial launcher on Earth. | As several people have said there are lots of options and lots of trade-offs. To give you an idea, [here](http://www.spacex.com/mars) is SpaceX's presentation of their ideas for Mars. To summarise.
1. BFR takes off from Earth and leaves BFS (upper stage) in orbit
2. Repeated (maybe 6) BFR launches take tanker-loads of fuel to the BFS and partly refill its tanks (it can hold about 1000 tons of propellant, but uses about 900 of them to get to orbit).
3. At some stage the crew go aboard. More launches maybe necessary to carry supplies for the crew.
4. Using the fuel that was carried aboard, the BFS flies to Mars, enters the atmosphere, and lands, Taking nine months or so.
After this there are two ways it could pan out:
5a The BFS is refueled with propellant made on Mars and stored there by earlier robot (or manned missions). It can take off, fly back to Earth, reenter and land. It might be wise to transfer the crew to a nice new BFS before reentry, in case theirs has taken damage on Mars or in space
5b A much smaller launch vehicle (carried to Mars as cargo) launches the crew to Mars orbit, where the rendezvous with yet another BFS that has been waiting, to take them back to Earth
5b leaves a ship stranded on Mars, but doesn't need propellant manufacture there. It also means you have much less cargo space, so your mission can do much less.
This isn't the only approach, but it one. Empty spacecraft are fairly light, so launching the spaceship in one piece and then launching fuel and cargo afterwards is quite appealing if you have enough launchers and the ability to send them up frequently |
82,884 | I know that the ABS main stack in my home is not rubbing against the floor or attic plywood openings; it is rubbing against the drywall in a interior wall when the pipe expands with the use of hot water. The pipe is 3.5" in diameter and the wall is studded out with 2x4's, so the stud bay is 3.5" as well. With such little room to add felt, I was hoping a product existed that was thinner but would still eliminate the ticking noise.
Does any sheet-like product for this application exist? I was expecting to find some sort of two-piece sheet system that would allow the sliding to occur between the sheets but I have had no luck in finding such an item on the interwebs. | 2016/01/23 | [
"https://diy.stackexchange.com/questions/82884",
"https://diy.stackexchange.com",
"https://diy.stackexchange.com/users/2271/"
] | Cut out the 1/2" drywall in the affected area & hot-patch in 1/4" drywall. A gap won't wear out over time, but any & all padding, greasing or spraying will. But yes, even a slight temperature increase will expand plastic plumbing. | Attach teflon sheets/strips to the drywall to allow the the pipe to easily slide around without noise.
such as
[http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FPD674/](http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B000FPD674)
Or the as a tape, though the tapes are less wear resistant than the sheet/plates
[http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004V41BPE/](http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B004V41BPE) |
82,884 | I know that the ABS main stack in my home is not rubbing against the floor or attic plywood openings; it is rubbing against the drywall in a interior wall when the pipe expands with the use of hot water. The pipe is 3.5" in diameter and the wall is studded out with 2x4's, so the stud bay is 3.5" as well. With such little room to add felt, I was hoping a product existed that was thinner but would still eliminate the ticking noise.
Does any sheet-like product for this application exist? I was expecting to find some sort of two-piece sheet system that would allow the sliding to occur between the sheets but I have had no luck in finding such an item on the interwebs. | 2016/01/23 | [
"https://diy.stackexchange.com/questions/82884",
"https://diy.stackexchange.com",
"https://diy.stackexchange.com/users/2271/"
] | Cut out the 1/2" drywall in the affected area & hot-patch in 1/4" drywall. A gap won't wear out over time, but any & all padding, greasing or spraying will. But yes, even a slight temperature increase will expand plastic plumbing. | How hot would a 3" abs stack have to get to make sqeaking or ticking sounds in the drywall cavity. If it wasn't built in the last couple of years 2 X 4 studs were actually 3 5/8" wide leaving you just enough space that it shouldn't tick. I've only seen this happen on hot water lines where the hole through the floor plates were really tight, never on abs stacks. For the record cast Iron had big hubs for the joints and ween't used when I got in the trades in 72 not worth talking about. I would be thinking hard about how your hot waterline goes |
23,762,647 | I would like our Windows Forms application to register the customer's details in a Azure database (after they have purchased the application). I can create a table on Azure but how should I get the data into the table? I don't think talking directly to the database is the correct way to do this. Also I need to make sure only our application has access to the database and the information is encrypted from the application to the database. Any help would be most welcome on the correct way to do this. I'm using .NET 4.0 and Visual Studios 2013.
Do I need something running on the server which can be called by our application which then adds / edits the database? What's the best solution? | 2014/05/20 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/23762647",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/2417907/"
] | The problem with speaking directly to the database is that you'll end up distributing the connection string to the database with your application. Sure, it can be encrypted, but somewhere in the code, you'll have to decrypt it prior to connecting to the database. At best, this is a hassle (when changing databases from DEV to PROD, for example). At worst, it increases the surface area for attack.
Here's a standard-ish solution that hits most of your requirements:
* Set up the windows Azure database with the tables and columns you need.
* Set up a web service (azure-hosted or somewhere else) with the appropriate security (either SSL, or some form of message encryption with WCF).
* Have the client application call the web-service with the registration information.
In this case, you're still opening up a non-authenticated web request to be able to perform writes into your database, but you are limiting the channel with which they can perform those actions. You could harden the implementation by adding a clever agent string to your request or by adding some form of clever secret / encryption / checksum to the message. Additionally, depending on how you do registration and activation, the webservice could validate the incoming information against previously registered evaluation downloads.
Hope this helps a little. | Even for Azure database you will have connection string. So, there is no problem to connect and read/udpate data. And of course you can manage database object via SQL server management studio.
Regarding talking directly or not it depends on your goal/application architecture.
What's the purpose of having Azure database? |
30,484,139 | I have a question about bootstrap.
So basically, depending on the device, I want to show a different image. Using media queries, I was the changing the content of the depending on the device's size.
However, I just learned about the visible classes in bootstrap, and I tried them out, and they gave the same result, except that all images are loaded, and they are hidden. So I was wondering: which method is more efficient? | 2015/05/27 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/30484139",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/4650311/"
] | I would say the first method is more efficient because you only load the image that you need based on the device size. It would decrease the number of outgoing requests and allow faster initial page load. | Certainy the Bootstrap classes because it's faster mobile-friendly development. These can be used for showing and hiding content by device via media query, combined with large, small, and medium devices.
They make developers work more simple and simple and the feasibility to hide excess of ifo in smaller devices and vice versa |
2,931 | In our (web) application, we want tooltips (read: title attributes) that also indicate shortcuts for buttons. We have some button that involve the cursor ('arrow') keys.
We've tried using characters like ⬅ and ←, but they just don't look right. We've also tried spelling it out, e.g. "Left Arrow Key", but that's a bit verbose.
What's a good way to do this? | 2010/12/20 | [
"https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/2931",
"https://ux.stackexchange.com",
"https://ux.stackexchange.com/users/2608/"
] | Maybe you could try a dingbat font with actual keyboard keys? Something like this:
 | What's wrong with your first icon? It looks almost perfect, to me. Of course, it would be better to see it in the context of your other 'key shortcut' icons, but it looks very much like it will convey the important info., namely 'this is the left cursor key'.
If you want to be extra clear, you could colour it beige according to the fact that it's the most likely colour of the key the user will press. Maybe some shading and reshaping of the icon would help to emphasise its 'key-ness'. |
2,931 | In our (web) application, we want tooltips (read: title attributes) that also indicate shortcuts for buttons. We have some button that involve the cursor ('arrow') keys.
We've tried using characters like ⬅ and ←, but they just don't look right. We've also tried spelling it out, e.g. "Left Arrow Key", but that's a bit verbose.
What's a good way to do this? | 2010/12/20 | [
"https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/2931",
"https://ux.stackexchange.com",
"https://ux.stackexchange.com/users/2608/"
] | Tooltips from the basic 'title' attribute are very limited and not your best option: browsers may or may not pop them up as you expect them.
I think @Rahul comment is very good in this regard: you may want to look at a more complete tooltip solution. There's plenty of pre-made libraries to give you more flexible, solid and appealing tooltips that the basic 'title' attribute.
If you are looking at the title attribute for accessibility reasons (as a fallback option from more complex tooltip solutions), then I think the verbose option ('Press Left Arrow Key to...') is your best option: a screenreader would read it out nicely. | What's wrong with your first icon? It looks almost perfect, to me. Of course, it would be better to see it in the context of your other 'key shortcut' icons, but it looks very much like it will convey the important info., namely 'this is the left cursor key'.
If you want to be extra clear, you could colour it beige according to the fact that it's the most likely colour of the key the user will press. Maybe some shading and reshaping of the icon would help to emphasise its 'key-ness'. |
2,931 | In our (web) application, we want tooltips (read: title attributes) that also indicate shortcuts for buttons. We have some button that involve the cursor ('arrow') keys.
We've tried using characters like ⬅ and ←, but they just don't look right. We've also tried spelling it out, e.g. "Left Arrow Key", but that's a bit verbose.
What's a good way to do this? | 2010/12/20 | [
"https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/2931",
"https://ux.stackexchange.com",
"https://ux.stackexchange.com/users/2608/"
] | Maybe you could try a dingbat font with actual keyboard keys? Something like this:
 | If you move beyond using the title attribute and instead utilize a CSS solution, you could actually provide both a small image of the keyboard key as well as a short description below it. There are a huge collection of very interesting web pages and example images of "CSS Keyboard Key images" use that phrase in a Google Image search for starters here is an erudite page by somebody who cracked the way it is done on Stack Overflow pages see:-
<http://www.jimmyscode.com/css-styling-for-kbd-tags/> |
2,931 | In our (web) application, we want tooltips (read: title attributes) that also indicate shortcuts for buttons. We have some button that involve the cursor ('arrow') keys.
We've tried using characters like ⬅ and ←, but they just don't look right. We've also tried spelling it out, e.g. "Left Arrow Key", but that's a bit verbose.
What's a good way to do this? | 2010/12/20 | [
"https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/2931",
"https://ux.stackexchange.com",
"https://ux.stackexchange.com/users/2608/"
] | Tooltips from the basic 'title' attribute are very limited and not your best option: browsers may or may not pop them up as you expect them.
I think @Rahul comment is very good in this regard: you may want to look at a more complete tooltip solution. There's plenty of pre-made libraries to give you more flexible, solid and appealing tooltips that the basic 'title' attribute.
If you are looking at the title attribute for accessibility reasons (as a fallback option from more complex tooltip solutions), then I think the verbose option ('Press Left Arrow Key to...') is your best option: a screenreader would read it out nicely. | If you move beyond using the title attribute and instead utilize a CSS solution, you could actually provide both a small image of the keyboard key as well as a short description below it. There are a huge collection of very interesting web pages and example images of "CSS Keyboard Key images" use that phrase in a Google Image search for starters here is an erudite page by somebody who cracked the way it is done on Stack Overflow pages see:-
<http://www.jimmyscode.com/css-styling-for-kbd-tags/> |
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